Symphony Review: The SLSO rings in the 20s with music of the (19)20s

The year 1921 was no picnic. Traumatized by political violence, a ruinous and ultimately pointless foreign war, and a pandemic that killed more people than the war itself, Americans were ready to celebrate. The result was a decade of irrational exuberance known as “the roaring twenties.” That exuberance was distilled, refined, and transmuted into musical art by one of the last century’s great composers, George Gershwin.

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

As St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Stéphane Denève noted in his opening remarks for the SLSO’s New Year’s Celebration concert Friday night (December 31st, of course), the parallels between 1921 and 2021 were reason enough to dedicate the first half of the night’s festivities to the music of Gershwin, including two of his Greatest Hits: the 1924 “Rhapsody in Blue” and the 1928 tone poem “An American in Paris.”

The evening opened, appropriately, with an overture. Specifically, the overture to Gershwin’s 1930 musical “Girl Crazy,” which ran for 272 performances at Broadway’s Alvin Theater. Orchestrated by Robert Russell Bennett (a decent composer in his own right), this lively curtain raiser includes hits like “Embraceable You,” “But Not for Me,” and “I Got Rhythm,” which was a show stopper for the 22-year-old Ethel Merman. Denève and the band dug into it con brio, with a performance high on fun and finesse.

Michelle Cann and
Stéphane Denève

In his introduction, Denève promised Gershwin “with just a tiny French accent”—a promise on which he made good in both the “Rhapsody” and “An American in Paris,” with readings filled with panache and originality.

This was especially true of the “Rhapsody,” thanks to a fresh, imaginative take on the piano part by soloist Michelle Cann. When Kirill Gerstein was the soloist for the “Rhapsody” in 2014, (a performance recorded live and available on Spotify) he freely embellished the music in a '20s jazz style—as did the composer himself in the work's premiere. Cann imbued her performance with that same sense of freedom and improvisation but (as far as I could tell) without changing a single note of the printed score. Which is quite a remarkable accomplishment. Denève conducted with flair and the band played with true twenties zip.  The famous opening solo had a bluesy feel in the hands of Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews and Principal Trumpet Karin Bliznik, who brought a buoyant jazz age spirit to her playing throughout.

A performance like that often results in a standing ovation and an encore and we got both Friday night. The encore was a short (no repeats) and snappy piano four hands arrangement of Scott Joplin’s “The Cascades” (written for the 1904 World’s Fair) with two of the hands belonging to Maestro Denève.

Preceding the “Rhapsody” was an elegant and romantic “American in Paris.” Andrews and Bliznik had solid solos here again, as did Concertmaster David Halen and guest artist James Land on tuba. Done well, this is a work that never disappoints. The animated opening with its colorful evocation of the city's sidewalk cafes and bustling boulevards (complete with honking taxi horns in the percussion section) is a masterful bit of musical imagery. And the lyrical central section evokes not only the homesickness of the traveler but also the allure of Paris at night. Denève brought out some of the more piquant harmonies in the score—a reminder that the composer was, in his own words, writing “in typical French style, in the manner of Debussy and The Six.”

The second half of the concert opened with the first and last movements of the 1926 “Mississippi Suite” by Ferde Grofé, the gent who orchestrated Gershwin’s “Rhapsody.” Although not nearly as popular as Grofé’s “Grand Canyon Suite,” the “Mississippi Suite” is not without its charms, all of which came through clearly in Friday night’s performance. “Father of Waters,” the opening movement, captured the serene grandeur of Big Muddy’s headwaters in Minnesota, while “Mardi Gras” was a rousing closer, complete with a romantic theme that would later become the 1942 Frank Sinatra hit “Daybreak.”

Up next was a world premiere that also took its inspiration from the Mississippi, the “Voyageur Fantasy” for horn and orchestra by Stefan Freund, a Missouri-based  composer and founding member of the contemporary music ensemble Alarm Will Spound. The title refers to the French-Canadian trappers who were among Missouri’s earliest settlers. In comments from the podium, Denève revealed that the work’s two short movements are intended to reflect a day in the life of a voyageur, beginning with a mysterious opening depicting dawn on the river. That leads to a long, technically demanding cadenza followed by what sounds like a wild, alcohol-fueled and blues-infused dance that stretches both the instrument and player to their limits.

Dueling vocalists Debby Lennon
and Stéphane Denève

Principal Horn Roger Kaza seemed unfazed by those demands, combining a cool on-stage persona with protean technique. Rapid passages, leaps that cover the horn’s entire range, and what sounded like every conceivable form of hand muting were all handled with that deceptive sense of ease that marks the true virtuoso. Congratulations to Kaza, Denève, and the orchestra for a job well done.

