Symphony Preview The Comeback Kid

For Valentine’s Day weekend, Music Director Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra have a program that features a pair of passionate audience favorites by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, along with the world premiere of Anna Clyne’s multi-media Concerto for Orchestra, “PALETTE.”

I covered Clyne’s work extensively in an interview with her on my video blog. In this piece I’m going to concentrate of the two Romantic blockbusters by liberally re-writing material I first published about a decade ago.

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

Tchaikovsky circa 1872

There’s little doubt that the "Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy" is one of the Greatest Hits of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). First performed in Moscow in 1870 and then revised in 1877 and 1880, the work manages the neat trick of compressing the essential emotional themes of Shakespeare's five-act tragedy into around 20 minutes of music. The "love theme" is, as Daniel Durchholz writes in his program notes for a 2014 St. Louis Symphony performance, "one of Tchaikovsky's best and most memorable melodies." With lyrics by Buddy Bernier and Bob Emmerich, it even became a hit song: "Our Love," recorded by the Larry Clinton band in 1939.

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873 – 1943), which concludes the concerts, inspired not one but two pop songs (three if you count a 1975 Eric Carmen ballad), both recorded by Frank Sinatra: “I Think of You” from 1957 (adapted from the second theme of the first movement by Jack Elliott, Don Marcotte) and “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” The latter was adapted by Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman. Sinatra’s recording rose to number 17 on the Billboard charts in 1945.

Of somewhat more interest than the concerto’s success as a source of Top 40 inspiration, however, is the remarkable story of its troubled origins.

Rachmaninoff’s career got off to promising start. By the age of 20 he had already finished his Piano Concerto No. 1, had his opera Aleko produced to great acclaim at the Bolshoi Theater, and published a plethora of works for orchestra and solo piano. That includes his immensely popular Prelude in C-sharp minor, which the composer would later come to loathe. In short, Rachmaninoff’s star was on the rise

That star fell abruptly when the composer's Symphony No. 1 had its St. Petersburg premiere in 1897. The performance was a debacle. Conductor Alexander Glazunov, a notorious alcoholic, was said to be conducting under the influence and critics hated it. Vituperatively.

Rachmaninoff in 1900
en.wikipedia.org

The psychological impact on the young Rachmaninoff's was devastating. He spiraled down into a depression so severe that friends urged him to seek help from one Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who was then making a name for himself in Moscow with hypnotherapy.

Dahl hypnotized Rachmaninoff daily for three months. "I heard repeated, day after day,” recalled the composer, ”the same hypnotic formula as I lay half somnolent in an armchair in Dr. Dahl's consulting room. 'You will start to compose a concerto—You will work with the greatest of ease—The composition will be of excellent quality.' Always it was the same, without interruption."

The result was everything Rachmaninoff could have hoped for. Ideas for the concerto "began to well up within me," he reported. The second the third movements were completed by the autumn on 1900 and by the spring on 1901 the entire work was ready for a November Moscow premiere under Alexander Siloti, with the composer at the piano. It was a hit and has remained so ever since. Rachmaninoff was on the comeback trail.

The SLSO recorded all of Rachmaninoff’s concertos in 1990 under Leonard Slatkin with Abbey Simon at the keyboard. You can listen to the 2023 remaster of the Concerto No. 2 on Spotify. I think it holds up quite well. The soloist this weekend will be Nikolai Lugansky, who gave us a superlative Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 3 back in 2017 with John Storgårds at the podium. Lugansky recorded all of the concertos in the early 2000s, so this will likely be familiar territory for him.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Anny Clyne’s “PALETTE,” Tchaikovsky’s "Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy," and Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2 with piano soloist Nikolai Lugansky. Performances are Friday and Saturday, February 14 and 15, at 7:30 pm at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri—St. Louis campus. Saturday night’s concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available as an on-demand stream for a month starting the week of February 17th.

Symphony Preview: Darkest before the dawn

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,” wrote Robert Burns back in 1785, “Gang aft agley.” Today I might add “and of symphony orchestras as well.”

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

This weekend, composer/conductor Sir James MacMillan (b. 1959) was originally scheduled to conduct the St. LouisSymphony Orchestra in a program that would have included two of his own compositions: “The World’s Ransoming” for English horn (cor anglais) and orchestra, with SLSO Principal English horn Cally Banham as soloist, and his Violin Concerto No. 2 with Nicola Benedetti, who gave the work its world premiere last fall.

Portrait of Mendelssohn by
James Warren Childe
(1778–1862), 1839
en.wikipedia.org

The good news is that Banham is still on the program. The bad news is that Benedetti is not, due to illness. Replacing the concerto will be “The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave),” op. 26 by Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847). Given that both MacMillan and the inspiration for Mendelssohn’s overture are Scottish, that seems appropriate.

Last heard here in 2017, Mendelssohn's overture powerfully summons up the wild and brooding Scottish islands that the composer visited in 1829. His specific inspiration was a visit to Fingal’s Cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa. “With its echoing acoustics, which emphasised the sound of rumbling waves,” writes Hannah Neplova of the BBC Music Magazine, “Fingal's Cave made a deep impression on Mendelssohn, who later sent his sister Fanny a postcard, with the work's opening theme, that read: 'In order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, I send you the following, which came into my head there.'”

The actual overture would take three years to write, with the final revised version getting its first performance in Berlin in 1833, with the composer at the podium. Given the overture’s enduring popularity, it looks like it was worth the wait.

The dark and stormy atmosphere of “The Hebrides” turns out to be a good prelude to the musical darkness of “The World’s Ransoming.” Composed in 1995/96 on a commission from the London Symphony Orchestra, it is as the composer relates in his program notes, the first of a series of three works related to the events and liturgies of the Easter Triduum—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil:

The World’s Ransoming focuses on Maundy Thursday and its musical material includes references to plainsongs for that day, Pange lingua and Ubi caritas as well as a Bach chorale (Ach wie nichtig) which I have heard being sung in the eucharistic procession to the altar of repose. The cor anglais part emerges from the orchestra to carry the lamenting ritual through a long, slow and delicately scored introduction and then through a process of metric gear-changes as the music becomes more animated.

Sir James MacMillan
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

The title of the work refers to the final lines of Pange lingua (by St. Thomas Aquinas) which describe Christ’s blood “shed for the world’s ransoming.”

