Review: The Bach Society Illuminates the Sounds of the Season

In real estate, we are told, location is everything. During the Bach Society’s annual Christmas Candlelight Concert at Powell Hall on December 23rd, it occurred to me that the same can often be true of a performing arts event. Some seats are better than others, especially when there’s a strong visual component to the performance.

The Bach Society at Powell Hall

That’s not usually a major issue for classical concerts, but the Bach Society’s annual event isn’t like most. That’s primarily because of the candlelight procession that opens the second half. The lights dim and the members of the Bach Society walk down the aisles singing, each with an electric candle. If you're lucky enough to be sitting downstairs in the orchestra section, you're soon surrounded by singers—some carrying the melody, some the harmony, enveloping you in a constantly changing kaleidoscope of sound. It’s unforgettable.

This year, though, I was late in requesting tickets, so we were in what is now called the Mid Balcony. From up there, the chorus and orchestra still sounded fine, but the surround-sound experience of the candlelight procession was mixed down to stereo, and the procession itself wasn’t visible. That meant that over half of the audience at this sold-out concert missed what has become the event’s trademark.

That said, this first Candlelight Concert in the new Powell Hall did not lack for fine musicianship and holiday cheer. Bach Society Music Director and Conductor A. Dennis Sparger led the society’s orchestra and chorus with his usual authority, making the evening of holiday sounds old and new a fitting tribute to mark the Bach Society’s 85^th birthday.

Usually dedicated to more serious/traditional classical works, the first half of this year’s event was taken up almost entirely with a brightly celebratory performance of the 1990 Magnificat by Sir John Rutter (b. 1945). A prolific composer of choral music—including popular Christmas tunes such as “The Shepherd’s Pipe Carol,” “Angels’ Carol,”  and “Donkey Carol”—Rutter is one of what was, until fairly recently, a small number of contemporary composers writing in an accessible, audience friendly style. As Sparger writes in his program notes, the composer’s “infectious melodies, along with colorful harmonies and brilliant orchestrations…have made Rutter a favorite in churches, schools and concert halls around the world.”

The text of the Magnificat, per the composer’s web site, is “based on the prayer ascribed by St Luke [Luke I:46-55] to the Virgin Mary on learning that she was to give birth to Christ, [and] is extended by the interpolation of Marian prayers and poems chosen by the composer to create a celebratory work reminiscent of outdoor processions in honour of the Virgin.” In notes for a Naxos recording of the work, Rutter added that “it is mainly in the sunny southern countries—Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico—that Mary is most celebrated and enjoyed. This led me to conceive the music as a bright Latin-flavoured fiesta.”

Scored for orchestra, chorus, and soprano solo, the Magnificat covers a wide range of moods, from the exuberant first movement (“Magnificat anima mea Dominum”) with its lively Latin-American percussion to the majestic and celebratory final movement (“Gloria Patri”), complete with a fervent Marian Antiphon in a translation by Ron Jeffers. The second movement, “Of a Rose, a Lovely Rose,” is a tranquil setting of an anonymous 15^th-century English poem comparing Mary to a rose. The fugal fifth movement, “Fecit potentiam in brachio suo” (“He has shown strength with His arm”), is a dramatic depiction of divine might reminiscent of Vaughan Williams—a sharp contrast with the rocking, near-lullaby “Esurientes implevit bonis” (“The hungry He has filled with good things”) that follows.

Under Sparger’s sympathetic direction, the Bach Society Orchestra and Chorus ensured that all those moods and colors came through with superb clarity.  The occasional cracked note in the horns and brasses notwithstanding, this was quite a solid reading and created the proper festive spirit.

Emily Birsan

Soprano Emily Birsan, who was the soloist the last time the Bach Society presented the Magnificat in 2016, brought a pure and precise tone and good stage presence to her performance. The part calls for a wide vocal range, dipping into the low end of the soprano tessitura in “Esurientes,” but Birsan sounded entirely comfortable with it.

Birsan returned in the second half of the concert for an impressively virtuosic “Laudamus Te” from Mozart’s Great Mass in C minor, K. 427. The composer wrote this and other soprano solos in the Mass with the coloratura voice of his future wife, Constanze Weber, in mind, so a large range and vocal flexibility are called for. Birsan is a lyric soprano rather than a coloratura per se, but she sounded very much on top of her game in the piece.

Other highlights of the evening included a pair of inventive arrangements by Texas-based composer/arranger Tyler Scott Davis of the classic carols “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”  and “Joy to the World.” The former wrapped the 15^th-century tune in a shimmering, modernist haze while the latter had an appropriately triumphal feel that placed the shining brass section in the foreground. The Latin-American sound of “Angels We Have Heard on High” (by Dr. Barlow Bradford of the University of Utah) was a pleasant surprise and kept percussionists Erin Elstner and Paul Brumleve busy with multiple instruments, including marimba, gourd, wood block, and bongos.

The program included a recurring favorite, A Musicological Journey through the 12 Days of Christmas by contemporary American composer Craig Courtney. In this witty arrangement of the popular Christmas memory challenge, each verse is orchestrated in the style of a different composer and/or musical era. As a bonus, most of the arrangements also include a nod to the lyrics.

So, for example, the “seven swans a-swimming” uses the “Swan” theme from Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, the “eleven pipers piping” is set to the “Dance of the Mirlitons” (toy flutes) from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, the “eight maids a-milking” become the eight Valkyries from Wagner’s Die Walküre, and the “twelve drummers drumming” are setting the beat for Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. The program lists only the century and country of inspiration for each verse (e.g., “19th-century France” for Saint-Saëns), leaving it to listeners to fill in the blanks. Judging from the laughter, the audience had no difficulty doing so. I’m not sure the visual jokes (mostly chorus members dancing in period costumes) added anything, but neither did they detract.

