Symphony Review: Denève and the SLSO present a musical and visual feast

Five years ago, when Stéphane Denève was the Music Director Designate of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO), I asked him if he was thinking of using any visuals to go with the ballet scores he was planning since this was something the symphony had done successfully in the past. He said no "because as much as I love combining art forms, I'm very doubtful about the visual and the music together… Every time you have a visual which is very powerful, the music tends to become an accompaniment. And therefore it's very hard to find the right balance to make that successful."

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

Grégoire Pont
Photo: Israel Solorzano

Judging from the use of animation in the concerts Maestro Denève and the SLSO presented this past weekend (January 27 and 28), he has found that balance. Two out of the three works performed during the concert were accompanied by animation. When we saw the concert on Sunday afternoon the result in both cases was unquestionably successful.

The program opened with the 1912 "ballet-pantomime" "Le Festin de l'araignée" ("The Spider's Feast") by Albert Roussel (1869–1937).  Set in a garden at twilight, the whimsical scenario shows us ants grabbing a rose petal, and worms dodging praying mantises to gorge themselves on a piece of fruit dislodged by the wind. A mayfly, unable to resist the demands of her insect audience, dances herself to death.

Meanwhile, the titular spider has spun an intricate web and is lying in wait for her next meal. She traps and kills an incautious butterfly along with a pair of mantises, who have worn themselves out in a pointless duel over who was responsible for letting those worms give them the slip.  Before she can begin her feast, a dung beetle frees a mantis who deals the spider a death blow. As the night falls, the surviving insects come together to bear away the body of the mayfly in a somber funeral procession. Curtain.

Roussel's score is a tour de force of tone painting. His ants enter with a slightly silly march. The worms slither on in high strings on their way to the fruit and then wiggle off, stuffed with fruit, in the low strings. The spider mends her web with quick rising glissandi in the violins and later does a celebratory dance that echoes the "Danse infernale" from Stravinsky's "Firebird."

As Denève pointed out in his pre-concert chat, the score for "Le Festin de l'araignée" is filled with notations of the ballet's stage directions as a reminder to the conductor; "Entrée des Fourmis" ("Entrance of the ants") at rehearsal number 7. and "Danse de Papillon" ("Dance of the butterfly") at number 19, and so on. Instead of displaying static stage directions on a screen, Denève enlisted the help of French illustrator and animator Grégoire Pont to animate them. Pont's work was shown for the first time last week during a performance of the score that Denève conducted with the New World Symphony in Miami.

As you can see in Pont's Facebook sample reel, his fanciful and witty line drawings match the music perfectly. I especially liked what he did with the final bars, when a firefly, after a few false starts, finally achieves illumination, and his light changes into a crescent moon. It was (ahem) de-light-ful.

Every time Denève conducts a Roussel score for us, I'm reminded of why he has so much affection for this composer's work and how completely justified that affection is. Roussel surely deserves more attention than he has gotten over the years. The high quality of the performances his music gets from Denève and the orchestra should help to remedy that situation.

"Le Festin de l'araignée" got a sympathetic and elegant reading from Denève and the usual excellent playing from the orchestra. Associate Principal Flute Andrea Kaplan got a well-deserved nod during the curtain call for her many fine solos, and everyone else was at the top of their game.

After intermission, we leaped forward to 1942 and a suite from the ballet "Les animaux modèles" ("The Model Animals") by Francis Poulenc (1899–1963).  Denève said this work had a special place in his heart because of the ingenious way the composer, who was already part of the resistance movement, managed to sneak in Antifa messages that would be understood by his audience but would sail over the heads of the Nazis. Fascists, as we are reminded far too often, are notoriously unable to handle nuance.

The most notable example is the insertion in the fifth movement of the suite, "Les deux coqs" ("The Two Roosters") of the refrain of the 1871 Franco-Prussian war song “Alsace et Lorraine”: "Vous n'aurez pas l'Alsace et la Lorraine / Et malgré vous nous resterons Français" (roughly, "You will not have Alsace and Lorraine, and despite you we will remain French). Denève favored us with a couple of bars in his talk, which might have made it easier to spot when the trumpets let loose with it in performance. As Poulenc recalled later, "each time the trumpet started out on the tune, I couldn't help smiling."

