Symphony Review: Celebrating music in motion with the SLSO and St. Louis Dance Theatre

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday night (January 10) was the third collaboration between Music Director Stéphane Denève and local dancer/choreographer Kervin Douthit-Boyd, the Artistic Director of St. Louis Dance Theatre (STLDT). Formerly the Big Muddy Dance Company, STLDT has been widely praised here and has forged strong relationships with not only the SLSO but many other performing arts organizations, enabling them to pursue their mission to “constantly strive to invigorate life through dance.”

St. Louis Dance Theatre. Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Given the unquestionable success of the first two partnerships in 2021 and 2024, I came to this one with high expectations. To say the least, I was not disappointed. From both a musical and terpsichorean standpoint, this was a dazzling evening that more than lived up to the promise of “a program that celebrates powerful partnerships between dance and music.”

Titled “Music and Motion,” the concert consisted of three of actual ballet scores and a fourth that eventually became the basis for a ballet by Jerome Robbins, albeit over three decades later. It was the second of the three works that served as the basis for the collaboration with STLDT, so let’s begin there.

In 1920, Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) was approached by the eccentric entrepreneur Sergei Diaghilev with the idea of Pulcinella, a one-act ballet based on 17th-century Neapolitan commedia dell’arte characters. There would be costumes by Pablo Picasso, choreography by Léonide Massine, and music by the short-lived (1710–1736) Italian Baroque composer Giovanni Battista Draghi (a.k.a. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi after his birthplace in Pergola) as arranged by Stravinsky. Most of the music turned out to be misattributed, but that doesn’t detract from its appeal.

Initially unimpressed with the idea, Stravinsky eventually came to embrace it. In 1922 the composer created a suite of eight of the ballet’s original 21 numbers. It’s that version of the score that is most often performed these days, and it was that version that was impeccably played and danced Saturday night.

Allow me to set the scene. The stage was covered with a gray, dancer-friendly mat. The chamber orchestra (around 30 players) was placed far upstage left, leaving a good two-thirds of the stage clear for the 17-member corps de ballet. Led by Demetrius Lee as a kind of MC, dancers flowed on and off the stage combining in pas de deux, pas de trois, pas de quatre, ensembles, and the occasional solo. Lee’s tongue-in-cheek star turn in the Vivo movement, with its cartoonish trombone solos, was but one of many memorable moments.

Costuming suggested a mix of 17th and 21st century styles, with the men in sleeveless red tunics and the women in long glittering gowns. Douthit-Boyd’s choreography was a similar mélange, mostly classical ballet with a dash of modern dance. As executed with lithe, athletic grace by the dancers, it was the perfect match for Stravinsky’s witty, piquant transformations of the original Baroque dances.

The decision to choreograph a concert suite rather than a scenario-driven ballet proved to be a wise one. Freed from the necessity to prepare and rehearse the kind of precise, measure-by-measure synchronization that would be demanded by a conventional narrative ballet, Douthit-Boyd was able to give his dancers steps that creatively reflected the spirit of the music.

Stravinsky’s score is filled with solo opportunities, every one of which got the virtuosity it deserved. That includes, but is not limited to, Concertmaster David Halen in multiple movements, Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks in the Serenata, Principal Trumpet Steven Franklin in the Toccata, Associate Principal Horn Thomas Jöstlein and flautist Olivia Staton in the Gavotta, and Principal Trombone Jonathan Randazzo in the Vivo. And even with my attention divided between the dancers and the orchestra, I was still able to appreciate Denève’s tempo and dynamics choices.

Individual orchestra members were even more in the spotlight in the opening work, Stravinsky’s Concerto in E flat (“Dumbarton Oaks”). Composed in 1937–38 on commission for Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss in celebration of their 30^th wedding anniversary, the concerto was premiered in May, 1938, at a private concert at the Bliss’s Dumbarton Oaks estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It’s a bright and cheerful work, heavily influenced by the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, especially the Concerto No. 3.

The last SLSO performance of the concerto was to have taken place November 13 and 14, 2020 with Denève at the podium. Those concerts were cancelled due to the pandemic but were recorded and released on video (no longer available, alas)  the following spring. Because the piece is scored for only 16 musicians, it demands prodigious playing from all concerned, and the that’s exactly what it got in both that video and in Saturday’s live performance. Even the most rhythmically tricky passages were clear under Denève’s direction.

The concerto asks a lot of the solo wind players—flute, clarinet, and bassoon—if only because they are solo parts and therefore more visible. Those roles were filled expertly by (respectively) Olivia Staton, Associate Principal Clarinet Robert Walker, and Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo.

 The second half of the concert belonged entirely to the French, beginning with the rarely heard score (the last SLSO performance was 20 years ago, and then only at Carnegie Hall) by Claude Debussy (1862–1918) for his rarely seen 1913 ballet Jeux. It would prove to be one of his last orchestral works as the cancer that would kill him in 1918 began to tax his strength.

