Symphony Preview: The swans of Ainola

Twentieth century American composer William Grant Still (1985–1978) has been getting a fair amount of long-overdue attention in recent years. His one-act opera “Highway 1, USA” got an exceptional production at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2021. Just last month on his “Sticky Notes” podcast, conductor Joshua Weilerstein did a detailed analysis of Still’s 1931 Symphony No. 1 (“Afro-American”)— the most popular of all American symphonies until 1950. Search for him on Spotify and you will find an impressive list of recordings of his music. And yet for decades after his death his work was routinely ignored.

William Grant Still
By Carl Van Vechten/ Adam Cuerden
Public Domain

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

I mention all of this because the local premiere of Still’s 1965 “Threnody: In Memory of Jean Sibelius” opens the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concerts this weekend (Friday and Sunday, November 22 and 24). Guest conductor Jonathon Heyward (last seen here in 2022) will be on the podium and Yeol Eum Son will make her SLSO debut in a program that includes the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 16, by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) and (not surprisingly) the Symphony No. 5 by Jean Sibelius (1865–1957).

What motivated Still to honor Sibelius? To begin with, there was the fact that, as Matthew Mendez wrote in program notes for the Boston Symphony, “during the 1920s, when Still was discovering his musical voice, Sibelius’s scores were in considerable vogue in the English-speaking world” and his symphonies “were viewed by many as outstanding achievements with which any young composer would need to come to grips.”  There’s also the fact that Sibelius, like Still, insisted on composing in his own voice, regardless of what particular school was in vogue at any given moment.

The ”Threnody” is short but intense, opening with a dramatic declaration from the brass section followed by a sustained elegy that alternates between lament and funeral march. It’s intensely moving and yet comforting at the same time.

Prokofiev in New York, 1918
Photo by Bain News Service

The Prokofiev concerto that follows sounds like something of a lament at first, possibly because the composer’s friend pianist Maximilian Schmidt had committed suicide just a few months before the concerto's first performance in 1913. Then fate dealt the composer a second blow in the form of a fire that incinerated the original manuscript along with the composer’s apartment.

The rebirth of the concerto took place in 1923, when Prokofiev completely rewrote the piece from memory. By then, however, his approach to composition and orchestration had changed significantly and he had written another concerto (his Third, in C major). "I have so completely rewritten the Second Concerto," he wrote to a friend "that it might be considered the Fourth."

Number it how you will, the G minor concerto is, as I wrote in a 2019 preview, a testament to Prokofiev's skill at the keyboard. It's a wildly difficult piece, with four movements in which the tempo never falls below Allegro and a stunningly challenging first movement cadenza that, at around five minutes, takes up almost as much time as the rest of the movement. In fact, as David Nice wrote in BBC Music Magazine, even Prokofiev “got into a terrible mess trying to perform it with [Ernest] Ansermet and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the 1930s, when it had gone out of his fingers."

Finally, a few words about the Sibelius Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82. Originally composed in 1914 and 1915 and first performed on the composer’s 50^th birthday in 1915, the Fifth went through several subsequent rewrites, reaching its final form in 1919. Having heard both the original four-movement 1915 version and final three-movement 1919 version, I have to say that the composer saved the best for last.

Ainola, photographed in 1915 By Unknown author
Public Domain

Slightly shorter and more structurally compact that it was the first time around, the final version of the symphony covers a vast swath of emotional territory.  From the first movement’s mellow horn quartet, swirling woodwind figures, and mysterious bassoon solo over pianississimo strings, to the grand sweep of the Allegro molto final movement, this is music that overflows with both the light and darkness of Finland’s wild beauty. Possibly the most glorious example of that comes at the very end of that movement with the famous “swan theme”—so called because Sibelius wrote it after witnessing a flight of sixteen swans, which he described as “one my greatest experiences”:

Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon… Strange to learn that nothing in the whole world affects me—nothing in art, literature, or music—in the same way as do these swans and canes and wild geese.

In fact, before he turned thirty Sibelius had already left urbanity to live closer to the soil. From 1892 until his death in 1957, Sibelius lived and worked in Ainola, a home he had built entirely of wood (he didn't want to hear the sound of rain in metal gutters) on Lake Tuusula in the Finnish forest, where he often went for long walks. That love of nature informs every bar of the both the first and final versions of the Symphony No. 5. This weekend, you’ll hear the latter. Done well, it will be inspiring.

