As I said in my first symphony preview post this week, the main event at the St. Louis Symphony this weekend is Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” Steven Jarvi is at the podium and the violin soloists—all drawn from the symphony string section—are Jessica Cheng (“Spring”), Angie Smart (“Summer”), Jooyeon Kong (“Autumn”), and Alison Harney (“Winter”). What I left out was any mention of the other two works on the program.
Usually a performance of “The Four Season” presents all four of the concertos as a unit. But not always. Before the four concertos became part of the standard repertoire, it wasn’t unusual for them to be played individually. Indeed, as I noted in my earlier post, that’s exactly what St. Louis Symphony back in January of 1928 when guest conductor Bernadino Molinari spread them out over three separate concerts.
This time around Mr. Jarvi has kept them all on the same bill but has shuffled in two other pieces: Samuel Barber’s hauntingly nostalgic “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” Op. 24 (1947), with Kiera Duffy as the soprano soloist; and Richard Wagner’s utterly ingratiating “Siegfried Idyll” from 1870. The Wagner was written as a Christmas present for his wife Cosima, so it’s played just before the “Winter” concerto, while the Barber acts as a bridge between spring and summer.
Mr. Jarvi elaborates on the logic behind this in the program notes. “James Agee’s incredible text,” he observes, “brings this work to life, similar to the poems that inspired The Four Seasons, which may or may not have been written by Vivaldi...With Wagner we move from autumn to winter. At first we were looking at something symbolic of winter—something representative of ‘lateness,’ the end of life. Then we thought of how Siegfried Idyll was one of the most wonderful musical Christmas gifts ever given.”
Makes sense. And I’m especially happy to see the Barber on the program. Mr. Jarvi says it’s one of his “favorite pieces of all time” and I’m inclined to agree with him. I first encountered this wonderfully evocative setting of James Agee’s little prose-poem (which later became the prologue for his autobiographical novel “A Death in the Family”) in a 1968 recording by the great Leontyne Price with an orchestra conducted by Thomas Schippers, and have been something of a sucker for it ever since.
The text is a poetic recollection of a peaceful scene from the author’s childhood in which the narrator is sometimes an adult and sometimes the child who later becomes the adult. Prosaic descriptions of a quiet summer evening on the lawn are mixed with flights of poetic fancy, leading finally to philosophical contemplation of the narrator’s family and their place in the cosmos: "By chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night." Barber’s music mirrors and highlights all of this with deceptive simplicity.
The inspiration for the novel of which Agee’s text became a part was a death; specifically, the death of Agee’s father. In the case of Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” the inspiration was exactly the opposite: the birth, in 1869, of the composer’s son Siegfried.
The piece was originally titled “Triebschen Idyll with Fidi's birdsong and the orange sunrise, as symphonic birthday greeting. Presented to his Cosima by her Richard. "Fidi," says Wikipedia, “was the family's nickname for their son Siegfried. It is thought that the birdsong and the sunrise refer to incidents of personal significance to the couple.” The first performance took place not in a concert hall, but on the stairs of the Wagner family home in Tribschen on Christmas morning, 1870. The musicians were members of the Tonhalle Orchester Zürich. Wagner’s wife Cosima (whose own birthday was December 24th) was awakened by the first gentle strains of the music and was, as you might expect, completely enchanted.
“As I awoke,” she would later recall, “my ear caught a sound, which swelled fuller and fuller; no longer could I imagine myself to be dreaming: music was sounding, and such music! When it died away, Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears, but so were all the rest of the household. Richard had arranged his orchestra on the staircase, and thus was our Tribschen consecrated forever.”
Although Wagner never intended the piece for public performance,, financial considerations obliged him to expand the orchestration from the original 13 players to 35 and publish the work as the “Siegfried Idyll” in 1878. It might also have been a canny marketing decision. He used themes from the “Idyll” in his 1876 opera “Siegfried,” so publication gave him another way to get his “Ring” cycle music before the public.
It is, in any case, a disarming a piece as you are likely to hear, and utterly unlike the more grandiose gestures most people associate with Wagner. It’s a reminder that even that great egotist had his moments of intimate reflection. And it also reminds us that winter is about the warmth of family as well as the cold weather.
The essentials: 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 concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.
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