The orchestra's spirited and incisive performance, along with Ken Page's suave readings of three of the La Fontaine fables on which the ballet is based, left the audience smiling. The rhyming translations of the fables by the late, multi-talented Craig Hill captured the satirical wit of the originals, at least based on my somewhat rudimentary French.

Denève masterfully built the slow crescendo to the somewhat musically ambiguous "Le petit jour" ("Day Break"), with its abrupt shift to darkness near the end, and brought out all the noble romance of "Le lion amoureux" ("The Lion in Love"). Poulenc's vivid portrayals of a man's two rather picky mistresses and the fight of the roosters with its reminder about the evanescence of victory (probably lost on the Germans) were sharply etched in Sunday's performance.

There was excellent playing here from the horns and brasses, especially in "La mort et la bûcheron" ("Death and the woodcutter"), and impressively precise articulation by the strings. Harpists Julie Smith Phillips and Ellie Kirk added to the richness of the sound.

The final work on the program, "Peter and the Wolf" by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), is written for narrator and orchestra. This time around, however, the narration was replaced with the 2006 “stop motion” animated film “Peter and the Wolf” by British writer/director Suzie Templeton. Templeton's film sticks fairly close to the outline of Prokofiev's original story but embellishes it substantially and sets it in a somewhat dystopic Soviet Russia. Peter is still a hero and the wolf, especially in his animated incarnation, is still menacing. The hunters, though, are essentially thugs, Peter's animal friends are skinny and scruffy, and everyone seems to be leading a hand-to-mouth existence. It's imaginative but a bit bleak.

The music, however, remains unchanged and was played just as well as the last time I heard the orchestra perform it in 2021. Most of the soloists were also the same, including Andrew Cuneo, the Principal Bassoon who played the role of a comically pompous grandfather, and Jelena Dirks, the Principal Oboe who portrayed a mournful and (in this grittier version) unquestionably dead duck. Percussionists Will James and Alan Stewart, the Principal and Associate Principal respectively, played the fearsome hunters. Kevin Ritenauer, who was not part of the 2021 ensemble, joined them on the tympani.

Principal Flute Matthew Roitstein's bird was wonderfully light and agile—allegro and staccato with lots of grace notes, just as written. The contrast with Templeton's clumsy, broken-winged creature (who needs a balloon to stay aloft) was heavily ironic. Ditto clarinetist Steve Ahearn as the cat: musically sly and slinky in contrast with the clumsy and inept animated counterpart.

Titled "Musical Fables," the concert was an innovative approach to putting old wine in new bottles without damaging the vintage. Hats off to everyone.

Next from the SLSO: Denève conducts the orchestra and violin soloist Augustin Hadelich in Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto along with the local premieres Valerie Coleman’s “Umoja: Anthem of Unity” and the Symphony No. 3 by Florence Price. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm, February 2 and 3, at the Touhill Center on the UMSL campus. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live 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.

Symphony Preview: Reanimated

This Saturday and Sunday (January 27 and 28) Music Director Stéphane Denève returns to lead the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) in an unusual program of three works with three things in common. First, they were all written during the first half of the last century. Second, they were all theatrical (two ballets and one piece for narrator and orchestra). And third, all three will be performed in ways that probably would never have occurred to their creators.

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

Albert Roussel in 1913
Public Domain, Link

First, it’s the score for the 1912 “ballet-pantomime” “Le Festin de l’araignée” (“The Spider’s Feast”) by Albert Roussel (1869–1937).  A relatively solitary and independent figure, probably due to the loss of his parents and grandparents before he turned ten, Roussel was influenced by both Impressionism and Neo-classicism. He absorbed those trends into his own personal style, which Nicolle Labelle (in Grove Online) describes as “harmonically spiced and rhythmically vigorous.”

You can hear that in “Le Festin de l’araignée,” which he wrote at the request of Jacques Rouché, director of the Théâtre des Arts in Paris. The scenario, as you might guess from the title, describes a day in the lives and deaths of insects caught by a spider who is himself done in by a praying mantis. That sounds a bit grim, but Roussel’s music is so exotic and appealing in its mashup of late French Romanticism and Impressionism that it’s impossible not to love it.

