Review: Jun Märkl and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra offer a Spanish-flavored post-Thanksgiving treat

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

Jun Märkl
Photo: Christiana Hohne

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There's a lot to be thankful for at Powell Hall this weekend (November 24 -- 26, 2017) as Jun Märkl conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a colorful program that is a feast for the eyes and ears.

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

Things got off to a festive start Friday night with a performance of Ravel's 1919 Alborada del gracioso that positively sparkled with grace and wit. Inspired by the mischievous and vulgar clown figure of 16th century Spanish comedy--the gracioso of the title--this lively and brilliantly orchestrated work got crisp and precise direction from Mr. Märkl and brilliant playing from all the musicians. That included Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo, who had just the right touch in the seriocomic solo that introduces the elegiac middle section, as well as the trumpets and horns in the rapid-fire triplets in the lively beginning and end.

More brilliant playing followed, this time by violin soloist Karen Gomyo. Decked out in a red floor-length gown, she cut a striking figure as she took the stage for wonderfully sympathetic reading of Ernest Chausson's haunting 1896 miniature, Poème. Inspired by a romantic novella by Turgenev, the Poème rises from a hushed, mysterious introduction to a passionate and technically demanding cadenza before eventually dying away in a flurry of soft trills--equally demanding, if less flashy. Ms. Gomyo handled all the demands with apparent ease, and did so without stinting on the dark romanticism at the heart of the music.

The first half of the concert concluded with a straightforward virtuoso vehicle, the 1883 Carmen Fantasy by the Spanish violinist/composer Pablo de Sarasate. Sarasate's skill was legendary and this mini-concerto assembled out of themes from Bizet's opera bristles with technical challenges, including an elaborately ornamented version of the famous Habanera and the insanely fast finale, based on the Act II Danse bohème. Ms. Gomyo took it all in stride, bringing out all the yearning of the former as well as the flash and fire of the latter. As was the case in the Poème, her focus on the music was intense.

Karen Gomyo

After intermission, the Spanish theme continued with a performance of Manuel de Falla's 1925 revision of a ballet that premiered in 1916, El amor brujo (usually translated as "Love, the Magician"). Originally commissioned by flamenco dancer Pastora Imperio, the ballet is infused with Andalusian folk elements and the percussive spirit of flamenco.

The spooky scenario, about a young woman trying to free herself from the obsessive intentions of her unfaithful husband's ghost, reads like something that would have been more appropriate around Halloween. There is dark, brooding music here--especially in the opening sequence, with its vivid evocation of a nocturnal cavern--but also moments of brilliance, like the famous "Ritual Fire Dance." There are even a few smoldering, passionate songs for the smoky tones of a mezzo soprano--a nod to the cante jondo, a dark and dramatic style of singing associated with the flamenco tradition.

This is immensely compelling stuff, and it got a powerfully theatrical performance from Mr. Märkl, the orchestra, and vocal soloist Catalina Cuervo. Although a soprano and therefore presumably singing at the bottom of her range, Ms. Cuervo nevertheless sounded entirely comfortable with her three highly charged, "take no prisoners" songs, delivered with a fierce intensity that was completely compelling. She also cut a commanding figure on stage with a form-fitting red gown, silver nails, and some very flamenco poses and foot stomping.

Mr. Märkl's interpretation exuded that same dramatic intensity, and was filled with neat little details, like the pointed snap of the viola trills in the "Ritual Fire Dance." He got great playing from the orchestra, including powerful moments from the horns and heartfelt solos from Principal Cello Daniel Lee and Concertmaster David Halen in the "Dance of the Game of Love." I can't recall the last time I saw any version of El amor brujo live (the SLSO hasn't done it since 1998), so it was a pleasure to see it performed so well.

Catalina Cuervo
Photo: John Parra

Friday night's concert ended with one of the longest crescendos in musical history, Ravel's 1928 Boléro. Ravel himself apparently began to view it in somewhat the same way that Rachmaninoff came to view his equally popular Prelude in C sharp minor: as a career milestone that eventually became a millstone. But it's still a piece that never fails to entertain.