Audiences at the premiere were apparently baffled by the banality of the scenario, involving a game of tennis by a man and two women that eventually turns into an impassioned flirtation. Said flirtation is quickly (and inexplicably) abandoned when a tennis ball bounces onto the court from offstage.  At that point, says the score, “surprised and frightened, they [the dancers] leap away and disappear into the depths of the nocturnal park” (“surpris et effrayés, ils se sauvent en bondissant, et disparaissent dans les profondeurs du parc nocturne”). After that an airplane was supposed to crash land on the stage, but Debussy made removing that event one of the requirements for accepting the commission.

There’s more to the piece, as discussed in my preview article. Rather than repeat it here I’ll refer you there.

What many audience members and critics found truly odd, though, was Debussy’s score. As Stephen Walsh wrote in his 2018 book Debussy: a Painter in Sound,

Debussy’s prevailing technique, which would so impress avant garde composers half a century later, is to distribute tiny gestures round the orchestra like fragments of overheard conversation or like simulacra of the unspoken, barely expressed, only half-recognised passions that fleetingly develop between the three dancers. Every detail is touched in with a fine brush. Snatches of decorative arabesque melody flit from instrument to instrument.

Just to add to the bafflement, Jeux features frequent changes in tempo, time signature, and key. The result is music that often feels weightless and unsettled. “Analysing it,” wrote the BBC’s Christopher Dingle, “is like trying to capture wisps of mist.”

Narrative ballet scores, in my experience, can be a challenge for the audience without some guidance as to what would be happening on stage. This is especially true with a piece as elliptical as Jeux. Debussy’s score is filled with brief descriptions of the action, and I think projecting at least some of them during the performance would have gone a long way towards leaving the audience more engaged and less bemused.

That said, this was a well-paced performance with first rate work by the musicians. The opening whole-tone chords by the woodwinds, for example, has just the right sense of dissonance without sounding out of tune, which nicely set expectations for the evanescent music that followed. Although the orchestra is large (just under 100 musicians), dynamic markings in the score generally hang around the neighborhood of piano, with forte markings appearing rarely until the flirtation becomes heavier in the last several minutes. That’s tricky to manage, especially in a live environment where real silence is hard to come by, and there were times Saturday night when the levels felt a bit compressed.

Still, very nicely done overall, and with just the right sense of wit, especially in those final pages when, after a brief silence, an ascending three-note figure brings everything to an abrupt end.

Bringing the evening to a rousing conclusion was the Suite No. 2 from Bacchus et Ariane, op. 43 by Albert Roussel (1869–1937).  Although not one of France’s better known musical sons, Roussel is a favorite of Denève. 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. Composed in the same year as that symphony, the music for Bacchus et Ariane has a strong rhythmic drive and an appropriately Bacchanalian climax.

In this version of the story, Ariadne (Ariane in French), abandoned on the isle of Naxos by the ingrate Theseus, is about to throw herself into the sea when the god Bacchus intervenes. They dance, the bacchantes join in, and Ariane is crowned as the consort of Bacchus.

I missed seeing this when Denève and the orchestra last presented it in 2007, so it was a pleasure to see it now. A despairing violin solo (beautifully done by Halen) in the prelude sets the bleak scene as Ariane is abandoned. She awakens and, molto agitato, tries to fling herself in the Adriatic—only to fall into the arms of Bacchus. From there on the mood is by turns playful, seductive, and finally, wildly abandoned. It’s exotically colorful music and got an appropriately sensuous, Technicolor performance from Denève and the orchestra. The concluding Bacchanale and Coronation of Ariane sizzled with energy and brought the audience to its collective feet.  Laurel wreaths are due to all concerned.

Upcoming: Guest conductor Dima Slobodeniouk and sheng virtuoso Wu Wei make their local debuts with Jukka Tiensuu’s Teoton (Concerto for Sheng and Orchestra). The program includes Flounce by Lotta Wennäkoski and the Symphony No. 4 by Tchaikovsky. Performances are  Saturday and Sunday, January 24 and 25 at Powell Hall.

Symphony Preview: The Light Fantastic

This Saturday and Sunday, January 10 and 11, Stéphane Denève leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in what the web site describes as “a program that celebrates powerful partnerships between dance and music.” A good summary, that, given that three of the four works on the program are actual ballets and the fourth eventually became the basis for a ballet by Jerome Robbins, albeit over three decades later.

Dancer Sergio Camacho in
St. Louis Dance Theatre’s 
Way Out West. Photo courtesy of the SLSO.

The work in question was the Concerto in E-flat major, "Dumbarton Oaks," written by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) in 1937–38 on commission for Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss in celebration of their 30^th wedding anniversary. The first performance was in May, 1938, at a private concert at their Dumbarton Oaks estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It’s a bright and cheerful work, heavily influenced by the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, especially the Concerto No. 3.

As the composer recalled later:

I played Bach very regularly during the composition of the concerto, and I was greatly attracted to the Brandenburg Concertos. Whether or not the first theme of my first movement is a conscious borrowing from the third of the Brandenburg set, however, I do not know. What I can say is that Bach would most certainly have been delighted to loan it to me; to borrow in this way was exactly the sort of thing he liked to do.

No doubt, although I expect Bach would have found the astringent harmonies and constantly changing time signatures a bit weird.

