Symphony Preview: Some of my favorite things

This Friday and Sunday, November 3 and 5, Music Director Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Paul Lewis in a program that I pretty much guarantee will include at least one of your favorites. It certainly includes my favorite of the five piano concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827).

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

"Beethoven Letronne" by Blasius Höfel
Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Common

The concerto in question is Beethoven's Fourth in G major, Op. 58, composed in 1806 and first performed in March 1807 at a private concert at the home of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz. The public got its first exposure to it at an infamous four-hour concert on December 22nd of the following year at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, with the composer as both soloist and conductor.

That concert was such an unpleasant, ill-prepared disaster that it was not until Mendelssohn revived the work in 1836 that it began to catch on with the public, which has loved it ever since.

The Fourth is my favorite in part because it's so concise. I don't think there's a spare note in the entire work, and everything is perfectly proportioned. It's also remarkably innovative for its time in that it begins with a short declaration by the solo piano which is then taken up by the orchestra. Normal procedure would have been to have the orchestra state all the major themes before the piano made its first entrance. Instead, the movement seems to grow out of a dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra.

The second movement is a dialogue between the soloist and the band as well, but this time it's in the form of a call and response, in which dramatic pronouncements by the orchestra are met, at least initially, with more subdued and lyrical material by the soloist.

This unusual structure has given birth to a notion (first advanced by Beethoven's biographer Adolph Bernhard Marx in 1859) that the movement was inspired by the story of Orpheus’s descent into Hades. When I first heard this movement, though, it conjured up the image of an argument (or maybe a debate), with the aggressive stance of the orchestra met, at first, with attempts at calm reason, then with agitation, and finally with a kind of resignation. It's as if, after trying in vain to calm and placate its orchestral partner, the piano finally sighs and say, "OK, OK, you win. Let's just drop it."

Gluck in 1775
by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis
Public Domain

It is, in any event, hard to say what Beethoven actually had in mind. The bottom line is that when the movement comes to its tragic conclusion, I have always felt a need to exhale slowly and then bask in the relief of the jolly, Haydnesque Rondo finale.

“In the 4th piano concerto,” said Joshua Weilerstein on his “Sticky Notes” podcast this past June, “Beethoven turns his entire musical brand so to speak upside down. Instead of a blazing fire, we get a gentle warmth, instead of drama, we get tenderness. And instead of virtuosity, we get a practically transcendental level of simplicity.”

Speaking of Orpheus in the underworld, the work immediately preceding the Beethoven concerto is the popular “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Act II Scene 2 of the opera “Orfeo ed Euridice” (1762) by Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787)—a pairing that surely isn’t coincidental. In the opera it accompanies a ballet that introduces a scene set in Elysium. The work’s prominent role for the flute has made it a favorite among folks like James Galway (whose recording is on the SLSO’s Spotify playlist), while the serene mood it creates has earned it a place on albums and playlists emphasizing music for relaxation.

Maurice Ravel in 1925
en.wikipedia.org

After intermission it’s back to the Baroque as re-imagined by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). Written between 1914 and 1917, “Le Tombeau de Couperin” began life as a six-movement solo piano work that invokes the style and form of the 17th century French keyboard suites epitomized by François Couperin (1668–1733). Each of the movements was dedicated to a friend of Ravel’s who died in World War I. That lends a dual meaning to the work’s title since “tombeau” literally translates as “tomb” but musically it means “tribute to” or “in memory of.”

That sounds like it ought to be music for lamentation. Instead it’s a bubbly, graceful, and altogether charming work, especially in the 1919 four-movement version for full orchestra that will be on the program this weekend. James M. Keller describes Ravel’s orchestration as “crystalline”—the perfect adjective as far as I’m concerned.

“Crystalline” would not be a bad description of the sound of the final work on the program, the Symphony No. 1 (“Classical), Op. 25, by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953). It’s not a word one would use to label most of the composer’s output, and thereby hangs a tale.

Prokofiev’s "Classical" symphony 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.

Prokofiev in New York, 1918
Photo by Bain News Service

“When our classically inclined musicians and professors (to my mind faux-classical) hear this symphony, they will be bound to scream in protest at this new example of Prokofiev’s insolence,” wrote the composer in his diary. “But my true friends will see that the style of my symphony is precisely Mozartian classicism and will value it accordingly, while the public will no doubt just be content to hear happy and uncomplicated music which it will, of course, applaud.”

Audiences have been applauding ever since.  The symphony does, indeed, take the Classical style and give 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 Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and piano soloist Paul Lewis in a program consisting of Gluck’s “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from “Orfeo ed Euridice,” Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin,” and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1 (“Classical”). Performances take place at the Touhill Center on Friday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, October November 3 and 5.  The Friday performance will be broadcast Saturday evening, November 4, at 7:30 pm on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming for a limited time at the SLSO web site.

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

Review: Radical, dude

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

L-R: Jennifer Johnson Cano and Andriana Chuchman
Photo by Ken Howard

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When Christoph Willibald Gluck's "Orfeo and Euridice" ("Orfeo ed Euridice" in the original Italian) was first performed back in 1762, it was considered somewhat radical. Opera Theatre's lively and whimsical production is radical as well, although in a very different way.