It certainly did that Friday night, with a brilliantly conceived performance that built expertly from the almost inaudible opening with snare drum and plucked strings to the massive orchestral crash of the final pages. Yes, Boléro is almost guaranteed to work as long as the conductor doesn't get in Ravel's way, but even so this was a performance that packed a real punch and brought down the house.

It helped, of course, that Mr. Märkl had an ensemble of virtuosos to work with. That includes, but is certainly not limited to, Associate Principal Clarinet Dana Haskell, Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo, Associate Principal Flute Andrea Kaplan, Principal Trombone Timothy Myers, and Cally Banham on oboe d'amore. Guests Nathan Nabb and Jeffrey Collins on soprano and tenor sax, respectively, brought the same jazzy feel to their solos that they did the last time the SLSO played this piece in 2015. And let's hear it for Principal Percussionist Will James. Seated just behind the violas, he had the difficult and somewhat thankless role of playing the same snare drum figure repeatedly for around 17 minutes. There ought to be a medal for that.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's mostly Spanish post-Thanksgiving feast repeats Saturday night at 8 and Sunday at 3, November 25 and 26, at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. The music continues next weekend with an all-Vivaldi program conducted by Nicholas McGegan.

Symphony Preview: L'heure espagnol

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

Violinist Karen Gomyo

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Music lovers have a lot to be thankful for this weekend (November 24 -- 26), as Jun Märkl conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program of classical favorites. It's a real feast for the ears to match the one your stomach will probably still be digesting.

The concerts will open with Ravel's colorful tone poem Alborada del gracioso, written as a solo piano work in 1905 then orchestrated in 1919. The work's title is, as Ravel admitted, essentially untranslatable. The composer explained it this way in a letter to Ferdinand Sinzig of Steinway and Sons in New York on September 14, 1907 (cited in the 2011 biography Ravel by Roger Nichols):

I understand your bafflement over how to translate the title 'Alborada del gracioso'; precisely why I decided not to translate it. The fact is that the gracioso of Spanish comedy is a rather special character and one which, as far as I know, is not found in any other theatrical tradition. We do have an equivalent, though, in the French theater: Beaumarchais' Figaro. But he's more philosophical, less well--meaning than his Spanish ancestor. The simplest thing, I think, is to follow the title with the rough translation 'Morning Song of the Clown' [Aubade du buffon]. That will be enough to explain the piece's humoristic style.

reflecting the composer's love of Spain. The brilliant orchestration includes a large percussion battery with, of course, castanets.

Up next is the Poéme for violin and orchestra, composed in 1896 by Ernest Chausson, a composer whose music does not, in my view, get quite as much attention as it deserves. His Symphony in B flat (1890) is a particular favorite of mine, but live performances seem to be rare.

Inspired by Turgenev's 1881 novella The Song of Love Triumphant, the Poéme originally had the same title as the book, but Chausson changed it before the piece was published, apparently to avoid associating it too closely with the novel. I think it was a wise decision; this music has a haunting beauty that doesn't need any extra-musical connections.

The Poéme has been massively popular with violinists ever since it was first performed by the great composer/violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, who commissioned the piece and may have helped with some of the details of the violin part. "When Ysaÿe introduced the Poéme in Paris," writes Michael Steinberg in The Concerto: A Listener's Guide, "the applause rang on and on. Chausson's friend the novelist Camille Mauclair recalled that the bewildered composer kept repeating 'I can't get over it.'" Sadly, it wouldn't last; only two years after the work's 1897 premiere, Chausson lost control of a bicycle and smashed into the wall of his country villa. He was only 44.

Conductor Jun Märkl
Photo by Christiana Hohne

The violin remains in the spotlight with the last work in the first half, the flashy 1883 Carmen Fantasy by the virtuoso violinist and composer Pablo de Sarasate, based on Georges Bizet's massively popular 1875 opera Carmen. Like Chausson, Bizet died young; he shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 36 from a heart attack a few months after the opera opened to tepid reviews and public apathy. So he went to his grave not knowing that he had composed what would become one of the most popular operas ever written. Operabase statistics for the 2015/2016 season, in fact, show it as number 3 worldwide, surpassed only by Verdi's La Traviata and Mozart's The Magic Flute.