That said, complete ballet scores don’t always work in a concert setting, tied as they are to the action on stage. In this performance, though, visuals will be provided by illustrator Grégoire Pont using a technique he calls Cinesthetics. This involves Pont creating his illustrations in real time as the score is performed with the intent of “offering audiences spellbinding new connections between eyes, ears, and mind.”

Pont does this using a touch screen and stylus, with the images displayed on a big screen in the auditorium. For a preview of what to expect this weekend, check out the artist’s short demonstration video on YouTube. This is, quite literally, performance art. Given the state of the art in film back in 1912, I doubt that this would have ever crossed Roussel’s mind.

Although not one of France’s better known musical sons, Roussel is a favorite of Denéve, who recorded all of his symphonies for Naxos back in 2010. His performance of Roussel’s Symphony No. 3 with the SLSO in 2020 was enough to convince me that his admiration for the composer is fully justified.

Francis Poulenc in 1922
Photo by Joseph Rosmand

After intermission we leap forward to 1942 and a suite from the ballet “Les animaux modèles” (“The Model Animals”) by Francis Poulenc (1899–1963).  A member of that eccentric group of French composers known as “Les Six,” Poulenc is best known for witty and somewhat Neoclassical works like his Organ Concerto, Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (performed so brilliantly here in 2018, and his many pithy pieces for solo piano. Poulenc also had a more serious side, though, as revealed in his opera “La voix humaine” (a fine performance of which graced Opera Theatre’s 2020 season), his religious works, and his 1955 opera “Dialogues des Carmélites” (“The Dialogs of the Carmelites,” also presented at Opera Theatre in 2014).

“Les animaux modèles” shows off both sides of Poulenc’s musical personality. Based on the tales from the twelve volumes of Fables by Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), the full-length ballet ranges from brightly comic numbers like “L'homme entre deux âges et ses deux maîtresses” (“The Middle-Aged Man and His Two Mistresses”) to the passionate nobility of “Le lion amoureux” (“The Lion in Love”) and the solemnity of the concluding “Le repas de midi” (Lunchtime). The suite includes these numbers along with three others.

Since it was written in Nazi-occupied France, “Les animaux modèles” has a subtext that goes beyond La Fontaine’s fanciful stories. Poulenc was already part of the resistance, having joined the Front National des Musiciens (The National Front of Musicians), which fought the Teutonic invasion of the musical world, and embedding pro-French and anti-Nazi themes in his music. He did so in a way that went over the heads of the Nazis, fascists being notoriously unable to handle nuance. As David Raymond wrote in program notes for the Rochester Philharmonic, “The fables of LaFontaine are (or were) considered one of the glories of French literature, and given that any educated French audience would recognize them, Poulenc’s ballet became a symbol of French civilization and resistance.”

We’ll hear one example of the composer’s Antifa sarcasm Sunday, in the fifth movement of the suite, “Les deux coqs” (“The Two Roosters”), in which Poulenc quotes the 1871 anti-German song “Alsace et Lorraine.” Written in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war (which resulted in the German annexation of Alsace and Lorraine), the refrain goes like this:

Vous n'aurez pas l'Alsace et la Lorraine,
Et malgré vous nous resterons Français ;
Vous avez pu germaniser la plaine,
Mais notre cœur, vous ne l'aurez jamais.

Rough translation: “You will not have Alsace and Lorraine, and despite you we will remain French; you were able to Germanize the plain, but you will never have our hearts.” As Poulenc recalled later, “I gave myself the treat, recognized only by some members of the orchestra…each time the trumpet started out on the tune, I couldn’t help smiling.”

Unlike Poulenc’s audiences, most Americans are unlikely to be familiar with La Fontaine’s work, so Denève has chosen a novel approach. The suite has been cut down from its original eight movements to six, and each one will be paired with a modern English translation (by the late Craig Hill) of its original fable, read by our own "trusty and well-beloved" thespian Ken Page.