Now that they are back in Powell Hall, my hope is that the Bach Society can make better use of the space in the future. Use of the hall’s projected text capabilities, for example, would have been helpful during the Magnificat, as would an awareness of the fact that placing soloists too far down stage center makes them invisible to some of the balcony seats.

The Bach Society’s 2026 season continues with Parts II and III of Handel’s Messiah in March, Bach’s Magnificat in May, and the 2026 Bach Festival at multiple locations this spring. More information is available at the Bach Society web site.

Symphony Review: A Scintillating "Messiah" by Nicholas McGegan and the SLSO

Last Friday (December 12) Nicholas McGegan—a familiar visitor to our fair city over the past four decades—conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the 1742 oratorio Messiah by George Frideric Handel (1685–1759). It was an opportunity to, as both the libretto and Zacariah 9:9 say, “rejoice greatly.”

“Handel was a dramatist of genius,” says McGegan in the program notes, “and I like to bring this out.” That he did Friday night, and in a most compelling fashion. I’ve seen a number of Messiah performances at Powell Hall over the years, and for me the best ones have combined HIP (historically informed performance) practices with a strong sense of theatre. Give me a small orchestra, matching chorus, and soloists who understand Baroque style and I’m good.

Needless to say, I was good Friday night.

Everything about McGegan’s Messiah felt just right, including the decisions as to which numbers to include and which ones to leave out. Handel himself made frequent changes in Messiah during his lifetime, and conductors ever since have followed in that tradition. This Messiah was weighted towards the celebratory, with Part I (which concentrates on Advent and the Nativity) taking up the entire first half of the evening—most appropriate for Yuletide.

The orchestra was a bit larger than what audiences would have been used to in the mid-17^th century, but not by much: around two dozen string players plus two oboes, one bassoon, two trumpets, tympani, and harpsichord alternating with chamber organ for the continuo. The resulting sound was crisp, light, and a perfect balance for the (roughly) 60-voice chorus.

It was also well suited to McGegan’s generally brisk tempos. There is something undeniably thrilling about hearing a solid professional chorus nimbly tripping through rapid-fire contrapuntal numbers like “And he shall purify” (Part I, No. 7) or “For unto us a child is born” (Part I, No. 12). That’s especially true when the conductor honors the dance element of Handel’s tunes, as McGegan unerringly did.

Speaking of the chorus, Director Erin Freeman must be feeling particularly proud of her singers after their splendid performance. Their elocution was impressively precise, often rendering the projected text irrelevant, and their massed vocal power was a joy to hear.

Before discussing the soloists, I’d like to return briefly to the subject of Handel as dramatist. It's worth remembering that until he reinvented himself as a composer of English-language oratorios, Handel was best known as a composer of Italian opera. Indeed, the sacred oratorio was essentially his invention—a libretto on a religious subject combined with the theatricality of an opera. That mix didn’t always please the more religiously stuffy back in Handel’s day, but it’s precisely that blend of theatre and theology that has made Messiah such a hit over the centuries.

That means that the soloists should ideally have operatic backgrounds and should know how to invest their singing with an awareness of the emotional content of the text. All four of the soloists this past weekend met those requirements and then some, with my personal favorite being contralto Sara Couden. Her “He was despised” (II, 23) was filled with compassion, while her “O thou that tellest good tidings” (I, 9) radiated joy. She seemed to be the least dependent on her score and the most successful in engaging with the audience.

Soprano Sherezade Panthaki’s bright, flexible voice served her well in the virtuoso aria “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion” (I, 18). The aria is a showpiece for a soprano with coloratura skills like Panthaki’s.  Her “I know that my Redeemer liveth” (III, 45), on the other hand, was brimming with simple sincerity.

Tenor John Matthew Myers, who was so impressive in the SLSO’s 2022 Messiah, has a powerful voice throughout its range, including some solid low notes, and a commanding stage presence to go with it. The tenor soloist is the first voice you hear in Messiah, with “Comfort ye my people” and “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted” (I, 2 and 3), so it’s important to make a strong first impression—which he unquestionably did.

Bass-baritone Brandon Cedel was a last minute substitute for an ailing Philippe Sly. Not surprisingly, he watched his score a bit more closely than his fellow singers, but that did nothing to detract from his powerful and authoritative singing in “Why do the nations so furiously rage together” (III, 40), “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light” (I, 11), and, accompanied by the clarion-clear playing of Principal Trumpet Steven Franklin, “The trumpet shall sound (III, 48).

The score doesn’t use the trumpet that often (the only solo is in III, 48) but they are critical in the four numbers that call for them. Franklin and Michael Walk did themselves proud in “Glory to God” (I, 17)—where, in accordance with Handel’s original concept, they were seated offstage—as well as in the famous “Hallelujah” (II, 44) and the glorious “Amen” (III, 53).

McGegan has described that final number as “the sort of music that I imagine could be played in heaven.” It certainly felt that way Friday night, as did the performance as a whole. This was a sparkling, fleet-footed, and very High Baroque Messiah, conducted by an expert with copious knowledge of the style and performed by singers and players all at the top of their form.

Finally, allow me to distribute some laurel wreaths to the individual players who supplemented the SLSO’s excellent string section. Mark Shuldiner was the solid cornerstone of the continuo on harpsichord and chamber organ. The latter provided surprising punch despite its small size. Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo added to that firm foundation.  There was also excellent work by Oboes Jelena Dirks (Principal) and Xiomara Mass as well as Associate Principal Tympani Kevin Ritenauer. Congratulations to all.