The program concluded with a quartet of popular favorites: the Dick Hayman arrangements of “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “The St. Louis Blues March,” along with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Do-Re-Mi” sung with her usual élan by Debby Lennon and preceded by some comic byplay in which Denève displayed his skill at solfeggio (singing with the sol-fa syllables).

And, of course, there was “Auld Lang Syne” as a sing-along. We all sounded a bit muffled by our masks, but the sentiment was undiluted.

At the start of the evening, Maestro Denève expressed the hope that the 2020s would bring an explosion of creativity similar to the one that occurred a century ago. I hope he’s right, and I’ll happily raise a glass of something bubbly to toast the idea.

Next at Powell Hall: The regular season resumes as Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and piano soloist Shai Wosner (substituting for the originally scheduled Lars Vogt) in the Symphony No. 1 by Brahms, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Detlev Glanert’s 2012 “Brahms-Fantasie.” Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 8 pm, January 7 and 8  at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center.

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

Review: A potent Fifth of Beethoven

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

Roger Kaza

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Attracting big-name international soloists, as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra does on a regular basis, is a sure sign that an orchestra is playing in the big leagues. So does having first chair players that are good enough to take the solo spot themselves. Friday night (October 27, 2017) we had examples of both.

The concert opened with the Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major by Richard Strauss. Written in 1943, when the composer was in his eighties, it's a warm and nostalgic look back on the cultural traditions that had been seriously poisoned by the Nazi regime under which Strauss labored. The last movement in particular, as Music Director David Robertson pointed out in his pre-concert talk, has a kind of grace that recalls the horn concertos of Mozart.

In the solo spot was SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza, delivering a technically solid performance that was a model of classical restraint. That approach worked especially well in the Rondo finale, which skipped along beautifully. For me, though it was a bit less effective on the first and second movements, where a bit more passion would have been welcome. Mr. Kaza also muted his horn a bit too much, I thought, often causing him to be swamped by the orchestra. He and Mr. Robertson showed real rapport, though, and got impeccable support from his fellow orchestra members. It was, overall, a very satisfying piece of work that drew a standing ovation.

Up next was Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs, composed between 1905 and 1908 when he was studying with Arnold Schoenberg but not fully orchestrated and published until 1928. Like the Strauss concerto, this is also music that largely looks back to the past, although in this case that past includes Strauss himself. There's a yearning and ecstatic romanticism to this music that makes it very approachable even if, as René Spencer Saller points out in her program notes, it rather annoyed Schoenberg.

The soloist was soprano Christine Brewer, who is both a big-name international performer as well as a local favorite, with stage credits that include not only Union Avenue Opera and Opera Theatre of St. Louis but also the Metropolitan Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and English National Opera. No surprise, then, that her singing here combined a luminous, powerful sound with a clear grasp of the text.

Soprano Christine Brewer
Photo: Christian Steiner

Those texts come from seven different German poets and vary from Carl Hauptmann's straightforward "Nacht" (Night) with its vivid evocation of a nocturnal landscape to Rilke's "Traumgekrönt" (Crowned in Dreams) with its more elliptical sexual references. Ms. Brewer showed the sensitivity to the varied moods of the songs that I have come to expect of her over the years. From the post-coital blush of "Libesode"(Ode to Love") to the quiet contemplation of "Im Zimmer" (Indoors), it was all there, and delivered with great authority.

The concert concluded with a rousing Beethoven Symphony No. 5, conducted without a score and with real fire. The Fifth has been performed and recorded so many times by so many different orchestras that it can be difficult for a conductor to put his own stamp on the work, but Mr. Robertson nevertheless managed to do just that with a driving, high-energy interpretation that created tangible excitement.

It even had some surprises to offer, including a headlong first movement and a graceful second that ran, with only the briefest pause, straight into the ghostly third. The orchestra played superbly, with fine solo work from everyone, including Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks in the first movement cadenza and flautist Ann Choomack on piccolo in the finale.

In a 2006 program note on the Beethoven Fifth for the Performance Today radio program, Christopher H. Gibbs noted that "it is difficult to divest this best known of symphonies from all the baggage it has accumulated through nearly two centuries and to listen with fresh ears to the shocking power of the work and to the marvels that Beethoven introduced into the world of orchestral music." Mr. Robertson's energetic approach jettisoned quite a bit of that baggage, reminding us of the work's remarkable power and originality.

Next at Powell Hall: SLSO Resident Conductor Gemma New leads the orchestra in John William's score for Jurassic Park, accompanying a showing of the film. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., November 3-5. As with all film events, there will be popcorn, drink specials, and you'll be able to bring food and drink into the hall with you; so be careful to avoid spills.

