Symphony Preview: Stereophonic sound and other enhancements.

Akiko Suwanzi
Photo: Kiyotaka Saito

This Friday and Saturday, March 21 and 22, Stéphane Denève returns to conduct the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) in a program titled Bernstein and Williams: Cinematic Visions. That would be Leonard and John, respectively. Therefore, I would like to open this preview with a song:

That number is from the 1957 film version of Cole Porter’s 1955 musical Silk Stockings, which was based on the 1939 non-musical movie Ninotchka. It goes to show that the Broadway/Hollywood barrier has never been all that impermeable.

The song pokes fun at what was, at the time, the cutting-edge technology of stereo sound in cinemas. It was but one of a number of technological changes in movies that included widescreen filming (CinemaScope and its successors) and enhanced color (Technicolor, Metrocolor, etc.). These days, when you can get surround sound and high definition color in your living room, this might all seem a bit quaint, but it was a big deal Back in the Day.

The evening begins and ends with music based on film scores. Kicking things off is the yearning, romantic theme John Williams (b. 1932) composed for the 1996 movie Seven Years in Tibet, featuring a solo cello line that’s deeply infused with Essence of Erhu. Yo-Yo Ma played that in the film soundtrack. This weekend Yo-Yo Ma will be played by the SLSO’s own Yin Xiong.

Up next is the US debut of the 2018 violin concerto Les Horizons Perdus (Lost Horizons) by contemporary French composer Guillaume Connesson (b. 1970). The concerto’s connection to the “Cinematic Visions” concept is a bit tangential since it was inspired by James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon rather than Frank Capra’s classic 1937 film or (heaven forfend) the 1973 musical film. Its four movements capture the contrast between the tranquil utopia of Shangri-La and the hectic quotidian world. “More than the illustration of a fanciful narrative,” writes Connesson, “it is this division and radical opposition between the active life and the perfection of the inner life that constitute the basis of my work” (“Plus que d’illustrer une narration Romanesque, c’est ce déchirement et cette opposition radicale entre la vie active et l’absolu de la vie intérieure qui constituent la trame de mon oeuvre”).

The first movement, “Premier voyage,” is a cacophonous and aggressive depiction of that world, with brief lyrical moments reflecting the desire to find a bit of calm amidst the noise

“Shangri-La 1 – Deuxième voyage” (the linked second and third movements) consists of a brief glimpse of the tranquility of the utopian Shangri-La followed by an exuberant dance-cum-chase scene suggesting the brief departure from and return to the Himalayan paradise.

The start of that journey is where the novel ends, leaving it unclear as to whether the protagonist finds his way back to Shangri-La. Connesson leaves no doubt about it with the final movement, “Shangri-La 2” (hence the title change from singular to plural). It’s the mirror image of the first movement—a slow, meditative mix of the sublime and the nostalgic. “At the end,” writes the composer, “a new theme appears for muted violin, which sings with an infinite tenderness of rediscovered ties with childhood” ("À la fin, un nouveau thème apparaît au violon en sourdine, qui chante avec une infinie tendresse les liens retrouvés avec l’enfance").

Denève has expressed his admiration for Connesson’s music and has programmed several of his works in previous seasons. He conducted the Brussels Philharmonic in the world premiere performance with soloist Renaud Capuçon, so between him and this weekend’s soloist—Tchaikovsky Competition winner Akiko Suwanai—the music will be in good hands.

There’s an intermission between the sublime finale of Horizons Perdus and the raucous opening of An American Port of Call by Adolphus Hailstork (b. 1941). Inspired by Norfolk,Virginia—the city he calls home—the title of the work is both a tip of the hat to the suite Escales (Ports of Call) by Jacques Ibert and a portrait of, in the composer’s words, “a bustling American port city.”