Prokofiev in New York, 1918
en.wikipedia.org

With the final work on the program, “Peter and the Wolf” by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), we go from adding narration to removing it. Composed in 1936 on a commission from Natalia Satz, director of the Moscow Children’s Musical Theater, this tale (with a text by Prokofiev) of the stalwart Peter’s mostly successful attempt to protect his animal friends from the nefarious wolf has proven to be wildly popular worldwide.

It has been much admired at the SLSO as well, most recently performed in May 2021 under the baton of David Robertson with actress and singer/songwriter Alicia Revé Like as the narrator. This time around the narrator will be replaced with the Oscar-winning 2006 animated film “Peter and the Wolf” created by British writer/director Suzie Templeton. Templeton uses a technique known as “stop motion,” in which real-world objects are manipulated one frame at a time to create the illusion of motion.

Stop motion dates back to the silent film era, but I remember it primarily from the films of Ray Harryhausen, where it was used to create special visuals for films like “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” (1953) and “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” (1973). George Pal used stop motion for his “Puppetoons” in the 1940s and Nic Park used a variant called “Claymation” (in which the figures were sculpted from plasticine clay) for a series of films in the 1990s and 2000s such as the whimsical “Wallace and Gromit” shorts and the Hollywood hit “Chicken Run” (2000).

These days mass-market films have moved on to less time-consuming digital techniques, but stop motion still holds a place in the hearts of many film fans and directors. Using it here instead of the usual narrator will, according to the program notes, “tell a richer and more nuanced tale” and “demonstrate that music can tell powerful stories without uttering a single word.”

Next from the SLSO: Music Director Stéphane Denève returns to conduct the SLSO and actor Ken Page in Poulenc’s ballet “Les animaux modèles” (“The Model Animals”), Roussel’s ballet “Le Festin de l’araignée” (“The Spider’s Feast”), and Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” In an interesting change-up, Prokofiev’s work will be performed without the usual narration but with Suzie Templeton’s animated 2006 film, while the Poulenc will be performed with Page reading contemporary translations of the La Fontaine fables that inspired the composer.  Performances will be Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm (January 27 and 28) at the Stifel Theater downtown.

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

St. Louis theatre calendar for the week of February 22, 2021

Now including both on-line and live events during the pandemic. To get your event listed here, send an email to calendar [at] stageleft.org.

The Blue Strawberry presents Open Mic Night with Sean Skrbec and Patrick White Sundays at 7 pm. "Come on down and sing, come on down to play, or come on down to listen and enjoy." The club is operating under a "COVID careful" arrangement with restricted indoor capacity, mask requirements, and other precautions. The Blue Strawberry is on North Boyle in the Central West End. For more information: bluestrawberrystl.com.

Martin Silvestri and Christine Andreas

The Cabaret Project presents Christine Andreas in Piaf, No Regrets via on-demand video stream Saturdays from 7:30 pm to midnight, February 27. "Two time Tony Award nominee Christine Andreas brings her dynamic voice and passionate interpretations to celebrate the music and life of one of the greatest musical artists of all time - Edith Piaf. Andreas weaves a journey filled with love, loss and ultimately hope. Martin Silvestri music directs the evening. Filmed exclusively for The Cabaret Project of St. Louis at the The Katharine Hepburn Arts Center in Old Saybrook, Connecticut Piaf, No Regrets is a masterfully performed salute to a master." For more information: thecabaretproject.org.

Circus Harmony in St. Louis and Circus Circuli in Stuttgart, St. Louis's German sister city, present Sister City Circus, on Circus Harmony’s YouTube page.  "Through a series of online meetings, workshops, and classes the two troupes created 6 different circus acts and then filmed them at iconic architectural locations in each of their cities." For more information, visit the Circus Harmony YouTube channel.

Look Into My Eyes

First Run Theatre presents an on-demand streaming version of Look Into My Eyes, a new play by Robb Willoughby, through the end of February 2021. The play can be viewed on First Run's YouTube channel as well as on the First Run Facebook page.