The Essentials: Jonathan Heyward conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and piano soloist Yeol Eum Son in William Grant Still’s “Threnody: In Memory of Jean Sibelius,” Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2, and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Sunday at 3 pm, November 22 and 24, at the Touhill Performing Arts center on the UMSL campus. A recording of the Friday morning concert will air on Saturday, November 23, at 7:30 pm on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: The big chill

A chilly wind blows through St. Louis this weekend as temperatures drop back to something more closely approximating the norm for late April. By sheer coincidence the musical equivalent of a brisk northern breeze blows through the Touhill Center, as well, as frequent guest John Stogårds steps up to the podium of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) to conduct concerts dominated by his fellow Finn Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) and Danish composer Per Nørgård (b. 1932).

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

Sibelius in 1913
By Daniel Nyblin (1856–1923) 
Public Domain, 

It may be a bit of a cliché, but for me the music of Sibelius conjures up images of pines, snow, and brisk northern winds. You can hear that in the Sibelius works that open and close the program which are, respectively, “Rakastava (The Lover)” and the Symphony No. 7.  That same feeling is present in the work that precedes the Sibelius Seventh, Nørgård’s 2007 composition “Lysning (Glade)” for strings and percussion, albeit with a more contemporary harmonic palette.

Sibelius was notoriously self-critical, often revising works and even destroying those he deemed inferior. His Symphony No. 8, for example, was never completed and was eventually burned by the composer. “Rakastava” didn’t suffer that dire fate, but the original four-movement 1894 version, for unaccompanied male chorus, was never published. The composer produced a version for men's chorus and string orchestra in that same year, and for mixed choir in 1898, but none of them really caught on.

Finally, in 1912, he recycled “Rakastava” into a three-movement work for strings and percussion (tympani and triangle) and this time it was a hit. The work “captivated audiences” and is now “regarded as a minor masterpiece.” But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the recording by Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra on the SLSO’s Spotify playlist and I think you’ll agree. The romantic yearning of the first movement (“The Lover”) has an unsettled feel that’s accentuated by the occasional interruptions for the melodic flow by an agitated motif in the lower strings and tympani. The brief second movement (“The Path of the Beloved”) is an ethereal scherzo reminiscent of Mendelssohn. And the sense of melancholy in the final movement (“Good Night!... Farewell!”) becomes tragic about halfway through before setting into quiet resignation.

It’s emotionally complex music with just an occasional frisson of the cold north wind.

Per Nørgård
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Nørgård’s “Glade,” which opens the second half of the evening, feels a bit bleak, as well, but not consistently. There is, rather, a mix of light and shade of the sort you might encounter in a forest clearing. “There is a balance between the number of darker and lighter sections,” writes the composer, “as each ‘light’ section presents the same material as the ‘dark’ section before it—but heard from different instrumental colorings and nuances.” The unresolved feeling of the final moments of the work makes it a perfect companion for the Sibelius Symphony No. 7 that follows it and concludes the concert.

Sibelius completed his seventh and final symphony in 1924 after considerable labor and revisions. This brief (around 22 minutes) one-movement work is, as conductor Joshua Weilerstein writes, “a piece that is barely a symphony at all, and yet carries symphonic logic throughout.” Indeed, at its premiere (with Sibelius conducting) it was billed as “Fantasia Sinfonica” (“Symphonic Fantasy”) No. 1. It wasn’t until a year later that the composer decided that it was, in fact, an actual symphony—and one of which he was proud. “A great success,” he wrote after the first performance. “There is no denying it: my new work is one of the best. Tone and ‘colour’ both powerful.”

A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled in analyses of the Sibelius Seventh over the past century, with much argument about what its actual form might be, what it really means, and other questions that are such great fodder for academic papers and blog posts. Weilerstein’s “Sticky Notes” episode on the work has the advantage of being clear and filled with musical illustrations. I recommend it.