The sense of anxiety and lamentation is strong in this music, enhanced by the dark and melancholy sound of the English horn. The piece opens with angry growling sixteenth notes in the low woodwinds that quickly expand to the flutes and brass sections. Violent interjections from the tympani lead to a massive dissonant outburst that quickly subsides to make way for the elaborately melismatic solo line of the English horn. More violent outbursts pop up as well as a weird setting of the Bach chorale for muted brass, wood blocks, and agogo bells that has an unsettling feel of Shostakovich-style mockery.

It all ends with a flurry of sixteenth and thirty-second notes in the woodwinds, a last despairing solo from the cor anglais, and finally, a few measures of whacks on large plywood cubes. The composer says that these “[set] the scene for the next piece in the cycle, the Cello Concerto.” Heard all by themselves, they bring the work to an oddly enigmatic conclusion.

The Easter theme continues after intermission with the “Russian Easter Overture,” Op. 26, written by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) in 1888, the same year as his Greatest Hit, “Scheherazade”.  Like both “The Hebrides” and “The Ransoming of the World,” this is music that begins in sonic darkness—in this case, the darkness of Passion Saturday, which precedes the unbridled celebration of Easter Sunday, the major holiday of the Orthodox Christian year.

The work is so well-known and so vividly described by the composer in chapter 20 of his autobiography “My Musical Life” (where it title is given as the “Easter Sunday Overture" in the 1923 Judah A. Joffee translation) that I’m going to just refer you there. It’s quite an interesting read, especially the part wherein the composer (who was not a believer) points out that his sonic description of Easter is as much about the holiday’s pagan origins as it is about its importance in the Christian calendar:

And all these Easter loaves and twists and the glowing tapers…. How far a cry from the philosophic and socialistic teaching of Christ! This legendary and heathen side of the holiday, this transition from the gloomy and mysterious evening of Passion Saturday to the unbridled pagan-religious merry-making on the morn of Easter Sunday, is what I was eager to reproduce in my Overture.

Portrait of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1898
by Valentin Serov (detail)
en.wikipedia.org

He went on to add that “in order to appreciate my Overture even ever so slightly, it is necessary that the hearer should have attended Easter morning-service at least once and, at that, not in a domestic chapel, but in a cathedral thronged with people from every walk of life with several priests conducting the cathedral service.” Most of us haven’t had that experience, but at least you can hear a fine performance of it by Yuri Termirkanov and the New York Philharmonic on my Spotify playlist. Or, if you want a closer look, check out the YouTube performance by USSR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov, which comes with a synchronized score.

Christianity—or at least Dante’s version of it in the “Inferno” section of his “Divine Comedy”—pops up again in the evening’s Big Finish, “Francesca Da Rimini: Symphonic Fantasy after Dante,” op. 32, composed in 1876 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). “I wrote it with love and love has turned out pretty well, I think,” he wrote to his brother Modest in October of that year. Audiences have generally agreed; this big, highly charged tone poem is often performed and is well represented on recordings.

Francesca Da Rimini (original name Francesca Da Polenta) was a real noblewoman in 13th-century Italy. The daughter of Guido da Polenta, ruler of Ravenna, Francesca was married off to one Gianciotto Malatesta, whose family ran the show in Rimini, just to the south. As is sometimes the case in marriages of political convenience, this union was not an especially happy one, and Francesca became embroiled in an affair with Gianciotto’s brother Paolo. Giancotto discovered the pair in flagrante delicto and, in a classic display of poor impulse control, murdered them both.

Tchaikovsky circa 1872
en.wikipedia.org

In the medieval moral universe, this meant that Francesca and Paolo were condemned to the second circle of Hell. In Canto V of “inferno” Dante (in the John Ciardi translation) describes this as:

a place stripped bare of every light
And roaring on the naked dark like seas
Wracked by a war of winds. Their hellish flight
Of storm and counterstorm through time foregone,
Sweeps the souls of the damned before its charge.

Here are “those who sinned in the flesh, the carnal and lusty / Who betrayed reason to their appetite.”  This does not, apparently, include guys like Giancotto, who simply betrayed reason for a little casual murder.

But I digress.

Tchaikovsky’s tone poem opens and closes with a vivid depiction of Dante’s “storm and counterstorm” in which strings and winds swirl madly over blasts of brass and percussion. This brackets a lavishly romantic section in which, as in Dante’s original, Francesca tells the story of her ill-fated romance. Dante is so moved that:

I felt my senses reel
And faint away with anguish. I was swept
By such a swoon as death is, and I fell,
As a corpse might fall, to the dead floor of Hell.

Tchaikovsky translates that into an especially violent and impassioned coda, with multiple brass chords and cymbal crashes depicting the poet’s collapse.

The Essentials: James MacMillan conducts the orchestra along with SLSO Principal English Horn Cally Banham in Mendelssohn’s “The Hebrides,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture,” Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimini,” and MacMillan’s “The World’s Ransoming.” Performances are Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8 pm, February 10 and 11, at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday performance will be broadcast live 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: Visions of sugar plums

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

Konstantin Ivanov's original sketch
for the set of The Nutcracker (1892)
Source: en.wikipedia.org

If there's one thing you can count on at this time of the year, it's that someone somewhere will be putting on a production of Tchaikovsky's popular 1892 ballet "The Nutcracker." This weekend (November 29-December 1), that includes the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) as Andrew Grams [https://andrewgrams.com/] conducts the SLSO and St. Louis Children's Choirs in a complete concert performance of Tchaikovsky's classic. But their "Nutcracker" is probably going to be unlike any other you might have seen.

That's because, being a concert performance, it will be a "Nutcracker" without dancers (but with the charming children's chorus that accompanies the "Waltz of the Snowflakes). What it will have, though, is special lighting design by Luke Kritzeck, Director of Lighting and Resident Designer for the New World Symphony located in Miami Beach, Florida.

The Moscow Ballet's Great Russian Nutcracker
Photo: The Fabulous Fox

Mr. Kritzeck's resume is impressive, including six years touring with Cirque de Soleil as well as designs for the Chautauqua Opera (New York), the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis), among others. I have no idea what he has in mind for the SLSO, but a look at his online portfolio certainly suggests it will be creative.