The concerto follows the general format of its 18th-century inspiration, with two fast movements framing a slower Allegretto second movement. Themes are lobbed back and forth among the members of the small ensemble like the ball in a fast-paced game of tennis and there's even a very traditional fugue at the end of the first movement. The score directs all three movements to be played attacca (without pause), separated by only a series of more solemn chords to signal a break in the emotional tone.

The entire piece runs around 12 to 16 minutes. It's fun to hear but difficult to play and gives all the musicians a chance to test their mettle. The members of the SLSO passed that test with flying colors when the work was presented as part of its digital concert series in March and April 2021.

Up next is the suite Stravinsky prepared in 1922 from the score for his 1920 ballet Pulcinella. Commissioned by the eccentric entrepreneur Sergei Diaghilev, for whose Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo Stravinsky had composed his previous hits The Firebird and Le Sacre du Printemps, the ballet drew its visual inspiration from 17th-century Neapolitan commedia dell’arte characters in general and the titular character in particular.

Stravinsky’s score takes the form of a collection of sprightly pastiches on tunes by the short-lived (1710–1736) Italian Baroque composer Giovanni Battista Draghi (a.k.a. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi after his birthplace in Pergola). Later research would reveal that many of them were the result of historical misattributions, but since Stravinsky put his own personal stamp on all of them, it probably matters only to scholars these days. Stravinsky’s full score consists of 21 numbers, including several songs. The composer’s suite includes only eight of those numbers (and none of the songs), but they’re all winners.

The SLSO last performed the Pulcinella Suite in May 2021, but this weekend the experience will be very different. That’s because the orchestra has teamed up with St. Louis Dance Theatre and its Artistic Director Kirven Douthit-Boyd to create a new ballet based on the eight movements of the suite. In an article on the SLSO web site by Iain Shaw, Douthit-Boyd talks about his process in designing the ballet, which is inspired in part by Powell Hall’s origins as a vaudeville theatre.

“It’s kind of paying homage to that,” he said. The idea of a performance troupe coming through St. Louis gave him the impetus to start creating. “I’ve used each of the sections to highlight the dancers in different ways.”

In program notes for the 2021 performance, Denève said that Stravinsky “captures the spirit of several 18th-century composers and others in Pulcinella. He treats them with such respect, creating such tender and charming music.”

The second half of the concert is dedicated entirely to 20th-century French music for the ballet, beginning with the rarely heard score by Claude Debussy (1862–1918) for his 1913 ballet Jeux. It would prove to be one of his last orchestral works as the cancer that would kill him in 1918 began to tax his strength.

In his 2018 book Debussy: a Painter in Sound, Stephen Walsh describes Debussy as a composer for whom visual elements were central to his music and who in his spare time was more likely to be found at the Louvre than the Opera. He was a close friend of painter Henry Lerolle and was very taken with the work of Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

This is important not just because Jeux is a ballet but also because the scenario is primarily a set of somewhat static images of two girls and a boy in tennis outfits flirting with each other while supposedly playing tennis. Sergei Daighliev first approached Debussy with the idea in June 1912. The choreographer would be the legendary Vasily Nijinsky who had just scored a major hit in Debussy’s Prélude d’après-midi d’un faune the month before.

The composer’s first response, in a telegram, was “Subject ballet Jeux idiotic, not interested,” but Diaghilev doubled the fee and the deal was done.

One the surface the scenario, such as it is, is as straightforward as it is banal. As described in Walsh’s book, the titular games take place in or near a tennis court. Léon Baskt’s set for the premiere was a densely tree-lined London square. The curtain rises on an empty stage. A ball bounces on to the stage followed by a young man leaping across the stage in a tennis outfit. Two young girls appear and a series of flirtations follows, first between the young man and each of the girls in turn, then among all three of them. It culminates in “a kiss of disturbingly ecstatic intensity” at which point another tennis ball bounces on to the stage “like a passing policeman” and the players flee. After that an airplane was supposed to crash land on the stage, but Debussy apparently made removing that one of the requirements of accepting the commission.

But, as Nijinsky later wrote in his diary, tennis was just a cover for a much older game. Jeux, he wrote, “is the life of which Diaghilev dreamed…he wanted to make love to two boys at the same time and wanted those boys to make love to him. In the ballet the two girls represent the two boys and the young man is Diaghilev. I changed the characters, as love between three men could not be represented on the stage.”

When Diaghilev talked to Debussy, though, it was about the way he wanted the music to reflect a particular style of dancing. He wanted all three dancers to spend a lot of time en point—that is, on their toes—to create a feeling of lightness and elegance. Debussy jokingly said that “I’ll have to find an orchestra ‘without feet’ for this music. I’m thinking of that orchestral color that seems lit from behind.”

That footless orchestra announces itself so softly in the opening bars of Jeux that the opening bars might have been hard to hear for the First Nighters. The dynamic doesn’t rise above piano until a sforzando and a few fortissimo bars mark the entrance of the  tennis ball at around rehearsal number 8 (bar 70 or so). For the rest of the ballet forte markings are rare until the flirtation becomes heavier in the last several minutes.