Issues of structure and other musical nuts and bolts aside, though, the ultimate question for the listener is: what does it sound like and how does it feel? To me it sounds and feels mercurial, constantly shifting emotions, defying expectations, and ultimately ambiguous. Now it’s lamenting, now it’s breaking into a little folk dance, now it’s triumphant, and now it’s…over. And it’s not all that clear what actually happened.

Sir Simon Rattle, who conducts the performance in the SLSO playlist, says the Symphony No. 7 ends with an existential scream while Weilerstein says “it is a cosmic ending, almost like the launch of the note C into outer space.” I say it just…stops. And leaves us to decide what happens after that. Grey skies and whistling winds will probably figure into it somehow.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

That said, the concert won’t be all stormy weather. The first half concludes with the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1771–1827), a work with a sunny outlook and strong echoes of Mozart, and especially in the finale, Haydn. Written before but published after the Concerto No. 1, it marks the beginning of Beethoven's dual careers as pianist and composer of concerti for his instrument of choice.

Outside of that finale, Haydn is mostly hiding in this work, though. It's ultimately all Beethoven. That's particularly obvious in the dramatic cadenza, written around 14 years after the concerto.

The last time the SLSO performed the Second Concerto, the ebullient Nicholas McGegan with conducted with South Korean (b. 1994) virtuoso Seong-Jin Cho at the keyboard. This time the soloist will be the remarkable Marie-Ange Nguci (b. 1998), whose biography is impressive, to say the least.

Clearly a prodigy, the Franco-Albanian pianist was only 13 when she won her first competition, the 2011 Lagny-sur-Marne International Piano Competition. That same year she was accepted into Nicholas Angelich’s class at the Paris Conservatoire. Today, she holds degrees in Musicology, Musical Analysis, and Music Pedagogy (Paris Sorbonne, Paris Conservatoire), an MBA in Cultural Management, and a performance diploma in ondes martenot (essentially a Theremin with a keyboard; Messiaen famously used it in his 1949 “Turangalîla-Symphonie”).

Oh, yeah: she’s also studying conducting at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts.

“En Miror” (“In the mirror”), her 2017 debut album on the Mirare label, consists of piano music by composers known for their skills as organists and improvisers: César Franck, J.S. Bach, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Thierry Escaich. And her busy concert schedule includes appearances with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Macao Symphony Orchestra. It’s impressive, one must admit.

The Essentials: John Storgårds conducts the orchestra and soloist Marie-Ange Nguci in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The concert also includes the Symphony No. 7 and “Rakastava (The Lover)” by Sibelius along with “Lysning (Glade)” by contemporary Danish composer Per Nørgård. Performances take place Friday at 10:30 am, Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, April 19 through 21, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. The Saturday evening concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

Symphony Preview: Very old school

I’ve been listening to a lot of Great Courses audio lectures these days on world history and archeology. It’s an enlightening and humbling experience. It’s also one I highly recommend for anyone who thinks a nation that has existed for over two centuries is somehow remarkable. Or you could just read Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias.”

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

James Lee III
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Or you could spend some time exploring the history of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site just across the river in Illinois. That’s what composer James Lee III  (b. 1975) did for “Visions of Cahokia,” the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra commission which has its world premiere this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, January 28 and 29) under the baton of Music Director Stéphane Denève. The Mississippian civilization flourished there for around 800 years (i.e., 550 years longer than the USA) before dissolving as a result of internal strife and economic hardship brought on, in part, by climate change (the so-called “Little Ice Age,” which ended around 200 years ago). I’ll leave you to contemplate that possibly awkward bit of reality while we shift the focus to Lee.

If his name is familiar, that’s probably because this will be the fourth work by him to be heard at Powell Hall, beginning with his “Emotive Transformations” in November 2021. That was my first exposure to his work, which I described as “unquestionably contemporary, but still listener-friendly—a hallmark of the new music that Denève has introduced to local audiences.” His next two works— “Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan” last March and “Sukkot Through Orion's Nebula” last November reinforced that opinion, while demonstrating Lee’s skill as an orchestrator.

That said, since this is a world premiere, I have no idea what “Visions of Cahokia” will sound like. Fortunately, Lee provides a detailed description in this weekend’s program notes so there’s no need to repeat it here. You can, however, listen to some of his other compositions on Spotify.

