Casual Friday: "Music you Know" with the St. Louis Symphony

David Robertson

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
What: Music You Know
When: Friday, November 21, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis

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The title of Friday's St. Louis Symphony concert said it all: "Music you Know." Presented by The Whittaker Foundation, the evening probably was, for the many of those in attendance, something of a reunion with old friends.

Like many such reunions, it was a relatively informal gathering. Many of the audience members were dressed more casually than is usually the case and drinks were allowed in the auditorium. Traditional concert etiquette was relaxed—applauding between movements was OK, and conductor David Robertson even brushed off the almost comic outbreak of coughing that marred a particularly impassioned performance of "Ase's Death" (from Grieg's "Peer Gynt" suite) with a few witty asides.

Printed program notes were minimal as well. SLSO blogger Eddie Silva provided a page of "fun facts" about the popular pieces on the bill, but most of the information about the music came from Mr. Robertson's spoken commentary. Mr. Robertson is an engaging speaker, but in this case most of his remarks ran far too long, so it sometimes felt as though he were simply killing time. Extensive stage resets after each piece also tended to slow down the overall pace of the evening. Normally, SLSO concerts flow more smoothly.

Dana Edson Myers

Still, the essentials were in place. Performances of concert standards like the Mussorgsky/Rimsky-Korsakov "Night on Bald Mountain" and Tchaikovsky's "Marche Slave" were wonderfully precise, crisp, and passionate. The selections from the "Peer Gynt" incidental music had a lovely transparency and grace. There were a few moments of sloppiness in the excerpts from Copland's "Rodeo" ballet (including an uncharacteristic lapse by Concertmaster David Halen) but on the whole the orchestra did justice to this quintessentially American classic.

The two works for violin and orchestra came off well. Dana Edson Myers, of the orchestra's first violin section, gave a deeply felt "Meditation" from Jules Massenet's "Thais" and Becky Boyer Hall (of the second violins) burned up the stage with the world premiere of "Beinn na Caillich (Hill of the Old Woman), Fantasia for a Fiddler" by the SLSO violist Christian Woehr. Based in part on the traditional Scots song "Over the Sea to Skye," the piece vividly depicts the wild Scottish seacoast (complete with wind machine) and comes to a flashy virtuosic finish.

Becky Boyer Hall

"Music you Know" was clearly pitched primarily to people who don't attend the symphony on a regular basis, presumably in hopes of enticing them to attend regular season concerts. That weekend's Saturday and Sunday concerts, with Mahler's "Das Lied von der Erde," got a particularly hard sell. I hope it worked. With over 2200 people in attendance, the hall was nearly full. I'd love to see that kind of turnout on a regular basis.

Next at Powell Hall: Mr. Robertson conducts an all-American program featuring the original jazz band version of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story," and two local premieres: "Hell's Angels" by Michael Daugherty and "Try" by Andrew Norman. Kirill Gerstein is soloist for both the Norman and Gershwin works, while nearly all of the SLSO bassoon section is featured in "Hell's Angels." Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., November 28-30. For more information, visit the symphony web site.