Roll over, Beethoven

Andrey Boreyko

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Andrey Boreyko with violinist Adele Anthony
What:  Music of Stephanie Berg, Nielsen, and Beethoven
When: Friday and Saturday, January 10 and 11, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

The first of the St. Louis Symphony's "Beethoven Festival" concerts this weekend brought exciting performances by guest conductor Andrey Boreyko of three works, each separated by nearly a century: Beethoven's "Symphony No. 7 in A major", Op. 92 (first performed in 1813), Carl Nielsen's Op. 33 "Violin Concerto" (1912 premiere), and "Ravish and Mayhem", a colorful little tone poem by Missouri composer Stephanie Berg from 2012 that opened the evening.

New music at the symphony isn't often greeted with wild applause. More often the reaction is polite (if somewhat baffled) approval from audience members who aren't sure whether they missed something important or whether, as Anna Russell once observed, the composer was just trying to get away with something.

Stephanie Berg

Not so with "Ravish and Mayhem," which drew enthusiastic ovations for both the orchestra and—when Mr. Boreyko persuaded her to appear on stage—Ms. Berg as well. Inspired, according to the composer, by a vision of "an ancient Middle Eastern street festival," this unabashedly cinematic and vivid piece was a delight from the opening Coplandesque fanfares and melismatic woodwind figures to the brass glissandi near the end that conjured up images of trumpeting elephants.

Yes, dear friends, it was the 21st century version of Ketèlbey's 1920 hit "In a Persian Market." And I mean that in the best way possible. Many contemporary composers, in my view, could benefit from trying to be a bit more like the late British master of "light music" and a bit less like (say) Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The symphony musicians handled this new work with the same ease they display with well-worn favorites. There were especially notable contributions by Andrea Kaplan (flute), Ann Choomack (piccolo), Scott Andrews (clarinet), and Diana Haskell (E-flat clarinet) in the lively opening section.

Next was Carl Nielsen's violin concerto, a work that, like many of the Danish master's symphonies and other larger works, often defies expectations in ways that can leave audience members a bit confused. Which might explain why the concerto wasn't heard at Powell until 2001 (nearly 90 years after its premiere) and hasn't returned since Robert Spano conducted a performance with Yang Liu in October of 2002. Adele Anthony was the soloist this time, and she gave us a thoroughly idiomatic and assured reading (as you might expect from a Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition winner), dashing off the cadenza and final pages of the Allegro cavalleresco that closes the first half of the concerto so impressively that she was awarded with a spontaneous burst of applause.

Adele Anthony

Personally, I've always loved Nielsen's music. I find the composer's joy in the unexpected and characteristic melodic voice immensely appealing. It would be nice to see more of it on the stage at Powell.

The evening closed with an exhilarating Beethoven "Symphony No. 7," beautifully shaped by Mr. Boreyko. He last conducted the orchestra in an all-Tchaikovsky program in November of 2012 that was distinguished by an electrifying performance of the "Violin Concerto" by Vadim Gluzman and a "Symphony No. 1" that exploited all of the work's extremes in tempi and dynamics while still pulling everything together into a coherent whole. The Beethoven Seventh comes from a more restrained emotional world than the Tchaikovsky First, but Mr. Boreyko nevertheless found and effectively exploited all the drama inherent in the music.

He displayed an unerring ability to build to an effective climax, both within movements (as in the opening Poco sostenuto) and in the overall structure of the symphony. The white-hot intensity of the finale was simply the inevitable conclusion of an arc that had been built from the first notes of the first movement—the conclusion of which got a round of spontaneous applause—and which ran through the steady rhythmic pulse of the second and the fleet-footed romp of the third. An enthusiastic and thoroughly justified standing ovation followed.

It's likely that the orchestra that first performed Beethoven's seventh was somewhat smaller than 73 musicians assembled for this weekend's performance, but they played with the crisp articulation and precision of a much smaller ensemble. Timpanist Shannon Wood, in particular, deserves a shout-out for exactitude and endurance during that remarkable final movement.