The use of high-tech lighting and projections is nothing new for the SLSO, of course. In the past they have found some fairly ingenious ways of using projected images to enhance works written for the stage, from a performance of Copland's "Appalachian Spring" ballet suite accompanied by watercolors inspired by the ballet, to vivid projected scenery for a concert version of "Aida," to a performance of Schoenberg's "Five Pieces for Orchestra" in which each piece was accompanied by a more or less contemporary painting that mirrored the movement's central idea.

And "The Nutcracker" is certainly brimming with colorful scenes to inspire a visual designer. The first act includes the battle between the Nutcracker and the Mouse King, the Nutcracker's transformation into a handsome prince, and the magical journey to the Kingdom of Sweets. The second act gives us the various "national" dances (Chinese, Arabian, Spanish, and Russian Trepak), along with the dance of the mirlitons (a 19th-century cousin of the common kazoo, as well as a type of cake). There's also the popular "Waltz of the Flowers," the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" with its famous celesta solo, and the dramatic "Pas de Deux" for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier.

Mother Gigogne and her children

Act II also has one of the odder numbers, at least for contemporary American audiences: "La mère Gigogne et les polichinelles" (roughly: "Mother Gigogne and the puppets"). A character whose origins lie in French marionette theatre, she's usually portrayed as a woman (although often danced by a man) with a huge skirt out of which bursts a collection of tumblers and/or clowns. She would have been recognizable to Tchaikovsky's audiences. These days, not so much.

There's much more to be said about the music and the scenario of "The Nutcracker," but since Australian music writer Yvonne Frindle says it so well and in such great detail in the program, I'll just refer you there.

A few words are in order about this week's guest conductor, though. Now in his seventh season as Music Director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra in Elgin, Illinois (a town of just over 100,000 around 35 miles northwest of Chicago), Mr. Grams has had guest conducting gigs with high-profile domestic orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, the Detroit Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Houston Symphony. Internationally, his resume includes appearances with the symphony orchestras of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, as well as the Orchestre National de France, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra London, and orchestras in Australia and New Zealand. No wonder his web bio describes him as a "frequent traveler."

The St. Louis Ballet's Nutcracker at the Touhill

More to the point for this weekend, though, Mr. Grams has extensive experience with "The Nutcracker". He has led multiple performances of the New York City Ballet's production (with choreography by George Balanchine), as well as the first performances of a new production of the ballet for the Norwegian National Ballet in Olso. Reviewing his performance of "Nutcracker" excerpts with the Dallas Symphony, Scott Cantrell wrote that "he worked magic start to finish" and praised his "loving, sophisticated command of the score".

He'll also be bringing a musician's perspective to his conducting, having played violin with the New York City Ballet Orchestra from 1998 to 2004. He has played with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's (both based on NYC), the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the New Jersey Symphony as well.

The Essentials: Andrew Grams conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and St. Louis Children's Choirs in a complete performance of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" ballet on Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, November 29 - December 1. The program includes special lighting design by Luke Kritzeck. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: 'Tis the season to be jolly

Stéphane Denève kicks off his first official season as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) this week with concerts that can only be called celebratory.

The festivities start on Thursday, September 12, at 7 pm as Mr. Denève conducts the orchestra and Kevin McBeth's IN UNISON chorus in the annual "pops" program at the base of Art Hill in Forest Park. The evening includes favorites by Bizet, Bernstein, and Berlioz, along with St. Louis-themed numbers like the "St. Louis Blues March" (that's W.C. Handy's "St. Louis Blues," not the hockey team) by long-time SLSO Pops conductor Richard Hayman, as well as a mashup of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and "Meet Me in St. Louis" by Hayman and St. Louis jazz/classical keyboardist and composer Adam Manness.

It all concludes with a literal bang--Tchaikovsky's "1812" overture (full title: "The Year 1812, festival overture in E-flat major, Op. 49") followed by Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever," complete with fireworks. No tickets are required, although you'll probably want to bring a lawn chair or blanket for seating.

The "1812 Overture" in Melbourne in 2005
en.wikipedia.org

Regarding the "1812": while it's probably Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hit, the composer himself didn't think much of it. "The overture will be very loud and noisy," he wrote to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, "but I wrote it with no warm feeling of love, and so it will have no artistic merits at all." Composed on commission for a concert commemorating completion of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the work frequently shows up in outdoor concerts like this one, where the large orchestra can be supplemented with a brass band, bells, and (where practical and not prohibited by law) cannons.

Since its 1882 premiere, by the way, the "1812" has been a subject of some artistic tinkering by conductors and orchestrators. One of the more notable arrangements is the one conductor Igor Buketoff put together for his 1968 RCA recording, which added a chorus and children's chorus to sing the lyrics of the two Russian folk melodies in the score. Will we hear the IN UNISON chorus adding to the joyful noise this Thursday? You'll have to attend to find out.

The first indoor concerts of the season take place Friday through Sunday as Mr. Denève conducts the orchestra and soloists Daniel Lee (cello) and Erin Scheiber (violin) in something else that has become an annual tradition-an evening of music by John Williams.

Mr. Williams, who turned 87 in February, is probably the best known and most frequently recorded film music composer of the last 100 years. He's certainly one of the most honored, with five Oscars, three Emmys, four Golden Globes, 23 Grammys, seven BAFTA awards, and, for all I know, a partridge in a pear tree. With 51 Oscar nominations, he is the second most-nominated individual in that award's history. His most visible work has been for blockbusters like "Jurassic Park", the first Harry Potter film, the "Indiana Jones" films, and the "Star Wars" series, but Mr. Williams's involvement with the film music business extends all the way back to his days as a jazz keyboardist and film and TV studio pianist. Remember the piano riff for "Peter Gunn"? That's him.

John Williams receiving the
2009 National Medal of Arts from President Obama

Former Music Director David Robertson is a great admirer of the music of Mr. Williams, and made an evening of his works something of a Christmas tradition locally. Moving this popular concert to the beginning of the season makes considerable programmatic sense, though, since it offers something of a bridge from the pops sounds of the Forest Park event to the first major works of the season the weekend of September 21. Those concerts will include Debussy's "La Mer," Ravel's Piano Concerto in G, and Gershwin's "An American in Paris," along with newer pieces by Guillame Connesson, Jennifer Higdon, and Pevin Puts.

Stéphane Denève rehearses the main title from Superman.

When you go, expect an evening of Williams's Monster Hits, including music from "Close Encounters," "Superman," and "Jaws". There will also be selections from the "Harry Potter" films along with music from less well known films like "Memoirs of a Geisha," "The Book Thief," and John Badham's 1979 version of "Dracula."