This mini-concerto weaves virtuoso fireworks out of a number of tunes from the opera, starting with the Aragonaise that serves as the entr'acte between Bizet's Acts III and IV and ending with the Danse bohème from the top of Act II, as Carmen and her friends Frasquita and Mercédès dance for some army officers in Pastia's Inn. Along the way you'll also hear the famous Habanera as well as the Seguidilla, both from Act I. It's pure melodic fun that offers the violinist a chance to strut his or her stuff, especially in the breakneck finale.  This weekend's soloist is Karen Gomyo.

After intermission, the Spanish theme continues with a performance of Manuel de Falla's 1925 revision of a ballet that premiered in 1916, El amor brujo (usually translated as "Love, the Magician"). Originally commissioned by flamenco dancer Pastora Imperio, the ballet is infused with Andalusian folk elements and, of course, the spirit of flamenco.

The spooky scenario reads like something that would have been more appropriate around Hallowe'en. Here's a summary from John Henken's program notes for a 2015 performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic:

The tale in its final version concerns Candelas, a young widowed gypsy haunted by the ghost of her jealous husband. To free her from his unwanted attention, Candelas and Carmelo, her new lover, must exchange a kiss of perfect love. In a series of dances the ghost first frightens the couple (Dance of Terror), Candelas tries to exorcise it (Ritual Fire Dance), and then her friend Lucia seduces it. While the ghost is distracted by Lucia, Candelas and Carmelo kiss, and then mock the ghost in the final dance (Dance of the Game of Love).

Most concertgoers will be familiar with the "Ritual Fire Dance," but there's much to relish in this colorful and highly evocative score. There's even a part for a mezzo-soprano (sung this weekend by soprano Catalina Cuervo), acknowledging the influence of the Andalusian tradition of cante jundo, a dark and dramatic style of singing associated with the flamenco tradition.

The concerts close with one of the most popular orchestral works ever written and certainly the best-known thing Maurice Ravel ever produced: Bolero. Composed originally on commission for the dancer Ida Rubinstein, Bolero was first performed by her at the Paris Opéra on 22 November 1928, with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and designs by Alexandre Benois.

"Inside a tavern in Spain," runs the scenario printed in that first program, "people dance beneath the brass lamp hung from the ceiling. [In response] to the cheers to join in, the female dancer has leapt onto the long table and her steps become more and more animated." In program notes for the New York Philharmonic, the late New York Times music critic Louis Biancolli goes into greater detail. "The men gathered in the public room of the inn eye the dancer fixedly. As her movements grow more animated, their excitement mounts. They beat out an obbligato with their hands and pound their heels. At the peak of the crescendo, where the key abruptly shifts from C major to E major, the sharpening tension snaps. Knives are drawn and there is a wild tavern brawl."

Sounds like a hell of a party. There will be no weapons at Powell Hall this weekend, fortunately, so you will be able to enjoy Ravel's Greatest Hit in safety.

The essentials: Jun Märkl conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with soloists Karen Gomyo, violin, and Catalina Cuervo, soprano, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, November 24 -- 26. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Review: Nathalie Stutzmann brings a unique, joyous approach to familiar classics in her St. Louis Symphony debut

Nathalie Stutzmann conducing the
Monte Carlo Philharmonic
Photo: nathaliestutzmann.com

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The St. Louis Symphony concerts this weekend (April 22-24, 2016) offered a remarkable study in contrasts, with familiar classics by Mendelssohn, Sibelius, and Dvořák getting novel, idiosyncratic, and very compelling interpretations by French singer and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann in her SLSO debut.

Ms. Stutzmann's dual career path as both a singer and conductor is unusual, if not unique.  And while I don't want to read too much into that, it's hard not to hear in her performances the kind of direct emotional connection that I get from an accomplished singer. 