Leonard Bernstein in 1955

Like “Visions of Cahokia,” the 1954 Serenade for solo violin, strings, harp and percussion by Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) was inspired by an ancient civilization—specifically Athens in the late 4th century BCE. Subtitled “after Plato’s Symposium,” the Serenade consists of five movements, each of which refers to a specific episode in Plato’s fictional depiction of a drinking party in which each guest is challenged to make a speech in honor of Eros, the god of love. The speakers include real-life characters like Aristophanes, Alcibiades, Socrates, and even (as part Socrates’s speech) Diotima of Mantinea—who may or may not have been a historical figure but who is, in any case, the only woman whose voice is heard. She’s also portrayed as acting as Socrates’s teacher rather than his student, which is an interesting reversal of the role usually played by the former in Plato’s writings.

The day after completing the score, Bernstein wrote detailed notes explaining how each movement relates to its designated character in the Symposium. It’s not clear, though, to what extent these are actual primary inspirations. Bernstein biographer Humphrey Burton has suggested that they are more likely to be associations that occurred to him late in the composition process.

Having listened to both the Serenade and a dramatic reading of the Symposium, I’m inclined to agree. The serenity of the second movement (Aristophanes, Allegretto), for example, seems not entirely consistent with the cheerfully avuncular tone of the character’s speech in the Symposium. And the ominous drama of the Socrates section of the final movement seems out of synch with the quiet sense of authority that the noted philosopher projects in Plato’s text.

The real connection, as noted at the official Bernstein web site, may be more a matter of form than content. In the Symposium, each speaker takes up where the last one left off, using the last man’s ideas as a springboard for his own. Bernstein’s music does something similar, deriving the musical ideas of each movement, in part, from those of its predecessor.

If all that sounds a bit academic, fear not. The Serenade is a tremendously appealing work. You don’t need to look under the hood to appreciate the ride.

Sibelius in 1913
By fi:Daniel Nyblin (1856–1923) -
What We Hear in Music, Anne S. Faulkner,
Victor Talking Machine Co., 1913.,
Public Domain, 

The concerts conclude with a familiar favorite that’s a good match for the gloomy weather we’ve had recently: the Symphony No. 2 by Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). Like many of Sibelius’s works, the Symphony No. 2 evokes the darkness of the majestic, windswept Finnish landscape that rarely sees the sun for months on end. It's the kind of darkness you might appreciate from inside a cozy cabin. Like, say, the all-wood home (Sibelius didn't want to hear the sound of rain in metal gutters) on Lake Tuusula in the Finnish forest where the composer lived and worked from 1982 until his death.

It's dramatic and uplifting, and it conjures up potent images of the natural world that so inspired Sibelius. At the same time, it’s a reflection of the political darkness griping the composer’s homeland when the symphony was completed in 1902. Only three years earlier, the composer’s “Finlandia” was a defiant protest against attempts by Russia, which then ruled Finland, of the suppression of Finnish language and culture. Indeed, conductor Robert Kajanus, who first recorded the symphony in 1930, saw the Symphony No. 2 as a musical depiction of Finland’s struggle for independence. To him, the Tempo Andante second movement represented “the most crushing protest against all the injustice which today threatens to take light from the sun,” while the finale was “a triumphant closure which is capable of arousing in the listener a bright mood of consolation and optimism.”

Which, now that I think of it, is something we could use during our own current period of political darkness.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the world premiere of "Visions of Cahokia" by James Lee III, Leonard Bernstein's “Serenade (after Plato's Symposium)” with violin soloist James Ehnes, and  the Symphony No. 2 by Sibelius. Performances are Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, January 28 and 29 at Powell Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday concert will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: Jewels and imaginary landscapes at Powell Hall, October 24 and 25, 2014

Mendelssohn in 1839
James Warren Childe

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“The Germans," observed the great violinist Joseph Joachim, "have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising, is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's.”

Last week Leonard Slatkin and David Halen seduced us with Bruch. This week we get the jewels—Mendelssohn's E minor "Violin Concerto" with John Storgårds and Associate Concertmaster Heidi Harris.