Jeux is familiar territory for Denève, who recorded it with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra as part of an all-Debussy two-disc set for Chandos in 2012. At the time he was Music Director of the orchestra—his first such appointment and a big step up for a young conductor. During his tenure, which ended in 2011, he led the RSNO at the 2006 Proms concerts in London, and for the orchestra's first ever appearance in France in 2007. He would go on to conduct the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra (among others) before taking charge of the SLSO in 2019.

Finally, we have the Suite No. 2 from Bacchus et Ariane, op. 43 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.”

Although not one of France’s better known musical sons, Roussel is a favorite of Denève, who recorded all of his symphonies with the RSNO 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. Composed in the same year as that symphony, the music for Bacchus et Ariane has a strong rhythmic drive and an appropriately Bacchanalian climax.

In this version of the story of Ariadne (Ariane in French), the spurned lover of the ungrateful Theseus, abandoned on the isle of Naxos, is about to throw herself into the sea when the god Bacchus intervenes. “Shall we dance,” he asks (anticipating Rodgers and Hammerstein by millennia). She accepts, the bacchantes join in, and (in the words of the noted musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky), “the ballet ends in a triumph of Ariadne as the consort of the god of wine.”

I’ll drink to that.

The Essentials: the regular concert series resumes as Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO in music by Stravinsky, Debussy, and Albert Roussel. The orchestra will accompany St. Louis Dance Theatre and choreographer Kirven Douthit-Boyd in an “adventurous collaboration to imagine Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite in an entirely new way. Also on the program are Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, Debussy’s ballet Jeux, and the Suite No. 2 from Roussel’s ballet Bacchus et Ariane. Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, January 10 and 11, in Powell Symphony Hall.

The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and on Classic 107.3. Classic 107.3 is also where you can hear Tom Sudholt and yours truly host the Symphony Preview episode about the concert on Wednesday, January 7, from 8 to 10 pm as well as via on-demand streaming beginning on Thursday, January 8.

St. Louis theatre calendar for the week of December 16, 2024

What's on St. Louis theater and cabaret stages this coming week. Please leave a comment if anything was wrong or got left out

A Magical Cirque Christmas
Photo: Matt Gordon

The Fabulous Fox presents A Magical Cirque Christmas on Friday, December 20, at 7:30 pm. “Embrace the holiday spirit with A MAGICAL CIRQUE CHRISTMAS, a variety show full of nostalgia, charm, and awe-inspiring performances for all ages. Get ready to be dazzled, enchanted, and filled with holiday cheer as you witness the incredible talents of world-class entertainers performing to your favorite holiday music.” The Fabulous Fox is on North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: fabulousfox.com.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Photo Timothy Norris

The Fabulous Fox presents Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: the Musical on Saturday, December 21, at 1:00 and 4:00 pm. “The beloved TV classic RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER soars off the screen and onto the stage this holiday season.  Come see all of your favorite characters from the special including Santa and Mrs. Claus, Hermey the Elf, Bumble the Abominable Snow Monster, Clarice, Yukon Cornelius  and, of course, Rudolph, as they come to life in RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER: THE MUSICAL.  It’s an adventure that teaches us that what makes you different can be what makes you special.”  The Fabulous Fox is on North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: fabulousfox.com.

Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet

The Fabulous Fox presents Nutcracker! Magical Christmas Ballet, on Sunday, December 22, at 2:00 and 6:30 pm. “Celebrate America’s favorite Christmas tradition with an international all-star cast that blends world class ballet with whimsical puppets, lavish costumes and stunning acrobatics! Share the tradition of pure Holiday magic and Tchaikovsky’s timeless score with friends and family of all ages.”   The Fabulous Fox is on North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: fabulousfox.com.

The Greenfinch Theatre and Dive presents Abagail Jensen in her one-woman play Sex Diaries of an Ex-Catholic Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 3:00 and 7:30 pm, December 20 and 21. “When the devout Joan begins to doubt her faith, she dives head first into the world of casual sex. Through threesomes and foot fetishes, she must compensate for her lack of sex education but is confronted by dismal sexual healthcare in the US. This show, in which faith gets freaky, takes the audience on a journey that climaxes… well, when Joan does.”  Performances take place at the Greenfinch Theatre, The Greenfinch Theater, 2525 S. Jefferson. For more information: www.greenfinchstl.com.

Million Dollar Quartet Christmas
Photo: Jon Gitchoff

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Stages St. Louis present the musical Million Dollar Quartet Christmas through December 22. “Million Dollar Quartet Christmas brings Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins back together for a festive jam session that will have you jingling ALL the way! In the decked-out Sun Records studio, filled to the brim with Christmas cheer and enough musical talent to power a city grid, these legendary musicians blend their chart-topping hits with seasonal cheer. Get ready for a holly jolly journey through this iconic rock n’ roll musical!” Performances take on the main stage of the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus. For more information: www.repstl.org.

