Symphony Review: Variety is the spice of the St. Louis Symphony's Thanksgiving weekend

Variety was the order of the day Friday night as the St. Louis Symphony livened up the Thanksgiving weekend with classical favorites by Prokofiev and the local premiere of a new contrabass concerto by Chinese composer Tan Dun in a stunning performance by SLSO Principal Double Bass Erik Harris.

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

Erik Harris

Tan Dun is probably best known here in the USA for his film and multimedia work—most notably his score for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in 2000—but his musical interests are wide-ranging and heavily weighted toward the theatrical. Some of his earliest works were written for the stage and even his concert pieces often have extra-musical reference points.

In the case of his "Contrabass Concerto: The Wolf" the inspiration was the Chinese novel "Wolf Totem" by Jiang Rong. According to the composer's web site the novel "resonated deeply with Tan Dun’s personal connection and fascination with the spirits of the natural world and the sounds and customs of the ancient cultures along the Silk Road. The symbol of the Mongolian wolf and its life in the grasslands for Tan Dun is a mirror of the human spirit and our relationship to the natural world."

The concerto starts mysteriously with high harmonics in the basses and soft tones from Tibetan singing bowls suggesting a vast, empty landscape. That Largo melancholia introduction soon gives way to an Allegro depicting (to quote the web site again) "the running of the wolves and wild horses across the Mongolian grasslands." An elegiac Andante molto second movement suggests "the loneliness of a young wolf missing its mother; missing the sky and grasslands of its home" while the final Allegro vivace "returns us to the scene of the running horses, heard in the galloping rhythms of the orchestra while the soloist alternates between the lyrical and percussive capabilities of the instrument."

It's all very dramatic—I might even say cinematic—as well as tremendously appealing. As Mr. Harris points out in an interesting video interview with Mr. Robertson that's shown during the stage change preceding the concerto, it also poses some stiff challenges for the soloist, with lots of rapid passages and extended sections calling for bowing and fingering techniques more typical of the Chinese erhu. Mr. Harris, I'm happy to report, appeared to have completely embraced those challenges, delivering a performance that combined impressive technique with artistic sensitivity. Spontaneous applause broke out after the exhilarating first movement and the entire piece got a standing ovation.

Preceding the concerto is Prokofiev's "Symphony No. 1 in D major," op. 25, ("Classical"). One of the composer's most popular works, it takes classical style and gives it a distinctly 20th-century twist, with harmonies and key changes that would probably have astonished Haydn or Mozart. It relies heavily on the strings (especially the violins) to produce an exceptionally light and transparent sound, and the SLSO players did quite well by it. The violins sounded a bit more astringent than they usually do, which worked quite well for this music.

Mr. Robertson, for his part, brought out a wealth of orchestral detail in a superbly balanced and subtly shaded performance. As often as I've heard this music, there were still facets of the score that came through here in ways that I hadn't noticed in the past.

Lara Teeter

The second half of this weekend's concerts opens with a short suite from Rimsky-Korsakov's 1882 opera "The Snow Maiden". The piece is a real rarity—the SLSO hasn't performed it since 1926. Which is rather a shame as it's filled with some vivid music, colorfully evoking the fairy tale world of the opera. The "Dance of the Birds," with its inventive writing for the woodwinds, was especially delightful, especially when played with the kind of precision I heard Friday. Mr. Robertson and his forces brought out all the loopy comedy of the "Coretge," and the concluding "Dance of the Tumblers"—undoubtedly the best-known piece from the opera—was fittingly energetic.

The concerts conclude with another of Prokofiev's greatest hits, the 1936 children's story for narrator and orchestra, "Peter and the Wolf," about a brave lad who outsmarts a nasty predator. The SLSO has taken a variety of approaches to this piece in the past, but this one was perhaps the most remarkable in that it used fanciful watercolor-inspired animation and not one but two narrators: Webster Conservatory acting student Annie Barbour and Webster faculty member Lara Teeter.

A familiar figure from both the local and Broadway stages, Mr. Teeter handled the bulk of the narration in a slightly arch and humorous style, while Ms. Barbour was a bit more straightforward. I thought it worked quite well, especially in combination with Natalie Arco's charming animation, but I'm not sure splitting up the narration added anything much. The orchestral playing was excellent, in any case, with fine work by Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews as the cat, Associate Principal Flute Andrea Kaplan as the bird, and Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks as the unfortunate duck who gets swallowed whole by the wolf.

