Symphony Review: Denève and Gerstein celebrate Ravel

What’s better than an afternoon with the music of Maurice Ravel? Last Sunday the answer was: an afternoon with the music of Ravel performed by Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with piano soloist Kirill Gerstein. Beginning with the gossamer fairy tale world of the “Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose) Suite", continuing with both of the composer’s piano concertos, and wrapping up with the excessively popular “Boléro,” this was a sparkling celebration of one of the previous century’s great orchestrators and melodists.

[Find out more about the music with my symphony preview.]

As Denève pointed out in his pre-concert remarks, Ravel is renowned for his skill as an orchestrator but less often recognized for the long, irresistible melodic lines of his music. Denève held out the second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major as an example. It’s a good one, and only one of many we heard during the program.

Stéphane Denève
Photo: Dilip Vishwanat, courtesy of the SLSO

Denève last conducted “Ma mère l’oye” here in 2018. Looking back on my review of that concert, I find that everything I wrote about that resplendent performance would fit this latest one like one of Ravel’s tastefully tailored suits. His approach, then and now, was finely shaded and utterly idiomatic. The musicians responded with their usual élan. 

Ravel provided many wonderful solo moments in his transparent score and the SLSO musicians fully did them justice. The includes, by is not limited to, the interaction between Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews and newly appointed Principal Contrabassoon Ellen Connors in  Les Entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête (Conversations of Beauty and the Beast), the percussion section under Principal Will James in the Gamelan-flavored exotica of Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes (Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas), and the chirping woodwinds as the birds in Petit Pouchet (Tom Thumb) who devour poor Tom’s breadcrumb trail through the forest.  

Up next was something you don’t see every day, Chauncey (as they used to say on "Rocky and Bullwinkle"): both of Ravel’s piano concertos in back-to-back performances. Granted, there was an intermission in between, but even so that’s not something every pianist could do. Certainly, there aren’t many who could manage that particular double header as well as Kirill Gerstein did.

It's not just that the Concerto in G and the Concerto for the Left Hand are technically challenging (although they certainly are) but rather the fact that they also call for a deep understanding of Ravel’s characteristic sound world. As a consistently dynamic performer with a wide expressive range and spectacular technique, Gerstein was an ideal choice for this music.

Although completed at around the same time (they were both premiered in 1932) the two concertos inhabit very different emotional spaces. The Concerto in G is the more popular of the two—snappy and jazzy in its outer movements and touchingly lyrical in its famous Adagio assai second movement. The  aforementioned long melodic line in that movement was played beautifully by Gerstein and Principal English Horn Cally Banham. It’s a consistently sunny piece, played with elegance and wit by Gerstein and Denève

The Concerto for the Left Hand in D is another story. Composed on commission for pianist Paul Wittgenstein (who had lost his right arm in World War I), the concerto unfolds in a single 20-minute movement with four interconnected sections. It’s a remarkable piece, with a dark bitonal introduction featuring the contrabassoon (another nice bit of work from Connors) that sounds a bit like a more menacing version of the opening of “La Valse.” The piano enters with a defiant cadenza that sounds like it couldn’t possibly be played by one hand, and we’re off.  There’s a central march/scherzo that might have been written by Shostakovich and an ultimately triumphant finale preceded by yet another alarmingly difficult cadenza.

I can’t praise Gerstein’s work enough here. I have been impressed by his previous work with the SLSO, but this display of virtuosity and emotional range was truly spellbinding. The Concerto for the Left Hand, in particular, was very welcome, given that we haven’t hear it here since 2012 when Leon Fleisher played it with David Robertson at the podium. It was most gratifying to see it done so well by Gerstein and Denève.

Finally, there was Ravel’s Greatest Hit. Denève and the band did a bang-up job of “Boléro,” no question, with impeccable solo and soli moments all the way around. Nearly every player gets a moment in the spotlight, making this a real showpiece for an orchestra with a deep talent pool like that of the SLSO. This is especially true in the early moments of the work, in which the soloists are out on their own with little more than plucked strings and the snare drum behind them. This time around that meant Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews, flautist Jessica Sindell, and Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo—the latter playing at the top of his range, as Ravel seems fond of doing with that instrument.

