Symphony Preview: From Russia with love

The Russian government may be stinking up the place right now, but that’s no reason not to appreciate the all-Russian program Thomas Søndergård will conduct in his debut. Sir Stephen Hough will be the soloist for Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and the orchestra will play works by Prokofiev and Anatoly Liadov.

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

Anatoly Liadov
en.wikipedia.org

If you’ve never heard of Liadov, that’s hardly surprising. Although he studied composition with no less than Nikolay Rimski-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he was, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “expelled for idleness in 1876.” He would eventually complete his education and even teach at the Conservatory, where his students would include Prokofiev.

And what did Prokofiev think of his mentor? Based on what he wrote in his autobiography (published in the West as “Prokofiev by Prokofiev: A Composer’s Memoir” in 1979) the answer is: not much. “He was a rather lazy man,” wrote the composer, “and in no hurry to start teaching… He regarded teaching at the Conservatory as a burdensome duty and showed no interest in his students.”

Liadov's laziness (and resulting unreliability) essentially conspired with his self-criticism to prevent him from producing a large body of work, although he did write a number of piano miniatures (his 1893 "Musical Snuffbox" still regularly shows up as an encore piece). Even so, he became associated with (if not an actual member of) the "Mighty Handful" (a.k.a. the "Russian Five") of composers who were so important in the formation of the Russian nationalist school. The actual five were Mily Balakirev (composer of the fiendishly difficult "Islamey" for piano), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin.

Appropriately for a Russian nationalist, Liadov is represented this weekend by "The Enchanted Lake" (Op. 62), one of two orchestral miniatures based on Russian folklore (the other is "Kikimora" Op. 63) that were part of sketches for an opera he never got around to writing. It’s a neat piece of work in which the harp, strings, and woodwinds suggest a quiet lake that might or might not have something unpleasant lurking down there in the low strings. In a letter to a friend, the composer wrote that the music contains “no entreaties and no complaints; only nature—cold, malevolent, and fantastic as a fairy tale.”

Make of that what you will.

Prokofiev in 1950

The concerts close with the Symphony No. 7 in C-sharp minor, op. 131 by Sergei Prokofiev. Unlike his former teacher, Prokofiev was a hard-working professional composer with a string of well-known and highly regarded works to his credit by the time he started composing the seventh in 1951.

Alas, that meant nothing to Stalin’s Central Committee, which had started enforcing the so-called “Zhdanov Doctrine” in 1946. Named for its creator, Committee secretary Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, the doctrine condemned what it regarded as “decadent formalism”—a vague term which, in practice, mean any type of music that did not explicitly promote the Communist Party line. Any work that seemed too abstract, too intellectual, or even vaguely dissonant was banned and its composer condemned.

Such was the fate of Prokofiev and his Symphony No. 6 Op 111, which had the misfortune to appear in the same year as the dreaded Doctrine. Although received with enthusiasm by both audiences and critics at its premiere ("another stunning victory for Soviet art," declared Pravda), only one year later the symphony’s spare and uncompromising sound provoked Zhdanov and company to declare it a failure. Suddenly those who praised it—Prokofiev’s biographer Israel Nestyev for one—suddenly decided was “clearly formalist.” “Prokofiev was stripped of his pension and left in poverty,” writes SLSO Communications Manager Caitlin Custer in her program notes “his name erased from cultural conversation."

By 1951, as a result, Prokofiev’s physical and fiscal heath were both poor. In an effort to improve both, he wrote the Symphony No. 7 in response to a commission from the Children’s Division of State Radio. He hoped its apparent simplicity and charm would earn him the 100,000 ruble Stalin Prize, and at the behest of conductor Samuil Samosud, even went so far as to re-write the original wistful and enigmatic ending to make it more upbeat.

It was all for naught. The symphony didn’t win the prize and the competing endings have led subsequent conductors with the dilemma of which one to use. Custer says Søndergård will be using the “happy” ending, but others have opted for the composer’s original. That includes Seiji Ozawa, whose 2000 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic is the one you can hear in the SLSO’s Spotify playlist.

Kirill Karabits, who recorded a complete Prokofiev symphony cycle with the Bournemouth Symphony in 2014, agrees. “You could call it a farewell symphony,” he said in a 2016 interview for The Gramophone. “It’s a symphony that looks back over his life and childhood—an old man’s dream of childhood. But he’s also saying farewell. Look at the ending—it’s just a heartbeat that slows down and then stops.” The Karabits recording includes the upbeat ending as a separate track and I have to say it does sound rather like the last-minute addition that it was.

Tchaikovsky circa 1872

The Seventh Symphony was, in any case, a true “farewell symphony” in that it was Prokofiev’s last completed work. He died less than a year after its 1952 premiere on, ironically, the same day as Stalin.

In between Liadov and Prokofiev we get the Tchaikovsky concerto, an enduring chestnut that always gets a warm response. The lively melodies (some appropriated from Ukrainian folk sources) and flashy piano part never fail to appeal. The challenge, for Hough, will be to find an approach to it that can make an old standard like this one fresh and exciting. Given his wide range of interests—he’s a writer and composer as well as a spectacular pianist—he’s just the man to do it.

The Essentials: Thomas Søndergård makes his SLSO debut conducting the orchestra and pianist Stephen Hough in an all-Russian concert of Liadov’s “The Enchanted Lake,” Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 8 pm, October 28 and 29. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live, as usual, on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

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

Review: Cool music defeats hot air at the St. Louis Symphony

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

Ward Stare

Share on Google+:

What with the all the hot air lately, both climatological and political, it has been difficult to really get into the holiday mood, but Friday night's St. Louis Symphony concert might just have gotten me over the hump.

It wasn't just the music that did it, although the mostly Tchaikovsky program was certainly chockablock with memorable melodies. The festive mood actually started with the Powell Hall lobby, which is decked out in its annual holiday finery, complete with green garlands gleaming with lights.

Adding to the sense of occasion was the fact that the guest conductor was Ward Stare, the former SLSO Resident Conductor and a popular figure with local audiences. And finally, there was the fact that the soloists were all members of the band: Concertmaster David Halen, Principal Harp Allegra Lilly, and Principal Cello Daniel Lee. Who, to quote Ira Gershwin, could ask for anything more?

The concert opened with the only non-Tchaikovsky piece on the program, the overture to Alexander Borodin's patriotic opera Prince Igor. Left unfinished at the time of the composer's death in 1887, Prince Igor was eventually completed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov, and the overture is mostly Glazunov's work.

It is, in any case, a lively and engaging piece, laid out in something like sonata form with a portentous introduction and a lyrical middle section bracketed by energetic statements of themes from the opera. Mr. Stare gave the middle section an extra helping of romance, which made the contrast with the rest of the overture that much more marked. The difference it made was subtle but gave the work more dramatic shape than a more prosaic reading would have produced.

David Halen

The orchestra played quite well, even though they haven't performed this music in over 45 years. The overlapping brass fanfares that pop up multiple times were especially crisp. Mr. Stare singled out Third Horn Tod Bowermaster and Associate Principal Clarinet Diana Haskell in the curtain call for their work, but everyone sounded at the top of their game.

