Symphony Preview: 'Tis the season, part 5: Ring in the New

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s (SLSO) holiday programming concludes Tuesday, December 31, at 7:30 pm with the annual “New Year’s Eve Celebration” concert. This year the figure on the podium will be a familiar one—former SLSO Assistant Conductor Stephanie Childress. She conducted the NYE concert in 2022 as well, at which time I wrote that she had  “won the audience over from the very start with a cheerful and unassuming stage presence.” It’s reasonable to expect more of the same this time around.

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

Daniela Candillari
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

One thing will be very different this New Year’s Eve, though. In the past, details of the program have always been kept secret until concert time. This year the theme is “dance music from around the world” and the program is available at the SLSO web site. We’ve been told to expect “a few surprises along the way,” but here’s a quick look at the official list.

Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904):  Slavonic Dance No. 1. Dvořák wrote two sets of Slavonic Dances (Op. 46 in 1878 and Op. 72 in 1886) as pieces for two pianos. They were so popular he was obliged to orchestrate them—and those versions proved even more popular. Dance No. 1, in C major, is a certified rouser of a furiant, a lively dance in alternating 2/4 and 3/4 time.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893):  Overture from “The Nutcracker”. The popular 1892 ballet is one of those works that is inescapable at this time of year. While the ballet is not generally regarded as one of the composer’s best, the suite that he assembled from it prior to the premiere has become a concert staple. The “Miniature Overture,” with its emphasis on the orchestra’s higher voices, neatly sets up a fairy tale atmosphere.

Anna Clyne (b. 1980): “Masquerade” for Orchestra. Composed for and premiered at the 2013 Last Night at the Proms. “Masquerade” is a short, wildly energetic romp for large orchestra. As Clyne writes at her publisher’s web site, it was inspired by “the original mid-18th century promenade concerts held in London’s pleasure gardens… where people from all walks of life mingled to enjoy a wide array of music…Combined with costumes, masked guises and elaborate settings, masquerades created an exciting, yet controlled, sense of occasion and celebration. It is this that I wish to evoke.” And, in fact, there’s an effervescent exuberance to the piece that’s a perfect fit for New Year’s Eve.

Joseph Turrin: Fandango. This 2000 commission for the New Mexico Wind Symphony is scored for solo trumpet, trombone, and concert band. “This six-minute piece,” writes the composer, “explores the rhythmic, melodic and syncopated elements of the Spanish fandango dance form (A lively dance in triple time for two dancers).” Principal Trumpet Steven Franklin and Principal Trombone Jonathan Randazzo will have the featured roles Tuesday night.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 – 1912)  “Valse de la Reine” (“The Queen’s Waltz”) from “Four Characteristic Waltzes,” Op. 22. Although his music is rarely heard these days, the British-born Coleridge-Taylor was, in his time, a celebrated composer, conductor, and teacher. Unlike his more famous works, such as his three cantatas based on Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha,” the “Characteristic Waltzes” are charming little “salon” pieces of the sort you might hear genteel young ladies playing at the pianoforte—not profound, but definitely “ear worms.”

William Walton (1902 – 1983): Crown Imperial. Composed for the coronation of King George VI in 1937, “Crown Imperial” is very much in the rousing patriotic tradition of, say, Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” marches. Walton’s inspiration for the title comes from a speech in Shakespeare’s “Henry V” describing the trappings of kingship, including

the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835 – 1921): "Danse Baccanale” from “Samson et Dalila” The composer was a dedicated world traveler who took inspiration from the places he visited. It’s hard to know how much of his 1874 trip to Algiers wound up in the lush exoticism of the Act III Temple of Dagon orgy scene from his 1876 opera, but it certainly packs a great dramatic punch, especially in the ecstatic coda.

Leonard Bernstein (1918 – 1990): "Lonely Town” from “Three Dance Episodes from On the Town.” The first and last movements from the composer’s first stage hit are brash and pure Broadway, albeit with some sophisticated harmonies and polyrhythms that weren't typical of the Great White Way back then. The “Lonely Town” second movement, on the other hand, sets a more elegiac and wistful mood, with muted trumpet over clarinets and strings.

Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825 – 1899): “Frühlingsstimmen” (“Voices of Spring”). It wouldn’t be New Year’s Eve without at least one Strauss waltz. This one was written with an optional coloratura vocal line and while I’m not sure which version we’ll hear on Tuesday (there’s no soprano soloist listed, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a surprise guest star in the wings), I couldn’t resist including the vocal version in the play list, especially since the singer is the celebrated Kathleen Battle (b. 1948) and the recording is from the 1987 New Year’s Eve concert in Vienna. Prosit!

José Serebrier (b. 1938): Selections from the  “Carmen Symphony in Twelve Scenes.” Since I have no idea which selections will be on the program (although I’ll be amazed if it doesn’t conclude with the “Gypsy Dance”), I have included all twelve in my play list. This 2004 suite is more properly a collection of orchestral excerpts from Bizet’s opera than a symphony, although it does follow the arc of the plot. Serebrier makes minimal changes in Bizet’s original score, although he has assigned the original vocal lines to instruments in the same ranges. Carmen’s famous “Habanera,” for example, is sung by the alto sax and Escamillo’s “Toreador” is assigned to the trombone.

Serebrier is best known as a conductor rather than a composer (although his catalog of compositions is sizeable), so I have included his own recording of the work with the Orquestra Simfonica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya in my playlist.

It’s likely that there will be additions to the program on Tuesday night, probably including an “Auld Lang Syne” sing-along, but we’ll have to wait until then to find out.

The regular concert season resumes on January 10 and 11 as Opera Theatre’s Principal Conductor Daniela Candillari leads the orchestra in music by Dvořák and Samuel Barber, along with the world premiere of the Accordion Concerto by composer and multi-instrumentalist Nina Shekhar with Hanzhi Wang as the soloist. Check out the SLSO web site for details.

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

Symphony Review: SLSO New Year's Celebration sparkles with surprises

Norman Huynh, music director of the Bozeman (Montana) Symphony, has made a number of guest appearances with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) over the last five years. But New Year’s Eve was, as far as I know, his first time conducting the orchestra in a full evening program that didn’t involve accompanying a movie.

Norman Huynh
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

The New Year’s Eve Celebration is normally handled by either the music director or associate conductor. But with the latter position currently vacant and Music Director Stéphane Denève in Paris at the helm of the New Year’s Eve concert by Orchestre National de France, it’s no surprise that the baton was passed to someone who is no stranger to the SLSO.

Huynh proved to be an excellent choice. He and the musicians were clearly comfortable with each other, his musical taste was impeccable, and his personal charm was irresistible—an important qualification for a concert in which the conductor also doubles as master of ceremonies. Huynh’s podium patter was breezy, informative, and entertaining.

The program of the New Year’s Eve Celebration concert is always kept under wraps until show time, so it’s usually a pleasant surprise to see what the maestro has in store for us. The conductor invariably puts their own personal stamp on both the choice of material and the presentation. Huynh’s approach was impressively eclectic, ranging from Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) to contemporary composer Kevin Puts (b.1972), to Sir Elton John (b. 1947).

The latter was “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (from the 1973 album of the same name), one of five numbers by guest vocalist Jimmie Herrod, a soaring ultra-high tenor whose musical interests are apparently as diverse as Huynh’s. He gave us powerfully emotional renditions of Arthur Schwartz’s “Alone Together” (in a lush 1961 arrangement originally made for Judy Garland) and Jim Weatherly’s 1973 “Best Thing That’s Ever Happened to Me” (a hit for country artist Ray Price, R&B stars Gladys Knight and the Pips, and gospel singer Rev. James Cleveland). He also rocked the house with “Son of a Preacher Man” and a rousing “Dancing in the Street,” the Marvin Gaye classic that hit the No. 2 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 in a 1964 recording by Martha and the Vandellas.  In every New Year’s concert I’ve attended, the singers came from the classical and/or musical theatre worlds, so it was a welcome change of pace to see a performer who could inject some rock and soul into the mix.

