Symphony Review: Denève brings Florence Price's masterpiece to St. Louis

Last Friday night (February 2)  Stéphane Denève conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) and violin soloist Augustin Hadelich in music by Valerie Coleman (b. 1970), Samuel Barber (1910–1981), and Florence Price (1887–1953). It was a truly memorable concert and a demonstration of the strength that comes from diversity, consisting of works by two black women and a gay man.

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

The concert opened with a glorious performance of Coleman's 2019 "Umoja: Anthem of Unity." Originally a short piece for female choir titled simply “Umoja” (the Swahili word for “unity” and the first of the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa) this little musical acorn has now grown into a brilliantly orchestrated oak of a tone poem. It begins with the modest, Celtic-sounding main theme played softly by flute and violin (nicely done by Principal Flute Matthew Roitstein and Associate Concert Master Erin Schreiber) over the otherworldly sounds of bowed percussion (marimba, xylophone, and the like adeptly played by Will James, Alan Stewart, and Kevin Ritenauer). Over the next fifteen minutes or so it goes through a series of variations until building to a triumphant call for unity in the brass and percussion before returning to the quiet serenity of the opening.

L-R: Augustin Hadelich and Stéphane Denève
Photo by Chuck Lavazzi

Under Denève’s sympathetic direction, it emerged as one of the most uplifting and inspiring pieces I have heard in some time, and one I hope we hear more often from now on.

Barber's dramatic Op. 14 Violin Concerto got a highly expressive and technically brilliant performance by Hadelich ably supported by Denève and the orchestra. Hedelich’s intense emotional commitment to the music was apparent from the beginning of the Allegro first movement in both the sweetly nostalgic statement of the first theme and his powerful handling of the subsequent drama that pervades the rest of the movement. Both he and Denève were on the same quietly elegiac page in the following Andante (including a lovely solo by Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks) and delivered the hair-raising fireworks of the Presto in moto perpetuo finale with stunning precision.

That last movement isn’t just an Olympian exercise for the soloist. The members of the orchestra are called upon to inject a plethora of short, tricky motifs all the way through, so the entire ensemble has to work closely as a team. They did so perfectly under Denève’s leadership, providing yet another manifestation of the theme of unity.

The standing ovation that followed was, of course, inevitable but it was also completely justifiable. Hadelich responded with an unexpected and delightful encore: his own virtuoso arrangement of the Robert Shafer/Randy Howard version of the traditional “Wild Fiddler’s Rag.”

The evening concluded with a powerful performance of Florence Price’s remarkable Symphony No. 3. Premiered in 1933 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, it made Price the first African American woman to see her work performed by a major symphony orchestra.

When I first heard this work last July at Bravo Vail, I recall finding Price’s approach to traditional structures like sonata form to be somewhat episodic, but after Friday night's wonderfully coherent reading by Denève I am obliged to take that all back. The mix of traditional African American elements with modernist dissonances, whole-tone passages, and Wagnerian brass chorales no longer sounded disconcerting. The echoes of Dvořák and traditional spirituals in the second movement kept harmonious company and the bits of sly humor in the third movement Juba dance were just right. The wild, turbulent, and dissonant Scherzo last movement brought it all to a rousing close.

Denève and the SLSO have, in short, demonstrated that the Symphony No. 3 is a genuine masterpiece. He said it needs to be heard more often and I couldn't agree more. Judging from the enthusiastic audience response, that shouldn’t be a hard sell.

If you missed this concert, never fear. It was recorded and will shortly be available for streaming for a limited time at the SLSO website.

Next from the SLSO: On Wednesday, February 7, at 7:30 pm Concertmaster David Halen leads members of the orchestra in a chamber music evening at the Sheldon Concert Hall. On the program: Florence Price’s Andante cantabile from the String Quartet No. 2, the world premiere of “The Art of Dreaming” by Robyne Sieh, Ravel’s String Quartet in F major, and Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A major.

On Thursday, February 8, at 7:00 pm, the Washington University Department of Music and musicians of the SLSO team up for “Untold Stories: LGBTQ+ Composers through Time,” a unique narrated performance that introduces stories of composers from the LGBTQ+ community over the last 1,000 years. The concert takes place at the 560 Music Center in University City.

On Saturday, February 10, at 7:30 pm Norman Huynh conducts a special Lunar New Year program with the SLSO and soloists Rulin Olivia Zhang (erhu), the CECC dragon dance team, and the Thunder Drum team. The program includes music by Li Huanzhi, Tan Dun, Ravel, and Stranisnky and takes place at Lindenwood University's J. Scheidegger Center for the Arts.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: The great commission

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) programs often have a common theme, especially when Music Director Stéphane Denève is on the podium. This Friday, February 2nd, the program notes suggest that the unifying theme is that time-honored source of revenue for composers, the commission. Composers have relied on individuals, organizations, and governments to fund new works for centuries.