While “Boléro” is one of those works that might be too popular for its own good, it felt like the perfect finale for this particular concert. Its big, gaudy, Technicolor sound neatly balanced the translucent tints of “Ma mère l'oye” and was a fitting contrast to the darker colors of the Concerto for the Left Hand. Fine bit of programming, that.

If you missed this set of concerts, never fear. St. Louis Public Radio’s recording, complete with intermission interviews, will be available at the SLSO web site for the next month.

Next from the SLSO: Stéphane Denève conducts the orchestra and soloist James Ehnes in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, January 25 and 26, at the Stifel Theatre downtown. Note that this one, like the other Stifel concerts, won’t be available afterwards.

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

(New) season's greetings from the St. Louis Symphony

David Robertson

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The St. Louis Symphony announced its 2016/2017 season today and, after skimming through the complete calendar I have to say it looks like a winner.

You'll probably have your own favorites among the wide variety of programs offered, but here are some of my personal highlights:

"The Spirit of St. Louis" (16 and 17 September): David Robertson conducts a celebration of Charles Lindberg's historic trans-Atlantic flight that includes Kurt Weill's "The Flight of Lindbergh" along with music by Boulez and Debussy (he did fly to France, after all).

"Symphonic Dances" (21-23 October): Orli Shaham will perform Beethoven's "Piano Concerto No. 4" in a program that also includes Rachmaninoff's nocturnal "Symphonic Dances" and Balakirev's "Islamey". Whether that will be the orchestral version or the insanely difficult solo piano original, I have no idea, although I'd love to see Ms. Shaham take a crack at the latter.

Leonard Slatkin
leonardslatkin.com

"Slatkin Conducts Porgy and Bess" (11-13 November): It's always good to see our former music director on the podium; even more so when it's an all-American program like this one, with works by Barber, Copland, Gershwin, and Mr. Slatkin himself.

"Belshazzar's Feast" (24 and 25 February): Opportunities to hear William Walton's vibrant 1931 cantata are not that common, so this is most welcome. So are the other two works on this English-themed program: Elgar's "Falstaff" and the overture to Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor" (an opera based, of course, on the Shakespeare play).

"An Alpine Symphony" (10 and 11 March): I will never pass up an opportunity to hear Richard Strauss's monumental symphonic poem "Eine Alpensinfonie" (complete with wind machine and thunder sheet). Beethoven's "Piano Concerto No. 1" (with Steven Osborne as soloist) will make for a nice contrast. Stéphane Denève, whose work I have admired in the past, will conduct.

"Rhapsody in Blue" (7-9 April): It's always a pleasure to her the original jazz band version of the Gershwin classic, especially when paired with his exciting "Concerto in F." Kirill Gerstein will be at the keyboard with Maestro Robertson on the podium. The program will include Milhaud's jazzy ballet score "La Création du Monde" ("The Creation of the World").

Alan Held

"The Flying Dutchman" (4 and 6 May): Building on the success of its previous concert presentations of opera classics, the orchestra and chorus are taking on perhaps their most ambitious effort yet with Wagner's "Der Fliegende Holländer" ("The Flying Dutchman"). With its arresting, tempest-tossed overture and themes of redemption through love, this 1843 opera marked Wagner's emergence as a major operatic composer and librettest. "From here begins my career as poet," he would later write, "and my farewell to the mere concoctor of opera-texts." Principal members of this international cast will be American bass-baritone Alan Held in the title role, Irish soprano Orla Boylan as Senta (whose self sacrifice will set the Dutchman free) and New Zealand baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Senta's father Daland

Season tickets are available now at the St. Louis Symphony web site.

Bernstein and Gershwin rule in an all-American Thanksgiving weekend with the St. Louis Symphony

Kirill Gerstein

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
What: Music of Bernstein, Gershwin, Michael Daugherty, and Andrew Norman
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: November 28-30, 2014

St. Louis residents had a great alternative to the teeming multitudes at the malls and movie theaters Thanksgiving weekend: a bracing concert of American music for that most American of holidays.