Mendelssohn's jewel apparently required a lot of polishing. Although the composer announced his intention to write the concerto in a letter to his friend, the violinist Ferdinand David, in 1838, it wasn't until March of 1845 that the E minor concerto finally saw the light of day. Mendelssohn was ill at the time, so the Danish composer Niels Gade conducted the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (where Mendelssohn had been Principal Conductor since 1835) with David as the soloist. Which was only fair, as the composer sought David's technical and compositional advice throughout the concerto's six-year gestation period.

The concerto was an immediate success and is now one of the most frequently played violin concertos in the repertoire. Audiences never seem to tire of it and fiddlers never fail to find something new (or at least personal) in their interpretations. SLSO Concertmaster David Halen certainly put his stamp on it the last time the orchestra played the piece in February of 2012, with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski on the podium. This time around the soloist will be Associate Concertmaster Heidi Harris, whose previous starring roles with the SLSO have included Bartók's Violin Concerto No. 1 (with Leonard Slatkin) and Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 (with David Robertson). So it will be fascinating to see what her take is on this well-worn masterpiece.

Sibelius in 1891
en.wikipedia.org

If the Mendelssohn concerto is, as George Schaun once observed in program notes for the Baltimore Symphony, "sweet-flowing yet fiery," then the other big work on this weekend's program, the 1899 "Symphony No. 1" by Jean Sibelius, is craggy and wintery. From 1892 until his death in 1957, Sibelius lived and worked in a home made entirely of wood (he didn't want to hear the sound of rain in metal gutters) on Lake Tuusula in the Finnish forest, where he often went for long walks. The love of nature informs much of his work and figures prominently in his symphonies. It's impossible to hear his music and not conjure up images of pines, snow, and brisk northern winds.

"The orchestral compositions of Sibelius," wrote Paul Rosenfeld in "Musical Portraits," "seem to have passed over black torrents and desolate moorlands, through pallid sunlight and grim primeval forests and become drenched with them. The instrumentation is all wet grays and blacks, relieved only by bits of brightness, wan and elusive as the Northern summer, frostily green as the polar lights. The works are full of the gnawing of bassoons and the bleakness of the English horn, sinister rolling of drums, the menacing reverberation of cymbals, the icy glittering of harps."

It is, in short, powerfully dramatic stuff, the first big work by a composer who, in his early 30s, was already something of a Finnish hero for his unabashedly nationalist "Karelia Suite" and "Finlandia." With this symphony, as Eddie Silva points out in his program notes, Sibelius "hit the big time."

Andrzej Panufnik
en.wikipedia.org

I don't know whether or not this week's guest conductor, John Storgårds, is as outdoorsy as Sibelius was, but as the Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic he presumably knows the Finnish landscape. And since his recording of the complete Sibelius symphonies with the BBC Philharmonic was released last spring (on Chandos), it's a safe bet he knows Finland's most celebrated composer pretty well. He has already recorded the Sibelius violin concerto, along with music by Latvian composer Peteris Vasks, Finland's Kaija Saariaho and, most recently, discs of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and a Grammy-nominated disc of Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara who, like Sibelius, draws heavily on nature for inspiration.

The concerts open with a local premiere—"Landscape" a 1965 revision of a 1962 piece by the Polish-born composer Andrzej Panufnik. Quoted in Mr. Silva's program notes, the composer says the work is “an attempt to convey musically a landscape of my imagination, similar to those I have seen in Suffolk or remember from Poland... a boundless landscape which evokes melancholy—where the far distant, evanescent horizon induces a sense of space and unconfined contemplation.” Scored for strings only, the piece has the kind of stark beauty I associate with Sibelius. Its foundation in an A-minor triad (the notes A, C, and E) produces echoes of both modal folk music and blues, at least to my ears. And the final measures, as the music quietly fades to silence, are truly captivating.

The essentials: John Storgårds conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violin soloist Heidi Harris in Mendelssohn's "Violin Concerto" Sibelius's "Symphony No. 1," and Paufnik's "Landscapes" Friday and Saturday, October 24 and 25, at 8 p.m. The Saturday concert will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio. For more information, visit the web site.

Heart of Darkness

Shostakovich in 1945

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This weekend's St. Louis symphony concerts feature (to borrow a phrase from the baseball diamond) a pair of heavy hitters—on both the stage and the page.