The SLSO has had quite a public affair for some time now with movies and movie music. Movie nights have been especially successful, with films projected on Powell Hall's massive screen while the orchestra performs the score live. The "Harry Potter" film series, in particular, appears to be a big hit, with "Half Blood Prince" and "Deathly Hallows Part 1" scheduled for the 2019/2020 season.

A bigger curmudgeon than yours truly might sneer at these blockbuster events, but there's no doubt that they help the SLSO's bottom line. And if they attract audiences who have never experienced the heady cocktail of a live orchestral performance then I, for one, am all for it.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in The Music of John Williams Friday and Saturday at 7 pm and Sunday at 2:30 pm, September 13-15. Performances take place at Powel Symphony Hall in Grand Center.

Review: Quintessential Slatkin at the St. Louis Symphony

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

Soprano Hila Plitmann

It's an index of the continuing popularity of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin that he got a standing ovation from the crowd as soon as he stepped on to the stage Saturday night (May 4, 2019) for the final performance in a two-week concert series.

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

Granted, SLSO CEO Marie-Hélène Bernard warmed up the crowd with a laudatory introduction, but the audience didn't need much prompting. Fifty years after his first appearance with the orchestra, Mr. Slatkin--who ended his 17-year tenure as SLSO Music Director back in 1996--is as popular as ever.

Saturday night's concert demonstrated why that's the case. It was a quintessentially Slatkin evening, with an infrequently heard American classic, a world premiere by an American composer, and a highly personal take on a concert hall favorite--exactly the sort of thing that has endeared him to local classical music lovers. It was good to have him back.

The concert began with that infrequently heard American work, the Symphony No. 1 by Samuel Barber. Composed in 1935 and 1936 in Rome, the symphony netted him the American Prix de Rome at the ripe old age of 25. Running around 20 minutes, it's expansive, dramatic music with a wide emotional range.

Composer Jeff Beal

Conducting without a baton, Mr. Slatkin delivered a performance that was a perfect combination of big, dramatic gestures and precise details. The brass section was wonderfully clear and powerful in the first movement, the woodwinds danced through the rapid triplet passages in the second movement with ease, and the increasingly elaborate passacaglia of the finale was a model of clarity. There were fine individual performances here as usual, including the rapid bassoon and tympani duet at the end of the second movement (Andy Gott and Shannon Wood, respectively) and Jelena Dirks's plaintive oboe solo at the top of the final movement.

Next was that world premiere, the song cycle "The Paper Lined Shack" by contemporary American composer Jeff Beal. Best known for his film and television work (mostly notably the series "House of Cards"), Mr. Beal has recently branched out into the concert world. If this piece is any indication, he has a promising future there.

Based on diaries kept by Mr. Beal's great-grandmother Della, the piece reminded me a great deal of "Knoxville: Summer of 1915," written by Samuel Barber in 1947 to a text by novelist James Agee. Both are based on memoirs of family life in the early 20th century--urban middle class in Agee's case and dirt poor rural in the case of Della Beal--and both speak a musical vocabulary that would not have been shocking to audiences a century ago. Mr. Beal's music has a gentle, transparent quality that mirrors the sometimes surprisingly poetic text.

I'm not sure, though, that Mr. Beal writes that well for the human voice. I know he had input from the soloist, soprano Hila Plitmann, in developing the work, but even so the vocal line seems to lie too high a bit too often, and while Ms. Plitmann was in good voice generally, she did not always sound comfortable singing softly at the top of her range.

Still, it was a compelling performance, and a convincingly acted one. Ms. Plitmann made good theatrical use of the stage, entering far right on her first song, "Carefree Girl," and gradually working her way center to finish the cycle sitting at Mr. Slatkin's feet on the podium, as Della speaks directly to her children. I thought she perfectly captured Della's progression from carefree childhood to devastating personal losses in adulthood and, finally, poetic acceptance of her lot in life. The final two songs, "Our Garden" and "My Heart," were especially touching in their evocation of the contrast between the deaths of Della's mother and husband and the life of her garden. "The garden looked the same," Della wrote, "but everything had changed."

Leonard Slatkin
Photo by Nico Rodamel

The concert concluded with Tchaikovsky's popular Symphony No. 6, whose title, "Pathétique," is an example of what the French call a faux ami--a "false friend" that appears to be an English cognate but isn't. So while it looks like it should mean "pathetic", it is more property translated as "moving, touching, or poignant." The dark and dramatic first movement and, in particular, the despairing finale will move the most stony heart, and the absurdly rousing Allegro molto vivace third movement inevitably provokes applause.

Conducting without a score, Mr. Slatkin delivered a riveting, highly personal performance filled with subtle little touches that made it unlike any other performance of the work I have heard. The opening phrases in the bassoons, for example, were hushed and anguished. The first movement coda moved at a deliberate pace that made it feel like a candlelight procession. The tympani ostinato in the central section of the second movement had palpable tension. Small alterations in tempo added nuance to the boisterous third movement. And the yearning second theme of the final movement felt especially powerful.

The orchestra played beautifully, as always. Notable performances were turned in by bassoonists Andrew Cuneo and Felicia Foland, Scott Andrews on clarinet, and Tzuying Huang on bass clarinet. Thomas Jöstlein's horns acquitted themselves very well, and their muted notes in the finale had a truly threatening rasp. The strings had great depth and power, as they so often do.

The final measures faded out in despair, as they should, and would have been followed by a few seconds of silence if some members of the audience had not insisted on bursting into applause before Mr. Slatkin had lowered his arms. You really need a few seconds to exhale at the end of this piece, and Mr. Slatkin was trying to give it to us. As my wife remarked on the way out, people need to remember that the conductor leads the audience as well as the orchestra.

Next at Powell Hall: Music Director Designate Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham in the final concert of the season Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, May 10-12. The program consists of "Nyx" by composer/conductor Essa-Pekka Salonen, Ravel's song cycle "Shéhérazade," and the "Symphonie Fantastique" by Berlioz. Performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: Critical failure

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

This weekend (March 29-31) Jakub Hrusa leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in three works by well-established composers that were nevertheless greeted with a mixture of bafflement and hostility when they were first performed. Not surprisingly, history has since vindicated the composers.