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

Valerie Coleman

Friday’s program opens with “Umoja: Anthem of Unity” by Valerie Coleman (b. 1970). Commissioned in 2019 by the Philadelphia Orchestra,  “Umoja” (the Swahili word for “faith”) began life almost 20 years ago as a song for women’s choir. “It embodied,” writes the composer, “a sense of 'tribal unity', through the feel of a drum circle, the sharing of history through traditional ‘call and response’ form and the repetition of a memorable sing-song melody”. Coleman subsequently arranged it for her woodwind quintet, The Imani Winds, who recorded it for Koch International in 2006.

The 2019 version for full orchestra is the most recent of many arrangements of that simple tune, making it the basis of a tone poem in theme and variations format and more than doubling its length. Here the theme is first sung sweetly by the first violin, over a shimmering background of bowed percussion instruments, harp, and strings. Over the next fifteen minutes or so it goes through many transformations and, at one point, is “interrupted by dissonant viewpoints led by the brass and percussion sections, which represent the clash of injustices, racism and hate that threatens to gain a foothold in the world today.” It builds to a triumphant call for unity in the brass and percussion before returning to the quiet serenity of the opening.

According to the program notes by Justino Gordón-LeChevalé, "Umoja" is "a vibrant, musical invocation for a world increasingly in need of unity and freedom." This, along with Coleman's reference to "dissonant viewpoints," proposes another possible unifying idea in the program: the fact that all three composers who are represented here belong to historically marginalized groups. Coleman is a black woman, Florence Price (1887–1953), whose Symphony No. 3 closes the concert, was also a black woman, and the composer of the second work, Samuel Barber (1910–1981), was gay.

Samuel Barber, photographed by
Carl Van Vechten, 1944
Public Domain

Barber is represented by one of his more popular works, the Violin Concerto, Op. 14. It was commissioned in 1939 by Samuel Simeon Fels, founder of the soap company whose principal product, Fels-Naptha, will likely be familiar to those of us d'un certain âge. Fels wanted a concerto for his ward, the Ukrainian-born violinist Iso Briselli. What happened next has been the subject of some debate, but the consensus appears that Briselli’s violin coach, Albert Meiff, disliked the concerto and pressured Briselli not to play it. 

Meiff offered to "help" by rewriting the violin part, apparently under the impression that he was a 20th-century Joseph Joachim. Barber wasn’t having any of it, however. He continued to work on the concerto, Briselli’s exclusivity elapsed, and the premiere finally took place in 1941 with soloist Albert Spaulding and The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy. Briselli and Barber remained friends and Meiff is now a footnote in musical history.

Meiff was wrong in any case. The concerto proved to be a success, often performed and recorded by a “who’s who” of notable violinists, including this Friday’s soloist Augustin Hadelich. There’s also a 1986 recording by the SLSO under Leonard Slatkin with Elmar Oliveira as soloist.

I have always loved the piece. The dramatic first movement, the contemplative second, and the hair-raising Presto in moto perpetuo finale combine to produce a concerto that is both emotionally moving and, in the finale, filled with virtuoso fireworks. Briselli thought the last movement was too short compared to the first two, but he seems to have missed the fact that sheer length isn’t the same as dramatic impact.

Finally, we turn to Florence Price. Unlike Barber, who had little difficulty finding audiences for his work, Price had to struggle for recognition for her work as a composer. Yes, her Symphony No. 1 earned her first place in the 1932 Wanamaker competition and the work got its first performance the following year by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. That made her the first African American woman to see her work performed by a major symphony orchestra, and yet that symphony wasn’t published until 2008. Her Symphony No. 2 has been lost, as was her Symphony No. 4 until it turned up in her former summer home in Illinois in 2009.

Florence Price
By George Nelidoff
Public Domain

Her Symphony No. 3 has fared somewhat better. Commissioned by the WPA in 1938, it was first performed by the Detroit Civic Orchestra (a.k.a The Michigan WPA Symphony Orchestra) in 1940 to considerable acclaim. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was a great admirer. In his review for the Detroit Free Press, J. D. Callaghan wrote that Price “spoke in the musical idiom of her own people, and spoke with authority.” He praised the symphony’s “emotional warmth” helped make the evening “one of profound melody satisfaction.” He singled out the “majestic beauty” of the second movement and noted that the finale “swept forward with great vigor.”