Speaking of musicians at the top of their game, David Halen (to extend this metaphor a bit) hit multiple homers in the suite of six selections from Swan Lake (1876) and two from Sleeping Beauty (1889) that made up the rest of the first half of this program. With the exception of the familiar opening scene from Swan Lake, the numbers selected all gave Mr. Halen the chance to show the many moods of his virtuosity, from the delicate Sleeping Beauty "Entr'acte" to the fiery "Danse Russe" from Swan Lake. Spontaneous applause broke out after the "Pas de deux: Black Swan" Friday night, and Mr. Halen got a well-deserved standing ovation at the end.

The spotlight wasn't entirely on Mr. Halen, though. The "Pas d'action: White Swan" also gave Ms. Lilly and Mr. Lee a chance to show off in captivating duets with him. All of this was a reminder of what world-class musicians we have in our orchestra. Some visiting "big name" soloists might have generated more excitement in advance, but I strongly doubt that they could have played any better.

The most Christmassy part of the evening, however, came after intermission with the complete second act of Tchaikovsky's popular 1892 Christmas ballet The Nutcracker. Technical difficulties caused a last-minute cancellation of the planned projected images courtesy of Webster University's Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts, but it hardly mattered. Tchaikovsky's music is so filled with colorful orchestral touches that audience members who were familiar with Nutcracker (or with Disney's Fantasia, for that matter) were no doubt able to supply their own visuals.

Opportunities for individual players and sections to take center stage abound in this part of the ballet. So, to list but a few, we had icy trills from Mark Sparks and his fellow flautists in the opening scene at the Magic Castle, Karin Bliznik's commanding trumpet in the "Spanish Dance," the sinuous bass clarinet of Tzuying Huang at the end of the "Arab Dance," the lively contrast of Ann Choomack's piccolo and Andrew Cuneo's bassoons in the "Chinese Dance" and, of course, Peter Henderson's star turn with the world's most famous celesta solo in the "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy," complete with the less-often heard coda.

Mr. Stare conducted all this with the obvious joy and enthusiasm that has always marked his time on the podium. This was a well thought-out reading with plenty of variety and a strong sense of theatre. To quote a Noël Coward lyric, "I couldn't have liked it more."

Holiday concerts take up the rest of December, including A Gospel Christmas on December 8, music by Mannheim Steamroller on December 9 and 10, and the annual Macy's Holiday Celebration concerts December 16-18. Visit the SLSO website for more information.

Symphony Preview: From Russia with love

Conductor Han-Na Chang
Photo: Sheila Rock, EMI Classics

Share on Google+:

It's all Russia all the time at Powell Hall this weekend (November 4 and 5, 2016) as guest conductor Han-Na Chang makes her St. Louis Symphony debut with a program of music by three of the biggest names in Russian music of the 19th and early 20th centuries: Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Mikhail Glinka.

OK, Glinka may not have the immediate name recognition of the first two, but in his day (the first half of the 19th century) he was a major force in Russian music. Indeed, as Paul Schiavo writes in his program notes, Glinka "was Russia's first significant composer of opera and concert music and the first to impart a discernibly Russian character to his work. As such, he stood as spiritual father to Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Tchaikovsky: all composers who gave Russian music a distinctive identity during the second half of the 19th century." He's widely regarded as the intellectual father of the "Mighty Handful" (a.k.a. the "Russian Five") of composers who were so important in the formation of the Russian nationalist school: Mily Balakirev (whose Islamey was on last week's program), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin.

Mikhail Glinka in the 1840s
Portrail by Yanenko

Glinka's music, unfortunately, is rarely heard these days. The most notable exception is the piece that opens this weekend's concerts, the overture from his 1842 fairy tale opera Ruslan and Lyudmila. The opera itself hasn't gotten much traction outside of Russia but the overture is one of those pieces that used to crop up often as "filler" on classical LPs—a function it still serves on classical radio stations today. Its alluring melodies and neat little solo tympani part are irresistible.

Up next is Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, op. 19, composed in 1917 but, because of the Russian revolution, not actually performed until 1923 when Serge Koussevitzky conducted the premiere in Paris. It wasn't particularly well received—Paris audiences were more in the mood for Stravinsky's Octet for Wind Instruments, which premiered at around the same time—but a performance of a piano/violin reduction of the concerto in Moscow a few days later was a hit.

The fact that the violinist was Nathan Milstein and the pianist Vladimir Horowitz might have had something to do with that, of course.

The concerto didn't really begin to get widespread attention, though, until Joseph Szigeti performed it in Prague in 1924. "That incomparable Hungarian artist subsequently carried it all over Europe and America," writes Michael Steinberg in program notes for the San Francisco Symphony, "was the first violinist to play it with orchestra in the Soviet Union, and was politely persistent with English Columbia executives until they allowed him to make the first recording of it with Sir Thomas Beecham in 1935."

Prokofiev in New York, 1918
Photo by Bain News Service

One reason the concerto had trouble finding an immediate audience might have been the fact that it was a significant departure from the sarcastic and savage music that had first brought Prokofiev fame. Coming after wild and wooly works like the ballet The Buffoon and the Scythian Suite (which got such an electrifying performance by the SLSO back in 2012) it's overall lyricism probably felt a bit tame.

That doesn't mean that the work isn't difficult to play, though. The first movement starts out marked sognando (literally "dreaming") with the soloist playing softly over tremolo strings, but the music soon becomes agitated, with virtuoso passages using double stops. The second movement kicks the difficulty up to a whole new level with, as Peter Laki writes in program notes for the National Symphony Orchestra, "a combination of relentless rhythmic ostinatos (repeated figures), spicy harmonies, and a level of technical difficulty bordering on the impossible." And at the end of the final movement, Prokofiev has the soloist playing a chain of trills that moves higher and higher to the very top of the instrument's range, where playing in tune becomes increasingly more difficult.

Taking on the challenge of this music this weekend will be the young Czech violinist Jan Mrácek. Something of a prodigy, Mr. Mrácek began studying the violin at the age of five. In 2010 he was named the youngest laureate of the Prague Spring International Festival competition and in 2011 he became the youngest soloist in the history of the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra. Since then he has appeared with orchestras all over the world. Like Ms. Chang, he is also making his first appearance with the SLSO.

The concerts conclude with one of Pete Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits, the Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64, from 1888. Like the symphonies that bracket it, the fifth deals with the composer's obsession with fate and his attempt to find happiness despite the stress of being gay in Czarist Russia. If you need evidence of the pernicious effects of criminalizing sexual orientation, you need look no further than the pain and torment of Tchaikovsky's life.

Tchaikovsky portrait by Nikolai Kuznetsov

Somewhat surprisingly (in light of its enduring popularity), Tchaikovsky began the symphony at a time when he thought he might be played out. "Have I written myself out?" he asked in an April 1888 letter to his brother Modest. "No ideas? No inclination? Still, I am hoping to collect materials for a symphony." He continued to question himself after the lukewarm critical reception of the piece at its November 17th, 1888, premiere in St. Petersburg (due, in part, to the composer's poor performance as a conductor). Audiences and musicians, however loved it—not only in St. Petersburg but later in Prague and Hamburg as well. Time, in any event, would vindicate him (if not necessarily during his lifetime).