Fly North Theatricals presents three new free digital series. Their new digital line up includes The Spotlight Series, the Grown-Up Theatre Kids Podcast, and Gin and the Tonic. The Spotlight Series highlights the Fly North family of students and actors performing songs from previous FNT shows. In the Grown-Up Theatre Kids podcast you can join Colin Healy and Bradley Rohlf every other Friday as they explore life after drama club and what it means to make a living in theatre far from the lights of broadway. Gin and the Tonic is a "reckless unpacking of music history’s weirdest stories hosted by Colin Healy.” The Spotlight Series and Gin and the Tonic are available at the Fly North Theatricals YouTube channel and the Grown-Up Theatre Kids podcast can also be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Sticher, other podcast platforms. All three are updated on a bi-weekly (every other week) basis.

The Lemp Mansion Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre presents A Fistful of Hollers through May 8. "Gun slingers, dance hall girls, cowboys, gold diggers, cowboy boots and ten-gallon-hats will abound. Rowdy cowboys will duel to the death as the crooked sheriff watches with glee. But none of these characters are as dangerous as Nasty Nate, he’s the orneriest gun in the west and word is that he’s going to be stirring up trouble at the Lemp Mansion." The Lemp Mansion is at 3322 DeMenil Place in south city. For more information: www.lempmansion.com

Jacked!

Metro Theatre Company presents Jacked! streaming on demand through March 31. "From playwright Idris Goodwin (Ghost, And in this Corner: Cassius Clay) comes the Jack and the Beanstalk story with a modern-day twist. And it’s not just the story that has a fresh take. This all-new virtual production fuses storytelling and poetry with a smart, moving hip hop score and hand-drawn animation based on visuals by artist Nick Kryah – exploring the imaginative boundaries of theater, film, and animation. You and the children in your family join Jack for an adventure that might start with the beanstalk, but follows Jack and his mother as they struggle to live happily ever after." For more information: metroplays.org.

Moonstone Theatre Company presents Moonstone Connections, a series of in-depth interviews with arts leaders by company founder Sharon Hunter. New episodes air the third Tuesday of each month; see linktr.ee/moonstoneconnections for more information.

The Muny presents Attuned: Cast Me at the Muny, a nine-part podcast that "showcases audition tips and funny stories, while offering an inside look at what makes casting a Muny show so challenging." The series is available on demand at the Classic 107.3 web site. For more information: classic1073.org/podcasts

Opera Theatre of St. Louis presents a free John D. and Sally S. Levy Master Class led by Nova Thomas, soprano and professor of voice at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. at 4 pm on Friday, February 26. Viewers will have the opportunity to watch in real-time as Nova works with three Gerdine Young Artists on their musical and dramatic artistry. The class will be broadcast live on the OTSL YouTube channel.

L-R: Angel Riley, Ryan Johnson in
The Pirates of Penzance

Opera Theatre of St. Louis presents an abridged, 30-minute version of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance designed to introduce children to the world of Opera. The Pirates of Penzance is available via on-demand streaming through February 27. "As a child, Frederic was accidentally apprenticed to a conscientious but hapless band of pirates. On the day of his 21st birthday, Frederic thinks he’s finally free to explore the world — and meet girls — but some fine print in his contract leads to a surprising twist." For more informtation: opera-stl.org/on-the-go.

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis presents the one-actor comedy Hi, Are You Single? via on-demand streaming through February 28th. "Ryan is searching for love. Or a date. Or at least a hookup. From encounters with drag queens to platonic lap dances, writer/performer Ryan J. Haddad guides the audience through the gay dating scene while living with cerebral palsy, sharing his provocative take on intimacy, rejection and judgment. Hi, Are You Single? contains depictions and descriptions of sexual content, explicit language and discussion of ableism, racism, ageism and the stigmatization of HIV status." For more information: repstl.org.

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, in collaboration with Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theater and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, present Play at Home, a series of micro-commissioned short plays from some of the American theatre's most exciting and prominent playwrights. These new plays – which all run 10 minutes or less – are available for the public to download, read and perform at home for free at playathome.org.

Adena Varner and family

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis presents a live video stream of the WiseWrite Digital Play Festival running until the end of the Rep's 2020-2021 season. “Step into the imagination of three young playwrights as The Rep presents professional readings of their new plays.” The production is directed by Adena Varner, the Rep's Director of Learning and Community Engagement. For more information: repstl.org.