The SLSO’s Messiah will be available as an on-demand stream for the next month at the SLSO web site. If you missed the live concert, I can highly recommend that recording of the Saturday, December 13, performance as the next best thing.

The regular concert season is on hiatus until the new year to make way for the orchestra’s traditional holiday offerings

IN UNISON Christmas, December 18 and 19: Kevin McBeth conducts the IN UNISON chorus along with members of the SLSO, vocal soloists (including The Clark Sisters), and instrumentalists, in a blend of gospel, jazz, and traditional holiday favorites.

Mercy Holiday Celebration, December 20 through 23: Stuart Malina conducts the SLSO and Chorus along with vocalist Kennedy Holmes in a program of seasonal favorites and exciting twists on timeless classics.

Home Alone in Concert, December 27 and 28: Joshua Gersen conducts the SLSO and the St. Louis Children’s Choirs (Dr. Alyson Moore, artistic director) in the John Williams score for the 2018 comedy classic as the film plays on the big screen at Powell.

New Year’s Eve Celebration, December 31: Music Director Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and pianist Stewart Goodyear in a festive evening that features music by Gershwin, Bizet, Bernstein, and Offenbach. The concert will also be broadcast live on Classic 107.3 and St. Louis Public Radio.

Information on these and other concerts is available at the SLSO web site.

Symphony Preview, December 12-14: Messiah Mysteries

This weekend (December 12–14) British conductor and Handel expert Nicholas McGegan leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Handel's popular 1742 oratorio "Messiah." In doing so at Christmastime, he's following a tradition over two centuries old. The origin of that tradition is the first of our three "Messiah Mysteries." 

1. The Adventure of the Mobile Messiah

George Frideric Handel's Messiah is a Christmas tradition. Which is odd, because the composer never intended it to be Christmas music.

The oratorio was first performed on April 13, 1742, in Dublin; repeated that same June; and then moved to London, where it was first presented on March 23, 1743. I can't find any evidence that the work was in any way associated with Christmas during Handel's life. In fact, as Christopher H. Gibbs points out, "Handel performed it some three dozen times—every time, it should be noted, around Easter, not Christmas."

Still, as Jonathan Kandell notes in an article for Smithsonian, "By the early 19th century, performances of Messiah had become an even stronger Yuletide tradition in the United States than in Britain."

An important piece of the puzzle is supplied is supplied by Luke Howard in his program notes for a 2009 Messiah performance by UMS Choral Union:

Although the work was occasionally performed during Advent in Dublin, the oratorio was usually regarded in England as an entertainment for the penitential season of Lent, when performances of opera were banned.... But in 1791, the Cæcilian Society of London began its annual Christmas performances [of Messiah], and in 1818 the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston gave the work's first complete performance in the US on Christmas Day—establishing a tradition that continues to the present.

It apparently took a while for the Christmas tradition to become well established, though. As Marie Gangemil of the Oratorio Society of New York wrote in her program notes for their 2012 Messiah, the first December performance by that organization didn't take place until 1874.

But are these events sufficient to explain why the tradition became so widespread? Might there also be a supply and demand issue here? Laurence Cummings, who conducted Messiah here in 2022, observed that: "There is so much fine Easter music—Bach's St. Matthew Passion, most especially—and so little great sacral music written for Christmas. But the whole first part of Messiah is about the birth of Christ.”

So there you have it. Boston and New York picked up the idea from London, and the rest of the USA, seeing a chance to fill a product gap, picked it up from them. It's a reminder that memes were spreading long before the Internet, just a lot more slowly.

2. The Case of the Upright Audience

Another puzzle connected with Messiah is the business of standing during the "Hallelujah" chorus that ends Part II.

If you've been a classical music lover long enough, you have no doubt heard the story of how King George the II stood when he first heard it at the 1743 London premiere and how everybody else followed suit because, hey, he was the king. It's a great story with only one little flaw: there's no evidence that George II ever attended a performance of Messiah at all.

The story appears to come, not from a contemporary account, but from a secondhand description in a letter written by one James Beattie 37 years later. The story is almost certainly apocryphal and a classic example of how urban legends originate.

The idea of standing at some point in the oratorio appears to go back a long way, though. When George Harris attended a performance in 1750, he observed that "[a]t some of the chorus's [sic] the company stood up," suggesting that the custom extended beyond just the "Hallelujah." Six years later, another account mentions the audience standing for "grand choruses." In his video series on "Messiah," Andrew Megill, Music Director of Masterwork Chorus, describes a letter written by a woman who attended a Messiah in Handel's time complaining of audience members who weren't standing during the appropriate choruses—suggesting that the practice was already fairly well established.

The bottom line, though, is that nobody really seems to know where the custom originated or for that matter why so many of us are still doing it. Maybe early audiences were just so swept away by the power of some of the choruses they stood up spontaneously and the custom simply caught on. Like the Christmas performance tradition, it seems to be a meme that just won't die.

For anyone attending Messiah for the first time, it must seem just another example of the sometimes baffling and contradictory rules of etiquette that go with classical music concerts. But that's a whole different subject.

3. The Enigma of the Expanding Orchestra

Finally, a note on the size of the orchestra you'll see this weekend. That Dublin premiere back in 1743 at the Great Music Hall on Fishamble Street (capacity 700) probably used around 20 singers in toto, including soloists, along with an orchestra of strings, two trumpets, and tympani. Handel himself varied the orchestration of Messiah depending on the resources available for a particular performance as well as the size of the hall and other factors. 