Even so, the symphony disappeared into the same oblivion that claimed so many of Price’s other works until early this century—for reasons that Price understood all too well. “To begin with,” she wrote in a 1943 letter to Serge Koussevitzky, “I have two handicaps—those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.” She went on to ask the Koussevitzky to consider one of her scores for performance, a request which the conductor (to his discredit) apparently ignored.

Price died of a stroke in 1953, so she didn’t live to see her work rescued from obscurity. Her Symphony No. 3, in particular, has gotten a lot of attention in recent years. I heard a pretty persuasive performance of it last July at the Bravo! Vail festival by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who is an enthusiastic admirer of Price’s work. She has also been on Stéphane Denève’s radar for years. He originally planned to present the Symphony No. 3 in 2021 on the same bill as the Dvorak Symphony No. 9, but the pandemic killed that program along with many others.

The work is innovative in both its structure and sound. Price’s approach to traditional structures like sonata form can be disconcertingly episodic, as can her cheerful mixture of traditional African American elements (including spirituals) with modernist dissonances, whole-tone passages, and even a somewhat ominous brass chorale that sounds like might have escaped from Siegfried’s funeral music in “Götterdämerung.”  The slyly humorous third movement is based on the African-American juba dance and the fourth is a wild, turbulent, and dissonant Scherzo ending in (John Michael Cooper’s 2022 program notes for the Philadelphia Orchestra) “a fury of roaring percussion and chordal interjections that finally manage to reclaim the work from turbulence and discord.”

This is music that takes a bit of mental retooling on the part of the listener, but it’s worth the effort.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and violin soloist Augustin Hadelich in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto along with the local premieres Valerie Coleman’s “Umoja: Anthem of Unity” and the Symphony No. 3 by Florence Price. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and 7:30 pm, February 2, at the Touhill Center on the UMSL campus. The Friday night concert will be broadcast Saturday night at 7:30 on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Symphony Preview: On the road again

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

The Granada Theatre

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Jack frost may be nipping at our noses this week in St. Louis, but the members of our St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Music Director David Robertson won't be feeling it. That's because, in an example of very serendipitous timing, they're off on a tour of sunny California--Mr. Robertson's last tour as Music Director, I'm sorry to say.

Through Friday, January 19th, violin soloist Augustin Hadelich, and the orchestra will be serenading residents of the west coast with the program of Shostakovich, Britten, and Thomas Adès that got such well-deserved applause here last weekend. Or at least they will once they're all in California.

Yesterday (Monday the 15th) they played the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert (78 degrees and sunny), but because of flight delays about third of the orchestra was delayed in Denver so long that they never made it to the concert. So instead of the originally-scheduled Britten Violin Concerto, the orchestra presented Mozart's Symphony No. 40 and Augustin Hadelich performed the Mendelssohn concerto as part of a new program of works better suited to the reduced forces.

Tuesday the 16th is another big travel day, with a three-hour bus trip to Santa Barbara (64 and sunny) where the full orchestra plays the original program at the Granada Theatre in Santa Barbara. Wednesday it's on to the Mondavi Center at UC-Davis (61, partly sunny), and finally the Bing Concert Hall at Stanford University on Friday where, for a change, it will be 55 with a chance of rain.

At least that will give them a chance to decompress a bit before returning home, where we're expected to have highs in the 50s by the weekend.

They'll be coming back just in time for the SLSO to celebrate 50 years at Powell Hall with a day-long open house, culminating in a showing of the classic musical The Sound of Music. The film was the last one to be shown in the old St. Louis Theatre in 1966 before it was closed down for the renovations that would transform it into elegant Powell Hall.

The Monday Center

As Sarah Bryan Miller of the Post-Dispatch reminds us in her brief history of Powell Hall, the transformation was one devoutly wished, since at the time the SLSO was effectively without a home and was playing in the rather unsuitable Khorassan Room of the Chase Hotel after their long-time home the Kiel Opera House (now the Peabody Opera House) was no longer available. The opening of the 2600-seat Powell, with its European-style gilt and red velvet, was welcomed by audiences, musicians, and critics alike.

Alas, the theatre's pipe organ was sacrificed as part of the renovation, so we'll never hear Saint-Saëns's Third Symphony as the composer intended.

It's not just the SLSO that's celebrating the hall's anniversary, by the way. On Tuesday, January 16th, the St. Louis Public Library opens an exhibit at the central library downtown of historical posters, conductor's sheet music, photographs and other memorabilia from Powel Hall's half century. It'll be on view daily through March 17th.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra resumes its regular season on Friday and Saturday, January 26 and 27, as violinist Julian Rachlin joins Mr. Robertson for a program of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, John Adams's Harmonielehre, and the American premiere of Elegie: Remembrance for Orchestra, written in 2014 by German composer/conductor Peter Ruzicka.