"There's a monumental, an epic quality to this symphony," observed symphony Principal Horn Roger Kaza in the program notes for the SLSO's last performance of this piece in 2014, "as with all of Tchaikovsky's late symphonies, although I find this one less tragic and fatalistic than the Fourth or Sixth. The Fifth is more exuberant throughout, and it contains absolutely brilliant strokes of genius." In an essay for the 1966 Penguin collection The Symphony, the Austrian-born British music writer Hans Keller goes so far as to suggest that the Fifth "may be the most consistently outstanding" of all Tchaikovsky's symphonies in the way that the orchestration "offers original sounds at every change of texture. If this is not generally recognized, it is only because all these sonorities seem as natural and necessary as the hills."

The essentials: Han-Na Chang conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with violin soloist Jan Mrácek in Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila Overture, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1, and Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., November 4 and 5, at Powell Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: My favorite Beethoven

Christian Macelaru

Share on Google+:

This weekend (October 21 - 23, 2016) a pianist popular with local audiences, Orli Shaham, returns to perform my favorite Beethoven piano concerto with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program that begins and ends with Russian music. Philadelphia-based conductor Cristian Macelaru is at the podium.

The concerto in question is Beethoven's Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, composed in 1806 and first performed in March 1807 at a private concert of the home of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz. The public got its first exposure to it at a concert on December 22nd of the following year at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, with the composer as both soloist and conductor.

The hall was freezing cold, the musicians poorly prepared, and program a four-hour monster, including the premieres of not only the fourth concerto but also the Choral Fantasy for piano, chorus and orchestra (a work often seen as a kind of "first draft" for the finale of his Symphony No. 9), the Symphony No. 5, and Symphony No. 6 (the "Pastorale"). Still, as audience member Johann Friedrich Reichardt (cited in program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic reported, the concerto made quite an impression: “[Beethoven] played with astounding cleverness and skill and at the fastest possible tempi. The Adagio [sic], a masterly movement of beautifully developed song, he sang on the instrument with a profound, thrilling melancholy.”

Orli Shaham

The Fourth is my favorite in part because it's so concise. I don't think there's a spare note in the entire work and everything is perfectly proportioned. It's also remarkably innovative for its time-beginning with the unusual opening, in which a short declaration by the solo piano is then taken up by the orchestra. Normal procedure would have been to have the orchestra state all the major themes before the piano made its first entrance. Instead, the movement seems to grow out of a dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra.

The second movement is a dialogue between the soloist and the band as well, but this time it's in the form of a call and response, in which dramatic pronouncements by the orchestra are met, at least initially, with more subdued and lyrical material by the soloist.

As Paul Schiavo writes in his program notes for these concerts, this unusual structure has given birth to "a tradition that equates the music with the mythic scene of Orpheus taming the Furies of the underworld with his song" (a notion first advanced by Beethoven's biographer Adolph Bernhard Marx in 1859). When I first heard this movement, though, I had a very different response to it. To my ears it's an argument (or maybe a debate), with the aggressive stance of the orchestra met, at first, with attempts at calm reason, then with agitation, and finally with a kind of resignation. It's as if, after trying in vain to calm and placate its orchestral partner, the piano finally sighs and say, "OK, OK, you win. Let's just drop it."

Anyone who has ever gotten into a political firefight on Facebook will recognize the progression.

It's hard to say what Beethoven actually had in mind. The great pianist Arthur Rubinstein once described the movement as having been “written by a man in mortal fear.” And Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny (cited in program notes for the San Francisco Symphony) said that "in this movement (which, like the entire concerto, belongs to the finest and most poetical of Beethoven's creations) one cannot help thinking of an antique dramatic and tragic scene, and the player must feel with what movingly lamenting expression his solo must be played in order to contrast with the powerful and austere orchestral passages.” The bottom line is that when it comes to its tragic conclusion, I have always felt a need to exhale slowly to prepare myself for the jolly, Haydnesque Rondo finale.

Serge Rachmaninoff, circa 1936

After intermission, we get a work that's also tinged with a kind of calm resignation: Serge Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances from 1941.

When I first heard this piece (a 1961 LP recording by Eugene Ormandy, who conducted the work's world premiere), I was immediately struck by the “late night” feel of the music-and not just because of the chimes in the last movement. I was not surprised to learn, then, that Rachmaninoff had originally titled the three sections “Noon,” “Twilight,” and “Midnight”. This was the composer's last completed work (he died two years after its premiere), and there's a sense throughout of a life approaching its conclusion.

The composer dropped the titles, preferring the let the music speak for itself, and it does so eloquently. The work is filled with evidence of Rachmaninoff's genius as an orchestrator, with elaborate and complex string writing, inventive use of brasses and winds (including a short but poignant solo for alto sax), and an effective but never overwhelming use of the large percussion battery. This is dramatic music that is nevertheless steeped in fall melancholy-very appropriate given that we passed the autumn equinox a month ago.

This weekend's concerts will open with a work that will probably be unfamiliar to you unless, like me, you're a big fan of late 19th century virtuoso piano works. It's Islamey, an "Oriental Fantasy" written in 1869 and then revised in 1902 by Mily Balakirev. We'll be hearing the orchestral arrangement by Sergey Lyapunov, but the piano original is widely viewed as one of the most technically difficult works ever written for that instrument. "It is a score that demands the fanciest of finger work," observes Tim Page in his liner notes for the spectacular 1998 recording by Yefim Bronfman, "as well as an extraordinary range of tone color and a certain intensity of conviction to hold it all together." Check out Bronfman's recording on YouTube to hear what he means.

The orchestral version is pretty colorful as well, building over the course of nine minutes to what Mr. Schiavo accurately describes as an "animated coda that concludes the piece with a display of virtuoso orchestral fireworks." It's lively, fun stuff and an excellent way to open a concert.

Balakirev, by the way, was part of a group of Russian composers commonly referred to as the "Mighty Handful" (a.k.a. the "Russian Five") who were important in the formation of the Russian nationalist school of composition; César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin were the other four. Balakirev, unfortunately, was far less prolific than his compatriots and less comfortable as a composer, although we're told he was a pretty spectacular pianist. These days Islamey is the only one of his works that gets any attention, but in his time he was remarkably influential. Here's how the Encyclopedia Britannica summarizes his legacy:

"It has been said that it was Balakirev, even more than Glinka, who set the course for Russian orchestral music and lyrical song during the second half of the 19th century. He developed an idiom and technique that he imposed on his disciples (above all on Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin, and to some extent on Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky) not only by example but by constant autocratic supervision of their own earlier works. His music is superbly colourful and imaginative, but his creative personality was arrested in its development after 1871, and his later work is couched in the idiom of his youth."

The Essentials: Cristian Macelaru conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with piano soloist Orli Shaham, on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. October 21 - 23. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio.

Concert Review: A dramatic Russian program with Gilbert Varga and the St. Louis Symphony, March 5 and 6, 2016

Gilbert Varga
Photo: Felix Broede

Share on Google+:

Those of you Of a Certain Age may recall an ad campaign by Esso Oil (now Exxon Mobil) that promised to "put a tiger in your tank." St. Louis Symphony guest conductor Gilbert Varga had a tiger in his baton Saturday night, and the roaring was most impressive.

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

The concert got off to an electrifying start with a thrilling performance of Tchaikovsky's "Hamlet, Fantasy Overture after Shakespeare," Op. 67. Written only a few years before the composer's death, the work shows the obsession with fate that permeates both his "Symphony No. 4" from 1878 and his "Symphony No. 5," which first saw the light of day in the same year as "Hamlet". It's powerful music with a strong sense of impending doom.