Still, the Great Expansion didn't really kick in until after Handel's death, when it became customary to re-orchestrate and expand the size of the instrumental and choral forces to bring the work more in line with contemporary tastes. The German-language version Mozart prepared for his long-time patron Gottfried van Swieten in 1789 (officially Der Messias, K. 572) is one of the earliest and best-known examples, but there have been numerous others. A 1787 London Messiah, for example, promised 800 performers.

Not coincidentally, Messiah started getting bigger at the same time the Industrial Revolution began to make itself heard, in the most literal sense of the word. In 1743 the Industrial Revolution was still over a decade away and the sources of most noise were biological. By the end of the 18^th century the increase in environmental noise was well underway, and increased substantially during the 19th as detailed in the 1994 book The Soundscape by Canadian composer R. Murray Shafer (1933–2021).

Today, a large symphony orchestra playing fortississimo (fff) can deliver 100dbA or more—a level officially classified as “harmful” with sustained exposure. Which explains the earplugs you will sometimes see on the concert stage.

It’s not surprising, then, that during the 19th century, expanding Handel’s oratorio began to take on the aspect of an arms race, with each subsequent performance determined to become more grandiose (and in an ever-larger space) than the last. The 1857 Great Handel Festival at London's Crystal Palace employed 2000 singers and an orchestra of nearly 400. Later performances at the same venue became even more bloated.

By 1877 George Bernard Shaw, for one, had had enough. "Why," he asked, "instead of wasting huge sums on the multitudinous dullness of a Handel Festival does not somebody set up a thoroughly rehearsed and exhaustively studied performance of the Messiah in St James's Hall with a chorus of twenty capable artists? Most of us would be glad to hear the work seriously performed once before we die."

I don't know whether or not Shaw, who died in 1950, eventually got his wish. The tide did begin to turn back to Handel's original intentions in the 20th century, though, and by the 1960s performing editions began to show up based on the composer's original manuscripts and using instruments appropriate to the period. The 1965 edition by Watkins Shaw was probably the earliest, but it was a Basil Lam edition that was used in a groundbreaking 1967 Angel/EMI recording by The Ambrosian Singers and the English Chamber Orchestra. That recording would be the first of many that would return to something like Handel's original intentions.

The roster for this weekend calls for around 40 musicians plus chorus and soloists. In this respect, McGegan is in line with other recent Messiah performances by Laurence Cummings (2022), Matthew Halls (2018), Bernard Labadie (2015), and Christopher Warren Green (2012).

The actual length of Messiah varies from performance to performance. A complete Messiah contains either 47 or 53 numbers (depending on which edition you use) and can run just under two and one-half hours, not including an intermission. Given that the SLSO web site lists the duration of this weekend’s performance as two hours and 45 minutes, including intermission, it sounds like McGegan is going for the Full Handel.

By the way, Handel prepared alternate versions for a dozen of the numbers in Messiah. "Rejoice greatly" in Part 1, for example, exists in versions using both 4/4 and 12/8 time signatures. The former sounds like a march, the latter like a dance. Which one a particular conductor uses is pretty much up to them. The 1976 recording by The Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Neville Marriner uses the 12/8 score (my personal preference).

Want to know more? Check out Eric Dundon’s article at the SLSO Stories site, Conductor Nicholas McGegan on 5 magical Messiah moments that aren’t the Hallelujah Chorus. McGegan picks five numbers that he thinks deserve at least as much love as the “Hallelujah” chorus, including "Rejoice greatly.”

And don’t forget Symphony Preview Wednesday night, December 10, from 8 to 10 pm on Classic 107.3. Tom Sudholt and I will dish up some deep background and play some of the greatest hits from Messiah. The show will also be available for streaming at the Classic 107.3 web site. Here’s our playlist for the show.

The Essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Handel’s Messiah Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, December 12 through 14 . Soloists are Sherezade Panthaki, soprano; Sara Couden, contralto (SLSO debut); John Matthew Myers, tenor; and Brandon Cedel, bass-baritone. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and on Classic 107.3.

Symphony Review: Cellist Kian Soltani Lights Up the Night in SLSO Debut

I rarely take time during intermission at a St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concert to fire off a post on Facebook, but  last night’s (December 6) was a notable exception. With guest conductor John Storgårds at the podium, the local debut of Austrian cellist Kian Soltani in the Cello Concerto in C major, Hob. VIIb:1 by Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) was a dazzler.

Cellist Kian Soltani

Soltani, judging from this performance, has stunning technique and heart to go with it. The jovial march-like tune of the Moderato first movement radiated exuberance and the cadenza was a jaw-dropping display of virtuosity. The Adagio was all gentle contemplation, and the final Allegretto Molto was replete with the kind of good-humored energy one expects from the composer’s fast movements.

The finale was clearly intended as a showpiece for the original soloist Joeph Franz Weigl, who was the principal cellist of Prince Nicolaus's Esterházy Orchestra at the time. Weigl was an innovative virtuoso, noted for his high-speed runs up and down the fingerboard using the “thumb position technique”—an “advanced and comparatively new technique” at the time. That makes this movement (and the concerto in general, for that matter) a chance for the soloist to shine—which is exactly what Soltani did.

All of this was delivered with a passionate commitment on the part of both Soltani and Storgårds. It was the kind of performance that demanded the standing ovation it got.

Returning for an encore Soltani, mischievous grin in place, asked the audience “slow or fast?” And then offered to do both.