Review: Young at heart

This article originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Augustin Hadelich

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

The audience might have been grayer than usual at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's 10:30 am Coffee Concert Friday (January 12, 2018), but the music was all the work of composers in the prime of their youth.

The concert opened with a suite from the chamber opera (four singers and a small pit band in its original form) Powder Her Face, which premiered in 1995 when composer Thomas Adès was only 24. Based on the life of Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll (1912-1993), whose elegant and fashionable life took a bizarre turn after a near-fatal fall down an elevator shaft in 1943 turned her into something of a sex addict, the opera has generally gotten good reviews despite (or maybe because of) the R-rated nature of its story.

You can hear a fair amount of the eccentricity in the suite--a 2017 co-commission by the SLSO along with four other notable orchestras and Carnegie Hall--which uses a full-size orchestra and a huge percussion battery. The tango-style Overture sounds like a dance band in hell complete with discordant, wailing saxophones (played with bluesy precision Friday morning), but the music soon gives way to an almost saccharine Scene with Song featuring impeccable solos by Concertmaster David Halen and Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews that wouldn't have sounded out of place in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. There's also an intoxicated Waltz with icy string pizzicatos and a Hotel Manager's Aria with the horns, at the bottom of their register, acting as the voices of death.

There's humor, ingenuity, and aural variety in this music--more than I recall hearing in my only other exposure to Mr. Adès's work, his In Seven Days (Concerto for Piano With Moving Image), which the SLSO performed in 2012. It was, in fact, great fun to hear--something I find myself saying all too rarely about a lot of newer music--and performed with genuine élan (in the French sense of mouvement d'amour) by conductor David Robertson and his forces.

Up next was the Violin Concerto by Benjamin Britten, written in 1938 and 1939 when the composer was in his mid-twenties. Composed in response to the horror of the Spanish Civil War, the concerto was described by Britten as "without question my best piece," but he went on to say that it was "rather serious I'm afraid."

That it is. As an indictment of modern warfare with its ensuing trauma, I'd put it right up there with Nielsen's fifth symphony and Vaughan Williams's fourth. The concerto opens with a five-note figure on the tympani that's soon joined by an anguished, ascending theme on the violin. The two ideas dominate the rest of the movement, sometimes in opposition to each other, sometimes joined so closely that it's hard to tell them apart. The second movement is a wildly virtuosic scherzo that feels like one of Hieronymus Bosch's creepier paintings set to music. It's almost monothematic, based largely on a triplet figure that's first stated by the violin and then gurgles away in the bassoons before moving on to the rest of the orchestra. A cadenza leads to the final movement. Marked "Andante lento," it's a passacaglia (a series of variations on a repeating theme in the bass line) that moves contrapuntally around the orchestra and drips with anguish until the work concludes on a hushed and uncertain note, vacillating between major and minor but never really settling on either.

The soloist has his work cut out for him here. In a 2010 interview for violinist.com, violinist Janine Jansen describes the concerto as "quite demanding," and she's not exaggerating. The Vivace second movement is especially hair raising, with lots of "double stops and even double-stop harmonics" (to quote Ms. Jensen again), but the cadenza that leads into the Passacaglia is no less fearsome.

Nor are all the challenges technical. The emotional profundity of both the opening Moderato con moto and the closing Passacaglia demands a musician who has heart as well as nimble fingers. I'm happy to say that the young Italian-born violinist Augustin Hadelich is just such a performer.

His commitment to the music was obvious from the first notes, as both his facial expressions and body language displayed a deep, intense connection to both Mr. Britten and Mr. Robertson. Yes, his skill in negotiating the flashy stuff on his 1723 Stradivarius was unassailable, but what really made this performance work was his ability to put across the intense feeling behind those notes.

Mr. Robertson did a superb job shaping the music, bringing out all the drama and passion. He began slowly, on the low end of moderato, which made the build to the fervent central section of the first movement that much more powerful. He and Mr. Hadelich produced a second movement that hummed with energy, leading into a monumental final movement.

Music blogger Ben Hogwood once wrote that hearing this was like being in a "massive church." After Friday's performance, I see what he meant. I especially liked the fact that Mr. Robertson allowed the silence after the uncertain ending to linger before finally lowering his baton and accepting the applause. It was an incredibly dramatic moment.