Working without a score, Mr. Varga used slashing, dramatic gestures in the service of a compelling interpretation that brought out every bit of the composer's high drama without sacrificing clarity or descending into exaggeration. The opening "fate" motif was arresting, the appearance of the ghost alarming, and the sad little oboe melody that represents Ophelia (beautifully played by Phil Ross) was truly poignant. It was a vivid and breathtaking performance, skillfully played.

The same can be said of the Shostakovich "Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major," Op. 102, that followed. Written for the composer's son Maxim and first performed by Maxim on his 19th birthday, the concerto is an unambiguously (and uncharacteristically) happy work. Soloist Denis Kozhukhin handled the exuberant and fiercely difficult passages in the outer movements with ease and style while playing the charming and unabashedly sentimental second movement with sensitivity.

Denis Kozhukhin

Mr. Kozhukhin is one of those "heads down" pianists who maintain a laser-like focus on the keyboard while playing, but that clearly did not prevent him from being attentive to what was happening in the orchestra. Critics have praised this young (born in 1986) Russian pianist for his balance of technique and interpretive depth, and based on what I saw and heard Saturday night I'd have to agree.

The concert concluded with selections from Prokofiev's 1936 "Romeo and Juliet" ballet. Culled from the two orchestral suites the composer put together around the same time as the ballet's premiere, the seven selections capture the dramatic arc of Shakespeare's play in a little over a half hour of colorful and varied music that demonstrates Prokofiev's skill as an orchestrator.

As he did with the Tchaikovsky, Mr. Varga delivered, from memory, a high-octane interpretation filled with grand gestures, strong contrasts, and a fine feel for the many wonderful orchestral details, which were performed flawlessly by members of the orchestra. Scott Andrews's clarinet, Danny Lee's cello, and Nathan Nabb's tenor sax, for example, all contributed to the delicate beauty of "Juliet—The Young Girl."

The emotionally potent "Romeo and Juliet before Parting" gave us more striking individual performances from Mark Sparks and Jennifer Nichtman on flutes, Jonathan Chu on viola, and, towards the end, Michael Sanders on tuba and Erik Harris's bass section with their premonition of the tragedy to come. Roger Kaza's horn section sounded terrific in the big, sweeping passages in the middle of that same movement.

If you think that sounds like a true virtuoso performance, you're right. There were many other arresting moments, including Concertmaster David Halen's delicate solo in the "Dance of the Maids from the Antilles," but the bottom line is that this was another demonstration of the depth the orchestra's talent pool.

Mr. Varga has made several appearances with the orchestra since I've started covering it regularly, and he seems to have real rapport with the musicians. It's not unusual for a conductor to wade into the orchestra and ask individual players to stand during curtain calls, but Mr. Varga did so with real enthusiasm, even stopping to kiss the occasional cheek and otherwise display affection for the players. Witnessing that, it's impossible not to smile.

Next at Powell Hall, Leonard Slatkin conducts the orchestra and chorus in Berlioz's "dramatic symphony" "Roméo et Juliette" Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., March 11 and 12. The program concludes the Symphony's four-week Shakespeare Festival. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information, visit the symphony web site.

Symphony Review: A pair of threes is a winning hand for the SLSO, Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18

Simon Trpčeski
Photo: imgartists.com

Share on Google+:

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko
What: Music of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: April 17 and 18, 2015

[Find out more about the music with my preview and the SLSO program notes.]

A pair of threes may not be a winning hand at the casino, but it paid off handsomely at Powell Hall Friday night with virtuoso performances by the St. Louis Symphony and guest conductor Vasily Petrenko of Scriabin's "Symphony No. 3", Op. 43 (1902-04) and, with soloist Simon Trpčeski, Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 (1909) ."

The Rachmaninoff Third—"Rach 3" to its friends, of whom I am one—is widely regarded as one of the most challenging concerti out there.  Fiercely difficult, it’s a reminder of what a prodigious pianist Rachmaninoff was.  For many years after its premiere, its only real advocate was the composer himself. 

These days it's a part of the standard repertoire.  Even so, it's a hell of a workout.  By the time Mr. Trpčeski banged out those four final chords that Rachmaninoff often used as his musical signature—one long note and three short, corresponding to “RACH-man-in-off”—he looked like he had run a marathon.

Which, in a way, he had, since his performance had both the virtuoso flash and musical sensitivity that the concerto demands.  He threw himself into this work, displaying a breathtaking energy in the first movement's extended cadenza and getting every ounce of hallucinatory intoxication out of the Intermezzo second movement—one of the best performances I've heard of it, in fact.  This was at least as good as the excellent Rach 3 we got from Stephen Hough and Peter Oundjian three years ago.  It was a nearly ideal combination of passion and poetry—which is probably what you should expect from a pianist who sings Yves Montand's "Les feuilles mortes" ("Autumn Leaves" to us Anglophones) in an interview.

Mr. Trpčeski recorded the concerto for the Avie label with Mr. Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic back in 2010 (copies of it are for sale in the lobby), so both performers obviously know the work well and are comfortable playing it together.  Mr. Petrenko's interpretation was richly expressive, bringing out every bit of Rachmaninoff's dark romanticism without sacrificing a sense of momentum.  The last movement, in particular, was a bit on the brisk side, but the tempo proved to be completely comfortable for both the orchestra and Mr. Trpcheski.

The Rach 3 is the kind of thing guaranteed to get a standing ovation when it's played this well, so you won't be surprised to learn that it got one Friday night.  The audience was rewarded with, first, words of praise for the orchestra from Mr. Trpčeski, followed by a charming encore: Chopin's "Waltz in A minor, B. 150 (Op. Posth.)," written in the mid-1840s but not published until 1955.  It was a nice mental palate cleanser after the Rachmaninoff.

Vasily Petrenko
Photo: imgartists.com

"Moderation," Oscar Wilde once quipped, "is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."  He could well have been referring to the life and work of Aleksandr Scriabin (1872-1915). Although a close friend and contemporary (they were born only a year apart) of Rachmaninoff, Scriabin was a far more eccentric (not to say insane) person.  And although he died young, his compositions—especially his solo piano works—anticipated the twentieth century's near-total collapse of conventional notions of harmony (at least among "classical" composers) in ways that those of his longer-lived friend did not.

First performed in 1905, his "Symphony No. 3" (subtitled "Le Poème divin," "The Divine Poem") has an ambitious program.  The work, according to a note presumably written by Scriabin and distributed at the work's 1905 Moscow premiere,  "represents the evolution of the human spirit, which, freed from the legends and mysteries of the past that it has surmounted and overthrown, passes through pantheism and achieves a joyful and exhilarating affirmation of its liberty and its unity with the universe."

The symphony consists of a short introduction and three movements, all played without pause and running around fifty minutes.  Scriabin titled the movements "Struggles," "Delights," and "Divine Play."  The piece is a richly orchestrated, wildly excessive hymn to excess that makes great demands on the players.  The expanded brass section, in particular, has a lot to do.  And, on Friday night, they did it awfully well. 

And they weren't alone.  The orchestral playing was remarkable for its consistently high quality—impressive, given that the SLSO hasn't performed this music in nearly four decades.  Scriabin is especially fond of the first trumpet here—he seems to have regarded the instrument as his personal voice—so Karen Bliznik deserves a shout-out for her work although, as I say, everybody deserves praise.