The slow piece was “The Girl from Shiraz,” the third of the seven Persian Folk Songs by contemporary Iranian composer Reza Valli (b. 1952), with a steady drone by the SLSO cello section replacing the original piano part. The melismatic tune floated and danced above that drone hypnotically. The fast number was an abbreviated version of Soltani’s own Persian Fire Dance, which with a blazing display more than lived up to its title. You can hear him perform both on this 2018 Deutsche Gramophon disc Home.

The concerts opened with the Three Romances, Op. 22, by Clara Schumann (1819–1896) in an orchestral transcription by contemporary Danish composer Benjamin de Murashkin (b. 1981). First performed in 2021 by Storgårds and the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the de Murashkin significantly transforms the original with the intent of creating “something that sounds like it was always ‘meant to be’ rather than orchestrated piano music.”

In this, he has succeeded quite brilliantly. If I had not heard Schumann’s original, I doubt I would have guessed that this music had ever been anything other than a work for small orchestra. The piano and violin parts have been so thoroughly extracted and reassigned that at no point did it sound as if it had been intended for a different instrument. The themes flitted among the various sections in a manner slightly reminiscent of the Klangfarbenmelodie orchestrations of Anton Webern (1883–1945). It was a bit disorienting but entrancing all the same.

Speaking of disorienting music, the concerts concluded with the featured work of the evening, the Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141, by Dimitri Shostakovich (1906–1975). The composer began work on the last and most enigmatic of his symphonies while he was hospitalized in 1971 (he would die of lung cancer four years later) and later completed at his home. “It’s one of those works that just completely carried me away,” he said in a 1973 interview, “and maybe even one of my few compositions that seemed completely clear to me from the first note to the last.” Critical and audience response to it, though, has been all over the map.

It's profoundly odd music that stubbornly resists verbal description, but I’ll do my best. The Allegretto first movement, according to the composer, “is as if played in a toy store.” It opens with two notes on the glockenspiel followed by a long flute solo based on the notes D, E-flat, C, and B. It’s the composer’s signature in German musical notation (D, S, C, H)—and proves to be the basis for around eight minutes of music that’s both whimsical and demented. When the galop from the William Tell overture pops up (one of many musical quotations in the symphony, including a few from Shostakovich himself) it feels completely natural—largely because Shostakovich has been hinting at it for some time.

The solemn second movement, Adagio, alternates brass and string chorales with agonized cello passages. There’s a dirge for trombone and tuba, some chillingly dissonant chords in the woodwinds, and a massive orchestral outburst about two-thirds of the way through. It feels like towering icebergs floating on a dark ocean.

 A brief, sardonic Allegretto includes a violin solo that seems to have wandered in from Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, mechanically ticking percussion passages (prominently featuring wood block, snare drum, and xylophone), and snarling outbursts from the woodwinds and brasses.

The descent into the finale (Adagio – Allegretto) follows without pause. Quotes from Wagner—the “fate” motive and rhythm of “Seigfried’s Funeral March” from the Ring cycle—lead to a whimsical dance-like theme. That theme is supplanted by an ominous pizzicato motif in the low strings which proves to be the basis of a long passacaglia. It all builds to a final, massive howl of anguish and outrage that gives way to the little dance theme. Finally, we’re left with fleeting bits and pieces of melody, clicking percussion, and a sad little chord on glockenspiel and celesta over a string pedal point.

“The rest,” as Shakespeare wrote, “is silence.”

What does it all mean? In The Joy of Music, Leonard Bernstein suggested that the meaning of a great work of music can’t always be expressed properly in words. I can’t disagree. The Symphony No. 15 makes sense to me. But, as I just demonstrated, I can’t verbalize exactly why.

I can, however, say why I was left so deeply moved and impressed by this performance. Shostakovich’s score calls for a huge ensemble, but most of what we hear comes from soloists and small ensembles. The SLSO musicians proved their mettle in those many highly exposed sections. That includes (but is not limited to) Jennifer Nitchman and Associate Principal Andrea Kaplan on flutes, Gloria Yun on piccolo, bassoonists Ellen Connors and Principal Andrew Cuneo, Principal Trombonist Jonathan Randazzo, Chance Trottman-Huiet on tuba, Associate Principal Cellist Melissa Brooks, Associate Concertmaster Erin Schreiber, Principal Double Bass Erik Harris, and the horns under Principal Roger Kaza.

And then there’s the percussion of the section. In addition to the tympani (played by Principal Shannon Wood with his customary expertise) Shostakovich calls for a massive percussion battery, including triangle, castanets, woodblock, whip, tom-tom, tam-tam, glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, and the usual bass and snare drums. As Principal Percussionist Will James said on the SLSO’s Noted podcast, the placement of all those instruments on the Powell Hall stage is a logistical challenge.

He and the other five members of the section (Alan Stewart, Kevin Ritenauer, Charles Renneker, Kim Shelley, and Zachary Crystal) met that challenge brilliantly. All of the composer’s wide range of percussive effects came through clearly and precisely. Kudos are due all around.

Holding this monumental musical structure together was the sure hand and keen ear of John Storgårds. This can’t be an easy work to conduct, with its sprawling structure levels of enigmatic meaning. But he made a strong case for it, delivering a reading that was overwhelming in its power. If you missed last weekend’s performances, the Saturday concert will be available for streaming later this week at the SLSO web site, where it will remain for the next month.

Upcoming: Nicholas McGegan returns to town to conduct the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus along with vocal soloists in Handel’s evergreen Messiah. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, December 12, 13, and 14.

The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and on Classic 107.3. Classic 107.3 is also where you can hear Tom Sudholt and I host the Symphony Preview episode about the concert on Wednesday, December 10, from 8 to 10 pm.