This weekend's concerts open with a fanciful bit of low comedy and high musical invention: Michael Daugherty's "Hell's Angels." Scored for bassoon quartet and large orchestra (a plethora of percussion, including the massive "Mahler box" and a thundersheet), the piece is a cinematically vivid send-up of the obnoxious noise-making that seems endemic to motorcycle culture in the USA. The composer says it's "the musical tale of a gang of hot-rodding motorcycling bassoonists who ride into town and take over a concert hall" and, in fact, that's how David Robertson has staged it. The orchestra began playing the minuet from Boccherini's Op. 11 string quartet, only to have it rudely interrupted by Daugherty's aggressively discordant opening as SLSO bassoonists Andrew Cuneo, Andrew Gott, and Felicia Foland and contrabassoonist Gregg Henegar swaggered on to the stage all punked up in black leather to play their fiercely difficult solos. The joking suggestion, in my preview article, that Mr. Cuneo, as Principal Bassoon, should be wearing a black leather jacket with an eagle on the back turned out to be unintentionally prophetic.

As you might expect from the composer of the Peter Schickele-esque "Le Tombeau de Liberace" (which the SLSO did back in 2003), "Hell's Angels" is long on visual and musical jokes and features some spectacular virtuoso writing for the soloists, with lightning runs, leaps that employ the full range of the instruments, and what the composer describes as "devilishly difficult polyrhythms." Granted, the noisy movie music orchestrations swamped some of it, but Daugherty has written some wonderfully transparent passages as well.

For me, "Hell's Angels" wore out its welcome a bit before it ended, but it was still great fun. It was also a nice prologue for another work inspired by testosterone-fueled acting out, Leonard Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story."

If your only exposure to the dance music from Bernstein's "West Side Story" is via the film or touring productions of the show, you might not be aware of just how brilliantly scored it is. Theatrical pit bands rarely have enough players to do it justice, so much thanks is due to the composer and his orchestrators, TV and film arrangers Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, for putting together this nine-movement suite in 1960. It's a remarkable piece, filled with tricky polyrhythms, dissonance, flashy orchestration (including an expanded percussion battery), and a raft of other touches that remind us of how effectively Bernstein bridged the worlds of concert hall and Broadway theatre.

As you might gather from that last paragraph, this is music that requires great precision and drive from the orchestra (to say nothing of the ability to snap fingers and shout "mambo" on cue). I'm happy to report that Mr. Robertson and his forces passed the score's tests with flying colors. The percussion section covered itself with glory, and they weren't alone. Everyone played with such fluid skill that it was easy to forget what a challenging piece this is.

Even in the standard repertoire, by the way, Mr. Robertson has an uncanny knack for reminding us of the dance rhythms that underlie so much of Western music. In openly dance-inspired pieces like this, he is thoroughly in his element.

The big attraction for me this week, though, was the original 1924 jazz band version of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." Usually heard in Ferde Grofe's full-orchestra expansion of 1937, the "Rhapsody" didn't get back to its roots until Samuel Adler reconstructed and recorded the 1924 arrangement in 1971. The jazz band version has a kind of snap and flash that a full orchestra can't seem to match, especially when played by an ensemble as good as this one. Scott Andrews gave the famous opening clarinet solo all the limpid, bluesy grace it needs, nicely seguing into Tom Drake's "wah-wah" trumpet. The addition of saxophonists Nathan Nabb, Paul DeMarinis, and Adrianne Honnold added considerably to the '20s ambience, as did James Betts on banjo.

Pianist Kirill Gerstein played the solo part with all the technical skill you might expect, combined with an impressive sensitivity to the improvisatory nature of this piece. He freely embellished the music more than once Friday night (and even more so on Saturday), but always in a '20s jazz style that was very true to Gershwin. It was a reminder that the composer himself did some improvising when he played the work's Aeolian Hall premiere.

It was, in short, a joy to finally see and hear a live performance of an arrangement that I had previously known only on recordings.

Preceding the Gershwin and, in fact, leading into it without pause, was Andrew Norman's "Try" for piano and orchestra. Composed on a commission in 2011, the work is, according to Mr. Norman, about the difficult process of trying different musical ideas until you come up with one that "finally (fingers crossed) gets it right." It's an interesting notion, but in practice it sounded like a compilation of every "new music" cliché of the last fifty years. After 15 long minutes, it slowly winds down to a single descending figure in the piano repeated well past the point of tedium. It was, you should pardon the expressing, trying.