In the cabaret world we talk a lot about the importance of having a strong emotional connection to the music and lyrics of our songs.  That's the kind of strong connection I heard in Ms. Stutzmann's approach to the oft-heard works on the program this weekend.  It made me hear them in different ways that shed new light on the music.  In this respect she reminded me of the late Leopold Stokowski, whose work I admired tremendously even when it wasn't entirely to my taste—which was sometimes the case with Ms. Stutzmann.

The exceptionally delicate and slow opening of Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) Overture, for example, suggested an overblown and even lethargic approach to this depiction of the Scottish seacoast.  But while Ms. Stutzmann's extreme contrasts of tempo and dynamics sometimes felt more appropriate to Bruckner than Mendelssohn, the overall result was fascinating and even revelatory at times. To pick just one example: the full-orchestra climaxes, with Shannon Wood's tympani projecting forcefully over the rest of the band from his position on an elevated platform upstage center, vividly evoked the stormy landscape that had so impressed Mendelssohn.  I wouldn't call this a definitive interpretation by any means, but I'm glad I heard it.

Karen Gomyo
Photo: karengomyo.com

There was a similar interpretive freedom in the Sibelius Violin Concerto which, like the Mendelssohn, opened so quietly that the first few notes were almost inaudible, with soloist Karen Gomyo's entrance seemingly floating in from another plane of existence.  This was another ear-opening performance, with orchestral details revealed in high contrast.  It made the long-winded first movement feel even more discursive than it usually does, but the overall result was stunning in its impact.

It helped that Ms. Gomyo is such a technically proficient and artistically committed performer. The violin was Jean Sibelius’s first musical love and his concerto is both thoroughly idiomatic and incredibly demanding.  The long solo passages in the first movement and virtuoso fireworks in the finale will test the mettle of the best performers.  Ms. Gomyo handled it all with aplomb, delivering the intense passion of the second movement and fireworks of the third with equal credibility.  She was also completely in synch with Ms. Stutzmann, often moving and (seemingly) even breathing together.

The concluding work on the program, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70,  as always been a favorite of mine, for reasons that are difficult to articulate.  I can’t hear it without thinking of a long journey down a dark mountain river.  Flashes of light illuminate the trip, but we don’t see the sun until the work’s final moments, when the tonality changes from D minor to D major.

Maintaining a strong rhythmic pulse and a sense of momentum, then, have always been the hallmarks of a great Dvo?ák Seventh for me.  Ms. Stutzmann's interpretation had both, despite an opening tempo which felt a bit slow but turned out, in the end, to be exactly right for the musical structure she was creating.  By the time she got to the end of the energetic third movement Scherzo, she had built up such a head of steam that the decision to go straight to the final movement attacca (without pause) felt not just right but actually inevitable.   I wouldn't want this to be anyone's only exposure to Dvo?ák's masterpiece, given the number of fine recordings available out there, but it was entirely original and, taken on its own terms, entirely successful.

Ms. Stutzmann's style on the podium, by the way, is as uniquely personal as her conceptualization of the music.  She sways and dances with the music, virtually sculpting phrases out of the air with gestures that could be encompass everything from her fingers to her entire upper body.  And she does it all with a delighted smile that suggests a real pleasure in the business of making music.  That sense of joy on the part of a performer is always infectious and goes a long way towards winning over an audience.

Next at Powell Hall: David Robertson conducts the orchestra in two different programs April 29 – May 1.  With violin soloist Celeste Golden Boyer, he presents a Whitaker Foundation Music You Know concert on Friday, April 29, at 8 p.m. that features works by Ponchielli and Dukas as well as a new work by Stefan Freund.  On Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., he conducts the local premier of William Kraft's Tympani Concerto No. 2 with soloist Shannon Wood, as well as Schubert's monumental Symphony No. 9 ("The Great").  For more information, visit the symphony web site.

Symphony Preview: Something old, someone new

Nathalie Stutzmann

The St. Louis Symphony program this weekend (April 22-24, 2016) consists entirely of well-known classics: Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) overture, Sibelius's Violin Concerto, and one of my favorites, Dvořák's Symphony No. 7.