On stage we have the dynamic duo of violinist Christian Tetzlaff and SLSO music director David Robertson. Mr. Robertson, of course, needs no introduction—and neither, for most audience members, should Mr. Tetzlaff. An artist with an international reputation performing a wide range of music from Bach to contemporary world premieres and the founder of a string quartet that bears his name, Mr. Tetzlaff gave us an impressive Sibelius "Violin Concerto" in January of 2012 (with Mr. Robertson on the podium) that combined technical facility with musical sensibility.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is also one of this weekend's two heavy hitter composers; the other is Dmitry Shostakovich (1906-1975). From the latter we're getting the dark and demon-haunted "Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor," Op 77, while the former gives us his dramatic "Symphony No. 2 in D major," Op. 43.

That's the whole program. There's no short overture or other curtain raiser. Once the lights go down, you'll be plunged straight into the Shostakovich.

Although completed in 1948, the Shostakovich concerto was not performed until 1955 – two years after the death of Stalin and the subsequent easing of restrictions on composers who (like the residents of Monty Python's "Happy Valley" ) risked arrest for not being sufficiently cheerful. And cheerful is a word which nobody is his or her right mind would apply to this work. Yes, the finale is typically lively and boisterous, but it comes after a dark and tragically brooding first movement, a demonically grinning second that could have been penned by The Joker (Batman's, not Steve Miller's), a Passacaglia (based, in part, on the "fate" motive of Beethoven's "Fifth Symphony") that sounds like something Bach might have produced had he lived through the horrors of World War II in Russia, and a highly dramatic virtuoso cadenza that's almost a tone poem unto itself.

Sibelius in 1913

Taken as a whole, the concerto is a work of tragic grandeur, which may be why David Oistrakh (for whom the work was written and who assisted in its revision) referred to the solo violin part as a "pithy 'Shakespearean' role". Certainly the cadenza that links the third and fourth movements is as technically challenging as any of The Bard's soliloquies, with a dynamic and emotional range that compels complete attention. We got that and more when Simone Lamsma performed the concerto with Jaap van Zweden on the podium two years ago, so it will be interesting to see what the Tetzlaff/Robertson combo does with it this time around.

As with the Shostakovich concerto, there's darkness in the Sibelius "Symphony No. 2," but it's an entirely different kind. It's the darkness of the majestic, windswept Finnish landscape that rarely sees the sun for months on end. It's the kind of darkness you might appreciate from inside a cozy cabin. Like, say, the all-wood home (Sibelius didn't want to hear the sound of rain in metal gutters) on Lake Tuusula in the Finnish forest where the composer lived and worked from 1982 until his death. It's a natural and benign darkness, as opposed to the malevolent spiritual darkness of the Soviet police state that oppressed Shostakovich. It's dramatic, uplifting, and conjures up potent images of the natural world that so inspired Sibelius.

Ainola, the house of Sibelius and his wife Aino
finland.fi

Sibelius started this symphony in Italy in 1902, but he completed it in Finland in 1902. It's impossible to hear this music and not conjure up images of pines, snow, and brisk northern winds—especially in that final movement. Paul Schiavo, in his program notes, accurately describes it as "one of the most exultant finales in the symphonic literature."

The essentials: David Robertson conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violinist Christian Tetzlaff in Shostakovich's "Violin Concerto No. 1" and Sibelius's "Symphony No. 2" on Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, April 5 and 6, at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information: stlsymphony.org. The Saturday performance will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 FM, HD 1, and via live Internet stream.

National identity

Joshua Bell
Photo: Eric Kabik

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In case you thought music only got political in the 1960s, allow me to disabuse you of that notion. The great composers whose music fills concert halls these days were often very politically active and weren't shy about expressing their politics in their music.

Three of the four composers whose music David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony will perform this weekend were ardent musical Nationalists, which means they used their compositions to advocate for the cultures of their native countries. Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884) and Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) were Czech patriots promoting the artistic and (in the case of Smetana) political independence of their homeland from the Austro-Hungarian Empire while Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) was passionate about the legends and landscape of Finland. The fourth composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928- ), isn't generally regarded as a Nationalist per se, but he does draw inspiration from the Finnish countryside and folk tales.