The concert concluded with the Symphony No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich, written when the composer was still a student at the Leningrad Conservatory and first performed when he was 19 years old. It's a remarkable study in contrasts, with chamber music-style solo passages cheek by jowl with the full-tilt swagger of the composer's more popular works. Perky melodies reminiscent of the stuff Shostakovich probably heard during his work as a cinema pianist pop up in the first and second movements, standing in stark juxtaposition to the brooding and sporadically anguished gloom of the third. And the final Allegro molto wraps everything up in a classic flourish of brass and percussion, reflecting the young composer's brash confidence while still retaining the sense of sarcasm that is always just below the surface.

It's rather like a noisy and diverse party in which the guests have nothing much in common other than their relationships to the host.

There are a lot of great solo moments in this piece, such as Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks's plangent solo in the third movement, Mr. Halen's Korngold-esque moment in the finale, and Shannon Woods's tympani break in that same movement. There was excellent playing as well by Principal Flute Mark Sparks, Associate Principal Trumpet Thomas Drake, Principal Cello Daniel Lee, Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo, and Associate Principal Clarinet Diana Haskell. I'm told the reed players were a bit concerned about the effects of this weather on those little bits of cane that are the heart and soul of their instruments, but they sounded just fine to me.

The Shostakovich First is, to say the least, episodic, often coming to a complete halt while the composer shifts gears. Mr. Robertson's interpretation gave it a real sense of momentum nevertheless, building up considerable excitement in the more bombastic sections and bringing out all the details in the more transparently scored moments. Great work, and well deserving of the standing ovation it got.

The SLSO will be taking this program on the road January 16-19, with performances at multiple venues in California at Palm Desert, Santa Barbara, UC-Davis, and Stanford. The season locally resumes the weekend of January 26-28.

Symphony Preview: A visit to Russia House with Graf, Hadelich, and the SLSO February 27-March 1, 2015

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If you missed last week's big double dip of Russian romanticism or if (to quote a famous Big Band-era lyric) you just "can't get enough of that wonderful stuff," the St. Louis Symphony has another helping helping of it for you this weekend as Hans Graf leads the orchestra and violinist Augustin Hadelich in a program of Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, and Lyadov.

"Lyadov?" I hear you cry, "who the heck is that?"

Anatoyl Lyadov
en.wikipedia.org

A reasonable question. "Anatoly Lyadov," writes Daniel Durchholz in his SLSO program notes, "is considerably less well-known than Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky or Igor Stravinsky, and to some degree that may be his own fault. Though a composer of considerable skill and a professor (albeit an eccentric and pedantic one) at the St. Petersburg Conservatory whose students included Sergey Prokofiev and Nikolay Myaskovsky, Lyadov produced no works of sustantial [sic] length and grandeur, as had a number of his contemporaries."

Lyadov's laziness (and resulting unreliability) essentially conspired with his self-criticism to prevent him from producing a large body of work, although he did write a number of piano miniatures (his 1893 "Musical Snuffbox" still shows up as an encore piece on a regular basis). Even so, he became associated with (if not an actual member of) the "Mighty Handful" (a.k.a. the "Russian Five") of composers who were so important in the formation of the Russian nationalist school. The actual five were Mily Balakirev (composer of the fiendishly difficult "Islamey" for piano), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin.

Appropriately for a Russian nationalist, Lyadov is represented this weekend by three orchestral miniatures based on Russian folklore: "Baba-Yaga" (Op. 56), "The Enchanted Lake" (Op. 62), and "Kikimora" (Op. 63). They're short (4-7 minutes each), colorful, and great fun. Which makes them a great way to open the concert (and provide multiple opportunities for latecomers to be seated).

Up next is Tchaikovsky's "Violin Concerto in D Major." Although wildly popular these days, the concerto was originally dismissed as "unplayable" by St. Petersburg Conservatory violin professor Leopold Auer (to whom it was originally dedicated and who was supposed to play it at its premiere). Tchaikovsky's colleague Adolf Brodsky would replace Auer as both the first performer and the dedicatee.

Eduard Hanslick in 1865
en.wikipedia.org

Worse yet, it was roundly condemned by critics at its 1881 Vienna premiere. Eduard Hanslick, the notoriously conservative critic who Wagner had mercilessly parodied a decade earlier in "Die Meistersinger," was especially scornful. After admitting that the work was "musical and is not without genius," he went on to unload a tub of bile that would not be out of place on AM talk radio. It's worth quoting at length, if only to illustrate just how clueless critics can sometimes be (the translation comes from Minneapolis Symphony program notes by Donald Ferguson).