Next at Powell Hall, Bernard Labadie conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, with soloists Lydia Teuscher, soprano; Allyson McHardy, mezzo-soprano; Jeremy Ovenden, tenor; and Philippe Sly, bass-baritone, in Handel's "Messiah." Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., December 3-6. For more information: stlsymphony.org

Symphony Preview: The St. Louis Symphony cries "wolf" twice the weekend of November 27, 2015

Share on Google+:

David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony have a heavily lupine program for you this weekend, with Prokofiev's musical fairy tale "Peter and the Wolf" (in a collaboration with Webster University) as well as Tan Dun's new contrabass concerto, subtitled "The Wolf." There's also music from "The Snow Maiden," a fairy tale opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, along with one of Prokofiev's most popular pieces, "Symphony No. 1," Op. 25 ("Classical").

Prokofiev in New York, 1918
en.wikipedia.org

The "Classical" symphony, which opens the program, came about in part as a reaction by the composer to his growing reputation as an aggressive modernist—said reputation springing from his spiky "Piano Concerto No. 2" and his electrifying "Scythian Suite". He also felt that he was becoming too dependent on the piano as a compositional medium. So in 1917, with the socialist revolution exploding around him, he retreated, sans piano, to a village outside of St. Petersburg and completed the symphony he had begun the previous year.

"I had been playing with the idea of writing a whole symphony without the piano," wrote Prokofiev in his autobiography, "thinking that such a piece would have more natural and transparent colours. So that is how the project for a symphony in the style of Haydn came about. I had come to understand a great deal about Haydn's technique from Tcherepnin [his teacher at the St Petersburg Conservatory] and thought it would be less scary to embark on this piano-less journey if I were on familiar stylistic ground."

The result is a work that takes classical style and gives it a distinctly 20th-century sound. It will also give our orchestra's string section something of a workout as it demands a lot from them, with rapid passages in the first movement and a high soft entry in the second, and generally requires players that can handle the lightness and transparency of the orchestration.

The Tan Dun concerto is next. A joint commission among the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Taiwan Philharmonic (NSO), the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and our own SLSO, the concerto, according to the composer's web site, "richly gives voice to both the velvety expressive sound and also the virtuosic propulsive percussive abilities of the contrabass."

"At the time when Tan Dun began conceptualizing this concerto," the site continues, "he had recently finished reading the Chinese novel "Wolf Totem" by Jiang Rong...The symbol of the Mongolian wolf and its life in the grasslands for Tan Dun is a mirror of the human spirit and our relationship to the natural world."

For a more detailed description of the music along with some interesting background video, check out Tan Dun's site. His description of the unorthodox fingering techniques required for the music—based on the styles of ancient Mongolian Horse Fiddle playing—suggest that this piece will be a real challenge for the soloist, SLSO Principal Bass Erik Harris.

Rimsky-Korsakov in 1892
Painting by Ilya Repin

The second half of the concert kicks off with a suite from Rimsky-Korsakov's 1882 opera "The Snow Maiden". Based on Alexander Ostrovsky's 1873 play of the same name, the opera's basic plot is a familiar one about a supernatural creature—the Snow Maiden of the title—who falls in love with a mortal. If you know your Hans Christian Andersen, you know that can't end well—and it doesn't. The story is told with a sophisticated score that includes the Wagnerian technique of assigning different melodies (leitmotifs) to individual characters as part of the dramatic structure. You'll hear a number of them in the colorful suite's four movements.

The concerts conclude with Prokofiev's 1936 children's story for narrator and orchestra, "Peter and the Wolf," about a brave lad who outsmarts a wolf. This is a piece I first encountered as a child, in the 1946 animated version by Walt Disney with the gravel-voiced Sterling Holloway as the narrator. It changes the story a bit but generally sticks fairly close to the composer's original scenario.

"Peter and the Wolf" has been popular with the symphony lately. The most recent performance, for example, was this past February with Resident Conductor Steven Jarvi. In 2009 the SLSO performed a semi-staged production with former Resident Conductor Ward Stare at the podium and several local actors (including yours truly) playing the narrator, Peter, the wolf, and Peter's animal friends. This time around the orchestra is using a creative team from Webster University that includes acting student Annie Barbour and Webster faculty member (and well-known local singer/actor) Lara Teeter as the narrators. There will also be video projections, so expect a multi-media experience.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with double bassist Erik Harris, on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., 27-29. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.