Symphony Preview, December 5 and 6: Enigmas and Transformations

This weekend (December 5 and 6), the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concerts will have a familiar face at the podium and a brand new one in the solo spot. John Storgårds, a frequent guest at Powell Hall (his most recent appearance was last April), conducts the orchestra in music by Dimitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) and the local premiere of music by Clara Schumann (1819–1896). Cellist Kian Soltani, in his local debut, joins the orchestra for the Cello Concerto in C major by Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)

The program is a study in contrasts. The Schumann and Haydn works are generally light and engaging while the Shostakovich is dark and enigmatic. Allow me to elaborate.

Violinist Joseph Joachim and pianist Clara Schumann.
Reproduction of pastel drawing (now lost).
By Adolph von Menzel - Deutsche Fotothek, Public Domain

The Clara Schumann piece that opens the concerts is her Three Romances, Op. 22, in an orchestral transcription by contemporary Danish composer Benjamin de Murashkin (b. 1981). Originally scored for violin and piano, the Romances were written in 1852 and 1853 and first performed by Clara and Joseph Joachim, a celebrated violinist and close family friend.

Although melodically appealing and suffused with what husband Robert called leichtigkeit (literally “lightness,” with a sense of ease and gentleness), the Romances were among the last things Clara published. In 1854 Robert was confined in a mental asylum, and he would die there two years later. After his death, Clara effectively abandoned composition altogether. “It was,” notes pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason,  “as if her creative fire disappeared in the tragedy of her bereavement and the demands of looking after her family during the years that followed.”

What we’ll hear this weekend is not the original version for violin and piano but rather (as noted previously) an orchestral transcription first performed by Storgårds and the Copenhagen Philharmonic in November 2021. I described this as a “transcription” because, glancing at the sheet music, I have the sense that Murashkin has significantly transformed and expanded Clara Schumann’s original. Quoted in this weekend’s program notes, Murashkin described the result as “hopefully something that sounds like it was always ‘meant to be’ rather than orchestrated piano music.”

Meanwhile, you can listen to a masterful rendition of the original by Joseph Silverstein, the former concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, accompanied by pianist Veronika Juchum, the daughter of conductor Eugen Jochum. Tom Sudholt, my co-host for Symphony Preview on Classic 107.3, picked this recording for our December 3^rd broadcast, and it’s a winner.

Concluding the first half of the concerts will be Haydn’s C major Cello Concerto, Hob. VIIb/1 ("Hob." refers to the definitive catalog of over 750 Haydn works by Dutch collector and musicologist Anthony von Hoboken).  It's an early work, written somewhere around 1761–1765 (when Haydn was in his 30s) and apparently intended for Haydn's friend Joseph Franz Weigl, who was the principal cellist of Prince Nicolaus's Esterházy Orchestra at the time. Judging from the difficulty of the solo part, Weigl must have been quite the virtuoso.  He might also have been the only cello in the ensemble since the score has (depending on the edition) only one cello line, marked either "solo" or "tutti" ("all," indicating the orchestral part).

It is, in any event, something of a bridge between the traditional Baroque concerto, with solos alternating with ritornello passages and not much in the way of thematic development, and the more harmonically complex concertos of Mozart.

The concerto was considered lost until 1961, when a copy turned up in the Prague National Museum. The first-ever performance took place in May of the following year, with cellist Milos Shuttle and the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony, conducted by Charles (later Sir Charles) Mackerras. The world premiere recording came in 1964 by the impressive duo of Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten with the English Chamber Orchestra. It has since gone on to become one of Haydn’s most popular concertos, performed by a veritable laundry list of notable cellists. That includes Yo-Yo Ma, who was the soloist for the most recent SLSO performance in 2013.

The concerts conclude with Shostakovich’s enigmatic and profoundly odd Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141. Written while the composer was hospitalized in 1971 (he would die of lung cancer four years later) and later completed at his home, it's a mordant and cryptic work by a composer noted for his elusiveness. As Tom Service wrote in a 2013 article for The Guardian:

Every bar of the piece demands a variation on the same simple but utterly profound question: what does it all mean? What is that chirruping little tune at the start of the symphony about? Why does Shostakovich quote from Rossini's William Tell in the first movement, from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Ring cycle in its last movement?... And why, as Shostakovich surely knew this would be his last symphony when he was writing it, does the piece scrupulously avoid any trace of the bombast and boisterousness of his earlier symphonies?

It is certainly an odd work. The Allegretto first movement, according to the composer (in a 1973 interview on Chicago classical station WFMT), “is as if played in a toy store,” which might explain the fanciful opening and the recurring quote from William Tell. The solemn second movement, Adagio, alternates brass and string chorales with solo instrumental passages. A brief, sardonic Allegretto follows before the descent into the finale (Adagio – Allegretto) with its quotes from Wagner—the “fate” motive from the Ring cycle and the unsettling opening motif from Tristan und Isolde—and a final, anguished orchestral outburst.

In the end, the symphony fades out with clicking percussion and a sad little chord on glockenspiel and celesta over a string pedal point. Is this, as Paul Schiavo writes in the program notes, “the last movements of some mechanical doll before it winds down”? Or is it, as Tom Service wrote in the Guardian article “the faceless whirring and bleeping that are the grim accompaniments of disease, decline, and death in medical institutions”?  No questions are answered and it's not clear whether the music is grinning or grimacing.

“It’s one of those works that just completely carried me away,” the composer said in a 1973 interview, “and maybe even one of my few compositions that seemed completely clear to me from the first note to the last. All that I needed was the time to write it down.” And yet critical responses have been all over the map.