Rocky Marlowe Productions presents Let It Be Christmas—A Rock Opera Thursday and Friday at 7 pm and Saturday at 2 pm, December 19 through 21. “Experience the Christmas story like never before in Let it Be Christmas—a unique, modern-day telling of the Nativity, expressed entirely through the timeless music of The Beatles. This innovative production weaves together dozens of the Fab Four's most beloved songs to celebrate the journey of Mary and Joseph and the miraculous birth of the Christ Child.” Performances take place at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center, 201 E. Monroe in Kirkwood, MO. For more information: www.metrotix.com

Christmas Carol: the Remix

St. Louis Shakespeare Festival presents Christmas Carol: The Remix, created by Q Brothers Collective, running through December 22. In this comedy update on the Dickens classic, Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Hip-Hop Past, Present, and Future. As they show him the path of rhythm and redemption, will he throw off his selfish chains and get down to the beat? Performances take place in the .ZACK in Grand Center. For more information: stlshkes.org.

Bell, Book and Candle
Photo: John Lamb

Stray Dog Theatre presents the John Van Druten’s Bell, Book and Candle Thursdays through Saturdays at 8, December 5 through 21, with an additional performance  at 2 pm on Sunday December 15. “In 1950s New York, Gillian Holroyd is a modern-day witch who casts spells and performs feats of supernaturalism. When Gillian encounters charming publisher Shep Henderson, she casts a love spell to gain Shep’s interest in order to thwart a rival. Gillian finds herself falling in love with Shep, which poses a problem: witches, unfortunately, cannot fall in love, and this pesky imperfection leads to a number of difficult life lessons.” Performances take place at Tower Grove Abbey, 2336 Tennessee in Tower Grove East. For more information: www.straydogtheatre.org

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

To get your event listed here, send an email to chuck at kdhx.org Your event information should be in text format (i.e. not part of a graphic), but feel free to include publicity stills.

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 Review: The art of dance with Denève and the SLSO

During the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s (SLSO) “Operatic Favorites” concert a few weeks ago, Music Director Stéphane Denève reminded us that for much of its history opera has been accompanied by ballet. It seemed only appropriate, then, that when regular subscription concerts resumed this past weekend (March 16 and 17), ballet was front and center—both figuratively and literally.

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

The ”literally” part refers to the fact that for the first half of the concert, the area of the Stifel Theatre stage in front of the podium was turned into a dance floor for the Big Muddy Dance Company. They were there to perform the world premiere of a ballet commissioned by the SLSO to accompany “Picture Studies,” a 2011 suite by Kansas City–based composer Adam Schoenberg (b. 1980). That work was also the result of a commission, this time from the Nelson-Atkins Museum, who were looking for a 21st-century version of “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881).

Die Drei Pierrots Nr. 2
Photo coutesy of
Nelson-Atkins Museum

Mussorgsky’s suite was based on a collection of works by a single artist, the composer’s friend Viktor Hartmann. Schoenberg’s work is a collection of musical invocations of works by eight different artists (four paintings, three photographs, and one sculpture). So the challenge for Big Muddy Artistic Director Kirven Douthit-Boyd was to create a ballet that reflected both Schoenberg’s music and the works of art that inspired it.

He succeeded admirably. The combination of Douthit-Boyd’s choreography, Schoenberg’s music, and the polished performances of both the Big Muddy dancers and the SLSO added new layers of meaning to the original works of art. Here are a few examples.

Die Drei Pierrots Nr. 2 (The Three Pierrots Nr. 2) is a 1911 painting by Albert Bloch 1882–1961. The three figures in the painting may look dark and a bit creepy, but Schoenberg has given them light and mischievous music more in keeping with their commedia dell’arte origins. The dancing linked those two different sides of Pierrot, with a trio of women in polka dot dresses moving in tight formations that mirrored the grouping in the picture.

Repetition Photo courtesy of 
Nelson-Atkins Museum

Repetition, a 1913 photograph by Kurt Baasch (1891–1964), is the spatial opposite of Der Drei Pierrots. Here, four widely separated pedestrians are captured in their own individual worlds on a strangely empty midday street. The music reflects a less empty and more energetic scene while the dance presents us with the four isolated figures, each with their own style of movement.

Rose with Gray, a 1924 painting by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), is all jagged edges, blocks of color, and a general feeling of edgy energy. Schoenberg’s music matches the mood of the image, as do the choreography and lighting. The latter projects angular abstract shapes on the stage that are a match for the aggressive movements of the dancing.

Rose with Gray Photo courtesy of
Nelson-Atkins Museum

It was, in sum, a memorable mix of sight and sound. I think projecting images of the original art in synch with the music and dance might have given the audience a better idea of how it all fit together, but that could also have acted as a distraction. It was a hit in any case, with both composer Schoenberg and choreographer Douthit-Boyd on hand to share the curtain call.

The second half of the concert brought us back to the ballet with Denève’s compilation of music from the three concert suites from the “Romeo and Juliet” ballet by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953). The suites have been popular with audiences. With conductors, not so much.

In his comments before the performance, Denève noted that both he and his fellow conductors often struggle with the odd sequencing of the suites, and said he wished he could call up Prokofiev up and ask him what he had in mind. As a result, performances of the ballet suites often consist of individual numbers reassembled to match the musical vision of the conductor. Gilbert Varga did that, in fact, when the SLSO last played this music in 2016.