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Hailstork himself has to say:

To me, An American Port of Call bears more than a passing resemblance to another orchestral work about a bustling port city (or at least an etching of one by Thomas Rowlandson): Portsmouth Point by William Walton (1902–1983). Here, in any case, is the celebrated American conductor JoAnn Faletta and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra delivering a slam-bang performance of An American Port of Call. Enjoy!

The program’s big finish (just before the closing credits, including several thousand digital animators) is the 1955 suite Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) assembled from his score for the 1954 Oscar-winning crime drama about corrupt labor unions, On the Waterfront. The composer “initially resisted accepting the commission for the score,” writes musicologist William Runyan, due to his “deep antipathy for the director, Elia Kazan.” He was notably outraged at Kazan’s cooperation with Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-leftist witch hunts and his participation in the infamous Hollywood Blacklist, which destroyed many careers and lives.

Not coincidentally, the script was written by Budd Schulberg and starred Lee J. Cobb—both of whom also collaborated with McCarthy.

Bernstein was also less than thrilled about the way his music was treated in the editing process—which is probably why On the Waterfront was his first and last soundtrack.

“And so the composer sits by,” Bernstein wrote in a May 30, 1954, article for the New York Times, “protesting as he can, but ultimately accepting, be it with a heavy heart, the inevitable loss of a good part of the score. Everyone tries to comfort him. ‘You can always use it in a suite.’ Cold comfort. It is good for the picture, he repeats numbly to himself: it is good for the picture.”

The suite has, in any case, been critically praised for the way in which it weaves together themes from the original score into a twenty-minute distillation of the original story. As critic Mark Swed wrote in the Los Angeles Times, Bernstein “wrenched his atmospheric themes into something far grander, a symphonic suite.” Listen to the composer’s own performance with the New York Philharmonic and see if you don’t agree.

And, of course, the full playlist for the concert is available on Spotify.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, along with soloists Yin Xiong (cello) and Akiko Suwanai (violin) in music by John Williams, Guillaume Connesson, Adolphus Hailstork, and Leonard Bernstein. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm, March 21 and 22, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. The Saturday evening performance will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming late the following week at the SLSO web site

Symphony Preview: A hazy shade of winter

Hannu Lintu
Photo: Marco Borggreve

Spring may be on its way, but this Friday and Sunday (March 14 and 16) a brisk Nordic breeze will, sonically speaking, waft through the Touhill Performing Arts Center for the first half of  the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert as Finnish guest conductor Hannu Lintu presents a pair of works from his native land. They’re part of a tribute to the late Helsinki-born composer Kaija Saariaho, who died of a brain tumor in 2023.

The concerts open with Saariaho’s “Ciel d’hiver” (“Winter Sky”), which had its local premiere on October 7, 2022, under the baton of Jonathon Heyward. My description of it here comes from the preview article I wrote back then.

Since 1982, Saariaho had been living in Paris, where her studies at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) convinced her to turn away from serialism and towards spectralism, a movement that treats orchestral color (the sonic spectrum) as a compositional cornerstone.  You can hear that in the rich acoustic palette of “Ciel d’hiver,” which is a 2014 re-orchestration of the second movement of Saariaho’s 2002 suite "Orion."

Kaija Saariaho
Photo courtesy of the SLSO.

Beginning with high woodwinds suspended over growling low notes with not much in between, the work strongly suggests the bleak emptiness of a dark, chilly night. The aurora borealis shimmers in the exotic percussion battery, and eventually the winds begin to moan ominously. Finally the sky clears to a tinkling piano motif and an evanescent cello melody and it all fades to black.

All that suggests, as W.C. Fields repeatedly declaims in “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” that “it ain’t a fit night out for man nor beast.” But this music has a forbidding beauty all the same.

Up next is the local premiere of the 2024 Viola Concerto by Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) with soloist Lawrence Power, for whom the concerto was written. I interviewed Lindberg about it on my YouTube blog:

Lindberg’s comments on the virtues of writing for an 18th century-sized orchestra (strings, woodwinds, and trumpets only) are especially interesting, as are his thoughts on how his approach to composition has evolved over the decades.