In The Joy of Music, Leonard Bernstein suggested that the meaning of a great work of music can’t always be expressed properly in words. I can’t disagree. The Symphony No. 15 makes sense to me, but I can’t verbalize exactly why. Because if words were really adequate to describe this piece, we wouldn't need the music.

The Essentials: John Storgårds conducts the SLSO and cellist Kian Soltani in Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D major. The program includes Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 and the St. Louis premiere of the Three Romances by Clara Wieck Schumann (orchestrated by Benjamin de Murashkin). Performances are Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., December 5 and 6.

The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and on Classic 107.3. Classic 107.3 is also where you can hear Tom Sudholt and me host the Symphony Preview episode about the concert. It was originally broadcast Wednesday, December 3, and can be streamed for a limited time at Classic 107.3.

Symphony Review: The Joy of Beethoven with Kevin John Edusei and the SLSO

“Zoom, zoom, zoom zoom / The world is in a mess,” sings Fred Astaire in the 1937 film Shall We Dance?:

With politics and taxes
And people grinding axes
There’s no happiness.

Kevin John Edusei
Photo: Marco Borggreve

The remedy (and the title of that Irving Berlin classic) is to “Slap That Bass.” If Berlin were still with us, he I think he might concede that next best thing was the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concert last Saturday (November 29). Guest conductor Kevin John Edusei made his SLSO debut in a toe-tapping evening of music by Bela Bartók (1881–1945), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827).

The lively opening number was Bartók’s 1923 Dance Suite. Its six short movements are inspired by (but not direct quotes of) Wallachian, Hungarian, and even (courtesy of a 1913 trip to Algeria) Arabic songs and dances. This is Bartók at his most approachable, with endless melodic and rhythmic invention.

Here, as in the program as a whole, Edusei’s approach to the music was consistently joyful with strong emotional commitment and the kind of choreographic podium style that reminded me a bit of former Music Director David Robertson. The musicians responded with the high level of playing we have come to expect from them. Principal Bassoonist Andrew Cuneo and Contrabassoonist Ellen Connors deserve a special nod for their prominent solos, particularly in the first movement.

Kevin John Edusei. Phot by Marco Borggreve

Last performed here in 2013 with Hannu Lintu, the Dance Suite might not be Bartók’s Greatest Hit, but it’s certainly appealing and a real workout for the band. Perhaps we should encounter it more often.

The rest of the evening, though, it was all hits all the time, with Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini closing out the first half and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 filling up the second.

First performed here only few months after its 1934 Baltimore premiere with the composer at the piano, the Rhapsody is as popular with pianists as it is with audiences. This set of 24 variations on the last of Niccolò Paganini’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin served as a showpiece for the composer’s formidable keyboard skill during his lifetime and has continued to do the same for pianists ever since. It certainly did for Joyce Yang Saturday night.

Yang is no stranger to some of the more intimidating parts of the repertoire. She took the Silver in the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and has gone on to appear with many high-profile orchestras worldwide. That includes the SLSO, with whom she played another notoriously difficult Rachmaninoff work, his Piano Concerto No. 3, in 2019. Her reading of the Rhapsody was a fine mix of finesse and fireworks, neatly reflecting and enhancing the many moods of the work.

Her lyrical 18^th variation had an extra dose of lush romanticism, due at least in part to Edusei’s slower tempo choices in both the 17^th and 18^th variations. The music seemed to breathe a bit more here than it sometimes does. This gave the shift to the increasingly daunting Final Five variations that much more impact. The composer himself is said to have found the final variation a bit frightening, but Yang’s powerful performance felt truly fearless.

Her encore was both welcome and unusual: the third of the 1976 7 Virtuoso Etudes After Gershwin by pianist/transcriber Earl Wild (1915–2010). Based on “The Man I Love,” it’s an Andante study in (mostly) 16^th notes that looks hair-raising on the page but, in a performance of this quality, flows along luxuriantly.

Joyce Yang. Photo by KT Kim.

Written over 200 years ago, the Beethoven Symphony No. 7 was wildly popular from the start. One would think that it would by now have been done to death. And yet the best conductors continue to find ways to keep it fresh. Stéphane Denève did it in 2021 and Kevin John Edusei did it again last Saturday.

A theatrical director friend once said that way to direct Shakespeare was to simply avoid getting in The Bard’s way. One might say the same of conducting Beethoven. This is of course much easier said than done,but Edusei accomplished it with a mixture of precision, strong contrasts, and above all, an obvious joy in the process. The first movement was so positively celebratory, with a coda so impassioned that it might have provoked spontaneous applause if Edusei hadn’t elected to proceed straight to the sober Allegretto second movement attacca (without pause). It was an unexpected choice and a very effective one.

The Presto third movement was marked by a strongly contrasting trio with excellent playing by the horns under Associate Principal Thomas Jöstlein. The trumpets under Principal Steven Franklin joined them in the spotlight for the rousing Allegro con brio finale.

Edusei conducted without a score—a sign that he had internalized the music so thoroughly that he was able to be transparent to the composer’s intent without being invisible. The result was an eminently satisfying Beethoven Seventh that was both familiar and fresh.

There was a gratifyingly full house for Saturday night’s performance. If you weren’t among them, know that the concert will be available for streaming later this week at the SLSO web site, where it will remain for the next month.

Upcoming: At the Sheldon Concert Hall, SLSO oboist Xiomara Mass and bassoonist Julia Paine perform in a concert of works by Villa-Lobos, Eugène Bozza, Jeff Scott, and Júlio Medaglia on Thursday, December 4, at 7:30 pm. At Powell Hall, John Storgårds conducts the SLSO and cellist Kian Soltani in Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D major. The program includes Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 and the St. Louis premiere of the Three Romances by Clara Wieck Schumann (orchestrated by Benjamin de Murashkin). Performances are Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., December 5 and 6.