Throughout the evening—and especially during the last two works—artist S. Katy Tucker provided projections and a light show. They enhanced the Norman and the Gershwin, and provided some mood-setting footage from the film version of "West Side Story" as a prelude to the Bernstein. I don't know that any of it was particularly essential, but it was a nice addition nevertheless.

Next at Powell Hall: Steven Jarvi conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra along with violin soloists Jessica Cheng, Angie Smart, Jooyeon Kong, and Alison Harney Friday at 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m., December 5-7. The program features Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" along with music by Barber and Wagner. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information, visit the symphony web site.

Symphony Preview: A musical experiement recreated at Powell Hall Thanksgiving weekend

Whiteman in the trailer for the film
"Rhapsody in Blue"
en.wikipedia.org

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"An Experiment in Modern Music" was how bandleader Paul Whiteman billed the February 12, 1924 concert by his Palais Royal Orchestra at New York's Aeolian Hall. This weekend at Powell Hall, the St. Louis Symphony will recapture some of the excitement attendant on that legendary program.

The most memorable piece to emerge from Whiteman's experiment is, of course, Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" (although I have a fondness for the piece that preceded it: an arrangement of Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1" complete with plunking banjo). Until 1971, though, most people who heard the work weren't hearing what the New York audience heard in 1924. That's because it was Samuel Adler's 1971 recording that reconstructed the original Whiteman jazz band arrangement (by composer Ferde Grofe of "Grand Canyon Suite" fame) using parts from the original score. Before then, the "Rhapsody" was always heard in what conductor Maurice Peress (in the notes for his 1986 recreation of the Aeolian Hall concert for the Musicmasters label) calls the "Hollywood version" for symphony orchestra.

He (and I) grew up with that version—as have most classical music fans of a certain age. Hearing a reconstruction of the original, as you will this weekend at Powell, will probably come as something of a revelation. It certainly did to me when I first played that Adler disc. The jazz band version has a kind of snap and flash that the full orchestra can't seem to match, no matter how skilled the musicians.

The soloist for the Gershwin has a fair amount of snap and flash himself. It's Kirill Gerstein, who gave us a surprisingly lyrical Tchaikovsky 1st last September and a bravura performance of British composer Thomas Adès's “In Seven Days" two years ago. A Gilmore Artist Award winner, Mr. Gerstein has shown himself to be equally at home with both Romantic classics and new music—some of which he has commissioned himself.

Bernstein in 1955
en.wikipedia.org

The other big familiar work on the program is Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story," an orchestral suite assembled from the score for the 1957 musical by Bernstein in 1960. The orchestration by TV and film veterans Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal is irresistibly colorful and the piece as a whole does a nice job of distilling the essence of the play down into a nine-movement set lasting just over 20 minutes.

There are two local premieres on the program this weekend as well: "Hell's Angels" (written in 1999 by Michael Daugherty) and "Try" (written in 2011 by Andrew Norman).

Symphony program annotator Michael Durchholz describes the former as "a roaring, chaotic mini-concerto based on the titular outlaw biker gang" which "substitutes long, tubular bassoons for the unmuffled drag-pipes of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, creating a commotion sure to upset the neighborhood. Somebody call the authorities!" The composer himself says it's “the musical tale of a gang of hot-rodding motorcycling bassoonists who ride into town and take over a concert hall.” Appearing in the roles of the biker gang are SLSO bassoonists Andrew Cuneo, Andrew Gott, and Felicia Foland, along with contrabassoonist Gregg Henegar. Mr. Cuneo is the Principal Bassoon, so presumably he gets the "black leather jacket with the eagle on the back" (to quote a famous Leiber and Stoller lyric).

Andrew Norman
andrewnormanmusic.com

"Try," on the other hand, is less aggressive. In his notes on the piece, composer Norman says the music is at lot like him. "It's messy, and fragmented," he writes, "and it certainly doesn't get things right on the first try. It does things over and over, trying them out in as many different ways as it can. It circles back on itself again and again in search of any idea that will stick, that will lead it forward to something new. And, at long last, after ten minutes of increasingly frantic trying, it finds one small, unlikely bit of musical material it likes enough to repeat and polish and hone until it finally (fingers crossed) gets it right."

