Review: A trancendent Mahler 9th at the St. Louis Symphony

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

Peter Oundjian

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In an increasingly ugly and paranoid culture, moments of transcendent beauty are rare, which is why I appreciate one all the more when I encounter it at a St. Louis Symphony concert, as I did this past Saturday (March 2nd).

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

It was more than a moment, actually, since "transcendent beauty" describes pretty much all of guest conductor Peter Oundjian's interpretation of Mahler's Symphony No. 9, which clocked in at around eighty minutes. Written towards the end of the composer's life (he died within two years of completing it and never heard it performed), the Ninth is often seen as Mahler's farewell to life. Mr. Oundjian's impassioned reading certainly honored that sense of departure, but did so in a way that suggested calm acceptance more than resigned despair.

That may not be a majority view of the work these days. The predominant idea of the Mahler Ninth for the past several decades seems to have been colored by Leonard Bernstein's contention, in the fifth of a series of six 1973 lectures at Harvard, that Mahler was anticipating not only his own death but the "death of music itself." Bernstein's own performance with the Vienna Philharmonic reflects that, wringing every last bit of angst out of the music. But, as Tom Service notes in a 2014 article for The Guardian, "there is another way of thinking about this music, and there's another way of conducting it, hearing it, and experiencing it. It turns on whether you think of this piece as a hymn to the end of all things, or instead, as an ultimately affirmative love-song to life and to mortality."

To my ears, Mr. Oundjian's approach was closer to the "ultimately affirmative" end of the spectrum, beginning with a first movement that had a strong rhythmic pulse and a kind of lilting lyricism that contrasted well with the first of the three massive orchestral climaxes the punctuate the rest of the movement. The tempo marking is Andante comodo, and Mr. Oundjian's tempo choices seemed to honor the fact that "andante" literally means "at a walking tempo." The orchestra played beautifully, with admirable solo moments such as the lovely duet with Principal Flute Mark Sparks and Principal Horn Roger Kaza that recalls Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony.

The second movement, which is both an affectionate tribute to and parody of that rustic waltz known as the Landler, had all the requisite gusto and raucous humor. Musical jokes need to be played with consummate skill if they are to work, and the SLSO musicians certainly did not disappoint here. The final cheeky notes from Andrew Cuneo's bassoons and Ann Choomack's piccolo were perfect.

There's humor in the Rondo-Burleske third movement as well, but it's more along the lines of the snarling sarcasm you find in the works of Shostakovich. Mahler's tempo marking includes the words "sehz trotzig" (roughly "very defiant") and some have suggested that the mix of complex counterpoint and musical aggression here were the composer's angry response to critics who suggested, erroneously, that he couldn't write contrapuntal music. It was, in any case, performed with spectacular precision by the musicians, with a special nod due to Associate Principal trumpet Thomas Drake for the ethereal solo toward the end that, at least to my ears, harks all the way back to the deleted "Blumine" movement from Mahler's Symphony No. 1.

The final movement of Mahler's Ninth is perhaps one of the most moving things you can hear in a concert hall. It can be, at various points and to varying degrees, anguished, resigned, hopeful, or tranquil, but it's nearly always beautiful. Mr. Oundjian's interpretation reflected an ideal balance of the music's many moods, with powerful climaxes and moments of beatific stillness. This movement largely belongs to the string section, the SLSO players came through brilliantly, especially in the final, hushed pages when the music fades to nothingness.

Lars Vogt
Photo by Giorgia Bertazzi

In his Lucerne Festival Orchestra performance, Claudio Abbado famously held that final silence for a good two minutes. Mr. Oundjian didn't go that far, but the thirty seconds or so of absolute stillness he commanded at the end was a powerful as it was perfect. Amazingly, nobody coughed. Maybe they were all holding their breaths in the quiet: I think I might have been. It was the perfect end to a gripping, beautifully shaped performance by Mr. Oundjian and the orchestra that thoroughly deserved its standing ovation.

The concert opened with an equally intelligent and well-balanced performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21. First performed in Vienna on March 10, 1785 with Mozart himself at the keyboard, the concerto comes from a time in the composer's life when he was more or less the toast of the town. It radiates youth and optimism, and got an appropriately perky and joyful performance from Mr. Oundjian, the orchestra, and soloist Lars Vogt. I was especially taken with the Andante second movement, which managed to be lyrical without ever becoming sappy, but the noble first movement and jolly finale were gratifying as well.