The concerts open with a suite from Béla Bartók's ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin." First performed in Cologne, Germany, in November 1926, the ballet's sordid and violent story so outraged local audiences and religious leaders that the mayor, Konrad Adenauer (who would later be Germany's first post-WW II chancellor), had it banned. It wasn't seen again until after the composer's death in 1945.

Béla Bartók in 1927

What was all the fuss about? Thomas May has a synopsis in his program notes and there's an even more detailed one at Wikipedia, but essentially the story concerns a trio of thugs who force a young woman to lure unsuspecting rubes to an upstairs room where they're robbed, beaten, and tossed out into the street. The first two victims, an old man and a student, are easily dispatched, but the third--the wealthy Chinese man of the title--proves to be much tougher. The criminals try to kill him by suffocation, stabbing, and hanging, but he refuses to die until the woman finally embraces him, at which point he bleeds and expires.

Not exactly family friendly stuff. Also rather Freudian. Choreographer Attilla Bongar has posted a YouTube video of his version of the ballet and while the video quality is not great, it does give you a pretty good idea of what the action looks like.

The music Bartók wrote was appropriately aggressive and discordant. In an article for "The Listeners Club", Timothy Judd calls it "one of the scariest pieces ever written" and quotes the composer (in 1918) predicting that it would be "hellish music." Mr. Judd goes on to quote the musicologist and Bartók biographer József Ujfalussy on the way in which the ballet was a reflection of the post-WW I zeitgeist:

European art began to be populated by inhuman horrors and apocalyptic monsters. These were the creations of a world in which man's imagination had been affected by political crises, wars, and the threat to life in all its forms... This exposure of latent horror and hidden danger and crime, together with an attempt to portray these evils in all their magnitude, was an expression of protest by 20th-century artists against the...obsolete ideals and inhumanity of contemporary civilization. [Bartók] does not see the Mandarin as a grotesque monster but rather as the personification of a primitive, barbaric force, an example of the 'natural man' to whom he was so strongly attracted.

A quick glance at my news feed suggests that, if Mr. Ujfalussy is correct, this may be music whose hour (like that of Yeats's rough beast) has "come round at last."

Tchaikovsky, aged 52.
Photographed by Alfred Fedetsky
in Kharkov, 14/26 March 1893
wiki.tchaikovsky-research.net

Up next is Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. Although wildly popular these days, the concerto was originally dismissed as "unplayable" by St. Petersburg Conservatory violin professor Leopold Auer (to whom it was originally dedicated and who was supposed to play it at its premiere). Tchaikovsky's colleague Adolf Brodsky would replace Auer as both the first performer and the dedicatee.

I wrote at some length back in 2015 about the concerto and the oddly hostile reactions it got from clueless critics, so I won't repeat myself here. The bottom line is that it's now a beloved part of the repertoire and never fails to be a crowd pleaser.

The violin soloist this weekend will be Karen Gomyo, who has gotten her share of critical praise http://karengomyo.com/press/ over the years. "A first-rate artist of real musical command, vitality, brilliance and intensity," wrote John Van Rhein at the Chicago Tribune in 2009, while the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Zachary Lewis called her "captivating, honest, and soulful, fueled by abundant talent but not a vain display of technique" in 2011. Reviewing her performance of works by Chausson and Sarasate here in 2017, I praised her technical proficiency and intense artistic focus. I look forward to seeing what she does with Tchaikovsky's so-called "unplayable" masterpiece.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9, which concludes this weekend's concerts, actually got some decent notices when it was first performed on November 3, 1945, by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky, who conducted the world premieres of several other Shostakovich symphonies. His fellow composer Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov, for example, reacted to it this way (cited in "Shostakovich: A Life" by Laurel E. Fay):

Transparent. Much light and air. Marvelous tutti, fine themes (the main theme of the first movement -- Mozart!). Almost literally Mozart. But, of course, everything very individual, Shostakovichian... A marvelous symphony. The finale is splendid in its joie de vivre, gaiety, brilliance, and pungency!!

That opinion didn't last. As conductor Mark Wigglesworth writes on his blog, "Stalin was incensed when he heard the piece." Coming immediately after the conclusion of the Great Patriotic War (World War II to the rest of us) he had expected a grand heroic apotheosis, not "literally Mozart." As Mr. Wigglesworth notes, the winds of opinion quickly changed:

Within a year of its première in 1945, Soviet critics censured the symphony for its 'ideological weakness' and its failure to 'reflect the true spirit of the people of the Soviet Union.' One described it as 'old man Haydn and a regular American sergeant unsuccessfully made up to look like Charlie Chaplin, with every possible grimace and whimsical gesture.' Others, in more private circles, understood 'its timely mockery of all sorts of hypocrisy, pseudo-monumentality, and bombastic grandiloquence.' It was banned for the remainder of Stalin's life and not recorded until 1956. Nor was the work particularly well received in the West. According to an American critic, 'the Russian composer should not have expressed his feelings about the defeat of Nazism in such a childish manner.'

Shostakovich in 1945

In all fairness, Shostakovich might have been partly responsible for raising false expectations. "Undoubtedly like every Soviet artist," he declared on the occasion of the 27th anniversary of the revolution in 1944, "I harbor the tremulous dream of a large-scale work in which the overpowering feelings ruling us today would find expression. I think the epigraph to all our work in the coming years will be the single word 'Victory'."

He even went so far as to compose the first several minutes of that planned celebratory work early in 1945. As scholar Olga Digonskaya writes, fellow composers who heard him perform it described the fragment as "powerful, energetic and triumphant." Dissatisfied, he set the fragment aside, and by the summer his thoughts had completely changed. Running under a half hour, the final version of the Symphony No. 9 is a brisk, and (at least in the first movement) openly comic work with (as Mr. May writes in his notes) "a shockingly (to those who wanted it) unheroic finale."

If you want to listen to the complete symphony in advance, let me recommend a recording by the WDR Symphony on YouTube that includes a synchronized display of the score. Note the many prominent solos for instruments that don't always get them like the piccolo, bassoon, and trombone.

This week's guest conductor, Jakub Hrusa, was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1981. He studied paino and trombone before taking up the baton at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He's Chief Conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. Recent debuts include guest appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, and NHK Symphony.

