Symphony Preview: String theories

The string section is the backbone of the symphony orchestra, but even so, it’s rare to see them dominate a program the way they will when David Danzmayr conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) at 10:30 am and 7:30 pm this Friday (December 1, 2023). The wind and percussion sections don’t show up until after intermission, and even then, there are only a “baker’s dozen” of them. Sounds that are plucked and bowed will be more common than those that are struck and (ahem) blowed.

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

Jessie Montgomery
Photo by Jiyang Chen

The concerts open with "Strum” by Jessie Montgomery (b. 1981), a violinist and composer whose colorful "Starburst" was the first piece to be played on the stage at Powell when it reopened on a limited basis on October 15th, 2020, after a seven-month shutdown due to the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic. The composer says the title refers to "an upward and downward (back and forth) pizzicato stroke" for the strings that mimics the sound of a strummed guitar. "Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement," she writes, "the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration."

It achieves that by employing a wide variety of techniques as the string players pluck, strum, and bow in ways that call to mind everything from Appalachian folk tunes to guitar rock. You can hear that right from the start in the Catalyst Quartet's recording in this week's Spotify playlist, with Ms. Montgomery herself on second violin. Given her participation, we can probably regard that as the definitive performance. It certainly rocks and sings with virtuosity and spirit.

First performed by members of the SLSO in its string quartet version in the fall of 2020, “Strum” will be heard this weekend in an arrangement for full string orchestra that had its first performance on October 14, 2023, by Sinfonia Rotterdam. This will be the local debut of this latest version.

Up next is the Concerto in A minor for Oboe and Strings, written in 1943–44 by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). As the date indicates, this was a work written under the shadow of World War II, and in fact, its world premiere had to be postponed for over three months and moved from London to Liverpool because of the Luftwaffe’s bombardment of the British capital with the infamous V-1 flying bomb.

You’d never know that from the mix of moods that characterizes much of the concerto, though. The opening “Rondo pastorale” has a kind of thoughtful nostalgia and a pentatonic melody that evokes images of “England's green and pleasant land,” while the “Minuet and Musette” second movement continues in a bucolic vein with (as the title suggests) a mix of the court and country dances.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

The concluding “Scherzo” expands the emotional scope of the work significantly. It opens in a jaunty enough mood, but soon moves on to moments of longing and even anxiety before returning to the calmer world of the opening movement. It all concludes with a rapid mini cadenza ending on a sustained pianissimo high D that, “continues to strike fear into oboists.” Given that this Friday’s soloist is SLSO Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks, however, I don’t expect that to be an issue.

The concerts conclude with the Symphony No. 2 in D major, op. 36, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Written in 1802, the year in which the composer’s deafness was becoming apparent and in which he composed the famous “Heiligenstadt Testament”—a letter intended for (but never sent to) his brothers documenting his despair and hinting at suicide—the symphony shows not a trace of the anguish that plagued its creator. “In this Symphony,” wrote Hector Berlioz, “everything is noble, energetic, proud.” It’s as though the composer sought release from his dark mood in unstintingly sunny music.

Ironically, that unbridled cheerfulness rankled some stuffy critics at the work’s premiere at the Theater an der Wien on April 5th 1803. The French journal Tablettes de Polymnie grumbled about its “barbaric chords” that suggested “doves and crocodiles…locked up together.” The Vienna Zeitung für die elegante Welt declared it “a hideously wounded, writhing dragon that refuses to die.” Listening to the work now, one wonders what was up with those guys. A bad Schnitzel at the local Gaststätte maybe? In any case, audiences have found the Second Symphony pretty irresistible over the centuries. I expect you will as well.

The Essentials: David Danzmayr conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and oboe soloist Jelena Dirks in a program of Jessie Montgomery’s “Strum”, the Vaughan Williams Oboe Concerto, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 on Friday, December 1, at 10:30 am and 7:30 pm. The performances take place at the Touhill Center on the University of Missouri—St. Louis campus. The Friday evening concert will be broadcast on Saturday, December 2, 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.