Mozart was so much in demand when he wrote his concerto that he didn't bother writing down the cadenzas for the first and third movements, probably improvising them in performance. These days, soloists either use cadenzas composed by others or write their own. Mr. Vogt did the latter, deftly managing the trick of writing music that sounded both 18th-century and new at the same time.

Next at Powell Hall: Nathalie Stutzmann conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with soprano Siobhan Stagg and baritone Stephen Powell, Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, March 9 and 10. The program consists of Stravinsky's "A Funeral Song" and Brahms's "A German Requiem." The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Symphony Review: Magisterial Beethoven, poetic Schumann, and dynamic Nielsen with Storgårds, Vogt, and the St. Louis Symphony

John Storgårds

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[Learn more about the music with the SLSO program notes and my symphony preview.]

John Storgårds, the Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic and this past weekend's (October 23and 24, 2015) St. Louis Symphony Orchestra guest conductor, is a big man with a magisterial podium presence. In fact, "magisterial" is how I'd characterize his approach to the Beethoven "Egmont" Overture that opened the program. Tempi were on the slow side and orchestral details were highlighted, which gave the final triumphal pages of the score that much more impact.

If that approach were the only one in Mr. Storgårds's repertory it would make for a monotonous evening but, of course, there's much more to him than that. His expansive gestures clearly grow out of a passionate commitment to and intense concentration on the music itself. He seems willing to go where it leads him, while still putting his own stamp on the interpretation.

Lars Vogt
Photo: Neda Navaee

This was most apparent in the Schumann Piano Concerto that followed the Beethoven. Describing his work on the Concerto in a 1839 letter to his future wife, Clara Wieck, Schumann said that the work would be "a compromise among a symphony, a concerto and a huge sonata. I see I cannot write a concerto for the virtuosos: I must plan something else." That "something else" proved to a work in which the piano is an integral part of the orchestra, rather than set apart from it in the manner of so many of Schumann's contemporaries. The Concerto is more poetic and lyrical than big and dramatic, with a first movement cadenza that grows organically out of the music and a final movement that is more ingratiating than flashy.

In terms of the imaginary characters that Schumann used to illustrate the two sides of his musical personality, the Concerto tends to lean towards the dreamy and introspective Eusebius rather than the more passionate Florestan, although both are clearly present.

Kate Reimann

Mr. Storgårds and soloist Lars Vogt (a conductor himself as well as a noted pianist) followed Schumann's lead with a reading that was more graceful and sentimental than demonstrative. You could hear that most notably in the second movement Intermezzo, with its lovely duet for the soloist and principal cello (enchantingly rendered by Danny Lee), although there was a languor to the first movement as well. It's marked Allegro affetuoso, but in this performance is was more molto affetuoso. That wasn't entirely to my taste, but (as indicated in that letter to Clara) it's justified by the music itself as well as by Schumann's own thoughts on the matter.

The concluding work on the program, Carl Nielsen's "Symphony No. 3, Op. 27," ("Sinfonia espansiva") from 1910-11, is another matter altogether. Like G. B. Shaw, Nielsen believed in a kind of pantheistic "life force" that pervaded all of nature. It shows up in his fourth and fifth symphonies (both written in the shadow of World War I, when the "life force" no doubt appeared to be in danger of extinction) and pervades the third. The symphony opens, as Reneé Spencer Saller vividly writes in her program notes, with "a machine-gun barrage of a single note, A, which sounds 26 times, speeding up as the intensity mounts". From that point on, the "Espansiva" lives up to its name by delivering, in the words of the composer "a certain expansive happiness about being able to participate in the work of life".

It's vital and viscerally compelling stuff, and Mr. Storgårds's interpretation was appropriately electrifying and energizing. The headlong rush of the music came through loud and clear without sacrificing any of the many finer points of Nielsen's score. Spontaneous applause broke out after the Allegro espansiva first movement, and the standing ovation at the end was sincere and well earned.

