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.