Deal Orlandersmith in
After the Flood

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and All Arts present Until the Flood, written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith, via on-demand streaming. "On August 9, 2014, Darren Wilson, a white police officer, shot and killed Michael Brown, an African American teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. The shooting ignited weeks of social unrest, propelled the Black Lives Matter movement and prompted a controversial investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Celebrated writer, performer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith traveled to St. Louis and conducted interviews with dozens of people who were grievously shaken by Brown’s shooting and the turbulent aftermath. From these intimate conversations, Orlandersmith created eight unforgettable characters who embody a community struggling to come to terms with the personal damage caused by these events." For more information: allarts.org

R-S Theatrics presents While the Ghostlight Burns, a virtual discussion series featuring R-S Artistic Director Sarah Lynne Holt in conversation with St. Louis theatre artists, Mondays at 7 pm.  Conversations will be archived at the R-S Theatrics YouTube channel. For more information: r-stheatrics.com/while-the-ghostlight-burns.html

Come Together

The St. Louis Shakespeare Festival presents streaming videos from the SHAKE20 festival, including re-imagined, condensed versions of classic Shakespeare plays and new takes on old favorites like Joe Hanrahan's Come Together, at the Shakespeare Festival Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pg/STLShakesFest/videos

The St. Louis Writers Group streams live recordings of previous play reading sessions at their Facebook page. For more information: facebook.com.

SATE, in collaboration with COCA and Prison Performing Arts, presents Project Verse: Creativity in the Time of Quarantine. Project Verse presents two new plays: Quatrains in Quarantine by e.k. doolin and Dream On, Black Girl: Reflections in Quarantine by Maxine du Maine. The performances are streamed free of charge on SATE’s website and Facebook page. For more information: slightlyoff.org.

Classic Mystery Game

SATE also offers streaming performances of the shows originally scheduled for live 2020 productions: The Mary Shelley Monster Show, As You Like It (produced for SHAKE20, Project Verse, and Classic Mystery Game. The shows are available on their YouTube channel.


Union Avenue Opera offers Sneak Peeks of its 2021 season operas Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) and The Cradle Will Rock on its YouTube channel.

Looking for auditions and other artistic opportunities? Check out the St. Louis Auditions site.

For information on events beyond this week, check out the searchable database at the Regional Arts Commission's Events Calendar.

Would you like to be on the radio? KDHX, 88.1 FM needs theatre reviewers. If you're 18 years or older, knowledgeable in this area, have practical theatre experience (acting, directing, writing, technical design, etc.), have good oral and written communications skills and would like to become one of our volunteer reviewers, send an email describing your experience and interests to chuck at kdhx.org. Please include a sample review of something you've seen recently.

Symphony Preview: Fast away the old year passes

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

Conductor Nicholas Buc

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The week between Christmas and New Year's Eve is often a quiet one in Lake Woebegon, but the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has a couple of big events coming up for the final weekend of 2017 nevertheless.

Friday and Saturday, December 29 and 30, 7 pm: DreamWorks Animation in Concert -- DreamWorks Animation is the animated film division of DreamWorks Studios, which was originally founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg along with former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and recording industry mogul David Geffen. The DreamWorks Animation division of has been in the forefront of the digital animation revolution for nearly two decades now, with hits like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and Puss in Boots, to name only a few. The company has been very shrewd about producing animated movies that appeal to both kids and adults, with plenty of fast, colorful 3-D action mixed with sophisticated humor and sly parodies of pop culture. It has also engaged some of Hollywood's leading composers to write scores for its hit films.

DreamWorks Animation in Concert features music by, among others, Alexandre Desplat, Danny Elfman, Alan Silvestri, and Hans Zimmer. The concert features music from Mr. Peabody and Sherman, How to Train Your Dragon, Rise of the Guardians, Monsters vs. Aliens, and many other DreamWorks hits, with clips from the movies on the big screen to accompany the music. It's a kind of big, post-Christmas gift box for lovers of animation and film music.