These pieces are popular for good reasons, not the least of which is the way each one conjures up a particular time and place. Mendelssohn's overture powerfully summons up the wild and brooding Scottish islands that the composer visited in 1829, the year before he wrote the overture. Sibelius does the same for the dark, brooding landscapes of his Finnish homeland in his concerto from over seven decades later. And for the nature-loving Dvořák, whose 1884 symphony brought him international acclaim, the Bohemian countryside is an ever-present character in his music.

This is, in short, a big weekend for musical travelogues.

While the music will be familiar, though, the figure on the podium will likely be considerably less so for local audiences. That's because this weekend's guest conductor, Nathalie Stutzmann, is not only new to St. Louis but relatively new to conducting as well. Born in 1965 in the Paris suburb of Suresnes, she showed talent as a singer at an early age, studying first with her mother, soprano Christiane Stutzmann, and then at the Nancy Conservatoire and later in Paris. Remarkably for a singer, she also studied piano, bassoon, and -- most remarkable of all -- conducting.

And she didn't study with just anyone. Her primary teachers have been the noted Finnish conductor and composer Jorma Panula (whose students include Esa-Pekka Salonen and Simon Rattle) and the legendary Seiji Ozawa. She even founded her own chamber orchestra, Orfeo 55, in 2009. The group plays both Baroque and modern instruments, and Stutzmann herself has said that, as a conductor, she feels a real affinity for "le grand repertoire" of the Romantics like Beethoven Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss.

Although Ms. Stutzmann has only been conducting professionally since 2008, she has already made quite an impression on the critics. For example, Em Skow, reviewing her US conducting debut -- Handel's Messiah with the National Symphony Orchestra -- waxed positively rhapsodic at DC Metro Theater Arts:

The evening's program notes summarized her as rigor and fantasy embodied in a conduct and I have to agree. It would do her a disservice to say she just connected to the layers of the work, or even to say that she moved others to do the same. The piece shown through her, radiating from her fingertips, dancing through her toes, bouncing through her arms, shoulders, and legs to the floor where even she had to hold on to the rail to steady herself at times. For her, three dimensions weren't enough to conduct with and her level of passion was truly an honor to witness.

"Her experience as a Romantic musician and her knowledge of older genres allow her to tackle Vivaldi and Mozart as well as Beethoven, Wagner or Brahms," writes Brian Fowler in a profile for medici.tv. "Her approach, both loose and rigourous, her science of phrasing and the emotional intensity of her interpretations, her exceptional mastery in the service of the passion she conveys: these are some of the elements that make her so popular in the eyes of her audience and the musicians she conducts."

If you'd like to experience her work before this weekend's concerts, Ms. Stutzmann has a YouTube channel with videos of her singing and conducting both Orfeo 55 and other notable orchestras.

Karen Gomyo

Karen Gomyo, the soloist for the Sibelius Violin Concerto, has come in for her share of critical praise as well. "A first-rate artist of real musical command, vitality, brilliance and intensity," wrote John Van Rhein at the Chicago Tribune in 2009, while the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Zachary Lewis called her "captivating, honest and soulful, fueled by abundant talent but not a vain display of technique" in 2011.

Even more to the point, though, Ms. Gomyo has gotten some raves for recent performances of the Sibelius concerto. Reviewing her appearance with the San Diego Symphony last December, for example, the San Diego Reader noted that the audience "was locked on Ms. Gomyo from start to finish because her performance brought us into those dark woods into which Sibelius, and all of us, have wandered from time to time." A 2013 performance with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra under Christopher Seaman made such an impact on the audience that the end of the first movement, as Anthony Bannon wrote for the Chautauqua Daily, "pulled several in the Amp to their feet for impulsive applause, eager to affirm the miracle of what was just heard."

All of which bodes well for the weekend. These are concerts filled with vital, compelling, and wonderfully dramatic works. It will be interesting to see what Ms. Stutzmann and Ms. Gomyo make of them. Performances at Powell Hall are Friday at 10:30 a.m. (a Krispy Kreme Coffee Concert with free coffee and doughnuts), Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m., April 22-24. Check the St. Louis Symphony website for details.