Symphony Review: Anna Clyne's PALETTE dominates the stage at the SLSO

I strongly suspect that most of sold-out crowd for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concert last Saturday, February 15th, were attracted primarily by the prospect of seeing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky’s "Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy." After all, we’re talking about a pair of wildly popular Romantic classics performed by a world-class orchestra with a soloist—Russian pianist Nikolai Lugansky—whose substantial discography includes quite a lot of Rachmaninoff, including all four concertos. And it was Valentine’s Day weekend.

“’Nuff said,” as Stan Lee used to say.

"Amber." Photo by Virginia Harold
Courtesy of the SLSO

I was looking forward to that music as well, but for me the big attraction was the world premiere of PALETTE, Concerto for Augmented Orchestra by composer and artist Anna Clyne. Each of the seven movement\s in this half-hour piece is based on a different color whose first letters collectively spell the title of the work: Plum, Amber, Lava, Ebony, Teal, Tangerine, and Emerald. Clyne created paintings to go with each movement and these were used as the basis for a subtle light show created by Luke Kritzeck that enhanced the mood of each section.

In pre-performance remarks, SLSO Music Director Stéphane Denève promised “a bouquet of colors” and Clyne described PALETTE as an attempt “to create something beautiful in these turbulent times.” Everything about this work fulfilled those promises. PALETTE is by turns inspiring, fanciful, funny, dramatic, and just plain fun.

The augmented orchestra (AO) of the title uses a software program developed by sound designer (and Clyne's husband) Jody Elff that takes elements of the acoustic orchestra and electronically transforms them and integrates the transformed sound into the live experience in real time. It was done so subtly and tastefully Saturday night that I sometimes wasn’t sure when it was being used and when it wasn’t. I was just aware of a wider sonic range.

In “Plum” and “Amber,” for example, the AO added bottom notes to the basses that made them sound like 64 ft. organ pipes—very appropriate for music that often sounded like a Bach chorale. In the fanciful “Tangerine” the flute section became a diffuse, ethereal choir. Less obvious manipulation enhanced the sunny “Amber,” the scurrying marimbas in “Ebony,” and the meditative liquid calm of “Teal.”

"Lava" Photo by Virginia Harold
Courtesy of the SLSO

At least, I think it did. As I said, it wasn’t always obvious where the acoustic orchestra stopped and the AO began. The performance was, in any case, a compelling one, with the usual consummate playing by the band. Standing ovations at SLSO concerts are less common for new works than for the more traditional repertoire; PALETTE was an enthusiastic exception to that rule. I’ll admit to being one of the first to rise to the occasion.

After intermission it was time for the Russian Romantics, starting with an admirable Rachmaninoff Second. Lugansky’s playing and Denève’s interpretation blended seamlessly to deliver a performance with plenty of power and drama. The opening “church bell” chords for the Moderato first movement led to an attention-grabbing statement of the first theme, followed by a strongly contrasting second. The reflective Adagio Sostenuto second movement was capped by a pristine performance of the cadenza by Lugansky. That led to a blazing Allegro scherzando finale, featuring a sweeping, Technicolor treatment for the famous second theme.

The audience response was enthusiastic, leading to a most welcome encore: Rachmaninoff’s Prelude, Op. 23 No. 7 in C minor. With cascades of 16th notes flying over power chords it was a bold choice after a virtuoso workout like the concerto, and a good one.

Finally, there was an utterly theatrical reading of Tchaikovsky’s "Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy," a concert standard which (somewhat surprisingly) the SLSO has not played in over seven years. As is so often the case, Maestro Denève filled this reading with little touches all his own. To pick just two examples: the horn motif that accompanies the famous love theme pulsed like a heartbeat and there was a good pause at the double bar between the final outburst of battle music and the final Moderato assai dirge. It was all nicely done and a guaranteed crowd pleaser.

Next from the SLSO: Conductor David Afkham makes his SLSO debut in a program consisting of “The Ring of Fire and Love” by Finnish composer Outi Tarkianen, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 with soloist Saleem Ashkar, and the Symphony No 1 by Brahms. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Sunday at 3 pm, February 21 and 23, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Symphony Preview: Sous le ciel de Paris

This weekend (November 15 and 16) Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the second of two programs devoted almost entirely to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). It’s all Mozart all the time—except for the 12 minutes or so that will be Anna Clyne (b. 1980).

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

An English-born composer now residing in the USA, Clyne’s name is one that should be familiar to SLSO regulars. The orchestra has played a number of her works over the last decade or so, usually to appreciative (and well-deserved) applause. In fact, the Clyne work we’ll hear this weekend was the first of her compositions that the SLSO played.

