Symphony Preview: Cafe Vienna

We were in Vienna for a few days earlier this month and drenched ourselves in musical history. We visited the Mozarthaus museum. We saw a concert at the Musikverein and took a tour of the Vienna State Opera. We even stayed at the Hotel Beethoven on Papagenogasse, where the wall of our room was dominated by a picture of Placido Domingo in Fidelio.

And, of course, we had coffee and pastries.

This music scheduled for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this weekend (October 27 - 29, 2017) brought all of that back to mind. Two of the three works on the program were first performed in Vienna and the third, while premiered in Salzburg, was performed there by the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm. So it's essentially "all Vienna all the time" this weekend.

The concerts open with that last work I mentioned. It's the Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major by Richard Strauss. First performed on August 11th, 1943, the concerto's warmly nostalgic sound stands in stark contrast to the state of mind of its composer. His heath was not good, his wife was going blind, and the regime to which he had effectively sold his soul-and which he would later describe as a "twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals"-was collapsing. Small wonder, then, that he took refuge in a kind of musical nostalgia.

Roger Kaza

Its lyricism not withstanding, the concerto is a difficult piece to perform, which may be one of the reasons why this is only the second time the SLSO has presented it. The local premiere was given back in 1987 with the famed Barry Tuckwell as the soloist. This time the solo spot will be taken by SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza. As someone who loves seeing local band members take center stage, I'm very much looking forward to his performance.

Up next will be the Seven Early Songs, composed by Alban Berg between 1905 and 1908 when he was studying with Arnold Schoenberg but not published until 1928. They hark back to the late Romantic sound world of Mahler and Strauss for the most part and are less terse and elliptical than the kind of thing Berg was writing when he published them. That means you can expect something very different from the last Berg song cycle we heard at Powell Hall.

That last song cycle was the Five Orchestral Songs to Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg, performed by local favorite Christine Brewer last May. It's only appropriate, then, that Ms. Brewer is back as the soloist this time around. Ms. Brewer has substantial operatic credentials and Berg's songs are always very theatrical, so it should be a good fit.

Christine Brewer
Photo: Christian Steiner

At the other end of the popularity spectrum is the final work on the program, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. The opening movement, in particular, has been heard and parodied so often that it's easy to forget that the symphony's premiere on December 22, 1808, was not a great success. The Fifth was part of a mammoth five hour program that included the Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral"), the Piano Concerto No. 4, a couple of movements from the Mass in C, a concert aria ("Ah, perfido"), and the Op. 80 Choral Fantasy. Beethoven conducted and played the solo piano part in the concerto and the Fantasy.

There was only one rehearsal before the concert, the musicians weren't up to Beethoven's demands, the auditorium was cold, and by the time the Fifth was played after intermission the audience was exhausted. Things went so badly that at one point the Choral Fantasy had to be stopped completely after a performance error. Not auspicious.

In fact, it wasn't until E.T.A. Hoffmann published an enthusiastic review of the newly published score in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung a year and a half later that everyone began to sit up and take notice of the Fifth. "Radiant beams shoot through this region's deep night," wrote Hoffmann of the music's dramatic effect, "and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy everything within us except the pain of endless longing-a longing in which every pleasure that rose up in jubilant tones sinks and succumbs, and only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with full-voiced harmonies of all the passions, we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits."

More and better-rehearsed performances followed. By the time Hector Berlioz wrote his Critical Study of Beethoven's Nine Symphonies he could state that the Fifth was "without doubt the most famous of the symphonies" and "the first in which Beethoven gave wings to his vast imagination without being guided by or relying on any external source of inspiration." Today the Fifth is famous not just on earth but in outer space as well; a recording of the first movement by the Philadelphia Orchestra was part of the Voyager Golden Record, included on the first two Voyager space probes launched in 1977 and now speeding through deep space.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in music by Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, and Beethoven Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., October 27 - 29. Soprano Christine Brewer will perform Berg's Seven Early Songs and SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza will play Strauss's Horn Concerto No. 2. The concerts will conclude with Beethoven's popular Symphony No. 5. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.