Smetana

Smetana's music often has specific references to Czech legend and lore, so it's only right that he's represented here by two of the six tone poems that make up his epic cycle Má vlast (My Fatherland): Vyšehrad and the massively popular Vltava (more popularly known by its German name, The Moldau).

Vyšehrad, which opens the program, begins with a long introduction depicting the song of the bard Lumir, playing inside the great hall of the castle of Vyšehrad. A more dramatic central section suggests the strife that would characterize Czech history, after which the calmer voice of the bard returns. A few troubled final bars, though, suggest that the calm won't last. When you listen to Vyšehrad, notice how important the harp is as the voice of the bard. In the program book, principal harpist Allegra Lilly notes that the "big, rolled chords which are interspersed with arpeggiated passages" in the introduction help to "create a magical sound, a mystical element appropriate to the piece."

Vltava (which closes the program) is straightforward scene painting, vividly illustrating the course of the river Vltava from placid mountain stream to raging torrent at the St. John rapids (which manifest themselves as big crashing chords towards the end). The bard's theme from Vyšehrad pops up again near the end as well, to provide some artistic unity. When I was young, The Moldau (as it was usually known) was very popular with teachers of "music appreciation" courses (do they still have those?) because it was short (around 12 minutes) and the structure was simple. It's very appealing stuff.

Dvořák

Dvořák's nationalism tends to show itself more in reverence for the Czech countryside, which is very much on display in In Nature's Realm, op. 91. "Dvořák's pure woodwind colors," writes René Spencer Saller in her program notes, "and richly layered strings perfectly evoke the cries of birds, the murmuring of woodland streams, the sighing of wind in the trees." It's musical painting of a high order; some of Dvořák's most profound and touching work was inspired by his love of nature.

Originally the piece was the first of a cycle of three symphonic poems with the omnibus title Nature, Life, and Love. "His intention," writes Denby Richards, the late editor of Musical Opinion magazine, "was to explore every possible facet of nature and life and the effect they have had on the soul of man." These days the three works are usually performed separately under the titles In Nature's Realm, Carnival, and Othello.  Which is rather a pity, as there are thematic relationships among them that make more sense when they're performed as Dvořák originally intended.

Sibelius

Sibelius is represented by his Violin Concerto in D minor, op. 47. The violin was Jean Sibelius's first musical love. He began playing as a child and showed great promise as a performer, despite an elbow fracture that impeded his bowing technique. Even after it became clear that his real talent was for composition, he continued to play in chamber ensembles and even teach the instrument. It's no surprise, then, that his Violin Concerto—originally presented in 1903 and then again in a substantially revised form in 1905—is both thoroughly idiomatic and incredibly demanding. The long solo passages in the first movement and virtuoso fireworks in the finale will test the mettle of the best performers.

Fortunately, the symphony has one of the best violinists around as soloist this weekend: Joshua Bell. Born in Bloomington Indiana, Mr. Bell, who turns 46 on December 9th, began taking violin lessons at age four. By 14 he was already appearing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He made his Carnegie Hall appearance at the age of 17 with our own St. Louis Symphony. Today he is very much in demand as a soloist with notable orchestras worldwide. As of 2011, he also became the music director of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the Fields—the first person to hold that post since the orchestra was founded in 1958 by Sir Neville Marriner. He recorded the Sibelius concerto for Sony in 2000, so he should be very comfortable with the piece.

Einojuhani Rautavaara

Like many music lovers, I expect, I discovered the last composer on this weekend's program, Einojuhani Rautavaara, via a recording of his most well known work Cantus Arcticus (1972). Subtitled "Concerto for Birds and Orchestra," this three-movement work uses recordings of birds from near the Arctic Circle to weave a remarkable musical tapestry.

It seems only fitting, then, that the Rautavaara piece we'll hear this weekend—Lintukoto (Isle of Bliss) from 2001— is inspired by a Finnish poem about the mythical isle of Lintukoto, a paradisaical place where birds migrate for the winter and where all the inhabitants are dwarves because the sky is so close to the ground. There's a kind of hallucinatory wildness to the music which should make for an interesting contrast from the Dvořák that precedes it and the Smetana the follows it. Still, all three pieces are fine examples of nature rendered as music, which makes for a nice through line in the second half of the concert.