Gluck's original was innovative in the way it simplified an art form that had become noted for its convoluted plots and reliance on extended ballet sequences and elaborate staging. Gluck and his librettist, Ranieri de' Calzabigi, produced a streamlined work that concentrated entirely on the story of Orpheus and his journey to the underworld to bring his wife Euridice back to the land of the living. There are no extraneous subplots and all the music and dance sequences are designed to serve the story. It was the first of what came to be known as Gluck's "reform" operas, and its influence would be felt for years to come.

The Opera Theatre production honors that idea with a minimalist, modern dress approach. The action plays out on a bare stage, with the various settings suggested by video projections on the upstage wall. Hades, for example, is lit entirely in red with an abstract pattern reminiscent of a computer screen saver while the Elysian Fields have the same pattern in a soothing blue.

Maria Valdes
Photo by Ken Howard

Costuming is simple as well. In the first scene, which takes place on a dimly lit stage decorated only by a large photo of Euridice upstage center, Orfeo and his companions are all in black leather. The demons in Hades wear white masks and long red raincoats, while the blessed spirits in Elysium are all in white and completely covered in translucent veils. Amore, the god of love, sports "distressed" jeans, a backpack, and deliberately cheesy wings with lights. And for the final celebration of Euridice's return to life at the Temple of Love, everyone is decked out in colorful casual wear with lots of glitter.

So, no, you won't find any togas or other classical trappings here, but once you accept the idiosyncratic vision of director Ron Daniels, set designer Riccardo Hernández, and costume designer Emily Rebholz, it all makes a kind of sense. Amore is Cupid, after all, so why shouldn't he look like a teenager? And since the happy finale was written with the opera's premiere at a court celebration in mind (the name day celebrations of Emperor Francis I), why not make it look like a party, complete with balloons?

Jennifer Johnson Cano and Ensemble
Photo by Ken Howard

What really makes this "Orfeo" work, though, are the performances by the stellar cast, headed by mezzo Jennifer Johnson Cano as Orfeo (originally written for a male castrato, the part is usually sung by a mezzo today). The emotional range of the role is considerable, encompassing grief, defiance, and joy, and Ms. Cano portrays all of the character's many moods convincingly. She has a wide-ranging voice with an impressive lower register and sufficient flexibility to easily navigate the showy Act I aria in which Orfeo declares his determination to journey to Hades to bring back Euridice. The number is a throwback to the earlier florid Italian style, so it only seems appropriate that Ms. Cano's virtuoso performance provoked shouts of "brava" from the audience.

Soprano Andriana Chuchman, who was so compelling in OTSL's "Shalimar the Clown" in 2016, once again impresses as Euridice. She has a rich soprano that flows like liquid gold through Euridice's confused lamentations over Orfeo's refusal to look at her on the journey back from Hades.

Soprano Maria Valdes makes her OTSL debut as Amore. She radiates cocky juvenile confidence in the role, but is also warmly sympathetic as she comforts Orfeo. Her voice has a lightness that is an excellent match for the character.

The Big Muddy Dance Company
Photo by Ken Howard

The ballet sequences are choreographed by Katarzyna Skarpetowaska, using an eclectic mix of classical ballet and jazz steps. It's a combination which, given this production's juxtaposition of the old and new, works very well. The choreography is performed by St. Louis' own Big Muddy Dance Company. Whether they're portraying threatening demons, graceful Elysian spirits, or giddy revelers, they fill the stage with life and color.

There are multiple versions of the music for Gluck's opera available, and conductor Pierre Vallet has created his own for this production. It's based largely on the one Hector Berlioz created for the Théâtre Lyrique in 1859, but with some changes suggested by Mr. Daniels. Mr. Vallet conducts the orchestra of (mostly) St. Louis Symphony musicians in a vital and energetic reading of the score, with some notable solo work by SLSO Associate Principal Oboe Phil Ross and SLSO flautists Andrea Kaplan and Jennifer Nichtman. I'm not sure I understand the logic behind putting Mr. Ross on stage for his Act I duet with Ms. Cano, though.

Mr. Daniels' vision of "Orfeo and Euridice" is, as I say, an unusual one. I don't find it entirely convincing but, unlike some recent attempts at OTSL to put a contemporary spin on a classic, it didn't seem to be actively working against the music and text. And he does create some very compelling images. At one point in the Elysian Fields scene, for example, he places the veiled chorus in the audience, in two rows on either side of the thrust stage. It's a weird, otherworldly sight.

Opera Theatre's eccentric and entertaining "Orfeo and Euridice" runs in rotating repertory with three other operas through June 21st at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus.

Symphony Preivew: All roads lead to Mozart

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Nicholas McGegan, who is conducting the St. Louis Symphony in a program of (mostly) Mozart this weekend, is clearly a man who enjoys his work. When I've seen him conduct the orchestra, he practically bounds out to the podium, his face alight with a cherubic smile. His body language shouts: "this is going to be FUN!" And so it always is.