"[S]oon savagery gains the upper hand," he ranted, "and lords it to the end of the first movement. The violin is no longer played; it is yanked about, it is torn asunder, it is beaten black and blue. I do not know whether it is possible for anyone to conquer these hair-raising difficulties, but I do know that Mr. Brodsky martyrized his hearers as well as himself. The Adagio with its tender national melody, almost conciliates, almost wins us; but it breaks off abruptly to make way for a finale that puts us in the midst of a Russian kermess [a German country festival]. We see wild and vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell bad brandy. Friedrich Vischer once asserted in reference to a lascivious painting, that there are pictures that 'stink in the eye.' Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto brings us for the first time to the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks in the ear."

But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Today it can be hard to understand what Hanslick was gassing on about (although his description of the finale suggests that anti-Russian bigotry could be involved). Apparently written as a kind of therapy after Tchaikovsky's disastrous attempt at marriage failed and he was plunged into the despair heard so tellingly in his "Symphony No. 4," the concerto is an unfailingly sunny piece that never fails to please. Yes, it's technically demanding, but generations of violinists have mastered it and made it a central part of the repertoire.

Costume sketch for The Firebird by Leon Bakst
en.wikipedia.org

The concerts will conclude with a suite that Stravinsky put together in 1945 from the music for his 1910 ballet "The Firebird". The first in what turned out to be a series of successful collaborations between the composer and impresario Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, "Firebird" contains hints of the upheaval Stravinsky would generate with "Rite of Spring" and "Les Noces" but also pays homage to the work of Rimski-Korsakov, especially the Orientalism of (say) "Le Coq d’Or".

Interestingly, Stravinsky owed the opportunity to write "Firebird" to the laziness of—yes—Anatoly Lyadov. Diaghilev originally commissioned Lyadov to write the score but (according to Verna Arvey in "Choreographic Music") when, after months of waiting, Diaghilev went to see Lyadov to view his progress, the composer said, "it won't be long now. It's well on its way. I have just bought the ruled paper."

Soon Lyadov was out and Stravinsky was in. The premiere of "Firebird" put Stravinsky on the map, musically speaking, and it remains one of his most popular works. Stravinsky prepared three concert suites from the ballet: one in 1910, a second in 1919, and the third in 1945. In both the second and third suites the composer reduced the size of the orchestration. The last and leanest suite is the one you'll hear this weekend.

Both the conductor and violin soloist this week have appeared with the SLSO in the past. On the podium will be Hans Graf, former conductor of the Houston Symphony and an artist-in-residence at the Shepherd School of Music at my alma mater, Rice University. At his last SLSO appearance, Graf gave us masterful readings of Rachmaninoff's first and second piano concertos along with a wonderfully transparent interpretation of Shostakovich's dark and acerbic "Symphony No. 1." That bodes well for this weekend.

The young Italian-born violinist Augustin Hadelich, last heard here two years ago in a performance of Paganini's "Violin Concerto No. 1" that combined virtuoso flash with real emotional sensitivity. He'll certainly need both of those skill sets for the Tchaikovsky.

The essentials: Hans Graf conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with violin soloist Augustin Hadelich on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., February 27-March 1. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

St. Louis classical calendar for the week of February 23, 2015

The Bach Society at Powell Hall

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The Bach Society of St. Louis presents Handel’s Messiah on Sunday, March 1, at 3 PM.  “Few choral works even come close to the profound impact that Handel’s Messiah has had on audiences for over 250 years. This dramatic work offers an inspiring meditation on the life of the Messiah, from the prophecy of His birth through His death and resurrection, and culminating in man’s redemption and thanksgiving. The Chorus and Orchestra are joined by four outstanding Baroque soloists. Bach Society favorites mezzo-soprano Patricia Thompson and bass Curtis Streetman will return, while introducing two new performers to our audience: tenor Steven Soph and soprano Nathalie Colas from Strasbourg, France.”  The concert takes place at Firsts Prebyterian Church of Kirkwood, 100 East Adams.  For more information: www.bachsociety.org

The Ethical Society presents a Great Artist Guitar Series concert with Martha Masters on Saturday, February 28, at 8 p.m.  "In October of 2000 Martha Masters won First Prize in the GFA International Solo Competition, a recording contract with Naxos, a concert video with Mel Bay, and an extensive North American concert tour. In November of 2000, she also won the Andres Segovia International Guitar Competition in Linares, Spain. She has been a prizewinner or finalist in many other international competitions.
In addition to being on the guitar faculty of California State University Fullerton and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Masters is also the President of the Guitar Foundation of America (GFA), dedicated to supporting the instrument, its players and its music in the US and throughout the world." The performance takes at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Road.  For more information: ethicalstl.org.