Symphony Preview: Cafe Vienna

We were in Vienna for a few days earlier this month and drenched ourselves in musical history. We visited the Mozarthaus museum. We saw a concert at the Musikverein and took a tour of the Vienna State Opera. We even stayed at the Hotel Beethoven on Papagenogasse, where the wall of our room was dominated by a picture of Placido Domingo in Fidelio.

And, of course, we had coffee and pastries.

This music scheduled for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this weekend (October 27 - 29, 2017) brought all of that back to mind. Two of the three works on the program were first performed in Vienna and the third, while premiered in Salzburg, was performed there by the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm. So it's essentially "all Vienna all the time" this weekend.

The concerts open with that last work I mentioned. It's the Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major by Richard Strauss. First performed on August 11th, 1943, the concerto's warmly nostalgic sound stands in stark contrast to the state of mind of its composer. His heath was not good, his wife was going blind, and the regime to which he had effectively sold his soul-and which he would later describe as a "twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals"-was collapsing. Small wonder, then, that he took refuge in a kind of musical nostalgia.

Roger Kaza

Its lyricism not withstanding, the concerto is a difficult piece to perform, which may be one of the reasons why this is only the second time the SLSO has presented it. The local premiere was given back in 1987 with the famed Barry Tuckwell as the soloist. This time the solo spot will be taken by SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza. As someone who loves seeing local band members take center stage, I'm very much looking forward to his performance.

Up next will be the Seven Early Songs, composed by Alban Berg between 1905 and 1908 when he was studying with Arnold Schoenberg but not published until 1928. They hark back to the late Romantic sound world of Mahler and Strauss for the most part and are less terse and elliptical than the kind of thing Berg was writing when he published them. That means you can expect something very different from the last Berg song cycle we heard at Powell Hall.

That last song cycle was the Five Orchestral Songs to Picture-Postcard Texts by Peter Altenberg, performed by local favorite Christine Brewer last May. It's only appropriate, then, that Ms. Brewer is back as the soloist this time around. Ms. Brewer has substantial operatic credentials and Berg's songs are always very theatrical, so it should be a good fit.

Christine Brewer
Photo: Christian Steiner

At the other end of the popularity spectrum is the final work on the program, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. The opening movement, in particular, has been heard and parodied so often that it's easy to forget that the symphony's premiere on December 22, 1808, was not a great success. The Fifth was part of a mammoth five hour program that included the Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral"), the Piano Concerto No. 4, a couple of movements from the Mass in C, a concert aria ("Ah, perfido"), and the Op. 80 Choral Fantasy. Beethoven conducted and played the solo piano part in the concerto and the Fantasy.

There was only one rehearsal before the concert, the musicians weren't up to Beethoven's demands, the auditorium was cold, and by the time the Fifth was played after intermission the audience was exhausted. Things went so badly that at one point the Choral Fantasy had to be stopped completely after a performance error. Not auspicious.

In fact, it wasn't until E.T.A. Hoffmann published an enthusiastic review of the newly published score in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung a year and a half later that everyone began to sit up and take notice of the Fifth. "Radiant beams shoot through this region's deep night," wrote Hoffmann of the music's dramatic effect, "and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy everything within us except the pain of endless longing-a longing in which every pleasure that rose up in jubilant tones sinks and succumbs, and only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with full-voiced harmonies of all the passions, we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits."

More and better-rehearsed performances followed. By the time Hector Berlioz wrote his Critical Study of Beethoven's Nine Symphonies he could state that the Fifth was "without doubt the most famous of the symphonies" and "the first in which Beethoven gave wings to his vast imagination without being guided by or relying on any external source of inspiration." Today the Fifth is famous not just on earth but in outer space as well; a recording of the first movement by the Philadelphia Orchestra was part of the Voyager Golden Record, included on the first two Voyager space probes launched in 1977 and now speeding through deep space.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in music by Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, and Beethoven Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., October 27 - 29. Soprano Christine Brewer will perform Berg's Seven Early Songs and SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza will play Strauss's Horn Concerto No. 2. The concerts will conclude with Beethoven's popular Symphony No. 5. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

St. Louis classical calendar for the week of March 30, 2015

Roger Kaza

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The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra presents a St. Louis Symphony Monday concert on Monday, March 30, at 7:30 p.m. "Principal horn Roger Kaza leads a concert of Baroque period music with musicians from the St. Louis Symphony." The concert takes place in the Hettenhausen Center for the Arts on the college campus in Lebanon, IL. For more information: thehett.com.

The Tavern of Fine Arts presents The Linjadi Trio on Friday, April 3, at 8 p.m. The Linjadi Trio consists of Lindsey Jones, violin; James Nacy, cello; and Diana Umali, piano. The Tavern of Fine Arts is at 313 Belt in the Debaliviere Place neighborhood. For more information: tavern-of-fine-arts.blogspot.com.