Mozart, party animal

That couldn't be more appropriate for Mozart, a fellow who certainly knew how to enjoy himself. The portrait of Mozart as a potty-mouthed party animal in Peter Shaffer's popular play "Amadeus" may be distorted, but it's a distortion based on reality. Even as a child, some of Mozart's letters home were, as Brockway and Weinstock write in "Men of Music," "so coarse (to our taste but not to that of the eighteenth century) that their editors have scarcely left on unbowdlerized. Mozart is often in high, and very often in ribald, spirits."

Those high spirits are clearly in evidence from the very beginning of the "Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major," K. 271, that closes the first half of this weekend's concerts. "This is an astonishing and delightful opening," writes Charles Rosen of the Allegro first movement in "The Classical Style, "surprising not only for its use of the soloist at the very outset, but also for the wit with which he enters, as he replies to the orchestral fanfare." The second movement is dramatic and even tragic, but the Rondeau: Presto finale, with an unexpectedly graceful minuet in the middle, once again shows Mozart in jolly form.

The soloist for the concerto is Music Director David Robertson's wife, Orli Shaham. A frequent guest at Powell, Ms. Shaham is a versatile pianist, as comfortable with contemporary music as she is with the established classics. She also has a theatrical keyboard style that's fun to watch, which should mesh nicely with Mr. McGegan's exuberance.

The other Mozart music on the program is a bit more solemn: three entr'actes written in 1774 for the five-act drama "Thamos, King of Egypt" by Tobias Philipp, baron von Gebler. The play is filled with skullduggery and backstabbing in ancient Egypt, so Mozart's incidental music is appropriately dramatic. "Gebler’s play," writes John Henken in program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "is a Masonic allegory, and though not yet a Mason himself, Mozart gave it much of the expressive symbolism he later lavished on The Magic Flute. This is particularly apparent in the first Interlude, with its richly rhetorical chords, slippery chromaticism, muscular tension, and its contrast of light and dark." Whether or not Mozart ever saw a production of the play with his music is unknown.

Haydn in 1792
Artist: Joseph Hardy

Also on the bill this weekend is the "Symphony No. 98 in B-flat major," written in 1792 by Mozart's older contemporary (and admirer) Joseph Haydn. It was part of a dozen symphonies (the last ones he wrote, in fact) composed for a pair of trips to London in the last decade of the eighteenth century that were highly successful, both in terms of critical reception and income. It's notable for, among other things, a second movement that might contain a passing reference to the British national anthem. "The slow movement," writes Philip Huscher in program notes for the Chicago Symphony, "opens with a veiled reference to the first two phrases of 'God save the King,' which Haydn had heard played by a wind band 'in the street during a wild snowstorm' while he was putting the finishing touches on the symphony. Donald Tovey, the British critic and writer, thought that the slow movement, which toys with quoting from Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, was Haydn’s way of paying homage to his friend. Whatever Haydn’s intent, this music is like a great hymn."

The symphony is also notable for its final movement. "At the very end," writes Mr. Huscher, "Haydn uncharacteristically takes the spotlight. Since it was still Haydn’s habit in 1792 to conduct his symphonies from the keyboard, where he would normally provide the unobtrusive harmonies of the continuo part, he wrote a few measures of rippling arpeggios for himself to play. Like all of Haydn’s inside jokes, it’s over in a flash. Apparently the London audience loved it, for, as Haydn’s journal boasted, in a newly learned English that would have impressed Mozart, 'the new Symphony in B-flat was given, and the first and last Allegros encort.'" Playing the role of Haydn this weekend will be Ms. Shaham. Somehow, I don't think she quite looks the part of a 60-year-old Austrian, but I expect her performance will make you forget that.

Gluck in 1775
Artist: Joseph Duplessis

The concerts open with thirteen dances from Christoph Willibald Gluck's 1761 ballet "Don Juan," as arranged by Mr. McGegan. As Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, Gluck's ballet is based on Molière's play "Le Festin de pierre" ("The Stone Guest"), many elements of which would find their way into Lorenzo DaPonte's libretto for Mozart's "Don Giovanni" over two decades later. "The most arresting music," notes Mr. Schiavo, "comes at the end of the ballet, when the preternatural statue confronts Don Juan and effects his doom. Here furious scale figures, piercing harmonies and menacing tones of the wind instruments make for strong musical drama."

Compared to what Gluck's contemporaries were writing back then, those final movements are highly arresting and melodramatic. Audiences seem to have found it to be rather strong stuff, though. "Gluck’s audience," wrote David Hurwitz in a 2009 article for "Listen" magazine, "was fascinated by the work, as much for the dancing and decor as for the music itself. It exercised a certain horrid fascination — some listeners actually found the piece ugly, but still couldn’t resist it." He goes on to observe that "Gluck’s music inspired a whole new generation of composers. Mozart’s own 'hell scene' in Don Giovanni reveals the clear influence of Gluck’s earlier effort, and not just because it’s in the same key. It is the music’s expressive intensity that links the two composers."

This weekend, it seems, all roads lead to Mozart.

The Essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with piano soloist Orli Shaham, on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., November 6 and 7. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.