The concerts conclude with the Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 68 by Robert Schumann (1810–1856). Written in 1845 and 1846, it’s the product of a time in the composer’s life marked by both an intense burst of creativity and an onset of the illness that would eventually destroy both his mind and body. If the first half of the program is about varieties of darkness, then Schumann’s symphony is about an eventual emergence into the light.

“For several days,” he wrote to his friend Felix Mendelssohn in September of 1845, “drums and trumpets in the key of C have been sounding in my mind. I have no idea what will come of it.” What came of it was the fanfare-like motif that dominates the Sostenuto assai – Allegro, ma non troppo first movement. Although highly reminiscent of the fanfare that opens Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 (“London”), it’s much more emotionally ambiguous, especially in the overall context of a movement that Judith Chernaik (in Schumann: The Faces and the Masks, 2018) describes as “agitated, even distraught in feeling.” Indeed, both the first movement and the Scherzo second movement can come across as a mix of the energetic and febrile, depending on how the conductor approaches them.

Schumann recognized that there was an element of agony and conflict behind the symphony. “I sketched it out,” he wrote to Mendelssohn, “while suffering severe physical pain; I may well call it the struggle of my mind, by which I sought to beat off my disease.” That struggle is most apparent in the anguished Adagio espressivo third movement, which Chernaik accurately describes as “an unmediated expression” of the composer’s suffering. It’s only in the Allegro molto vivace finale that he shows us his hope of returning health.

P.S. I put together my own playlist for this one so that I could include the world premiere recording of Lindberg’s concerto as well as a recording of the Schumann Symphony No. 2 by the SLSO under the baton of the late Jerzy Semkov, who was Music Director of the orchestra from 1975 to 1979.. 

The Essentials: Hannu Lintu conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soloist Lawrence Power in the Viola Concerto by Magnus Lindberg, Kaija Saariaho’s “Ciel d’hiver,” and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. Performances take place at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on Friday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm, March 14 and 16. The Friday concert will be broadcast on Saturday night, March 15, at 7:30 pm on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

St. Louis theatre calendar for the week of March 10, 2025

What's on St. Louis theater and cabaret stages this coming week. Please leave a comment if anything was wrong or got left out

Albion Theatre Company presents The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh March 14 through 30. “Set in the small town of Leenane, County Galway, Ireland, The Beauty Queen of Leenane tells the darkly comic tale of Maureen, a lonely woman in her early 40s, and Mag, her manipulative aging mother. Mag’s interference in Maureen’s first and possibly final chance of a loving relationship sets in motion a train of events that leads inexorably towards the play’s terrifying denouement.” Performances take place in the Black Box Theatre at the Kranzberg Center, 501 N. Grand in Grand Center. For more information: albiontheatrestl.org.

The Black Rep presents The Wash by Kelundra Smith March 12 through 30. “Ordinary women become working class heroes in this true story of the Atlanta 1881 Washerwomerl' Strike. America's first successful interracial organized labor strike. Tired if being overworked and underpaid, Black laundresses stage a strike just weeks before the International Cotton Expedition comes to town. The story gives us an intimate and often humorous peek at the women who fought for their rights and won. Presented as part of a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere.” Performances take place at the Catherine B. Berges Theatre at COCA. For more information: www.theblackrep.org.

Who Killed Aunt Carloine?
Photo: John Lamb

Clayton Community Theatre presents the mystery Who Killed Aunt Caroline?, Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through March 16. “Following the struggling Endicott family, a murder takes place in their residence; this raises questions about inheritance and the character of this not-so-innocent family and those they call ‘friends.’” Performances take place at the Washington University South Campus Theatre, 6501 Clayton Rd. For more information: www.placeseveryone.org.