Mr. Petrenko had his work cut out for him with this piece.  Scriabin's notions of symphonic construction can sometimes feel repetitious, and there are so many big, swooning climaxes in this music that I think it might be easy to let them become distorted.  But Mr. Petrenko kept Scriabin's big, hyperkinetic musical machine running in top condition.  He allowed the piece to breathe when appropriate (in those delicate passages for the first violins and flutes in the second movement, for example) while still giving full vent to those big, heaven-storming moments.

It was all tremendously exciting, in short, and the audience responded enthusiastically with another standing ovation.  Yes, St. Louis audiences do tend to stand far too easily (and not just at Powell Hall, either), but in this case it was entirely justified.

Next at Powell Hall: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with pianist Emanuel Ax on Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., April 25 and 26.  Ax will be the soloist in Brahms' "Piano Concerto No. 2".  The concerts will include music by Elgar and Glanert. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: The SLSO deals a pair of threes Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18, 2015

This weekend's St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts offer a pair of threes: Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3" and Scriabin's "Symphony No. 3" ("The Divine Poem"). Both were written during the first decade of the 20th century when their creators were in their thirties. Both composers were Russian Romantics who were prodigious pianists. And both made significant contributions to the literature for both piano and orchestra.

Aleksandr Scriabin
en.wikipedia.org

(They both also experienced synaesthesia—the association of specific colors with certain musical keys—but that's another story.)

The personalities, however, of Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and Aleksandr Scriabin (1872-1915) were radically different, even though they were close friends from their days at the Moscow Conservatory. Rachmaninoff, famously, was so stung by the harsh criticism of his "Symphony No. 1" that he spiraled into a depression that was cured only after extensive hypnotherapy. Scriabin, on the other hand, was a raging egomaniac unacquainted with self-doubt. Rachmaninoff was a stable family man. Scriabin was an eccentric who fathered illegitimate children while separated from his wife. Rachmaninoff was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church with strong moral beliefs. Scriabin was a Theosophy-addled mystic who began to see himself as divine.

Basically, Rachmaninoff was sane while Scriabin, as Paul Schiavo writes in his program notes, "was, by any measure, quite mad."

How mad? Well, he became convinced that he could levitate and walk on water, for one thing. "I am the apotheosis of world creation," he said of himself. "I am the aim of aims, the end of ends." And at the time of his death in 1915 at the age of 43 (brought on by septicemia stemming from a sore on his upper lip), Scriabin was working on a "Universe Symphony". It would be a multi-media experience that would be performed in the Himalayas and would result in "a grandiose religious synthesis of all arts which would herald the birth of a new world." "The universe," as Scriabin's biographer Faubion Bowers wrote, "would be completely destroyed by it, and mankind plunged into the holocaust of finality." All we have are sketches of the first part, titled "Mysterium". Which might be just as well.

The intent behind the "Symphony No. 3," while less apocalyptic, was certainly ambitious. "The Divine Poem," ran a note presumably written by Scriabin and distributed at the work's 1905 Moscow premiere, "represents the evolution of the human spirit, which, freed from the legends and mysteries of the past that it has surmounted and overthrown, passes through pantheism and achieves a joyful and exhilarating affirmation of its liberty and its unity with the universe."

"The Divine Poem," writes Philip Huscher in his program notes for a Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance from this January, "is the longest work Scriabin wrote. It is scored for a very large orchestra, handled with the care and imagination of a much more experienced orchestrator. It is also the first of his works to be called a poem, signaling the shift from abstract symphony to a new, unnameable [sic] kind of music."

The symphony consists of a short introduction and three movements, all played without pause and running around fifty minutes. Scriabin titled the movements "Struggles," "Delights," and "Divine Play." Mr. Schiavo has a nicely detailed analysis of it in his notes for the SLSO program as does Mr. Huscher in his notes for the CSO. The former is heavier on musical detail while the latter includes fascinating quotes by the composer (Scriabin found few subjects more worthy of comment than Scriabin). They're both worth reading.

Although Scriabin died young, his compositions—especially his solo piano works—anticipated the twentieth century's near-total collapse of conventional notions of harmony (at least among "classical" composers) in ways that those of his longer-lived friend did not. He did it, however, in ways that were completely idiosyncratic, creating his own personal notions of harmony, including his famous "Mystic chord"—C, F♯, B♭, E, A, D. 

That failed to endear him to the serialists and others looking for a more rational and mathematical system.  "The strength of Alexander [sic] Scriabin," wrote Vladimir Horowitz for a 1956 recording of his sonatas, "…was unashamed Byronic romanticism.  It is one of those peculiar ironies that this strength in an earlier era may have turned out in retrospect to be his weakness in the age in which we live.  Today, in a more material age, unfortunately the tendency is to regard romanticism in any form with indulgent tolerance."

By the time Rachmaninoff got around to writing his "Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor," Op. 30, in 1909 he had fully recovered from the crippling depression brought on by the failure of his "Symphony No. 1" over a decade earlier and had achieved international recognition as both a virtuoso pianist and a composer. He wrote the concerto at his family's country estate, Ivanovka, in the summer of 1909 for a concert tour of the USA. The concerto's first two performances took place that November with the New York Symphony Society conducted by Walter Damrosch (the premiere) and Gustav Mahler (several weeks later).

Rachmaninoff in 1900
en.wikipedia.org

The Rachmaninoff Third is the K2 of piano concerti. Fiercely difficult, it's a reminder of what a prodigious pianist Rachmaninoff was. For many years after its premiere, its only real advocate was the composer himself. Even the virtuoso to whom the piece is dedicated, Josef Hofmann, never attempted to perform it in public. It wasn't until the great Vladimir Horowitz recorded it in 1930 and began to actively promote it that it started to rise in popularity. These days it's so much a part of the standard repertoire that two of the finalists in the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (Fei-Fei Dong and Sean Chen) picked it for their final-round concerts.

Still, it's not the sort of thing a pianist takes on lightly. Our soloist this weekend, Macedonian pianist Simon Trpcheski, is no stranger to the work, having recorded it for the Avie label with this weekend's guest conductor, Vasily Petrenko (who conducted a very impressive Rachmaninoff "Isle of the Dead" here in October, 2011). It also can't hurt that the orchestra played the work as recently as May of 2012 (under Peter Oundjian, with Stephen Hough as the keyboard).

An interesting local note: when the concerto had its St. Louis premiere on January 27, 1928, the soloist was Horowitz (the "young Russian pianist," to quote Post-Dispatch critic Thomas B. Sherman). The pianist had arrived in the USA just two weeks previously and had already created a sensation with the New York Philharmonic under Sir Thomas Beecham. Mr. Sherman loved Horowitz ("a powerful tone and a sparkling and expertly controlled technique") but hated the concerto, calling it "as dull a thing as the noted Muscovite expatriate has ever done". History has rather overruled him that one.

The essentials: Vasily Petrenko conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with pianist Simon Trpcheski in Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor" and Scriabin's Symphony No. 3, "Le Poème divin," on Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18, at 8 p.m. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: Mozart and Shostakovich offer stark contrasts at the SLSO Friday and Saturday, April 10 and 11, 2015

Dmitri Shostakovich
shostakovich.hilwin.nl

Share on Google+:

In the introduction to his chapter on Shostakovich in the 1967 Penguin Books edition of "The Symphony," British musicologist Robert Layton described the Russian symphonist somewhat dismissively as a "documentary composer, far more bound up with this time than...Prokofiev, or any other of his Soviet contemporaries."