Denève said that his R&J suite was “a Romantic suite” intended to follow the arc of the play. Which, to my ears, it certainly did. The “Balcony Scene” was as lush and achingly lovely as I have ever heard it, with a positively ethereal end. “Friar Lawrence” emphasized the sympathetic warmth of the character.

“Montagues and Capulets” (the first movement from the Suite No. 2) was turned into two separate movements, with the break coming right after the dissonant opening fortissimo brass chords and the pianissimo string chorale that follows. Denève then jumped directly to the “Minuet” (the fourth movement from Suite No. 1), not returning to “Montagues and Capulets” until after the puckish “Masks”  (Suite 1, number V). At that point he picked up at rehearsal number 1, which is a repeat of the same ominous opening followed by the lead-footed Allegro pesante “Dance of the Knights.”

Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO in
Romeo and Juliet
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

The dramatic impact of that contrast was palpable, as was the radical shift to the “Balcony Scene” immediately afterwards. “Death of Tybalt” was an electrifying exercise in virtuosity by the orchestra and the final death of Juliet had a tragic delicacy that echoed the Prince’s final lines from Shakespeare’s play: “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

It was all beautifully played and conducted with Denève’s customary attention to detail. At around 40 minutes, it felt more like a symphonic poem based on Prokofiev’s score than a mere collection of excerpts. Nicely done, everyone.

Next from the SLSO: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soloist Tom Borrow in the Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) by Beethoven, along with the overture to "Béatrice et Bénedict” by Berlioz and the local premiere of “Pretty” by Julia Wolfe. The final performance is Saturday, March 23, at 7:30 pm at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the UMSL campus. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming for a limited time afterward at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra site.

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

Symphony Preview: Shall we dance?

“Invitation to the Dance” (“Aufforderung zum Tanz”), Op. 65, is one of the more popular pieces by Carl Maria von Weber, especially in its 1841 orchestration by Hector Berlioz. It’s also a good description of the concerts Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) will perform this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, March 16 and 17).

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

Adam Schoenberg
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

The program consists of only two works: “Picture Studies,” a 2011 suite by Adam Schoenberg (b. 1980), and Music Director Stéphane Denève’s compilation of music from the three concert suites Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) assembled from his ballet “Romeo and Juliet.”

The Schoenberg work was the result of a commission by the Kansas City Symphony and the Nelson-Atkins Museum to write a 21st-century version of “Pictures at an Exhibition” by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881), which in its 1922 orchestration by Maurice Ravel has become a staple of the symphonic repertoire.

Mussorgsky’s suite was based on a collection of works by a single artist, the composer’s friend Viktor Hartmann. Schoenberg’s work is a collection of musical invocations of works by by eight different artists (four paintings, three photographs, and one sculpture). The only common thread is that they were all on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. “My main objective,” says Schoenberg in this week’s program notes, “was to create an architectural structure that connected each movement to the next while creating an overall arc for the entire piece.”

Those program notes include not only extensive quotes from the composer but also an interview with choreographer Kervin Douthit-Boyd, whose Big Muddy Dance Company will perform the world premiere of the SLSO-commissioned ballet Douthit-Boyd created for Schoenberg’s music. So rather than write any more about his project myself, I will simply refer you to those notes.

I will, however, make one recommendation: as you read Schoenberg’s commentary of the suite, listen to its world premiere recording by Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra on the SLSO’s Spotify playlist. Granted, this music is so approachable that an advance listen isn’t really necessary, but reading Schoenberg’s thoughts as you experience his music adds a great deal to the experience.

One more thing that will enhance that experience is seeing the art that inspired “Picture Studies.” Here are the links to the works in question, along with their corresponding movements. I have excluded movements I (Intro) and VIII (Interlude) since those are statements of what Schoenberg calls a “Ghost-like piano theme” that’s a nod to the recurring “Promenade” motif in Mussorgsky’s “Pictures”.

Kirven Douthit-Boyd
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

II. Three Pierrots: Die Drei Pierrots Nr. 2, a painting by Albert Bloch 1882–1961.
III. Repetition: Repetition, a photograph by Kurt Baasch (1891–1964).
IV. Olive Orchard: The Olive Orchard, a painting by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890).
V. Kandinsky: Rose with Gray, a painting by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)
VI. Calder’s World: Untitled, 1937,  a mobile sculpture by Alexander Calder (1898–1976). There’s more than one Calder mobile labeled Untitled, 1937, but based on Schoenberg’s description I think this is the right one. The Nelson-Atkins Gallery, on the other hand, has Untitled, 1936, so the year must might be wrong.
VII. Miró: Women at Sunrise, a painting by Joan Miró (1893–1983).
IX. Cliffs of Moher: Atlantic Ocean, Cliffs of Moher, a photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto  (b. 1848). This and the last movement are played without pause after movement VIII.
X. Pigeons in Flight: Pigeons in Flight, a photograph by Francis Blake (1850–1913).