The Essentials: Jakub Hrusa conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, along with violinist Karen Gomyo, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, March 29-31. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Review: Spring forward

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

Christian Arming
Photo by Shumpei Oshugi

Share on Google+:

Spring arrived early this year, both outdoors and inside Powell Hall, as guest conductor Christian Arming led the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Friday night (March 2, 2018) in an inventive take on Schumann's "Spring" symphony, followed by an intriguingly idiosyncratic Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 by soloist Rémi Geniet.

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

It was the dead of winter when Schumann wrote his Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major in January of 1841, but it was springtime in the composer's heart. He had just married the love of his life, Clara Wieck, the previous September, and he responded to this happy turn of events with a massive outpouring of music, including some of his best-known song cycles. You can hear that in the symphony which, after a brief, dramatically stormy introduction, bursts into pure joy and which it continues to express for the next half-hour.

Conducting with big, fluid gestures (and sometimes singing along with the orchestra), Mr. Arming found an impressive variety of emotional levels in this music. The build from the majestic introduction to the Allegro molto vivace of the first movement was neatly done, and the coda had impressive energy. The Larghetto second movement was lovingly sculpted (summoning up images of Schumann's love for Clara), the third movement Scherzo was bracing, with marked contrasts among its sections, and the finale overflowed with vernal cheer. The expressive range of Mr. Arming's interpretation was wide, making Schumann almost feel like Mahler at times.

I feel like a broken record (remember those?) writing this, but the orchestra played beautifully for Mr. Arming, with fine work by Roger Kaza's horns (a good thing, since Schumann gave them some important work to do). There were also excellent solos by (among others) Principal Flute Mark Sparks, Associate Principal Oboe Philip Ross, Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews, and Associate Principal Bassoon Andrew Gott.

The Tchaikovsky concerto that followed intermission was also wide-ranging in its scope, thanks in part to the intensely personal performance of Mr. Geniet. Yes, he displayed solid technique, with plenty of power as well as a delicacy of touch, but what made his performance memorable was his ability to find new ideas in this well-known warhorse. His first movement cadenza, in particular, had such a wide dynamic and expressive range that it felt rather like a mini-sonata. Critics have praised Mr. Geniet in the past for his ability to shine new light on established classics, and he certainly did that Friday night.

Rémi Geniet
Photo by Jean Baptiste Millot

The performance was received with an enthusiastic standing ovation by the audience, which was rewarded by an ethereal encore that gave Mr. Geniet another chance to demonstrate that delicacy of touch: the "Cradle Song," the first of Tchaikovsky's Op. 16 "Romances" for voice and piano, in a transcription by Rachmaninoff. It was the last thing Rachmaninoff wrote, in fact, which made it both touching and sad.

The concert opened with a high-contrast reading of Smetana's symphonic poem "Sárka," the third of the six works that make up the epic cycle "Má vlast" ("My Homeland"). It's a vivid bit of musical story telling from an episode in the legendary Czech "Maiden's War" in which the legendary female lieutenant of the title seduced the warrior Ctirad and then, with the help of her fellow fighters, slaughtered him and his men in their sleep. Smetana's writing is colorfully descriptive and Mr. Arming's interpretation was cinematic in its scope, with an appropriately fiery finale.

Both Mr. Arming and Mr. Geniet were making their St. Louis debuts Friday night. Based on what I saw and heard, I'd say they made a very good first impression and I hope to see them here again.

Next at Powell: Grammy Award-winning singer and rapper Wyclef Jean joins the orchestra for A Night of Symphonic Hip-Hop on Friday, March 9th, at 7:30 pm. Christian Macelaru conducts the orchestra on Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 3 pm, March 10th and 11th, with a program of Britten, Saint-Saëns, and Vaughan Williams. James Ehnes is the violin soloist.

Symphony Preview: Spring is coming

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

Ctirad and Šárka
Painting by Věnceslav Černý

Share on Google+:

It's an evening of Romantic blockbusters this weekend (March 2 and 3, 2018) as Christian Arming makes his conducting debut with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program that includes Tchaikovsky's popular Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, with Rémi Geniet (also making his local debut) as soloist.

The concerts will open with the symphonic poem "Sárka," the third of the six works that make up Smetana's epic cycle "Má vlast" ("My Homeland"). It's an interesting choice, in that it's based on a fairly bloody bit of Czech legend.

The story comes from the tale of the legendary "Maiden's War" which may (or may not) have taken place in the 6th or 7th century. First described in the twelfth-century "Chronica Boëmorum" and later in the fourteenth-century "Dalimil's Chronicle," this literal war between men and women was supposedly sparked by the death of Libuse, the last in a line of matriarchal rulers of Czech society. Here's Vaclav Ledvinka, director of Prague's city archives, describing what Czech legend says happened as a result:

When Libuse died, the matriarchal system of power came to an end, and a patriarchal system was introduced, with the arrival of Prince Premysl, the forefather of the Premyslid dynasty, which later ruled the Czech Lands for several hundred years. The women were apparently furious at this change, and this led to a civil war between Czech women and men.

One of the fighters in that civil war was Sárka, a lieutenant of the fierce warrior woman Vlasata. In the legend, Sárka seduces the warrior Ctirad and then, with the help of her fellow Amazons, slaughters him and his men in their sleep.

Smetana's tone painting is fairly literal and concludes with a particularly violent orchestral outburst. "The music is vivid and suspenseful," writes René Spencer Saller in her program notes, "with sharply contrasting motives: churning tempests reminiscent of The Flying Dutchman reveal the heroine's rage, a sinuous clarinet suggests her seductive wiles, a march represents the advancing male army, and rumbling bassoons mimic the snores of the doomed men." I keep hoping the SLSO will perform all of "Má vlast" one of these days (the orchestra's complete recording with Walter Susskind is still one of my favorites) but meanwhile it's good to hear bits of it now and then.

Next on the program is Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 38, known as the "spring" symphony-even though it was composed in the dead of winter, during an amazingly productive four days at the end of January, 1841. The symphony comes from a happy time in Schumann's life-he had just married his one great love, Clara Wieck, the previous September-and it's not hard to hear that joy in this energetic and sunny work.

It doesn't start that way, mind you. The Introduction to the first movement, marked Andante un poco maestoso, is a solemn invocation of grey winter skies, reflecting the opening stanza of "Frühlingsgedicht," the Adolf Böttger poem that inspired the composer:

Du Geist der Wolke, trüb und schwer
Fliegst drohend über Land und Meer
Dein grauer Schleier deckt im Nu
Des Himmels klares Auge zu

You spirit of the clouds, grey and heavy
Looming over land and sea
Your obscure veil obscures in a frozen moment
The clear eye of heaven

But this isn't "Game of Thrones," and winter is going rather than coming. An exuberant horn call leads to the main Allegro molto vivace and spring bursts out in all its glory, mirroring the final stanza of the poem:

O wende, wende deinen Lauf-
Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!