The Beethoven Festival continues this coming weekend with the "Piano Concerto No. 5" (the "Emperor") along with Weber's "Euryanthe Overture" and Bartók's "Concerto for Orchestra." Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts with soloist Louis Lortie . Performances are Friday at 10:30 AM (a Krispy Kreme coffee concert), Saturday at 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM, January 17-19. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Tales of the unexpected

First page of Beethoven's 7th

This weekend the symphony brings us the first of four "Beethoven Festival" concerts that will feature performances of the third and fifth symphonies, the fifth piano concerto (the "Emperor") and, this Friday and Saturday, the "Symphony No. 7 in A Minor," Op. 92. The two works that precede the Beethoven this weekend, however, are at least as noteworthy.

I'm not knocking the Seventh, mind you. First performed at a December 8, 1813, 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, in particular, "enchanted connoisseur and layman," according to a contemporary review in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung. Welsh musicologist David Wyn Morris has called the symphony "the continuous cumulative celebration of joy," and I'd have to agree.

But we get to hear the Beethoven seventh quite a lot. The symphony last performed it, for example, two years ago with Semyon Bychkov on the podium. By way of contrast, the piece that takes up most of the first half of the concert—Carl Nielsen's 1911 "Violin Concerto"—didn't make it's SLSO debut until 2001 and hasn't been seen on the Powell Hall stage since Robert Spano conducted a performance with soloist Yang Liu in October of 2002.

Carl Nielsen in 1910

Not that this is unusual. The concerto doesn't have anything like the high profile of the Sibelius concerto from six years earlier—possibly because it, like many of Nielsen's large-scale works, often defies expectations in ways that can leave audience members a bit confused. "The Violin Concerto," writes René Spencer Saller in her program notes, "for all its Neoclassical trappings, is similarly weird, not to mention unusually long and difficult to play. Notes ring out shrilly; harmonies collapse into dissonances; themes collide and implode. Its beauty is severe and gleams like a glacier."

For me, this is exactly what makes Nielsen such a very cool composer. His symphonies have always been favorites of mine, along with his concerti, programmatic pieces like the remarkable "Helios Overture," and the quirky incidental music he wrote for Adam Oehlenschläger's "dramatic fairy tale" "Aladdin" in 1919. When you encounter his concerto, expect the unexpected. It's in two movements instead of the usual three of four, for one thing, and each movement is preceded by a slow introduction. It's dramatic stuff but it makes no effort to impress with simple virtuoso display. Even the concluding Rondo, in the composer's own words, "renounces everything that might dazzle or impress." But I think you'll be impressed anyway.

The concerts open with a brand-new piece, "Ravish and Mayhem," written in 2012 by Missouri native Stephanie Berg (she was born in Parkville, MO, in 1986 has a Master's in composition from the University of Missouri). "With its wide-eyed, almost Coplandesque harmonies and hectic rhythms," writes René Spencer Saller, "Ravish and Mayhem neatly encapsulates Berg's approach. Dramatic brass vies with whimsical woodwinds; grand gestures are interrupted by playful passages; ceremony succumbs to chaos. The sonorities are at once American and exotic." Berg is also quoted in the symphony program as acknowledging an "Arabic" influence in the work in that "the melodies involve a lot of trills and flourishes, which seem to be a feature of music from that region." "It's a very high-energy piece," she said in a 2012 interview for Vox Magazine, "very folk-like melodies."

Stephanie Berg

Why the title? I have no idea, and Ms. Berg hasn't been quoted on the subject as far as I can see. I guess we'll just have to draw our own conclusions once we've heard it.

Turning from the music to the performers, this week's conductor, Andrey Boreyko, last led the symphony in an all-Tchaikovsky program in November of 2012 that was distinguished by an electrifying performance of the "Violin Concerto" by Vadim Gluzman and a "Symphony No. 1" that exploited all of the work's extremes in tempi and dynamics while still pulling everything together into a coherent whole. It will be interesting to see what he does with this weekend's vary varied program.

Mr. Boreyko's violin soloist, Adele Anthony, is making her SLSO debut. It's appropriate that she's playing the Nielsen, since she first made her mark on the international scene at Denmark's 1996 Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition. She has gone on to appear with important orchestras world wide, including the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, NDR Orchestra Hannover, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; also all six symphonies of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She performs on a 1728 Stradivarius.

Andrey Boreyko conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with violin soloist Adele Anthony this Friday and Saturday, January 10 and 11, at 8 PM at Powell Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday concert will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 FM, HD 1, and live streaming at the station web site. For more information: stlsymphony.org.