PORT ANGELES — This week, the conductor and the pianist will, at last, keep an appointment made just before everything changed.
The last time Port Angeles Symphony music director Jonathan Pasternack and soloist Josu de Solaun saw each other, they had just given a concert with the full orchestra.
As they took their bows, the packed Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center rose in a standing ovation.
The next day, Pasternack drove de Solaun, who lives in Spain, to the airport. First, though, Pasternack stopped at Jim’s Pharmacy to pick up an N95 mask for the pianist to wear while traveling.
It was Feb. 23, 2020, and they had been hearing about something called the novel coronavirus.
Less than a month later, air travel, live music and large gatherings ceased.
One of the innumerable performances canceled by the global pandemic had been planned for late March in the Czech Republic city of Olomouc, near the Slovakian border.
It was to be a recording project with the Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra, with Pasternack conducting and de Solaun as the guest soloist: a highlight of the two men’s careers.
The time since has been dark.
Pianist Josu de Solaun and Port Angeles Symphony conductor Jonathan Pasternack last saw each other at a symphony rehearsal in February 2020. (Photo by Dorthe Grube Porter/Port Angeles Symphony)
Pasternack had to cancel the Port Angeles Symphony’s 2020 season; the last time he stood in front of an orchestra was in a rehearsal around the first of March of that year.
De Solaun has been at home in Spain. Over the past year, he has lost both of his parents, one in April to COVID-19. He, too, was ill with the disease, and he spent two weeks in intensive care.
“With everything that has happened, it’s been very difficult for me,” de Solaun said in a phone interview.
He is recovering, even as Europe gradually reopens.
De Solaun is giving recitals of the music he loves — Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev — and has embarked on a 12-city tour of Romania.
Last week, de Solaun traveled to the Czech Republic to meet up with Pasternack, who flew from Seattle to Amsterdam to Prague, and then took a train three hours to Olomouc.
Today, they are joining the 60-member Moravian Philharmonic for their long-delayed recording project.
It will be given over to the music of Franz Liszt, the Hungarian composer and virtuoso many in the classical world consider the greatest pianist in history.
In six sessions, Pasternack, de Solaun and the orchestra will record three concertos from the Romantic period, including the Totentanz for solo piano and orchestra, and the famed tone poem, “Les Preludes.”
“Liszt was one of the fathers of musical modernity,” de Solaun said; “these are forward-looking works.”
For Pasternack, this feels surreal — and he’s “both incredibly excited and somewhat apprehensive.”
“But I think both of us have a lot to say with this particular music,” the conductor added.
Liszt’s work is about life, death and transcending struggle — and, while it’s more than 180 years old, Pasternack can feel the music’s emotions resonate as clearly as they ever have.
Pasternack, who grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and de Solaun, who is from Valencia, Spain, both attended the Manhattan School of Music. They met in 2014 when they were new professors at Texas’ Sam Houston State University.
At this point, they’ve performed together with orchestras many times: first in Houston, then three concerts in Port Angeles, plus three performances in Romania.
“It benefits the music-making a lot when you know each other so well,” de Solaun said. “I’m particularly proud of my musical relationship with Jonathan. He’s like family, like my brother.”
“I think we share certain ideals, both musical and human. It is a rare collaboration for me,” added Pasternack.
In performance, conductor and pianist hope to let the music flow through them, without affectation, to reach the audience in its full spirit.
“I think this will be a project to remember,” de Solaun said.
Making this music is “filling me with inspiration, with joy.”
While de Solaun returns to Spain for recitals in September, Pasternack will come home this Saturday to start his seventh season as conductor of the Port Angeles Symphony.
The first two concerts planned are the reimagined Family Pops on Oct. 1-2 at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center.
Season subscriptions are slated to go on sale in early September, while more information can be found at portangelessymphony.org.
“As excited as I am about the Liszt project in Europe,” Pasternack said, “I can’t tell you how much I look forward to making music for our community again, with our wonderful orchestra.”
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Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladailynews.com.