O turn, O turn and change your course-
In the valley spring blooms forth!

From there on it's springtime for Schumann.

Ms. Saller has a nice, compact analysis of the symphony in her program notes, but if you want a closer look, check out conductor Kenneth Woods's detailed commentary, written to accompany his own recording of the work with the Orchestra of the Swan. That's where I got the information on the Böttger poem.

The concerts will conclude with the excessively popular Tchaikovsky concerto, a work which has not lacked for fine performances by the SLSO in recent years. That includes the unorthodox but compelling Kirill Gerstein version in 2013 and the volcanic Yefim Bronfman approach in 2011.

The soloist this time around is the young (mid-twenties) French pianist Rémi Geniet, whose recent recital at the Morgan Library got a glowing write-up from the New York Music Daily blog, which heaped praise on both his technical facility and (perhaps more relevant for this weekend) his ability to shine new light on established classics. It will be interesting to hear his perspective on a well-loved warhorse like the Tchaikovsky.

Finally: if you're wondering why there's no Sunday afternoon concert, that's because Resident Conductor Gemma New will lead the SLSO Youth Orchestra Sunday at 3 pm with a program of Britten's "Soirées musicales," Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italien," and Sibelius's Symphony No. 2. You probably know that last two pieces, but you might not be familiar with the Britten. It's a brilliantly re-imagined collection of five pieces by Rossini, orchestrated in a witty and fanciful style. Ms. New and her young players should have a good time with it, as will you.

The Essentials: Christian Arming conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and piano soloist Rémi Geniet Friday and Saturday at 8 pm March 2 and 3. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Review: Spectacular Ravel and Tchaikovsky with John Storgårds, Marc-André Hameiln, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

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

John Storgårds

Share on Google+:

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

"Nothing," wrote Mary Ann Evans (a.k.a. George Eliot) "is so good as it seems beforehand." Had she seen the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in action on Saturday, November 11th 2017 (unlikely, given that she died in 1880), she might have revised that aphorism a bit.

I'll admit that I was looking forward to this concert. The program included my favorite Tchaikovsky symphony -- the Fourth, in F minor -- as well as Ravel's endlessly inventive Piano Concerto in G, and the guest conductor, John Storgårds, impressed me mightily when I last saw him in back in April. I was not, however, expecting to be quite as blown away as I was.

Things got off to a fine start with the local premiere of the Tänzchen im alten Stil ("Little Dance in the Old Style"), composed in 1918 by one of the great names in Hollywood film music, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It's an ingratiating gloss on the classic Viennese waltz, with a slyly humorous beginning and a middle section with echt romantisch solos for cello and horn, followed by a coda that cleverly combines both themes.

Mr. Storgårds gave it a very idiomatic treatment, complete with those small pauses between the first and second beat (luftpausen) that characterize the Viennese waltz. The orchestra played beautifully, including solos in the opening section from Associate Principal Flute Andrea Kaplan, Associate Principal Clarinet Diana Haskell, and bassoonist Vincent Karamanov. Principal Cello Daniel Lee and Associate Principal Horn Thomas Jöstlein carried out their solos with equal aplomb.

When pianist Marc-André Hamelin joined the orchestra for the Ravel concerto, though, it quickly became clear that the evening wasn't just gong to be good, it was going to be great.

Marc-André Hamelin

When Ravel wrote the concerto, he set out to make it technically challenging, hoping that it would force him to improve his own game at the keyboard. That didn't happen; Paris Conservatoire piano professor Marguerite Long played at the 1932 Paris premiere. But it did create a work that demands, especially in the wistful second movement, a pianist with technique and soul.

Mr. Hamelin displayed both Saturday night, dashing off the flashy stuff in the first and third movements with ease while caressing that long-limbed waltz theme in the second. He was completely in synch with Mr. Storgårds's loving and rhythmically free approach to that movement as well as his more dynamic interpretation of the other two. Mr. Storgårds also highlighted lots of little details like Principal Harp Allegra Lilly's solo in the first movement and the run up the piano keyboard to the first restatement of the main theme.

And speaking of solos, let's direct some applause to Cally Banham for that yearning English horn line in the second movement.

The concert concluded with what can only be called a kick-ass performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. Written in 1876-77, at a time when the composer's mood swung between hope and despair, this is the most compact and dramatically expressive of all his symphonies. From the commanding "fate" motive first intoned by the brasses at the beginning to the nearly hysterical triumph of the finale, this is a piece that grabs you by the lapels and doesn't let go until the end.

Which is exactly what Mr. Storgårds and the SLSO did Saturday night. If you were there, you know what I mean. Starting with a brilliant statement of the "fate" motive by the brass section, this was a Tchaikovsky Fourth that commanded one's attention and simply crackled with energy.

There were so many great moments in this express train of a performance that I really can't list them all here. I loved the relentless "march of doom" at the end of the first movement, for example, as well as the barn-burning intensity of the finale. For me, Mr. Storgårds delivered a Tchaikovsky Fourth against which all others must be measured, with the high drama of the music accentuated by the conductor's magisterial podium presence and big, dramatic, full upper-body gestures.

Everyone played their hearts out, both in the many solos and in the ensemble overall. The melancholy main theme of the second movement was beautifully rendered by Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks and Associate Principal Bassoon Andy Gott. The string section played the pizzicato third movement with intense concentration (you could see it on their faces as well as hear it) and impressive precision. The horn and brass sections were stunning all the way through. And Thomas Stubbs deserves a particular shout-out for doing such a great job with the insanely fast cymbal part in the finale.

Not surprisingly, the applause following this was thunderous as the audience leapt to its feet. I don't think standing ovations at Powell Hall are always justified, but I had no hesitation about joining in this time.

Since this was Veteran's Day (originally Armistice Day, which I've always felt was more appropriate), the concert was preceded by a short speech honoring the Gold Star families present by SLSO trumpeter Jeff Strong, who is a former member of the US Marine Band. It was tastefully done, and an appropriate reminder.