The Sheldon Concert Hall presents Sheldon Classics: Asia on Wednesday, February 25, at 8 PM. “Asia is a large and diverse continent, and many classical composers have been influenced by its music, including Claude Debussy, Florent Schmitt and Dmitry Kabelevsky. We’ll hear their beautiful and imaginative works, as well as music by 20th century composer Toru Takemitsu, and top composers of today – Bright Sheng and Tan Dun.” The Sheldon is at 3648 Washington in Grand Center.  For more information: thesheldon.org.

Hans Graf
cmartists.com / Bruce Bennett

Hans Graf conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with violin soloist Augustin Hadelich on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., February 27-March 1.  "Following his outstanding 2013 performances of the Paganini with the STL Symphony, violinist Augustin Hadelich is back to perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, a tour-de-force that will dazzle with its sizzling technical displays and tender melodies.  Hans Graf leads Stravinsky’s radiant Firebird Suite, known for its brilliant and colorful orchestration, bringing this concert to a spectacular conclusion."  The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.  For more information: stlsymphony.org.

The Tavern of Fine Arts presents a chamber music concert by the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra on Tuesday, February 24, at 7:30 p.m.  The Tavern of Fine Arts is at 313 Belt in the Debaliviere Place neighborhood.   For more information: tavern-of-fine-arts.blogspot.com.

The Tavern of Fine Arts presents Passione ed Armonia: Baroque String Band on Saturday, February 28, at 4:30 p.m.  " The Baroque string band “Passione ed Armonia” plays a program of Italian music for strings by Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Marini, Uccellini, Bertali and others." The Tavern of Fine Arts is at 313 Belt in the Debaliviere Place neighborhood.   For more information: tavern-of-fine-arts.blogspot.com.

Hellraiser

Augustin Hadelich

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier with violinist Augustin Hadelich
What: Music of Rossini, Paganini, and Berlioz
Where: Powell Symphony Hall
When: April 12-14, 2013

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As René Spencer Saller points out in her program notes for these concerts, the legendary violinist/composer Niccolò Paganini was the early 18th century equivalent of a modern rock star, with an extravagant talent and matching lifestyle. He made women faint with ecstasy and cheerfully encouraged rumors that he owed his phenomenal talent to a deal with Satan by dressing all in black and riding to concerts in a black coach drawn by black horses. He was, in short, Mr. Showbiz.

You can hear that flash as well as a fair amount of finesse in his Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major. Op. 6, which he first performed in 1816. Like most of Paganini’s music, it demands a high level of technical skill, especially in the opening and closing movements. The soulful "Adagio", though, could almost pass for an operatic aria and demands real musical sensitivity.

Augustin Hadelich appears to have plenty of both. He negotiated the purely showoff material with ease. But he also made that second movement sing and even, in places, weep. In his notes for a 2011 Kennedy Center performance of the concerto, Peter Laki notes that this movement “supposedly depicts a famous actor of the time delivering one of his most heart-rending speeches.” Others have heard the composer’s own anguish over his poor health. Whatever the cause, it’s emotionally charged stuff, and Mr. Hadelich did it well, beautifully supported by Mr. Tortelier and the orchestra.

Unlike Paganini, Mr. Hadelich does not appear to be drawn to the showy or overtly theatrical in performance. Yes, he was dressed entirely in black, but when he started playing his concentration was entirely on his instrument and the conductor. He’s a serious musician, a fact made all the more apparent is his encore, the "Andante" from Bach’s Violin Sonata No. 2 (BWV 1003). Virtuosity of a different kind is called for here, as the performer must sustain both the rocking base line and fluid melody above it. Done well, as it was Friday morning by Mr. Hadelich, the music presents the illusion that two instruments are playing at once.

If Paganini courted a diabolical image, his friend Hector Berlioz perhaps took it a step farther by actually going to Hell in the final movement of his 1830 Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14. Subtitled “An Episode in the Life of an Artist,” the work tells, in dramatic and musically explicit terms, the story of a “young vibrant musician” who becomes sexually obsessed with an “ideal” woman. He dreams of her in the first movement; unsuccessfully pursues her at a ball in the second; and flees to the country to escape his longing in the third. In the fourth movement “March of the Scaffold” (often performed by itself) he overdoses on opium (the LSD of the early 19th century) and dreams he is being beheaded for her murder. The work ends with the hallucinatory “Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath,” in which the protagonist envisions himself at an infernal dance, presided over by the object of his affection, now transformed into a demon.