Symphony Preview: Heroics and starbursts

This weekend (Thursday through Sunday, October 15-18), Music Director Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) return to Powell Hall for the first time since the SARS-Cov-19 pandemic broke in March. For the audience, the experience will, as I noted in an earlier article, be a radical change from what used to be considered "normal." One of the two works on the abbreviated program, though, will be familiar.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

That work is the Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, known as the "Eroica." First performed on April 7, 1805, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, the work was a radical departure from Beethoven's earlier compositions. Ironically for such a striking and ultimately triumphant work, that departure had its origins in a "dark night of the soul" brought on the composer's increasing deafness and tinnitus. I caused Beethoven to engage in a re-evaluation of his life, described in an 1802 document now known as the "Heiligenstadt Testament."

The "Testament," as most classical fans will recall, was a letter Beethoven wrote to his brothers Carl and Johann at the town of Heiligenstadt (now part of Vienna) in which he told of his despair over his hearing loss and his struggles with thoughts of suicide. The letter was never delivered (it was found among his papers after his death in 1827) and seems, in retrospect, to have acted as a kind of catharsis for the composer. Before the "Testament" he was a composer/pianist. Afterwards, he would be exclusively a composer.

But not just any early 19th-century composer. He would be Beethoven. Specifically, he would be the Beethoven we now often think of, in somewhat hyperbolic terms, as a heaven-storming, tormented genius. He would be the spark that ignited the Romantic movement in music. It's an attitude towards music that waned in the early 20th century in the face of dogged attacks by serialists and others who seemed to regard music as more of a mathematical exercise than an effort in communication, but it never really died. Indeed, the first work on this weekend's program sounds unquestionably Romantic to my ears.

But I digress.

The important point is that the Symphony No. 3 marked the beginning of the emergence of Beethoven's unique compositional voice. His first two symphonies were clearly in the mold of Haydn and Mozart. But with the "Eroica," as Paul Munro writes in his program notes, "his music decisively shifted to a bold, strange new direction."

You can hear that boldness in the first two big E-flat major chords. They're almost like a pair of gauntlets thrown down to challenge established notions of what a symphony should be, and they set the pattern for not only the first movement, but for the rest of the symphony as well. Indeed as Christopher H. Gibbs writes in an essay for NPR, "[t]he motivic, metric, and harmonic surprises continue throughout this movement of such extraordinary length, unprecedented for its time."

The bold drama continues with the heroic funeral march of the second movement, the restless energy of the third movement scherzo, and the towering finale-a set of elaborate variations followed by a powerful coda. It clocks in at around fifty minutes, which no doubt seemed absurdly excessive to audiences accustomed to symphonies half that length. "One early critic," writes Welsh musicologist David Wyn Morris, "described it as 'a very long-drawn-out daring and wild fantasia' which, at least, reveals a response to its emotive power."

The finale is also a classic example of musical recycling. The theme that serves as the basis for the variations was originally part of a set of twelve "Contredanses" Beethoven wrote between 1791 and 1802. It seems to have been a favorite of his, popping up again in (among other places) his score for the 1802 ballet "The Creatures of Prometheus." Composer and writer Derek Strahan has suggested that Beethoven saw it as a "hero" theme. It certainly becomes heroic in the course of the final movement of the "Eroica."

Violinist and composer
Jessie Montgomery

One aspect of this weekend's "Eroica" that will sound different to many listeners, by the way, will be the size of the orchestra. Physical distancing requirements limit the number of musicians that can be on the stage at any one time, so this "Eroica" will be performed by an ensemble of 40. Modern orchestras typically are much larger, but as Maestro Denève point out in this week's program notes, "when the ‘Eroica’ was premiered, it was in a very small hall, with a very small orchestra." So this is a chance to hear the work is much the way the composer's contemporaries would have heard it.

The concerts will open with a piece that, although composed back in 2012, will probably be unfamiliar to most of you since this is its first local performance. It's "Starburst" by contemporary violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery. Originally composed for a nine-piece string ensemble (and first performed in the format by the Sphinx Virtuosi in Miami in 2012), it was later expanded by Jannina Norpoth into the chamber orchestra version we'll hear this week.

