The regular concert season of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) resumes on this Friday and Saturday (January 10 and 11) as Opera Theatre’s Principal Conductor Daniela Candillari leads the orchestra in music by Dvořák and Samuel Barber, along with the world premiere of the Accordion Concerto by composer and multi-instrumentalist Nina Shekhar with Hanzhi Wang as the soloist. The fact that this program is accurately titled “American sounds” tells you a lot about our nation's musical diversity.
[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]
The concerts open with the “School for Scandal,” composed by Samuel Barber (1910–1981) at the ripe old age of 21 (and finally performed two years later), when the composer was still a student at the Curtis Institute. Along with his 1935 “Music for a Scene from Shelley,” the overture established his reputation as an exponent of music that was “distinctive and modern but not experimental.”
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| Samuel
Barber, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1944 Public Domain |
If you’re not familiar with the 1777 Sheridan comedy that inspired the music, fear not; the overture is an entertaining mix of sprightly and romantic themes that’s perfectly capable of standing on its own. Barber described it as “a musical reflection of the play’s spirit,” which is a mix of social satire, romantic misfires, and mistaken identities typical of late 18th-century British comedies. The Encyclopedia Britannica has a plot summary for those interested.
Next, it’s the world premiere of the Accordion Concerto by contemporary American composer Nina Shekhar (b. 1995). Commissioned for accordionist (and this weekend’s soloist) Hanzhi Wang by Young Concert Artists and The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the work runs around 23 minutes. “Writing this concerto,” says the composer, “was an exciting opportunity to learn more about this amazing instrument and allow its unique sound world and extensive technical capability to enrich my own musical vocabulary.”
To me, that vocabulary looks fairly rich already. Her official biography describes her as “a composer and multimedia artist who explores the intersection of identity, vulnerability, love, and laughter to create bold and intensely personal works.” A quick glance at her past projects reveals an artist with a wide range of interests and a willingness to embrace unorthodox techniques.
To pick just one example, her “Mad Libs,” commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, adapts the “fill in the blanks” format of the vintage party game of the same name. The performers were given short stories and musical settings that contain “blanks.” The students then filled in the story blanks with words of their choosing and came up with sounds that represented those words.
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| Nina Shekhar Photo: Shervin Laniez |
Closer to home, her “Turn Your Feet Around” (2021), written for the new music group Alarm Will Sound and the Mizzou International Composers Festival (where the group is the ensemble in residence), deconstructs Gloria Estefan’s “Get on Your Feet.” Check out the video and don’t let yourself be fooled by the unexpected uses of silence.
Closing the concerts is the Symphony No. 9 in E minor, op. 95, (“From the New World”) by Antonín Dvořák. The Czech master wrote it during a visit to America in the early 1890s, and while he never explicitly quotes any American folk material, there's still something about this music that strongly suggests America. From the flute theme in the first movement that seems to echo "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," to the second movement Largo that has (at least for me) always evoked the majestic solitude of the plains (Dvořák said he wrote it after reading Longfellow's "Hiawatha"), to the "bluesy" flatted seventh chords of the finale, Dvořák "New World" symphony just shouts "USA"—even if it does so with a strong Czech accent.
Some critics have complained about the symphony's structural weaknesses and its episodic nature. In an essay published posthumously in "The Symphony" (Penguin Books, 1967), English composer/conductor Julius Harrison noted that the work "has come in for considerable criticism as being mainly a succession of enchanting and virile tunes…presided over or helped out by a strongly rhythmic phrase bundled into each movement whenever Dvořák found himself wondering how best to proceed."
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| Anton and
Anna Dvořák in London, 1886 en.wikipedia.org |
I beg to differ. As conductor Joshua Wallerstein pointed out in the episode of his “Sticky Notes” podcast dedicated to the Ninth, that “strongly rhythmic phrase” is not just something tossed in whenever Dvorak wasn’t sure what to do. In combination with the pentatonic scale on which it’s based, it is in fact the tiny acorn from which the mighty oak of the symphony grows. It's embedded in every single melodic idea (starting with the main theme of the first movement) and is the major unifying factor of the symphony. “[T]his piece is not only a heavily traditional symphony,” observes Wallerstein, “it’s practically through composed from its very first notes.”
Dvořák gets more respect than he used to these days. As a long-time fan of his music, I’m happy to see that.
P.S. This week’s playlist doesn’t have the Shekhar concerto since but it does have fine recordings of the Barber and Dvořák, both by the SLSO conducted by Leonard Slatkin.
The Essentials: Daniela Candillari conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm, January 10 and 11. The program consists of Samuel Barber’s “The School for Scandal” Overture, the world premiere of Nina Shekhar’s Accordion Concerto with soloist Hanzhi Wang, and the Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 (“From the New World”). Performances take place at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri St. Louis campus. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3
Note that snow is currently scheduled for Thursday night and Friday, so be sure to check the SLSO web site for any possible cancellation information.
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