Jeffrey Heyl

I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record (remember those?) when I say this but say it I must: the SLSO musicians played beautifully here, as they did throughout the evening. The extended passages for the strings in the Andante pastorale second movement, for example, were a reminder of what great string players we have here. The sound was lush, focused, and just a bit astringent, which felt like an ideal match for the material. The woodwinds distinguished themselves as well all the way through, as did the expanded (five players) horn section.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the "Espansiva" is the use of wordless vocals that lend an otherworldly quality to the second movement. The soloists for these concerts were soprano Kate Reimann and bass-baritone Jeffrey Heyl, both of whom are familiar figures on local opera and concert stages. Their voices blended handsomely in their brief appearance, lending just the right sense of mystery to the music.

Next at Powell Hall: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra presents a showing of the film "Back to the Future," with the Alan Silvestri score performed live by the orchestra, Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m., October 30 – November 1. The showings take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: Beethoven's movie music and more October 23 and 24

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One of the things all three composers in last weekend's all-American St. Louis Symphony concerts had in common was that they had all written music for movies. In that respect, they were following a time-honored tradition that goes back centuries.

That's because film music is really just another form of what musicology types call "incidental music"—music written to accompany and provide extra punch for comedy and drama. And composers have been doing that since the days of ancient Greece.

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

This weekend's SLSO concerts open with a famous example: the overture that Beethoven wrote for Goethe's 1787 political drama "Egmont." Set in 16th century Spain when that nation was occupied by the Dutch, the play is the story of the Count of Egmont, a real-life Dutch nobleman who pleaded with his fellow occupiers to treat the Spanish with some respect and got executed for his efforts. A staunch Republican and champion of human freedom, Beethoven was irresistibly drawn to the story—an attraction that was only increased by the political situation surrounding him when he wrote his "Egmont" score in 1809 in Vienna.

Back then Vienna was not so much the fabled "City of Dreams" as a metropolis of nightmares. The French laid siege to it with shelling so fierce that at one point the composer took refuge in his brother's house and covered his head with pillows to escape the din. "[L]ife around me", he wrote, "is wild and disturbing, nothing but drums, cannons, soldiers, misery of every sort." The royal family—including Beethoven's friend and patron Archduke Rudolf—fled, along with many of the notable families with whom the composer had become close.

Left alone and, once the French occupation began, in difficult financial circumstances due to rapid inflation, Beethoven had little else to do but compose. The "Piano Concerto No. 5" ("Emperor") is probably the most famous work to emerge from this difficult period, although the Op. 81a piano sonata ("Les Adieux") is probably a close second.

Beethoven wrote a total of nine pieces to accompany the play, including "Die Trommel gerühret" (roughly "the drum is playing"), a particularly effective dramatic song for soprano and orchestra. These days the powerful Overture is the only one of the nine performed on a regular basis, possibly because it sums up the action of the play so neatly. Opening with stark, imposing chords by the full orchestra, it gradually moves, over the course of around nine minutes, to a triumphant finale. "The overture's conclusion", writes René Spencer Saller in her program notes, "foretells a freedom that only Beethoven—the stubborn dreamer, the Enlightenment's eternal child—could imagine. Mired in misery, he still believed in joy."

Schumann in 1850
en.wikipedia.org

Up next is Robert Schumann's "Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54," which was first performed in 1845 with Schumann's wife Clara (a gifted composer and pianist in her own right) as the soloist. Schumann had made several attempts at a large-scale work for piano and orchestra at various points in his life. As the early 20th-century poet and music critic Pitts Sanborn noted (in "Great Orchestral Music", Collier, 1962), Schumann "began to write a piano concerto at the age of seventeen before he was conversant with musical form... As early as 1839 there is apparently a reference to the A minor concerto in a letter sent by Schumann from Vienna to his betrothed, Clara Wieck: 'My concerto is a compromise among a symphony, a concerto and a huge sonata. I see I cannot write a concerto for the virtuosos: I must plan something else.'"

When Schumann's "something else" finally materialized it was, in fact, far removed from the sort of virtuoso showpiece that he and his fellow contributors to the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik" disdained. The piano is not set apart from the orchestra the way it is in the concerti of many of Schumann's contemporaries. From the very beginning, in which the soloist trades phrases with the winds, the piano is an integral part of the orchestra—a role it occupies until the very end. As Clara Schumann observed in her diary, "the piano is interwoven with the orchestra in the most delicate way—one can't imagine the one without the other."