Conducting the orchestra is composer and multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Buc. A graduate of New York University and a recipient of the Elmer Bernstein award for film scoring, Mr. Buc written for film and TV world-wide and has conducted a number of "in concert" film programs, including Pixar in Concert, Raiders of the Lost Arc, and Back to the Future.

David Robertson

Sunday, December 31, 7:30 pm: BMO Private Bank New Year's Eve Celebration - David Robertson conducts the orchestra for the last time as SLSO Music Director in the annual New Year's Eve gala. The SLSO web site promises "an enchanting evening full of magical music and unforgettable surprises." And by "surprises" they mean "the concert program" because that is, in fact, a secret that won't be revealed until the music starts.

Still, we can make educated guesses based on previous years. Expect lots of good humor, both from the music and from Mr. Robertson, who can be a very funny guy when he gets his hands on a microphone. In 2012, for example, the orchestra did Morton Gould's "Tap Dance Concerto" and featured some good-natured sing-alongs with the audience. Dance music has, in fact, been a major part of the New Year's concerts. And waltzes are always associated with New Year's Eve in any case.

The concert is immensely popular and is, in fact, sold out as this is being written. But don't despair! In 2015 St. Louis Public Radio began broadcasting the concert live and will do so again this year, starting with pre-concert conversations at 7 pm.

Musical magic

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Steven Jarvi
What: Fantasia
When: November 1-3, 2013
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

The first thing you need to know about the symphony's Fantasia program is that it was not a showing of the original 1940 film, but rather a mix of sequences from the original and the sequel, Fantasia 2000.  The second thing you need to know is that the film clips and associated musical selections were very well chosen, resulting in a nicely balanced program that effectively shows off both the Disney animators (past and present) and the virtuoso musicians of the St. Louis Symphony.

Yes, the presence of so many children in the house meant (at least the night we were there) that there was more audience noise than usual.  And the cuts and re-orchestrations in some of the music were a bit disconcerting at times.  But on the whole it was a thoroughly entertaining and worthwhile program—especially for parents looking for a way to introduce younger listeners to the classics. 

Besides, the orchestra played its heart out, from intimate, beautifully executed solos to massive walls of sound. Harpist Allegra Lilly was kept particularly busy, as is pianist Peter Henderson (who doubled on celesta), but everyone sounded in top form. 

This was my first opportunity to see Resident Conductor Steven Jarvi in action.  I found him to be a magnetic and physically exuberant figure on the podium.  I was also impressed by his ability to keep under control the disparate and somewhat contradictory tasks called for by conducting to a film score.  Mr. Jarvi had to do everything a conductor normally does while listening to a click track that keeps him in synch with the film—probably quite a challenge, given some of the eccentric tempo choices in Stokowski's original soundtrack.

My personal favorites included the selections from Stravinsky's Firebird that accompany a story of the coming of spring, volcanic destruction, and rebirth; the fancifully anthropomorphic flora that go with excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker; and, of course, the slapstick comedy of The Sorcerer's Apprentice.  The program also includes Debussy's Clair de Lune, which was cut from the original Fantasia and not released it its original form until 1996.  It's a lovely little nocturnal scene in a bayou with a pair of cranes that matches the music perfectly.  I'd never seen it before.

Also on the program: the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, the last two movements of his "Pastorale" symphony, a loopy mashup of four of Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance marches by Peter Schickele (to accompany a Noah's Ark narrative starring Donald and Daisy Duck), and most of Respighi's vivid Pines of Rome (used, inexplicably, for some fanciful animation of flying whales).  There was also an unlisted encore: the final march from Saint-Saëns's Carnival of the Animals (from Fantasia 2000), underscoring a bit of charming low comedy involving some flamingos and a yo-yo.

As with other film programs at Powell, popcorn and movie snacks were available at the bar, along with a special drink concocted for the occasion ("The Sorcerer," a tasty combination of vodka, curaçao, and pink lemonade) and you could take everything into the auditorium.  That's fortunate, because the larger than usual house meant longer than usual lines at intermission.

Next at Powell Hall: Nicholas McGegan conducts a program of Weber, Haydn, Rameau, and Mozart Friday and Saturday, November 8 and 9.  For more information: stlsymphony.org.