That work is “Within Her Arms” for string orchestra. Written as an elegy for the death of the Clyne’s mother in 2008, the piece is (as I wrote back then) a kind of memory play. Its somewhat mysterious music, which at times seems to harken back to Vaughn Williams or even Thomas Tallis, rises from a whisper to a roar before finally fading away, slowly, into nothingness. “The rest,” as Hamlet says, “is silence.”

Anna Clyne
Photo by Christina Kernohan courtesy of the SLSO

“Within Her Arms” is the only work on the program that’s missing from the SLSO’s Spotify playlist. Which is a bit surprising since there’s quite a splendid performance of it there by the adventurous chamber orchestra The Knights. When you listen to the SLSO’s playlist, just pause it and play “Within Her Arms” right before Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”) for the full effect.

The concerts open with Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, K. 16, penned when Mozart was eight years old and known primarily as a piano prodigy. It’s a modest and charming three-movement piece that sounds more like work of Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782) than Mozart. Still the somewhat enigmatic second movement does include, according to the anonymous program annotator for the Kamuela Philharmonic Society Orchestra, “a four-note motif that also appears in several later Mozart compositions, including his Symphony No. 33, and the finale of his Jupiter Symphony.” And it does end with a jolly little Presto.

Up next is the more substantial Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. It was, I believe, last presented by the SLSO in 2017, at which time I described it as engrossing, menacing, and filled with the kind of high drama that audiences would come to love so much in the ensuing decades of the 19th century. Beethoven, for one, loved this concerto, performing it often and composing two cadenzas for it, Mozart's own having been lost to history. It is, in fact, sufficiently "modern" for its time that Viennese audiences might have been put off by it, had it not been the work of a man who was at the peak of popularity.

Mozart, age 6
Painter unknown

The soloist this weekend will be the talented young (born in 1990) pianist Behzod Abduraimov. I last saw him in 2018 when he played the Grieg Concerto with Gemma New on the podium. At the time, I praised the ideal mix of technical flash and sensitivity in his performance. Which bodes well for this weekend.

Next, it’s the overture to Mozart’s early opera “Mitridate, re di Ponto” (“Mithridates, King of Pontus”), which is filled with engaging tunes that belie the work’s tragic finale. First performed at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan, it was something of a hit despite the fact that the composer was only 14. Mozart’s more mature operas have overshadowed it since then and revivals are rare.

The concerts will close with the Symphony No. 31 in D Major, K.297 (300a) ("Paris") composed in the City of Light in June, 1778. Mozart and his ailing mother Anna Maria had arrived there after a concert tour in search of additional professional opportunities, but the pickings were slim, and the pair soon found themselves in debt. The arrival of a commission for a new symphony from Jean LeGros, the director of the high-profile Concert Spirituel, was therefore a welcome development.

The audience at the symphony's June 18th public premiere was enthusiastic, if Mozart's account is accurate. The work was interrupted by applause several times (both between and within movements) and the composer was ebullient. "I was so happy," he wrote to his father, "that as soon as the symphony was over, I went off to the Palais Royal, where I had a large ice, said the Rosary as I had vowed to do—and went home.”

His joy was short-lived. Although Anna Maria was at first invigorated by the weather and the attentions of old friends like the tenor Anton Raaff and horn player Franz Joseph Heina and his wife, even small outings tired her out. A day at the Jardin du Luxembourg with the Heinas on the 10^th left her exhausted and her health began to worsen.

Behzod Abduraimov
Photo: Evgeny Eutykhov courtesy of the SLSO

As Mozart scholar and conductor Jane Glover relates in “Mozart’s Women” (Harper-Collins, 2006), by June 26th the situation was grave enough that Mozart “was told that she should make her final confession, which she did on the 30^th. At 10:21 on the evening of 3 July, with a nurse and Heina and her beloved Wolfgang beside her, Anna Maria died.” She was only 58.

You won’t hear any of the mental anguish Mozart must have felt as he watched his mother’s health deteriorate, though, in this vigorous and graceful three-movement work. Instead, you hear the Parisian sunshine and revel in the composer’s use of what the BBC’s Tom Service calls “the biggest orchestra Mozart had used in a symphonic context.” Service’s article includes an excellent analysis of the piece, in fact, and I highly recommend it as a bit of pre-concert reading.

The Essentials: The SLSO’s Mozart celebration concludes this weekend (Friday and Saturday, November 15 and 16, at 7:30 pm) with Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”), and Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. Behzod Abduraimov will be the soloist. Performances take place at the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Saturday’s 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.

Shall we dance?