After intermission it’s back to the ballet. This time, though, the dancing will have to be imaginary since we’ll be hearing a good 40 minutes of music from Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” suites. The ballet and the suites are quite popular today, but the story of their creation is not a particularly happy one.

Prokofiev emigrated to the West in 1918, first to the USA and then to Europe. In 1936 he was lured back to the Soviet Union with what proved to be false promises of personal and artistic freedom. At first he was allowed to retain his passport and make appearances abroad, including an American tour in 1938. But then, as Dorothea Redepenning wrote in a 2001 article for Grove Online, “the trap snapped shut: he was asked to hand in his passport for the transaction of a formality, but did not get it back, so that there could be no question of further tours abroad.”

With the closing of the trap came the imposition of censorship. Although Prokofiev had completed the score for “Romeo and Juliet” in 1936, he soon found obstacles in the path to an actual performance. And there was also the matter of the ending.

When he began work on “Romeo and Juliet” in 1935, Prokofiev had decided to give the ballet a happy ending, and his score reflected that decision. As the composer dryly noted, "living people can dance, the dead cannot". And, as Alice Jones wrote in a 2008 article for The Independent, there was also “the little-known fact of Prokofiev's deeply held Christian Science beliefs, according to which death does not exist. In Prokofiev's vision, the love of Romeo and Juliet is infinite, transcending all earthly boundaries and existing in a paradise-like realm.” Stalin’s censors disagreed, and “Romeo and Juliet” didn’t get an officially approved Bolshoi production until 1946—and then only on the condition that Prokofiev cut the 20 minutes of “happy ending” music he had originally composed and end the ballet with the death of Romeo and  Juliet.

Prokofiev in 1918
en.wikipedia.org

The original “happy ending” version of the ballet was rediscovered and performed at the Bard Summerscape festival outside New York in 2008, but the Stalin-approved version is still the one most often performed today.

As noted above, the “Romeo and Juliet” suites have been popular with audiences. But as Joshua Barone wrote in a 2018 New York Times article, “the suites, which are structured more like symphonies than tone poems, can be unsatisfying for conductors.” That includes Maestro Denève.

“I wish I could call Prokofiev and ask him what is the exact purpose of his three suites,” Mr. Denève said in an interview for the article. “With all my respect, of course, for Prokofiev, I can’t understand his logic.”

When the SLSO performed music from the “Romeo and Juliet” suites in 2016  guest conductor Gilbert Varga was on the podium with seven movements selected to mirror the dramatic arc of both Shakespeare’s play and the revised ballet. Stéphane Denève is doing essentially the same thing this weekend but—based on the number and order of the selections—in somewhat greater depth. You can see a more detailed breakdown in the program notes or just listen to the selections in the Spotify playlist.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in Adam Schoenberg’s “Picture Studies” and selections from the ballet “Romeo and Juliet” by Prokofiev. “Picture Studies” will be accompanied by an SLSO-commissioned ballet performed by the Big Muddy Dance Company with choreography by Kervin Douthit-Boyd. Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, March 16 and 17, at the Sifel Theatre 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 December 18, 2023

What's on St.Louis theater and cabaret stages this coming week. Please leave a comment if anything was wrong or got left out

NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet
Photo: nutcracker.com

The Fabulous Fox presents NUTCRACKER! Magical Christmas Ballet on Friday, December 22, at 2:00 and 6:30 pm. “Gather your loved ones for the warm-glow-nostalgia of America’s favorite Christmas celebration. Experience the extraordinary international cast and Ukrainian Principal Artists performing at the peak of classical European Ballet. Be transported by the magic of jaw-dropping acrobatics, larger than life puppets and stunning hand-crafted sets and costumes.” The Fabulous Fox is on North Grand in Grand Center.  For more information: https://fabulousfox.com

The Fabulous Fox presents Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer On Saturday, December 23, at 1:00, 4:00 and 7:00 pm. “The beloved TV classic RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER soars off the screen and onto the stage this holiday season.  Come see all of your favorite characters from the special including Santa and Mrs. Claus, Hermey the Elf, Bumble the Abominable Snow Monster, Clarice, Yukon Cornelius  and, of course, Rudolph, as they come to life in RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER: THE MUSICAL.  It’s an adventure that teaches us that what makes you different can be what makes you special.  Don’t miss this wonderful holiday tradition that speaks to the misfit in all of us.” The Fabulous Fox is on North Grand in Grand Center.  For more information: https://fabulousfox.com

The Lemp Mansion Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre and Jest Mysteries present Harm for the Hoidays  through January 13, 2024. "This may look like a festive Holiday Party for a family-owned, candle-making business but there is danger lurking beneath the mistletoe! Slimy characters, sneaky thieves, blackmailers, cheats and liars prowl around every corner and you oughta know since you’re one of them!  They’re malicious conspiring reveals the true nature of Harm Enterprises…organized crime (shhh…don’t tell Grandpa!)  But the shortest fuse in the room belongs to Hector Harm, he’s the grinchiest of the Harm siblings and he’s got one of his beady little eyes on old Grandma Harm’s Job.  Hope he doesn’t snuff her out before her time!" The Lemp Mansion is at 3322 DeMenil Place in south city. For more information: www.lempmansion.com

It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play
Photo: Jon Gitchoff

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis presents It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play through December 23. “Engage your imagination in the world of vintage radio broadcasting as you rediscover the magic of the holiday season with It's A Wonderful Life - A Live Radio Play. Experience the Golden Age of Radio through this classic holiday film reimaged as a live radio performance. Bear witness to this timeliness holiday story that explores the life of George Bailey, a compassionate and selfless man, standing on the brink of despair, when an angel named Clarence is sent down to Earth to teach George the power of kindness, the importance of family and friends, and the realization that each life, no matter how ordinary it may seem, is truly wonderful.” Performances take on the main stage of the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus.. For more information: www.repstl.org.