That's probably not the prevailing view of Shostakovich these days, but I do think that a full appreciation of his "Symphony No. 8 C minor," op. 65, which the SLSO is performing this weekend, requires some understanding of the time and place of its origin.

Shostakovich wrote the work in a little over two months, during the summer of 1943 (although he probably had it sketched out in his head long before that). It was a time when the tide of the war was turning against Germany. Leningrad was still under siege but the Germans had been defeated at Stalingrad earlier that year, and the overall mood was more optimistic. Official composers were expected to reflect that in their music.

But Shostakovich was unable to comply. Yes, he was glad to see the Nazis lose, but he could take no joy in seeing Stalin win. He recalled all to clearly the Soviet dictator's reign of terror. In Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov's 1979 "Testimony," allegedly based on Shostakovich's memoirs, the composer is quoted as saying: "I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death. There were millions of them in our country before the war with Hitler began. The war brought much new sorrow and much new destruction, but I haven't forgotten the terrible pre-war years. That is what my symphonies are about, including Number Eight."

Stalin in 1943
en.wikipedia.org

"Between 1937 and 1939 alone," wrote Mark Wigglesworth in his notes for the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra recording the Shostakovich Eighth, "one and a half million Russians were liquidated. People were forced to inform on each other and in one region a quota was even established whereby everyone needed to inform on five people. If you could only name four, you had to be the fifth. In addition, Stalin's policy of agricultural collectivism led to such poverty and famine that there were even reports of parents eating children."

Against such a backdrop, only a memorial would suffice

Laid out in five movements—the last three of which are played without pause—and running just over an hour, the "Symphony No. 8" can sometimes feel overwhelming in its intensity. This is especially true of the long (just under 30 minutes) first movement. Marked Adagio, Allegro Non Troppo, it begins with a dramatic three-note theme in the lower strings, variations of which recur throughout the piece, and rises to a shattering climax in a violent, mechanistic parody of a march before fading out in a despairing lament for solo trumpet and strings. It's reminiscent of the opening movement of Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 5," which was probably the composer's intent.

That would be powerful enough all by itself, but Shostakovich follows it with a grotesquely martial Allegretto and a propulsive Allegro Non Troppo which, as Mr. Wigglesworth writes, "seems to go the whole hog in expressing the total crushing of an individual. The relentlessness of its machine-like ostinato shows no pity at the human shrieks that ride above it". It's fast and, like the mechanized warfare that seems to have inspired it, relentlessly loud.

A final blast of winds and percussion leads to the Largo fourth movement. It's a passacaglia with a repeating bass line that rises only to repeatedly fall back again. Higher instruments try—and fail—to escape the pull of its gravity. Blogger Paul Serotsky calls this movement "static, chilled, drained, the frozen heart of the symphony."

But nothing stays frozen forever. As the Allegretto final movement begins, that plodding bass line yields to what Mr. Serotsky calls "the first friendly sound in the entire symphony": a little phrase on the bassoons that sounds almost jaunty. Like the first movement, this one also builds to a massive orchestral outburst. But instead of falling into despair at the end, it yields to soft, hauntingly beautiful music in the flutes and strings. Maybe it's hope. Maybe it's just resignation. It is, in any case, in C major. And it's the end.

The Mozart family, c. 1780
en.wikipedia.org

The concerts will open with a work so different from the Shostakovich that it might as well have been composed on another planet. It's the "Sinfonia concertante" in E-flat major for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364, by Mozart. Written when the composer was touring Europe in 1779, the work is generally considered to be Mozart's most successful experiment in this form, which is essentially a symphony with a group (a pair, in this case) of instrumental soloists.

There's no horror here, but there is around a half-hour of great music. That includes a Presto finale that begins with what New York Philharmonic program annotator James M. Keller calls "a tune of ineluctable charm" and then moves on to a theme which is "the perfect expression of late-18th-century mores. For a moment we are transported to the drawing room of an 18th-century aristocrat. The conversation is clever and cultured, but suddenly all heads turn as one of the assembled eminences—a Voltaire, perhaps, or a Franklin—imparts an observation that towers above the surrounding babble, and then brings the proceedings back to earth with an irrepressible chortle."

Which seems only right, as Mozart was a fellow much given to irrepressible chortles, musical or otherwise.

The soloists for the Mozart are both members of the band: Assistant Principal Viola Jonathan Chu (playing violin this time around) and Principal Viola Beth Guterman Chu. They're also married to each other, a fact which has at least the potential to add an air of intimate communication to their performance.

At the podium will be Hannu Lintu. When I saw him here in October 2013 I found his style on the podium to be a nearly ideal mixture of romantic intensity and intellectual rigor—fire combined with ice. For a program with contrasts as stark as this one, that could be a good fit.

The Essentials: Hannu Lintu conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with violinist Jonathan Chu and violist Beth Guterman Chu on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., April 10 and 11. The program features Mozart's "Sinfonia concertante," K. 364 and Shostakovich's "Symphony No. 8." The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: A visit to Russia House with Graf, Hadelich, and the SLSO February 27-March 1, 2015

Share on Google+

If you missed last week's big double dip of Russian romanticism or if (to quote a famous Big Band-era lyric) you just "can't get enough of that wonderful stuff," the St. Louis Symphony has another helping helping of it for you this weekend as Hans Graf leads the orchestra and violinist Augustin Hadelich in a program of Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, and Lyadov.

"Lyadov?" I hear you cry, "who the heck is that?"

Anatoyl Lyadov
en.wikipedia.org

A reasonable question. "Anatoly Lyadov," writes Daniel Durchholz in his SLSO program notes, "is considerably less well-known than Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky or Igor Stravinsky, and to some degree that may be his own fault. Though a composer of considerable skill and a professor (albeit an eccentric and pedantic one) at the St. Petersburg Conservatory whose students included Sergey Prokofiev and Nikolay Myaskovsky, Lyadov produced no works of sustantial [sic] length and grandeur, as had a number of his contemporaries."

Lyadov's laziness (and resulting unreliability) essentially conspired with his self-criticism to prevent him from producing a large body of work, although he did write a number of piano miniatures (his 1893 "Musical Snuffbox" still shows up as an encore piece on a regular basis). Even so, he became associated with (if not an actual member of) the "Mighty Handful" (a.k.a. the "Russian Five") of composers who were so important in the formation of the Russian nationalist school. The actual five were Mily Balakirev (composer of the fiendishly difficult "Islamey" for piano), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin.

Appropriately for a Russian nationalist, Lyadov is represented this weekend by three orchestral miniatures based on Russian folklore: "Baba-Yaga" (Op. 56), "The Enchanted Lake" (Op. 62), and "Kikimora" (Op. 63). They're short (4-7 minutes each), colorful, and great fun. Which makes them a great way to open the concert (and provide multiple opportunities for latecomers to be seated).

Up next is Tchaikovsky's "Violin Concerto in D Major." Although wildly popular these days, the concerto was originally dismissed as "unplayable" by St. Petersburg Conservatory violin professor Leopold Auer (to whom it was originally dedicated and who was supposed to play it at its premiere). Tchaikovsky's colleague Adolf Brodsky would replace Auer as both the first performer and the dedicatee.