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
What: Music of Mozart, Corelli, Scarlatti, Bach, Anna Clyne, Stravinsky, and Martinů
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: February 17-19, 2012

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View a segment about Hubbard Street's performance from "Show Me St. Louis" on KSDK TV.

The symphony was super-sized this weekend, with a longer than usual program. The two and one-half hour concert had a decidedly Baroque/Classical/Neoclassical orientation, with music ranging chronologically from Baroque to contemporary and stylistically from Mozart to Martinů. Add in the dynamic dancing by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and you had a pretty good bang for your entertainment buck.

I don’t know about you, but the first question that came to my mind when I learned that this weekend’s guest artists were a full ballet company was "where are they going to put everyone?" The answer is that you put the dancers on a temporary stage covering the front half of the regular stage and extending over the first row or two of seats. The orchestra is moved back and onto a platform a foot or two above the regular stage. The arrangement was ideal from our perch in the dress circle boxes and offered great sound and a clear view of the dancers.

Normally, of course, the conductor of a ballet orchestra would have the dancers above and in front of him instead of below and in back. The latter arrangement required David Robertson to frequently look over his shoulder, but both he and the musicians appeared to take it all in stride. Even with the new piece on the program—Within Her Arms by Chicago Symphony Orchestra composer in residence Anna Clyne—I saw no indication that the dancers and the orchestra weren’t always on the same page (literally or otherwise). Yet another reason why we love our St. Louis Symphony.

The program opened with an impeccably played Le nozze di Figaro overture by the orchestra alone, after which the Hubbard Street dancers, in simple deep mauve leotards, took to the stage for the first ballet, Nacho Duato’s Arcangelo. Originally created for Madrid’s Compañia Nacional de Danza in 2000, Arcangelo uses music from seven of the concerti grossi published in 1714 by one of the masters of the form, Arcangelo Corelli, along with a somber coda set to an aria (sung with great feeling by countertenor David Stephens) from Alessandro Scarlatti’s oratorio Il primo omicidio (based on the story of Cain and Abel). Mr. Duato’s choreography seamlessly blends modern and classically inspired movement—everything from a small flick of the wrist to athletic leaps—into a harmonious whole that handsomely complements the music. Until Friday morning’s concert, I didn’t know what Corelli’s music looked like. Now I do.

The first half closed with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 as a kind of palate cleanser. It was another fine performance, with a tip of the powdered wig to Peter Henderson’s sparkling harpsichord and concertmaster David Halen’s brief but beautiful second movement cadenza (the printed score has no second movement as such, only a single measure of two chords, so in performance a violin or harpsichord cadenza is often inserted there).

The second half opened with twice (once), in which Hubbard Street’s Rehearsal Director Terrence Marling turns Anna Clyne’s Within Her Arms—written as an elegy for the death of the composer’s mother in 2008—into a kind of balletic memory play. The fluid movement of dancers in flowing white costumes mirrored the somewhat mysterious music, which at times seemed to harken back to Vaughn Williams or even Thomas Tallis. Soloist Jessica Tong appeared to embody the spirit of the departed in a work that ends, courageously, with no music at all.

The rest is silence, to quote the dying Hamlet.

Next, another break for the dancers as the orchestra gave us Stravinsky’s 1938 homage to Bach’s Third Brandenburg, the "Dumbarton Oaks" concerto. Even though the work is from Stravinsky’s neo-classical period and therefore emotionally restrained, the composer still can’t resist some jolly writing for the winds (especially the clarinet and bassoon) and the symphony players did a fine job with it.

Bringing the concert to a brilliant close was As few as 3000 by Hubbard Street Resident Choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo, set to Bohuslav Martinů’s 1947 Toccata e due canzoni. There was so much going on here in terms of both music and dance that it was, to some extent, a case of sensory overload. Martinů’s score, with its rhythmic drive, clever reinterpretation of Baroque styles, and prominent piano part (another nod is due to Mr. Henderson there), is so interesting all by itself that it often threatened to draw focus from the dancers’ spectacular performance of Mr. Cerrudo’s inventive and often whimsical choreography. There were elements there of classic athletics—especially running and swimming—as well movement reminiscent of aquatic and insect life. There was even a mock levitation, complete with a magician in top hat and cape. Remarkable stuff, really, but it might work better with more familiar music.

To say that this program is ambitious would be an understatement. The fact that it all came off so well is a tribute to both our orchestra and Chicago’s dancers, and I congratulate them all.

Next at Powell Hall: Jaap van Zweden is on the podium along with pianist Martin Helmchen for Johan Wagenaar’s Cyrano de Bergerac Overture, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, and Brahms’s Symphony No. 4. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, February 24-26. For more information you may call 314-534-1700 or visit stlsymphony.org.