The idea for the Symphonie came from Berlioz’s own obsession with the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, whom he wooed for years and finally won after convincing her to attend a performance of the piece. The composer never tried to kill her, but he did threaten to kill himself with an opium overdose if she didn’t marry him—which she did. The marriage did not end well, but that’s another story.

Unlike the marriage, the music lasted, although it was fiercely controversial. Parisians had just gotten used to the idea of Beethoven when along came this wildly dramatic bit of excess scored for a massive orchestra and accompanied by a narrative that was, to say the least, lurid. Younger composers like Liszt and Saint-Saëns loved it but traditionalists like Mendelssohn were appalled. Even today, a good performance is still (to quote another concertgoer Friday morning) a “wild ride.”

Watch Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique on PBS. See more from Keeping Score.

In order for that ride to be enjoyable, of course, you need a conductor who can keep it all under control and make the languorous sighs of the first movement as compelling as the histrionics of the last. Mr. Tortelier did all of that Friday morning, and then some. His interpretation was nuanced without sacrificing any of the composer’s high drama. He clearly knows this music inside out—he conducted without a score—and that level of expertise was apparent in every note.

Mr. Tortelier’s conducting style is fascinating to watch. Working without a baton, he uses his very expressive hands to shape phrases. He seems to be all about economy of movement, holding the big gestures in reserve for when they’re really needed—the volcanic final moments of the Symphonie, for example. There’s subtle shading there that parallels his interpretive approach.

The Berlioz offers plenty of solo opportunities for members of the orchestra, and the symphony musicians did not disappoint. Cally Banham, for example, did full justice to the famous English horn solo in the bucolic “Scène aux Champs,” as did oboist Phil Ross with the offstage echo part. Andrew Cuneo and his fellow bassoonists were wonderfully precise in the fourth movement death march. There was also lovely work here by Scott Andrews and Diana Haskell on clarinet, Andrea Kalpan on flute, and Julie Thornton on flute and piccolo. Praise is also due to Harpists Megan Stout and Claire Happel for their lovely sound in the second movement waltz waltz as well as to the entire percussion section, who get a vigorous workout in the final two movements..

The concert opened with a wonderfully jolly performance of the overture to L’italiana in Algeri by another detractor of the Symphonie fantastique, Gioachino Rossini (“What a good thing it isn’t music”). It’s classic Rossini, with those familiar slow builds in volume and pace that earned him the nickname “Signor Crescendo.” Here, as in the Berlioz, Mr. Tortelier found variety and nuance where I have not heard them in other performances, at least on CD. Mr. Ross’s oboe and Ms. Thornton’s piccolo sounded quite fine in their solo passages.

Next on the calendar: Friday and Saturday, April 19 and 20, at 8 PM, Ward Stare conducts the orchestra and chorus in an intriguing program of two rarely heard Brahms choral works, Johann Strauss Jr.’s Artist’s Life waltz, a suite from Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier, and Webern’s entrancing Im Sommerwind. For ticket information: stlsymphony.org.

TPTBT (The Place to Be Tonight): Saturday, April 13

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony with conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier and violinist Augustin Hadelich
What: Music of Rossini, Paganini, and Berlioz
When: Tonight at 8 (simulcast on St. Louis Public Radio 90.7 FM and HD 1) and Sunday at 3
Where: Powell Symphony Hall
Why: "Known for his gorgeous tone and expressive communication, Augustin Hadelich has catapulted into the top echelon of young violinists. He makes his STL Symphony debut performing Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1, followed by Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. Complete with an elegant ball, a frightening march to the scaffold and a pastoral scene in a field, Berlioz’s most celebrated work is an orchestral tour-de-force."  We saw this concert Friday morning and were very impressed by Mr. Hadelich's performance.  The real killer, though, was Mr. Tortelier's electrifying Symphonie fantastique; a beautifully nuanced and highly dramatic interpretation.

Watch Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique on PBS. See more from Keeping Score.

Paganini was a violinist of such astounding technique that some said he was in league with the devil—a myth he cultivated by dressing entirely in black and arriving at concerts in a black carriage pulled by black horses.  His much-deserved reputation as a womanizer and hellraiser only added to the legend.  Berlioz was more stable, but his Symphonie fantastique—inspired by his obsession with the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson—is pretty extreme stuff as well.  Subtitled "Episode in the Life of an Artist", it's detailed program chronicles a sexual obsession that leads to a drug overdose (opium, the LSD of the early 18th century) and resulting hallucinations of murder and a Satanic mass.

And you thought the classics were stuffy!  Check out the embedded video above for an entertaining and enlightening tour through the Symphonie fantastique and the life of its creator.