Next at Powell: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with Joélle Harvey, soprano; Kelley O'Connor, mezzo-soprano; Stuart Skelton, tenor; and Shenyang, bass-baritone in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 3 p.m., November 18 and 19. There's also a free Youth Orchestra concert Friday at 8 p.m. with Resident Conductor Gemma New at the baton. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: Self-improvement program

Maurice Ravel birthday party, New York City, March 8, 1928
L-R: Oscar Fried, conductor; Eva Gauthier, singer;
Ravel at piano; Manoah Leide-Tedesco, composer-conductor;
and composer George Gershwin

Share on Google+:

This weekend (November 10 - 12, 2017) at Powell Hall, guest conductor John Storgårds takes the podium as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra plays a varied program featuring the local premiere of a piece that's almost 100 years old, one of Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits, and a popular piano concerto that was the result of a failed attempt at self-improvement by Maurice Ravel.

The Ravel work in question is the Concerto in G, written mostly between 1929 and 1932. It's one of only two piano concertos in his catalog (the other is the Concerto in D for the left hand, written at around the same time) and it represented an attempt by Ravel to improve his own less than stellar skill as a pianist.

Ravel, as Washington University's Hugh Macdonald has written, was not a virtuoso at the keyboard. “In his public appearances as a concert pianist,” notes Mr. Macdonald, “he had preferred to play easier pieces like the Sonatine and was all too conscious that his technique was not up to his most demanding works, such as Gaspard de la nuit. But rather than write a piece within his own capacity, he decided to write a concerto of proper difficulty and simply acquire the technique to play it.” Thus was born the Concerto in G.

The composition process was apparently long and difficult, having begun as early as 1911, according to Mr. Macdonald:

"Gustave Samazeuilh recounted that in 1911 he and Ravel spent a holiday in the Basque region (where both of them had come from) and that Ravel sketched a “Basque Concerto” for piano and orchestra. Without the right idea for a central linking movement the work was abandoned, to reappear 20 years later as the G-major Concerto. This at least suggests a Basque origin for some of the themes, although it is easier, without any general familiarity with Basque music, to recognize that the livelier themes emerge from Ravel's preoccupation with the brilliant percussive qualities of the piano itself and that the languorous melodies betray his gift for giving a peculiarly sophisticated edge to the language of jazz."

Jazz was certainly in the air in Paris in the late 1920s and Ravel got a taste of the real thing during a 1928 tour of the USA, so much is understandably made about the jazzy influences in the concerto; possible Basque influences, not so much. Regardless of the source of the concerto's inspiration, though, the result is characteristically Ravel: inventive, witty, and brilliantly orchestrated.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Ravel's attempts to bring his keyboard skills up to the level required by the concerto came to naught, unfortunately. He was already in his mid fifties-a time in life when learning new skills becomes more difficult-and his health was declining, resulting in memory problems and difficulty concentrating. So when it came time for the French premiere of the concerto, the solo role went to Marguerite Long, who taught piano at the Paris Conservatoire between 1906 and 1940. And even she found it a challenge.

“It is a difficult work,” she observed in the posthumously published Au Piano avec Maurice Ravel, “especially in respect of the second movement where one has no respite. I told Ravel one day how anxious I was, after all the fantasy and brilliant orchestration of the first part, to be able to maintain the cantabile of the melody of the piano alone during such a long slow flowing phrase... 'That flowing phrase!' Ravel cried. 'How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!'"

At the Steinway for this weekend's concerts will be Canadian pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin, last seen here in 2009. He has made a number of recordings for Hyperion, concentrating on some of the more obscure composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the inventive American Frederic Rzewski, virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowski, and one of my own favorites, Charles-Valentin Alkan. That seems apt preparation for a work as eclectic as the Ravel concerto.

The concerts will open with the first local performance of Tänzchen im alten Stil ("Little Dance in the Old Style"), composed in 1918 by one of the great names in Hollywood film music, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Written when the composer was just beginning to make a name for himself and long before the rise of Hitler would drive him to expatriate status in the USA, this short (around seven minutes) piece looks back nostalgically to the “old style” of the Viennese waltz and, as Benjamin Pesetsky tells us in the program notes , features a “gorgeous cello solo that would be equally at home in a Brahms symphony or a silver-screen love theme.” If you've ever heard Korngold's popular Violin Concerto or his classic film scores (like The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Prince and the Pauper), you know what to expect.

The concerts will conclude with my favorite Tchaikovsky symphony-his Fourth, in F minor, last heard in Powell Hall in March 2015, with David Robertson at the baton. I'm going to basically reprise what I wrote about it back then because it's still valid and because I am occasionally given to bouts of sloth.

"Tchaikovsky with wife Antonina Miliukova"
by Ivan Grigoryevich Dyagovchenko
Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Commons

Tchaikovsky began writing the symphony during a winter of discontent (to paraphrase Shakespeare) in 1876-77. "Since we last met," he wrote to his friend Ivan Klimenko on May 8, 1877, "I am very much changed-especially mentally. Not a kopek's worth of fun and gaiety is left in me. Life is terribly empty, tedious, and tawdry. My mind turns towards matrimony, or indeed any other steady bond. The only thing that has not changed is my love for composing. If the conditions of my life were different, if my desire to create were not balked at every step...I might write something really decent."

His disastrous attempt at marriage in 1877 to a former student, Antonina Miliukova didn't help matters any. He was gay, she didn't get it, and the entire business collapsed after only a few months. Still, by the beginning of 1878, all that Sturm und Drang had resulted in the creation of "something really decent." Although initially dismissed by critics who were baffled by the first movement's length (at just over 17 minutes, it takes up about half of the symphony's total time) and unusual structure, the Fourth would gradually gain acceptance and acclaim. It's now one of Tchaikovsky's most popular symphonies.

As well it should be. The composer poured all of his hope and despair into this most compact and dramatically expressive of all his symphonies. From the commanding "fate" motive first intoned by the brasses at the beginning to the nearly hysterical triumph of the finale, this is a piece that grabs you by the lapels and doesn't let go until the end. I've loved this work from the first time I heard it in a recording by Sir John Barbirolli and the Halle Orchestra on my parents' old console stereo some fifty years ago. I think you will as well.

The Essentials: John Storgårds conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, along with pianist Marc-André Hamelin in music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky Friday at 10:30 a.m, Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., November 10 - 12. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.