Jimmie Herrod
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

But let’s get back to the classics that made up the bulk of the program. Huynh’s interpretation of Shostakovich’s 1954 “Festive Overture” got the evening off to a rousing start. Slapped together in three days to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the October Revolution, the overture is a cheerful brass and percussion potboiler in which Huynh nevertheless found room for some nuance.

Following the Shostakovich was the colorful “Virelai (after Guillaume de Machaut)” by Kevin Puts. Commissioned and first performed by the SLSO under Stéphane Denève back in 2019, this brief little gem takes “Dame, a vous sans retollir,” a modest tune by Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–1377), and dresses it up in contemporary harmonies and a kaleidoscopic garment of sound—the musical equivalent of sparklers and/or sparkline wine. It was also a great workout for the band (especially the percussion section) and was a perfect contrast to Shostakovich’s good-humored bombast.

After a selection from the score for “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” by the redoubtable John Williams (b. 1932) and the first pair of tunes by Herrod, the French connection was re-established with a luminous reading of “The Fairy Garden” (Le jardin féerique), the final movement of the “Mother Goose Suite” by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937. The radiant final bars felt a little more subdued than I would have liked, but the solos by Concertmaster David Halen and Principal Viola Beth Guterman Chu were heavenly.

The first half of the concert closed with a pair of classics by Johann Strauss II (1825–1889): “The Champagne Polka” (complete with cork pops) and a somewhat truncated “On the Beautiful Blue Danube.” The former was the basis for some sight gags, as a waiter brought on a bottle of champagne and orchestra members lined up for drinks. The latter had a nice Viennese lilt, but the omission of the serene introduction seemed an odd choice.

Fun fact: the percussion instrument used to deliver the cork pops is officially known as a “pop-gun effect” and is available at the musical instrument shop of your choice. You, too, can be the life of the party for around $250 (although for that kind of moolah you’d be better off with four or five bottles of good champagne).

After intermission and the obligatory “Meet Me in St. Louis” sing-along it was back to la belle France again for “The Man with Two Mistresses” (L'homme entre deux âges et ses deux maîtresses) from the ballet “The Model Animals” ballet by Francis Poulenc (1899–1963). Denève will conduct the complete work January 27 and 28, but this tasty little aural bon-bon was a pleasant teaser.

Two more songs by Jimmie Herrod and it was time for a piece that was new to me and, to judge by the response, a delight for the whole audience. It was the “Fantasia on Auld Land Syne” by British composer Ernest Tomlinson (1924–2015).  Although described by Huynh as a theme and variations, I think it’s more properly classified as a quodlibet—a form dating back to the 15th century, in which, to quote the august Britannica, “several well-known melodies are combined, either simultaneously or, less frequently, sequentially, for humorous effect.”

“Humorous effect” is putting it mildly in this case. In the course of around 20 minutes, the “Fantasia” hilariously weaves together around 129 different melodies, ranging from “La Cucaracha” to the finale from Dvorak’s Ninth, always with “Auld Lang Syne” in the background somewhere. It’s a bit like Peter Schickele’s “Eine Kleine Nichtmusik” but with twice as many tunes and a larger orchestra. I doubt that anyone present caught all 129 themes (I certainly didn’t), but based on the chortles, chuckles, and guffaws among the spectators, enough of us did to make it a hit.

In a 2002 interview for MusicWeb International, conductor Gavin Sutherland called the “Fantasia” “a work of contrapuntal genius,” and I’d have to agree. The sheer complexity produced by combination of so many different themes in so many different styles must make this piece a beast to play and conduct, but Huynh and the SLSO musicians were more than up to the task. Comedy only works properly when it’s done with this kind of skill and precision. The “Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne” was, for me, the biggest surprise and biggest hit of the evening.

Next from the SLSO: Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin leads the orchestra and violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins in music by George Antheil, Jeff Beal, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin on Friday, January 12, at 10:30 am. On Saturday, January 13, at 7:30 pm Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews joins Slatkin and the band for an evening of Milhaud, Stravinsky, Weill, and Gershwin. Both concerts take place at the Touhill Center on the University of Missouri St. Louis campus. They’re part of a three-concert series concentrating on the influence of jazz on classical music. For more information, check out my interview with Leonard Slatkin at Chuck's Culture Channel.

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