Scored for solo piano and chamber ensemble (string quintet plus winds), "Try" will segue directly into "Rhapsody in Blue." Which makes more sense than you might think since Gershwin, like Norman, was still trying a lot of things out when he wrote the "Rhapsody." Indeed, at the February 12 premiere Gershwin—who was also the soloist—hadn't quite decided when he wanted the band to enter, so the piano part wasn't actually written down. When he wanted the band to play, he just nodded to Whiteman.

A final bonus with these concerts is that the music will be accompanied by a light show created by artist S. Katy tucker, known for her design work at (among other venues) Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Opera, and the Sydney Symphony (where Mr. Robertson is Artistic Director and Chief Conductor). Far out.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra along with Kirill Gerstein, piano; bassoonists Andrew Cuneo, Andrew Gott, and Felicia Foland; and Gregg Henegar, contrabassonon; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., November 28-30. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org. The Saturday performance will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio at 90.7 FM, HD 1, and web streaming.

A good dissonance like a man

David Robertson

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by David Robertson with pianist Kirill Gerstein
What: Music of Ives, Copland, and Tchaikovsky
When: Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, September 20-22

The first concert of the new symphony season was a study in contrasts, to say the least. For many music lovers, I expect, the Big Event of the evening was probably Kirill Gerstein's surprisingly lyrical approach to the massively popular Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1. For me, though, Charles Ives's Three Places in New England—still sounding fresh and radical over a century after it was first composed—was the star of the evening.

Orchestral showpieces are not, of course, uncommon at season openers (Respighi's Pines of Rome last year being a classic example), and Three Places certainly qualifies. Written between 1903 and 1911 (or thereabouts; it's sometimes hard to tell with Ives) the work was originally scored for a massive ensemble. However, Ives cut the orchestration back substantially in 1929—to chamber orchestra proportions, in fact—at the request of Nicolas Slonimsky. Judging from the scoring described in the program for these concerts, though—piano, organ, celesta, and an impressive wind section—the symphony is using James Sinclair's fourth restored version from 1976. That's probably as close as we'll ever get to the 1914 original, which is lost to history.

Charles Ives

Ives employs his orchestral forces in ways that still, nearly a century later, sound novel and daring. Iridescent, impressionistic harmonies; snatches of popular songs and hymns; the sound of clashing brass bands—they all come together in a psychedelic musical mélange that only Ives could pull off. Sure, the conflicting time signatures (4/4 vs. 9/8, for example, in "Putnam's Camp"), cheerful dissonance, and general organized pseudo-chaos that Ives loved so much can be challenging to audiences and (especially) performers, but it's also tremendous fun. I dare anyone to listen to the colorful evocation of a July 4th picnic as seen and heard by a small child in "Putnam's Camp" without cracking a smile.

It has been a decade since the symphony performed Three Places, but you wouldn't know it from the brilliance and precision of the playing under maestro David Robertson's baton Friday night. "The Housatonic at Stockbridge" shimmered in a chromatic mist, "The ‘St. Gaudens' in Boston Common" conjured up ghostly images of the all-black Union regiment honored in the titular statue, and "Putnam's Camp" was raucous but controlled fun. The many little solos Ives sprinkles throughout the piece were played with perfection.

Wintley Phipps

The first half of the program concluded with one of the great works for narrator and orchestra, Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait. Written in response to a commission from André Kostelanetz for a musical depiction of an "eminent American" after the Pearl Harbor attack, A Lincoln Portrait is a classic example of what the composer called his "vernacular style": open harmonies, liberal quotations from folk sources, and general accessibility.

It premiered in Cincinnati in 1942 with Kostelanetz at the podium and local actor William Adams reading the narration. Many of the voices taking on that role since then have come from places other than the stage, though, and this weekend's narrator is no exception: motivational speaker and education activist Wintley Phipps. A commanding figure with palpable stage presence and a resonant bass voice, Mr. Phipps delivered the narration (drawn from Lincoln's speeches and other documents) with great feeling. He read it from a teleprompter placed at floor level, unfortunately, instead of a music stand on stage, so his eyes were cast down much of the time—not a problem for patrons seated on the orchestra floor, but for those of us upstairs it meant we mostly just saw the top of his head. Still, it was a very effective performance that reminded me of how far the level of rhetoric has fallen among our elected officials over the years.