Eduard Hanslick in 1865
en.wikipedia.org

Worse yet, it was roundly condemned by critics at its 1881 Vienna premiere. Eduard Hanslick, the notoriously conservative critic who Wagner had mercilessly parodied a decade earlier in "Die Meistersinger," was especially scornful. After admitting that the work was "musical and is not without genius," he went on to unload a tub of bile that would not be out of place on AM talk radio. It's worth quoting at length, if only to illustrate just how clueless critics can sometimes be (the translation comes from Minneapolis Symphony program notes by Donald Ferguson).

"[S]oon savagery gains the upper hand," he ranted, "and lords it to the end of the first movement. The violin is no longer played; it is yanked about, it is torn asunder, it is beaten black and blue. I do not know whether it is possible for anyone to conquer these hair-raising difficulties, but I do know that Mr. Brodsky martyrized his hearers as well as himself. The Adagio with its tender national melody, almost conciliates, almost wins us; but it breaks off abruptly to make way for a finale that puts us in the midst of a Russian kermess [a German country festival]. We see wild and vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell bad brandy. Friedrich Vischer once asserted in reference to a lascivious painting, that there are pictures that 'stink in the eye.' Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto brings us for the first time to the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks in the ear."

But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

Today it can be hard to understand what Hanslick was gassing on about (although his description of the finale suggests that anti-Russian bigotry could be involved). Apparently written as a kind of therapy after Tchaikovsky's disastrous attempt at marriage failed and he was plunged into the despair heard so tellingly in his "Symphony No. 4," the concerto is an unfailingly sunny piece that never fails to please. Yes, it's technically demanding, but generations of violinists have mastered it and made it a central part of the repertoire.

Costume sketch for The Firebird by Leon Bakst
en.wikipedia.org

The concerts will conclude with a suite that Stravinsky put together in 1945 from the music for his 1910 ballet "The Firebird". The first in what turned out to be a series of successful collaborations between the composer and impresario Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, "Firebird" contains hints of the upheaval Stravinsky would generate with "Rite of Spring" and "Les Noces" but also pays homage to the work of Rimski-Korsakov, especially the Orientalism of (say) "Le Coq d’Or".

Interestingly, Stravinsky owed the opportunity to write "Firebird" to the laziness of—yes—Anatoly Lyadov. Diaghilev originally commissioned Lyadov to write the score but (according to Verna Arvey in "Choreographic Music") when, after months of waiting, Diaghilev went to see Lyadov to view his progress, the composer said, "it won't be long now. It's well on its way. I have just bought the ruled paper."

Soon Lyadov was out and Stravinsky was in. The premiere of "Firebird" put Stravinsky on the map, musically speaking, and it remains one of his most popular works. Stravinsky prepared three concert suites from the ballet: one in 1910, a second in 1919, and the third in 1945. In both the second and third suites the composer reduced the size of the orchestration. The last and leanest suite is the one you'll hear this weekend.

Both the conductor and violin soloist this week have appeared with the SLSO in the past. On the podium will be Hans Graf, former conductor of the Houston Symphony and an artist-in-residence at the Shepherd School of Music at my alma mater, Rice University. At his last SLSO appearance, Graf gave us masterful readings of Rachmaninoff's first and second piano concertos along with a wonderfully transparent interpretation of Shostakovich's dark and acerbic "Symphony No. 1." That bodes well for this weekend.

The young Italian-born violinist Augustin Hadelich, last heard here two years ago in a performance of Paganini's "Violin Concerto No. 1" that combined virtuoso flash with real emotional sensitivity. He'll certainly need both of those skill sets for the Tchaikovsky.

The essentials: Hans Graf conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with violin soloist Augustin Hadelich on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., February 27-March 1. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Review: Swooning romanticism with Watts and Valcuha at Powel Hall, February 20 and 21, 2015

Juraj Valcuha
rte.ie

Share on Google+:

Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Juraj Valčuha
What: Music of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky
When: Friday and Saturday, February 20 and 21, 2015
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis

[Find out more about the music with the symphony's program notes and my preview article.]

The young (late 30s) Slovenian conductor Juraj Valčuha came to town for his SLSO debut this weekend with a stack of impressive reviews from locations as diverse as London, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. in repertoire ranging from Mozart to Brahms to Szymanowski. Critics have praised his big sound, his precision, and what the Los Angeles Times critic called "his eloquent and flowing baton gestures."

All of that was certainly on display Friday morning in a program of two big Russian romantic blockbusters: Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 2" in C Minor, Op. 18 (first performed in 1901) and Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 6" in B minor, Op. 74 (a.k.a. the "Pathetique"), which had its first performance only eight years earlier. Also on display was a kind of lush, almost swooning lyricism and a tendency to linger over and emphasize details of phrasing.

That worked remarkably well for the Tchaikovsky. From the hushed statement of the first theme in the first movement—beautifully played by Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo and the low strings—to the massive, nearly hysterical final orchestral outburst that precedes those final dying chords in the cellos and basses in the last, this was a "Pathetique" that wrung every ounce of melodrama out of the score.

Mr. Valčuha made smart use of dramatic contrasts in dynamics throughout. Here's just one example: the little dying clarinet solo that ends the first movement exposition—sensitively played by Associate Principal Diana Haskell—was allowed to fade out almost to inaudibility, which gave the massive orchestral outburst that starts the development section that much more impact. It's a stormy movement anyway, but under Mr. Valčuha's baton it was more of a hurricane.

The wistful little 5/4 waltz of the second movement with its anxious contrasting second theme has never sounded more haunting. The aggressive march of the third movement radiated power, which made the opening despair of the last movement (Adagio lamentoso)—played after only the briefest pause—all the more heartbreaking.

To sum it up, this was a "Pathetique" that could stand with the best of them, and played with perfection by the orchestra.

That same intense, hyper-romantic approach served the Rachmaninoff less well. Tempi were on the slow side and the composer's long melodic lines were sometimes stretched to the breaking point. The big, lyrical second subjects in the first and last movements were as opulent as I have ever heard them but the outer movements sometimes lacked the rhythmic drive and sense of forward motion that I'm accustomed to hearing. This is a concerto that normally clocks in at around 35 minutes. Mr. Valčuha's version came in at closer to 45 by my reckoning, and not just because of the long pause after the first movement while we waited for latecomers to be seated.

André Watts
cmartists.com / Steve J. Sherman

That said, it was still a captivating performance. Mr. Valčuha is, as other critics have noted, a very commanding and theatrical presence on the podium. That LA Times review describes him as conveying the impression that he was spontaneously creating the music out of thin air—a very apt description of the way he seems to be physically molding the sound. And while I don't think his approach to the Rachmaninoff was ideal, especially for any listeners who might have been encountering the piece for the first time, it was certainly a personal and rather fascinating take on music that can often seem over-familiar.

I am, of course, assuming that tempo choices and the overall approach were largely Valčuha's idea. I should point out, in all fairness, that when this weekend's soloist, the legendary André Watts, last appeared with the SLSO in 2010, his Grieg concerto was a bit on the slow side as well, so perhaps this was a collaborative decision.