The composer describes "Starburst" as "a play on imagery of rapidly changing musical colors. Exploding gestures are juxtaposed with gentle fleeting melodies in an attempt to create a multidimensional soundscape." Now that I've had the chance to listen to it a few times, I'd describe it as a sparkling and thoroughly delightful sonic explosion that calls to mind musical depictions of fireworks by composers like Stravinsky and Debussy while still speaking in a sonic voice that is entirely Ms. Montgomery's own. It's "program music" in the best Romantic tradition and great fun. I look forward to hearing what the SLSO players do with it this week.

If you want to sample it yourself in advance, there's a recording of it by the chamber ensemble The Knights on YouTube that's hard to beat. The recording was produced entirely on line last month (September 20th) and includes a lively and informative post-performance chat with the composer and Knights violinist Christina Courtin, who is also a co-producer of the video.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the first of two special chamber orchestra concerts this Thursday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, Friday at 11 am, and Sunday at 3 pm, October 15-18. The program, which will run about an hour with no intermission, consists of Jessie Montgomery's "Starburst" and Beethoven's Symphony No 3 ("Eroica"). Audience size will be limited to 100 for each performance and tickets can only be purchased by calling the SLSO box office at 314-534-1700. Only two tickets can be purchased per household.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra makes a cautious return to Powell Hall

Powell Symphony Hall went dark in mid-March due to the rapidly spreading SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, but the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) quickly found multiple ways to stay in touch with its audience during the hiatus via its web site, its YouTube channel, rebroadcasts of previous SLSO concerts on St. Louis Public Radio, the monthly “Night at the Symphony”  series of concert highlights on Nine Network television, and the “SLSO Soundbites” podcast at Classic 107.3.

Stéphane Denève

Now, however, the orchestra is preparing to open Powell Hall for live concerts once again for a special two-concert series under the baton of SLSO Music Director Stéphane Denève. The experience, however, will be very different from what it was in the days before COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, had (as this is being written) killed over 214,000 Americans and infected at least 7.7 million, per the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

Working with a team of infectious disease specialists from Washington University, the SLSO developed a plan to insure the safety of both audiences and SLSO staff. You can find a complete rundown on the many upgrades and changes the SLSO has made to Powell at the SLSO Stories site, but perhaps the most obvious ones from your standpoint as an audience member will be the size of the house and the changes in the concert format.

For the two concerts in the fall series, which take place October 15-18 and October 22-24, the maximum audience size is limited to 100—less than 3% of Powell’s 2600-seat capacity. That means you and your concert companions will have nearly an entire row or dress circle box to yourselves and you won’t need to step over anyone to get to your seats. City health officials have actually approved a maximum of 300 seats, but the SLSO has elected to start with a more conservative approach.

The orchestra will be smaller as well. For the October 15-18 program, for example, there will be total of 40 players for Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony (around the size of a typical orchestra back in Ludwig’s day) and only 26 for the opening work (and the only other piece on the program), Jessie Mongomery’s “Starburst.” They’ll still take up the entire stage, though, because of physical distancing protocols. I’m not sure how that will affect the overall sound, but as I’ll be there opening night, I’ll give you a full report in my review.

Violinist and composer
Jessie Montgomery

The programs will be shorter as well. The “Eroica” runs around 45 minutes and “Starburst” clocks in at less than 5, resulting in a concert that will run only around an hour with no intermission.  There will be no concessions and no mingling in the lobby before the concert. Audience members will enter through separate doors, depending on where they’re sitting, and parties will be kept at least six feet apart both entering and leaving.

Needless to say, masks are mandatory, as are temperature checks. There will also be plenty of hand sanitizer stations, should you forget to bring your own.

In an effort to accommodate as many music lovers as possible, the symphony is presenting four performances of each program instead of the usual two or three: Thursdays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm, Fridays at 11 am, and Sundays at 3 pm. For these two special concerts, tickets are available only by calling the SLSO box office at 314-534-1700. The SLSO hopes to resume its regular season in January, but no formal announcement has been made and tickets are not yet available.