Mean Girls
Photo: Jeremy Daniel

The Fabulous Fox presents the musical Mean Girls Friday through Sunday, March 14 through 16. “Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.” The Fabulous Fox is on North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: fabulousfox.com.

First Run Theatre Playwright’s Workshop presents a reading of the one-act plays Inside Boone Smalley and The Pachyderm by Kenn Stillson on Monday, March 10, at 6:30 pm. “Inside Boone Smalley is an expressionistic comedy about a simple man living in the nightmarish purgatory of his family room in 1998. It's prom night, and his loud and overbearing wife and his hellion daughter engage in an epic battle before and after the arrival of the girl's prom date . The Pachyderm is an absurdist comedy that asks the question, ‘How does the majority of Americans simultaneously lose their collective minds and reelect a clownish fraud and convicted felon to become president of the most powerful country in the history of the world? They drink the Kool-Aid.’” The readings take place at Square One Brewery and Distillery in Lafayette Square. For more information: firstruntheatre.org.

Kirkwood Theatre Guild presents comedy Into the Breeches March 14 through 26. “WWII era. Oberon Playhouse’s director and leading men are off at war. Determined to press on, the director’s wife sets out to produce an all-female version of Shakespeare’s Henriad, assembling an increasingly unexpected team united in desire, if not actual theatre experience. Together they deliver a delightful celebration of collaboration and persistence when the show must go on!” Performances take place at the Strauss Black Box Theatre in the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. For more information, ktg-onstage.org

The Rocky Horror Show
Photo: Jill Ritter Lindberg

New Line Theatre presents the rock musical The Rocky Horror Show through March 22. “As the Culture Wars continue to escalate, ROCKY HORROR is as relevant today as it was in the early Seventies, a brilliantly creepy, wickedly funny satire that spotlights Americans' frequent cultural freak-outs, all told in the language of 1930s horror-sci-fi movies, 1950s "physique" magazines, and 1970s punk rock. This glam-punk celebration of the mad variety of human sexuality and gender is particularly timely right now.” Performances take place at the Marcelle Theatre in Grand Center. For more information: www.newlinetheatre.com.

The Theatre Guild of Webster Groves presents Herb Gardner’s comedy A Thousand Clowns Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 pm through March 16. Performances take place at the Guild theatre at 517 Theatre Lane, at the corner of Newport and Summit in Webster Groves. For more information: www.webstergrovestheatreguild.com.

Looking for auditions and other artistic opportunities? Check out the St. Louis Auditions site.

To get your event listed here, send an email to chukl at pobox dot com. Your event information should be in text format (i.e. not part of a graphic), but feel free to include publicity stills.

Symphony Review: Gemma New returns for a celebratory Beethoven Ninth

Gemma New. Photo by Chris Christodoulou

Guest conductor Gemma New, in comments preceding her appearance with St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) last Saturday (March 1), said that the concert would be about “celebrating our Earth and our life upon it.” Certainly the work that opened the evening, the local premiere of “Hymn to the Sun” by St. Louis’s own Kevin Puts (b. 1972), was quite a party.

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

Commissioned by the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in 2008, “Hymn to the Sun” is described by Puts as “a wild, sacred dance to call forth the sun and all its powers, and then the sudden and magnificent rising on the horizon.” It absolutely was that on Saturday night, with terrifically demanding writing for the percussion section (especially the marimbas, xylophone, and piano) and elaborate passages for the flutes. The mood abruptly shifted to a powerful chorale for the strings—the hymn of the title—before returning to the sense of wild revelry that opened the work.

Props to percussionists Will James, Alan Stewart, Kevin Ritenauer, and Charles Renneker; pianist Peter Henderson; and the members of the flute section: Jennifer Nitchman, Jennifer Gartely, and Ann Choomack (doubling on piccolo). New led her forces through this elaborate web with that perfect mix of what my fellow critic Gary Liam Scott described as “poise and control” a few years ago.