"The opening allegro", write Brockway and Weinstock in "Men of Music," "is unstintedly opulent in melody, and rises to moments of sheer rhapsody. Its cadenza, far from interrupting the mood of the whole movement, sustains it—which makes it a rarity among piano cadenzas. The intermezzo is more restrained and contemplative, and the marvelously varied rhythms of the finale mount and mingle in a paean of unrestrained joy. These elements combine to produce, in the A minor Concerto, the sovereign gesture of musical romanticism."

From the beginning, audiences and critics mostly agreed. "When the Concerto was performed in Leipzig," report Brockway and Weinstock, "the Gewandhaus patrons (then the most enlightened on the continent) were already thoroughly acquainted with Schumann's ideas, but it took this definitive expression of them to evoke the Leipzigers' unqualified enthusiasm." The reception was also very positive when Clara performed the Concerto in London shortly before Schumann's death in 1856. Even the critic J. W. Davidson, who regarded the Concerto itself as "a labored and ambitious work," had to admit that "the praiseworthy efforts of the gifted lady make her husband's curious rhapsody pass for music."

These days the A minor Concerto is part of the standard repertory. The SLSO first performed it in 1913, with Marion Bauer at the keyboard, and most recently in November of 2011. Eric Le Sage was the soloist for that one (Stèphane Denève was at the podium), turning in (as I wrote in my review) a performance of chamber music-style intimacy along with the kind of close, cooperative give and take that goes with it. This time around the soloist is the young German pianist Lars Vogt, whose wide-ranging repertoire includes not only Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, but also Rachmaninoff and even Witold Lutoslawski.

Remarkably for a concert pianist, he is also making his mark as a conductor and, in fact, will take over as Music Director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Newcastle, U.K., for their 2015-2016 season. It will be interesting to see how all that plays out on stage with guest conductor John Storgårds.

Carl Nielsen in 1910
en.wikipedia.org

The concerts conclude with the "Symphony No. 3, Op. 27," (the "Sinfonia espansiva") written in 1910-1911 by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen. I've been a sucker for Nielsen's music ever since I first encountered his fiercely anti-war "Symphony No. 5" in Leonard Bernstein's remarkable 1963 recording. His symphonies have always been favorites of mine, along with his concerti, programmatic pieces like the remarkable "Helios Overture," and the quirky incidental music he wrote for Adam Oehlenschläger's "dramatic fairy tale" "Aladdin" in 1919.

Like G. B. Shaw, Nielsen believed in a kind of pantheistic "life force" that pervaded all of nature. It shows up in his fourth and fifth symphonies (both written in the shadow of World War I, when the "life force" no doubt appeared to be in danger of extinction) and pervades the third. Quoted in Hugh Ottaway's chapter on Nielsen in "The Symphony" (Penguin Books, 1967), Robert Simpson observes that "espansiva means the outward growth of the mind's scope and the expansion of life that comes with it."

"Here, in fact," continues Mr. Ottaway, "is the key to Nielsen's personality, and for those who like to strike directly at the root of the matter, the Espansiva makes an excellent introduction to his art. It is precisely in the generous, outward-looking aspect, and in the optimism springing from it, that Nielsen stands apart from so many of his contemporaries." "From the white-hot, orchestral hammer blows of its opening to its triumphant and open-hearted conclusion," wrote James Goodfriend in his notes for Bernstein's recording of the "Espansiva" with the Royal Danish Orchestra, "the 'Sinfonia Espansiva' proclaims itself the work of a great composer, one of the twentieth century's most irresistible symphonists at his best."

The symphony is remarkable in another way as well: the second movement includes wordless vocals for a soprano and baritone. They add an otherworldly quality to the Andante pastorale second movement. This weekend, that otherworldliness will be supplied by Kate Reimann and Jeffry Heyl, both of whom are familiar figures on the local opera and concert stage. Kate comes from a musical family, by the way; her mom Charlene is a respectable jazz singer in her own right and a frequent guest at the open mic night that I host for The Cabaret Project at the Tavern of Fine Arts.

The essentials: John Storgårds conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with piano soloist Lars Vogt, soprano Kate Reimann, and bass-baritone Jeffrey Heyl on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., October 23 and 24. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.