Mr. Watts' performance was, in any case, impressive—technically solid and poetically expressive. He has often performed and recorded the Russian romantic repertoire, Rachmaninoff included, and has apparently been touring extensively with the second concerto recently—often to rave reviews. The concerto is often given flashy performances that emphasize the virtuoso nature of the work, but Mr. Watts and Mr. Valčuha made, my misgivings not withstanding, an awfully good case for taking a more leisurely and autumnal view of this music.

Next at the SLSO: Hans Graf conducts the orchestra with violin soloist Augustin Hadelich on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., February 27-29. The program includes Tchaikovsky's "Violin Concerto" and the suite from Stravinsky's "Firebird" ballet. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: Two Russian romantic blockbusters at Powell Hall February 20 and 21, 2015

Share on Google+

Works by two giants of the Russian romantic school are on the Powell Hall Stage this week as the St. Louis Symphony under guest conductor Juraj Valcuha takes on Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 2" in C Minor, Op. 18 (first performed in 1901) with famed pianist André Watts as soloist and Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 6" in B minor, Op. 74 (a.k.a. the "Pathetique"), which had its first performance only eight years earlier.

Rachmaninoff in the early 1900s
en.wikipedia.org

Although he as over three decades older than Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky was nonetheless a huge supporter of the younger composer. When the latter was only 16, Tchaikovsky was already predicting "a great future" for him, according to Rachmaninoff biographer Max Harrison. In an 1892 interview with the Petersburg Gazette Tchaikovsky went even farther, naming Rachmaninoff (along with Glazunov and Arensky) as one of the younger generation of composers whom he expected to take up the torch of Russian romanticism after he retired. "That made me so glad," wrote Rachmaninoff to a friend when he read the interview. "My hearty thanks to the old man for not having forgotten about me!"

Tchaikovsky's faith certainly appeared to be validated by Rachmaninoff's early successes. "By the time he was 20," writes Paul Schiavo in his SLSO program notes, "Rachmaninoff had completed a piano concerto; an opera, Aleko, which was triumphantly produced at the Bolshoi Theater; several tone poems and chamber pieces; and a number of keyboard works, including the famous Prelude in C-sharp minor. The stage seemed set for a lifetime of rich musical accomplishment."

All that came to a crashing halt when the composer's "Symphony No. 1" had its St. Petersburg premiere in 1897. The performance was a debacle (conductor Alexander Glazunov, a notorious alcoholic, was said to be conducting under the influence) and critics hated it. César Cui, for example, famously wrote that if "there were a conservatory in Hell, if one of its talented students were instructed to write a program symphony on the ‘Seven Plagues of Egypt,’ and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would bring delight to the inhabitants of Hell.”

The psychological impact on the young Rachmaninoff's was devastating. "All my self-confidence broke down," he recalled, "and the artistic satisfaction that I had looked forward to was never realized." He spiraled down into a depression so severe that friends urged him to seek help from one Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who was then making a name for himself in Moscow with hypnotherapy.

Dahl hypnotized Rachmaninoff daily for three months. "Dahl had inquired what kind of composition was desired of me," recalled the composer, "and he was informed 'a concerto for pianoforte,' for I had promised this to people in London and had given up in despair the idea of writing it. In consequence, I heard repeated, day after day, the same hypnotic formula as I lay half somnolent in an armchair in Dr. Dahl's consulting room. 'You will start to compose a concerto—You will work with the greatest of ease—The composition will be of excellent quality.' Always it was the same, without interruption."

The result was everything Rachmaninoff could have hoped for. He took up composing with a new vigor. Ideas for the concerto "began to well up within me," he reported. The second the third movements were completed by the autumn on 1900 and by the spring on 1901 the entire work was ready for a November Moscow premiere under Alexander Siloti, with the composer at the piano. It was a hit with both critics and audiences and has remained so ever since.

The Second may not be the best of Rachmaninoff's four piano concerti—both the revised First and (my favorite) the Third are more economical and generate more momentum—but its flashy (and technically demanding) solo passages, soaring melodies, and showy finale have made it a real crowd pleaser. From its famous seven-chord introduction to the big tune of the finale (popularized by Frank Sinatra in 1945 as “Full Moon and Empty Arms”), this is a concerto that is impossible to dislike.

Tchaikovsky, aged 52.
Photographed by Alfred Fedetsky
in Kharkov, 14/26 March 1893
wiki.tchaikovsky-research.net

If the Rachmaninoff concerto is brimming with the optimism and confidence of youth, Tchaikovsky's "Symphony No. 6" is marked by the regret and despair of age. Which, given the composer's circumstances and mood at the time, is a bit surprising.

When Tchaikovsky began working on the symphony at his country house in Frolovskoe in the spring of 1893, all the signs were positive. "Although his health and spirits had been more than usually good," wrote R.L.F McCombs in program notes for the Philadelphia Orchestra, "he made sure they would remain so by taking long walks, even in bad weather. He was fifty-three, popular, respected, and in fairly easy circumstances."

Tchaikovsky actually began work on the Sixth in 1891, after he returned from a trip to America, but he abandoned work on it the following year (Soviet musicologist Semyon Bogatyrev would complete it in 1950). "You know I destroyed a symphony I had been composing and only partly orchestrated in the autumn," he wrote to his nephew Vladimir Davydov in February of 1893. "During my journey I had the idea for another symphony, this time with a programme, but such a programme that will remain an enigma to everyone—let them guess; the symphony shall be entitled: A Programme Symphony (No. 6). The programme itself will be suffused with subjectivity, and not infrequently during my travels, while composing it in my head, I wept a great deal. Upon my return I sat down to write the sketches, and the work went so furiously and quickly that in less than four days the first movement was completely ready, and the remaining movements already clearly outlined in my head. The third movement is already half-done. The form of this symphony will have much that is new, and amongst other things, the finale will not be a noisy allegro, but on the contrary, a long drawn-out adagio. You can't imagine how blissful I feel in the conviction that my time is not yet passed, and to work is still possible. Of course I might be mistaken, but I don't think so."

The first performance—in St. Petersburg, with the composer conducting—did not, alas, realize those hopes. Tchaikovsky was, unfortunately, much less capable as a conductor than as a composer. "He was too diffident to demand the best results from his players," wrote McCombs, "and would rather have a half-way performance than a fuss. In public he suffered from nervousness and had a peculiar delusion that in conducting, his head was liable to fall off if he did not support it with his left hand which, of course, permitted him only the use of his right." As a result, the first performance was "received with politeness rather than enthusiasm."

That would change with subsequent performances, but Tchaikovsky never lived to see it happen; nine days after the premiere, the composer was dead. The official cause: cholera, brought on by drinking a glass of contaminated drinking water. Whether that was true or not quickly became a matter of some contention and even today theories abound that the composer committed suicide or was murdered. What is certain, though, is that the "Pathetique" has become enduringly popular.

As well it should. This exceptionally well-crafted symphony’s compelling mix of triumph and tragedy is, as the song goes, “simply irresistible”. Only a world-class grouch, for example, could refuse to applaud after the exuberant third movement and only a heart of granite could fail to be moved by the despairing finale. Those final, dying chords in the low strings are just heartbreaking. A well-conducted "Pathetique" leaves the audience feeling that they need to take a moment to exhale.

The Essentials: Juraj Valcuha conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with piano soloist André Watts on Friday at 10:30 a.m. (a Coffee Concert with free Krispy Kreme doughnuts) and Saturday at 8 p.m., February 20 and 21. The Saturday concert will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.