The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and on Classic 107.3. Classic 107.3 is also where you can hear Tom Sudholt and me host the Symphony Preview episode about the concert on Wednesday, December 3, from 8 to 10 pm.

Symphony Preview, November 29 and 30: Gotta Dance!

This weekend (November 29 and 30) conductor Kevin John Edusei makes his St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) debut in a toe-tapping evening of music by Bela Bartók (1881––1945), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943), and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Let’s put on our dancing shoes and find out more.

Béla Bartók using a phonograph to record
Slovak folk songs sung by
peasants in Zobordarázs from Griffiths, Paul (1978)
A Concise History of Modern Music,
Thames and Hudson ISBN: 0-500-20164-1.,
Public Domain

The concerts open with Bela Bartók’s 1923 Dance Suite, written in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the unification of the Hungarian cities Óbuda, Buda, and Pest to form the national capitol Budapest. A pioneering ethnomusicologist as well as celebrated composer and pianist, Bartók spent much of 1908 tramping through the Hungarian countryside with fellow composer Zoltán Kodály collecting Magyar folk tunes. The spiky melodies and complex polyrhythms of that music would strongly influence what both composers produced from then on.

The Dance Suite is an excellent example. Its six short movements (the entire thing runs around 15 minutes) are inspired by (but not direct quotes of) Wallachian, Hungarian, and even Arabic songs and dances—the latter stemming mostly from a 1913 trip the composer took to Algeria. This is Bartók at his most approachable, with endless melodic and rhythmic invention.

Do you want to hear more of the kind of music Bartók collected, check out John Uhlemann’s Music from Distant Traditions show Sundays at 2 pm here at Classic 107.3. Many recent episodes are available for on-demand listening.

Next is one of the great virtuoso showpieces of the twentieth century, the flashy Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 49, written in 1934 by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The Russian expatriate was one of the previous century’s great virtuoso pianists and the Rhapsody served him well as he toured America and Europe. He played the solo role at the premiere performance in Baltimore, Maryland, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by another giant of 20th-century music, Leopold Stokowski.

The piece is a sort of mini-concerto, consisting of 24 variations on the twenty-fourth and last the 24 Caprices for Solo Violin by the eccentric virtuoso and composer Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840). The 24th caprice has proved to be an irresistible basis for variations by a wide variety of composers from Brahms to Eugène Ysaÿe. Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody is probably the most well-known of the lot, even producing a romantic tune (in variation 18) that has had a life of its own, including a brief run as the accompaniment for (if my memory is correct) a Folger’s coffee commercial.

Listen also for the quote of the Latin plainchant “Dies Irae” (a theme that crops up often on Rachmaninoff’s music) about a third of the way through and note the extreme technical difficulty of the last variation. Even Rachmaninoff was said to have found it scary. Legend has it that he was so nervous about playing his own work at the Baltimore premiere that he drank a glass of crème de menthe to steady his nerves. That worked so well that he continued the practice every time he was called upon to play the Rhapsody, motivating the press to refer to it as the “Crème de Menthe Variations.”

Apocryphal? Maybe, but it’s a good story, nevertheless. Fortunately this weekend’s soloist is Joyce Yang, who gained international attention by winning the silver medal at the 12^th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2005. She went on the garner rave reviews and multiple awards, performing with many high-profile orchestras worldwide. That includes the SLSO, with whom she played another notoriously difficult Rachmaninoff work, his Piano Concerto No. 3, in 2019.

It’s worth noting that Paganini’s original caprice includes some pretty fancy variations of its own, as you can both see and hear in a YouTube video featuring violinist Salvatore Accardo and including images of the sheet music synched with his performance.

The concerts will conclude with Beethoven’s “right trusty and well-beloved” Symphony No. 7 in A major, op. 92. First performed at a December 8, 1813, at a charity concert to benefit widows and orphans of soldiers killed in the Battle of Hanau—which marked the beginning of the end of Napoleon’s dreams of empire—the work was greeted with wild acclaim by audiences and critics alike. The second movement Alegretto, in particular, “enchanted connoisseur and layman,” according to a contemporary review in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung.

Perhaps the most famous and most enthusiastic review of the Seventh, though, came from Richard Wagner. It’s so effusive it’s worth quoting at length:

All tumult, all yearning and storming of the heart, become here the blissful insolence of joy, which carries us away with bacchanalian power through the roomy space of nature, through all the streams and seas of life, shouting in glad self-consciousness as we sound throughout the universe the daring strains of this human sphere-dance. The Symphony is the Apotheosis of the Dance itself: it is Dance in its highest aspect, the loftiest deed of bodily motion, incorporated into an ideal mold of tone.

Now THAT is a boffo notice.

“If Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony unites people with the idea of brotherhood,” observed Stéphane Denève in the program notes from the SLSO’s May 2021 performance, “his Seventh Symphony unites people with the idea of dance.” These days anything that unites us in a positive way is certainly welcome, it seems to me.

The Essentials: Conductor Kevin John Edusei makes his St. Louis Symphony Orchestra debut in a program of Béla Bartók’s Dance Suite, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Joyce Yang will be the piano soloist. Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 PM, November 29 and 30.

The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and on Classic 107.3. Classic 107.3 is also where you can hear Tom Sudholt and I host the Symphony Preview episode about the concert on Wednesday, November 26, from 8 to 10 pm. It will also be available for streaming beginning on Thanksgiving Day.