Kirill Gerstein

The Tchaikovsky concerto brought the evening to happy conclusion. Mr. Robertson and soloist Kirill Gerstein did some slightly unorthodox things with it, revealing aspects of delicacy and charm not always apparent in this popular old chestnut. The second subject of the first movement, for example (marked "allegro con spirito"), was played more slowly than usual, and the movement as a whole got more rubato and lyricism than I'm accustomed to hearing. The tempo contrasts in the second movement were more marked than they sometimes are and the "allegro con fuoco" first subject of the finale was as fiery as I've ever heard it. There were also lovely solo passages by (among others) Mark Sparks (flute), Danny Lee (Cello), and Phil Ross (oboe).

It was, in short, the sort of original take on this popular work that made me hear parts of it with new ears. Ives would have approved of that, I think.

Mr. Robertson seemed in especially good spirits Friday night, by the way. He gave a cheerful nod to Mr. Gerstein after the first movement of the Tchaikovsky, for example, and then turned to the audience to congratulate us for not applauding between movements (one of those bits of concert etiquette that probably baffles newbies, but that's another discussion). He also congratulated us for our singing during "The Star Spangled Banner" at the top of the concert, but that might be pro forma (I note wryly).

For more background on the music, check out Paul Schiavo's program notes on the St. Louis Symphony web site.

Next week: that famed tribute to Richard Strauss's ego Ein Heldenleben ("A Hero's Life") along with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3 and Patrick Harlin's 2011 Rapture, inspired by the composer's quasi-religious experience plumbing the depths of Kubera Cave. Lars Vogt is the pianist and the orchestra is conducted by Stéphane Denève, who gave us such a splendid "Daphnis et Chloé" in May of 2011. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Notes: First Nighters

David Robertson

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The opening concert of the St. Louis Symphony season is always a gala night (and, as Groucho Marx once observed, "a gal a night is plenty for me"), usually marked by at least one orchestral showpiece. The new season opener is no exception, although the showpiece is probably not the kind some of the more conservative members of the audience might expect.

Under the baton of Maestro David Robertson, this weekend's concerts start off conventionally enough with an arrangement by the great bandmaster John Philip Sousa and legendary composer/conductor Walter Damrosch of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and continues in an American vein right up to intermission. From that old-fashioned opening, though, we plunge straight into one of the more remarkable pieces to flow from the pen of that legendary American iconoclast Charles Ives: Three Places in New England.

Charles Ives

Originally written between 1903 and 1911 or thereabouts and scored for a massive orchestra, the work was cut back substantially by Ives in 1929 at the request of Nicolas Slonimsky. Judging from the scoring described in the program, which includes piano, organ, celesta and an impressive wind section, the symphony is using James Sinclair's restored version from 1976. Ives employs his orchestral forces in ways that still, nearly a century later, sound novel and daring. Shimmering, impressionistic harmonies, snatches of popular songs and hymns, the sound of clashing brass bands—they all come together in a psychedelic musical melange that only Ives could pull off. It's a challenge to musicians and audience alike that's not to be missed. It has been a decade since the symphony performed it, which is far too long as far as I'm concerned.

The first half of the program ends with one of the great works for narrator and orchestra, Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait. Written in a burst of patriotic fervor (and in response to a commission) after the Pearl Harbor attack, A Lincoln Portrait premiered in Cincinnati in 1942 with André Kostelanetz at the podium and local actor William Adams reading the narration. Many of the voices taking on that role since then have come from places other than the stage, though, and this weekend's narrator is no exception: motivational speaker and education activist Wintley Phipps. It's stirring stuff, blending Copland's spacious music with Lincoln's inspiring words.

Kirill Gerstein

After intermission, the tone shifts from American to Russian nationalism with a performance of the ever-popular Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, op. 23 by Tchaikovsky. The pianist is Kirill Gerstein, last seen here in 2012 as the soloist in the local debut of Thomas Adès’s In Seven Days. He was impressive as hell then as well as in the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2 back in 2011 (his local debut). The interesting question this time is: can he find a way to make an old standard like this one fresh and exciting? It's one of the best-known piano concerti in the world, after all, and an in-demand performer like Mr. Gerstein has probably performed it hundreds of times.