The mood turned reverential with the next work (also a St. Louis premiere) the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537, by J.S. Bach (1685–1750) in a 1921 orchestration by Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934). Elgar employs the full resources of the post-Wagner orchestra (around 80 players) with spectacular results, especially in the final moments of the fugue.

Elgar doesn’t unleash the full power of that big band for the first time until nearly the end of the fantasia, which begins with the main theme played by the oboes and clarinets—done with great feeling Saturday by Phil Ross and Xiomara Mass (oboes) along with Abby Raymond and Thomas Frey (clarinets). Shannon Wood on tympani and (I think) Will James on bass drum provided the ominous processional tread that Elgar added to Bach’s original. The composer doesn’t pull out all the stops again, so to speak, until the final pages of the fugue, when the horns and bras sections really come to the forefront. They sounded terrific Saturday night, especially Thomas Jöstlein’s horns in those exposed trills.

New possesses a singular combination of artistic sensitivity and fine craftsmanship, especially when it comes to revealing sonic details. I could, for example, hear that in the way she kept the threads of the fugue clearly delineated while losing none of the raw power of the composer’s orchestration. This was a classic case of the iron fist in the velvet glove, a fine mix of finesse and force.

The same was true of her take on the evening’s Big Event, the Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (Choral) by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Ideally, the Ninth ought to open with a mix of otherworldly mystery and tension, like the components of a nebula spiraling together to form a star, moving from pianissimo violins over a horn pedal point to a fortissimo statement of the first theme by the full orchestra. With the right pacing and instrumental balance, that first movement (Allegro ma non troppo e un poco maestoso—“not too fast and somewhat majestically”) should grab one by the throat.

The SLSO did all that and more under New’s direction. She  is, as I have written previously, an engrossingly theatrical conductor who engages on a very physical level with the score. Her big, sweeping gestures are a kind of 3-D metaphor for the music, bringing an added visual dimension to an already persuasive performance.

The first movement was rich in orchestral detail and forward momentum. The Molto vivace—Presto second movement featured some delightfully precise playing by the horns and woodwinds. The Adagio third had a balletic flow and heightened the contrast with what went before. And then there was the famous choral finale.

In looking over my notes from Saturday night, I find that my handwriting (which is never all the clear, even to me) deteriorated to chicken scratches as I tried to keep up with all the great things happening on stage. The vocal quartet was quite impressive, particularly bass-baritone Nathan Berg, who sang from memory and was deeply connected to the lyrics. 

Tenor Jamez McCorkle was a bit more dependent on his score but nevertheless turned in a fine performance in the alla Marcia solo. The decision to put the marching band in its own space stage right worked very well here, allowing the audience to hear both it and soloist quite clearly.

Soprano Susanna Phillips and mezzo Sasha Cooke, both familiar faces locally, rounded out the quartet in fine style, their powerful voices blending perfectly.

Under Erin Freeman’s direction, the SLSO Chorus were in top form. Their enunciation was crisp and their vocal lines clear, even during the complex contrapuntal moments in the choral finale. Beethoven, as New remarked back at the top of the evening, was a great admirer of Bach—a fact that is abundantly clear in Ninth. Indeed, in the hands of some conductors (the late Wilhelm Furtwängler comes to mind) Beethoven’s writing can be a bit of a strain for the singers. Happily, New and Freeman appear to have a better grasp of what works best for choristers.

So, yes, another immensely satisfying Beethoven Ninth from the SLSO. The last time they did it (February 2020) with Stéphane Denève at the podium, I praised their performance as “the Ninth against which all others must now be measured.” This one, I’m pleased to report, measured up quite well.

Next from the SLSO: Jason Seber conducts the orchestra in David Arnold’s score for the 2006 film version of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale as the movie unspools on the big screen overhead at the Stifel Theatre. Performances are Saturday at 7:00 pm and Sunday at 2:00 pm, March 8 and 9.