David Robertson and The St. Louis Symphony, with violinist Joshua Bell, perform Smetana's Vyšehrad, Sibelius's Violin Concerto, Dvořák's In Nature's Realm, Rautavaara's Lintukoto (Isle of Bliss), and Smetana's Vltava at Powell Hall in Grand Center on Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM. The Saturday concert will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 FM and HD 1, as well as via the station web site. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Swan Song

Photo: Vanessa Briceno

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu with pianist Conrad Tao
What: Music of Sibelius and Prokofiev
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: February 1 and 2, 2013

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It’s every orchestra manager’s nightmare: just a few days before the scheduled performance of a virtuoso showpiece the soloist gets sick and a replacement must be found. And not just any replacement; it has to be someone who knows the piece and has the chops to pull it off.

If there were any nightmares around Powell Hall earlier this week when scheduled pianist Markus Groh fell ill, they have surely turned into sweet dreams now that his replacement, 18-year-old prodigy Conrad Tao, has delivered a bang-up performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3. This is the music of youth—Prokofiev was only a few years older than Mr. Tao when he started writing it—with ample wit, nose-thumbing cheer, and some ridiculously difficult writing for the soloist, especially in the final movement. Mr. Tao and guest conductor Hannu Lintu did full justice to the vital energy of Prokofiev’s score and were rewarded with spontaneous applause after the first movement and a thunderous ovation after the last.

But Mr. Tao wasn’t finished. After multiple bows, he returned with an encore: Liszt’s equally thorny Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6, delivered all the fire one could wish for. This was Mr. Tao’s debut with the orchestra and it could not have gone better. He’s a tremendously talented young man (and a fellow Midwesterner, hailing from Urbana, Illinois) at the beginning of what looks like a very promising career.

The orchestra was in excellent form as well. Scott Andrews gets a nod for his fine clarinet solo in the first movement, of course, but fine playing was the order of the day everywhere.

Bracketing the Prokofiev was a pair of deeply felt performances of music of Mr. Lintu’s countryman, Jean Sibelius.

The concert opened with a Finlandia that was one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen, with slow but majestic treatment of the famous “Finlandia Hymn” (now one of Finland’s most popular national songs) and an expansive finale. In this, as in the Sibelius Symphony No. 5 (the 1919 revised version) that closed the program, Mr. Lintu was a commanding and visually compelling figure on the podium. His big gestures were striking—at one point in Finlandia, for example, he held the baton with both hands and swept it down from overhead to signal a Really Dramatic Moment. But he also coaxed delicate sounds with a minimum of physical display. His interpretations were, in short, a nearly ideal mixture of romantic intensity and intellectual control—fire combined with ice.

Sibelius’s 5th symphony is a combination of fire and ice as well. It covers a vast range of emotional territory, from the first movement’s unearthly bassoon lament (beautifully played by Principal Andrew Cuneo) over ghostly ppp strings to the grand sweep in the final movement of the “swan theme”—so called because Sibelius wrote it after witnessing a flight of sixteen swans, which he described as “one of the greatest experiences of my life… Nature’s mystery and life’s melancholy.”

From 1892 until his death in 1957, Sibelius lived and worked in a home made entirely of wood (he didn’t want to hear the sound of rain in metal gutters) on Lake Tuusula in the Finnish forest, where he often went for long walks. The love of nature informs every bar of the 5th. It’s impossible to hear this music and not conjure up images of pines, snow, and brisk northern winds.

Mr. Lintu and the orchestra brought out all of the mystery and wildness in this remarkable score. The opening of the first movement sounded a little bit scrappy in places on Friday night, but the finale, with that sweeping final statement of the swan theme and those final six chords separated by just enough silence, had all the power and majesty you’d want. It was, altogether, a potent experience.

Mr. Lintu last conducted the orchestra in November of 2012. Let’s hope he returns to us again soon.

Next on the calendar: David Robertson returns to the podium to conduct Strauss’s On the Beautiful Blue Danube, Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4. Radu Lupu is the soloist. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 3, February 7-9. For ticket information: stlsymphony.org.