These and other questions will be answered at Powell Hall this weekend. Concerts are Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM. For more information: www.stlsymphony.org, where you can also download Paul Schiavo's program notes. The Saturday concert will be simulcast on St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 FM and HD 1.

Kirill Gerstein isn't the only guest musician this weekend, FYI. R. Douglas Wright, Principal Trombone with Minnesota Orchestra, will also be sitting in for the Ives and Tchaikovsky.

Getting with the program

Who: Pianist Kirill Gerstein and The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson
What: Music of Richard Strauss, Hindemith, and Thomas Adès
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: November 30 – December 2, 2012



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As anyone who has ever taken a “music depreciation” course will recall, “program music” is the label applied (sometimes dismissively) to any composition either inspired by or intended to depict something non-musical. That usually means the dramatic, literary, or visual arts, although history, nature, and even architecture figure prominently as well.

The weekend of November 30, 2012, the symphony offered an ambitious quartet of works that all qualify as “program music” but haven’t much in common otherwise—which just shows you how little that label really means. Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, for example, takes its inspiration from a poem by Lenau while his Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks harkens back to German folklore. Paul Hindemith’s Symphonie Mathis der Maler, written under the lengthening shadow of fascism, draws on the life and work of 16th century painter Matthias Grünewald who, like Hindemith, found himself caught up in violent political strife. And British composer Thomas Adès’s In Seven Days, written in 2008 and making its local debut, turns the seven mythical days of creation into a seven-movement virtuoso piece for piano and orchestra.

In Seven Days is the new kid on the block, so let’s spend a bit of time with it first.

In Seven Days is, essentially, a series of variations on a brief motif tossed around by skittering strings in the opening “Chaos—Light—Dark” section. As the piece progresses that little motif becomes the basis for an increasingly elaborate musical structure that reaches its peak in the fugue of the fifth and sixth movements (“Creatures of the Sea and Sky—Creatures of the Land”) which, as Mr. Robertson noted in his pre-performance comments, depicts the “amazing joy and wonder” of the newly minted animals in their home. In the final section, “Contemplation,” the main theme shows up in its original form and the music winds down into a silence that says, “to be continued”. Because creation isn’t an event, it’s a process.

Mr. Robertson noted that In Seven Days depicts “Genesis in its sophistication and childlike wonder,” but to my ears it worked just as well as a musical depiction of real-world creation, with complexity arising from very simple organisms. So maybe there’s ambiguity there and, so, just a bit more Art.

The piano is as much a part of the orchestra as it is a solo instrument here, although the writing is often very flashy and demanding. There is, for example, a particularly striking section in the fourth movement, “Stars—Sun—Moon,” where sparkling cascades of sound at the very top of the instrument’s register segue into brass fanfares, and another in the opening “Chaos” movement when the soloist bursts out of a cluster of bass notes into a duet with the congas. Mr. Gerstein, reading from an iPad rather than a printed score (first time I’ve seen that outside of a Parisian piano bar), navigated his way through this treacherous terrain with ease, as did the orchestra. This is my first exposure to In Seven Days, so while Mr. Gerstein's technique was impressive, I can’t say much about his interpretation. I will say that it sounded impressive and he appeared wholly caught up in the music.

It should be noted, by the way, that Mr. Adès’s work was apparently conceived as a multi-media piece. The original title was In Seven Days (Concerto for Piano With Moving Image), with projected video by artist Tal Rosner. More recent performances have apparently dropped the images but if the brief excerpts on YouTube are any indication, they add considerably to the experience. Without them, there were times when the music felt a bit repetitious.

Hindemith’s Symphonie Mathis der Maler isn’t a new work, but it does rather lie somewhat outside the core repertory of contemporary orchestras. It was last heard locally over fourteen years ago under Hans Graf. Hindemith intended it as a kind of preview for his opera Matis der Maler (Matthias the Painter), which he was working on at the time. The Symphonie was a popular success when Wilhelm Furtwängler premiered it in 1934, but Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels saw the anti-authoritarian subtext of both the Symphonie and the developing opera as suspiciously leftist and banned the composer’s “degenerate” music—starting a process the eventually led to Hindemith’s departure to Switzerland (where the opera finally had its first performance) and finally, his emigration to the United States.

Each of the symphony’s three movements refers to a panel of Matthias Grünewald’s “Isenheim Altarpiece”: “Angelic Concert,” “Entombment,” and “Temptation of St. Anthony”. Together, they constitute a striking blend of post-Romantic orchestral color and the neoclassical counterpoint that characterizes so much of Hindemith’s music. Mr. Robertson’s performance brought out all those orchestral details and did full justice to the work’s dramatic origins (the opening of the final movement, for example, was most striking) without sacrificing any of its clarity.

The two Strauss tone poems that opened the first and second halves of the concert were more familiar stuff. Till Eulenspiegel was last heard here in a nifty reading by JoAnn Falletta in March of 2009 and Don Juan was last performed by the symphony under Ward Stare just a month earlier. They are, of course, brilliantly showy works from a young composer who was just beginning to make his mark. Mr. Robertson’s interpretations favored bold strokes and strong contrasts. His Don Juan had swashbuckling flair, languorous romance (clearly, to quote a 1951 Dominoes lyric, a “sixty minute man”), and a poignant demise, while his Till Eulenspiegel played pranks that were not just merry but somewhat manic as well. The orchestral playing was first rate, with impressive solos from (among others) Diana Haskell on clarinet, Cally Banham on English horn, Roger Kaza on horn (the famous opening of Till Eulenspiegel), and concertmaster David Halen.

Next on the calendar: A series of holiday concerts begins with Christopher Warren-Green conducting Handel’s Messiah December 7 through 9. For ticket information: stlsymphony.org

Simply Irresistable

Kirill Gerstein

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
What: Kirill Gerstein plays Shostakovich; Semyon Bychkov conducts Schubert and Beethoven
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: January 28 – 30, 2011

This weekend's St. Louis Symphony concerts [January 28 - 30, 2011] presented a pair of impressive local debuts by conductor Semyon Bychkov and pianist Kirill Gerstein. Much admired for both his operatic and symphonic work, Mr. Bychkov more than lived up to his reputation with winning performances of Schubert's Symphony No. 2 and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, bracketing a barn-burner of a Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2 by Mr. Gerstein. It wasn't what you'd call an adventurous program, but it was certainly an entertaining one.

It hardly seems possible that Schubert's genial Symphony No. 2 was written a couple of years later than Beethoven's Olympian Symphony No 7. The former clearly looks back to the 18th century while the latter looks forward to the 19th and beyond. But then Schubert was just starting his brief career while Beethoven was well along in his. The younger composer already had, in any case, a good grasp of how to put his own stamp on the form he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart. The charmingly lyrical thematic material and sympathetic wind passages, for example, are all his own.

Watching Mr. Bychkov conduct both of these Viennese masterpieces without a score made it that much easier to appreciate the way he interacted with the orchestra. There was an obvious rapport and two-way communication with the players that appears to be a hallmark of all this season's guest conductors. Mr. Bychkov's style seems to favor precision over large gestures, even in a cheerfully aggressive work like the Shostakovich concerto, and the approach served the music well.

The product of a short-lived thaw in artistic repression the USSR in 1957, the concerto is an unambiguously (and uncharacteristically) happy work. Written for the composer's son Maxim and first performed by him on his 19h birthday, the piece zips through thee short movements in around 20 minutes, concluding with a slightly satirical nod to the Hanon finger exercises that Maxim undoubtedly knew well from his years at the Moscow Conservatory. It is, in short, an irresistible work.

Mr. Gerstein can probably do this sort of thing in his sleep, so it's hardly surprising that he and Mr. Bychkov seemed to be having as much fun performing the concerto as we did hearing it. Their reading had a snap and precision that was a joy to behold, and got an appropriately enthusiastic response from the audience.

Mr. Bychkov returns to the podium next weekend for the far more challenging Symphony No. 6 of Mahler; I look forward to the results. For information on that and other St. Louis Symphony events, call 314-534-1700 or visit slso.org.