Q Brothers Christmas Carol
Photo: Philip Hamer

The St. Louis Shakespeare Festival presents the Q Brothers Christmas Carol through December 23. “In this laugh-out-loud hip-hop remix of Dickens’ classic tale, Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the Ghosts of Hip-Hop Past, Present, and Future. As Scrooge is shown the path of rhythm and redemption, will he throw off his selfish chains and get down to the beat? Q Brothers Christmas Carol mixes everything from reggae to rock, taking this beloved tale of love, forgiveness, and Christmas spirit to the next level. Best enjoyed by ages 12 & up.” Performances take place at the National Blues Museum downtown. For more information: https://stlshakes.org/production/carol.

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

To get your event listed here, send an email to chuck at kdhx.org Your event information should be in text format (i.e. not part of a graphic), but feel free to include publicity stills.

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 Review: The SLSO rocks out with Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring"

Back in the spring of 2020, Music Director Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) planned a season closer that included the score of a ballet that literally caused a riot at its 1913 premiere, “Le Sacre du Printemps” by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971). Unfortunately, COVID-19 shut the season down in March and we never got to hear the orchestra’s much-anticipated performance of that remarkable score.

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

Until this past weekend (Saturday and Sunday, April 29 and 30), that is. Coming at the end of a concert that had already brought us pristine renditions of the colorful tone poem “Apu” by Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972) and the valedictory Piano Concerto No. 3 by Béla Bartók (1881–1945), “Sacre” was an exhilarating, pulse-pounding thrill ride. It not only delivered the big, ear-shattering climaxes, but it also honored the many intimate orchestral details that can get overlooked in performances that place too much emphasis on the more “rock and roll” moments of Stravinsky’s provocative big band blowout.

Stéphane Denève and the SLSO
"Sacre du Printemps" curtain call

I have always thought that a good “Sacre” ought to sound like it could go completely off the rails at any moment. The composer baked that into the score with crashing dissonances, frequent changes in the number of beats per bar, and unusual instrumental sonorities (like forcing the bassoon up to the top of its register in the opening measures). In the same manner as a properly executed “mad” scene in the theatre, “Sacre” should create the illusion that total chaos lurks around the corner while always being completely under control. By that standard, Saturday night’s performance wasn’t just good, it was legendary.

Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo handled that tough opening solo line expertly, setting the stage for a series of virtuoso performances by all the members of the orchestra. The eight (!) horns were in wonderful form, with special props to Tod Bowermaster and Victoria Knudtson doubling on Wagner tubas; ditto for Andrea Kaplan on the alto flute. They were working with instruments that, I expect, they rarely have to play and doing so expertly. Stravinsky’s score demands a lot from the players and got it from both the regular orchestra members and the additional musicians hired for this event.

Denève has a knack for taking familiar music and making it sound brand new, bringing out sonic details that are not always clear in other performances, making creative use of silence as a musical element, and generally shining new light on corners of the music that are sometimes in darkness—or (to push the simile to the breaking point) at least in dim light. His Beethoven Ninth in 2020 was an excellent example. So was this “Sacre.” It packed a powerful punch, but (to mix metaphors) did so in a velvet glove.

But then, the whole evening was immensely satisfying. It began with a scintillating run through Frank’s fanciful “Apu” which, like “Sacre,” is based in folk traditions. Unlike “Sacre,” it describes a mischievous spirit (the titular Apu) rather than a savage sacrifice. It delights rather than stuns, enchanting the ear with unusual orchestral combinations and a wide assortment of percussion instruments. There’s a particularly challenging passage for the marimba and xylophone in the final movement that was fun to watch as well as hear as Alan Stewart and Kevin Ritenauer jumped back and forth between instruments and occasionally played nearly on top of each other. The flutes and other wind instruments were kept quite busy as well, a nod by the composer to the dominance of that instrumental family in the folk music of Andean Perú.

The first half of the program concluded with the Bartók concerto. Like Frank, the Hungarian composer/pianist made extensive use of folk material and is cited by her as a primary source of inspiration.

L-R: Stéphane Denève, Piotr Anderszewski

Soloist Piotr Anderszewski was once dubbed “amusician of both power and sensitivity” in a New Yorker review of a recital of the works of Bach, a composer Anderszewski has recorded extensively. Saturday night he fully lived up to that description, dancing through the first and third movements with style and grace while bringing a hymn-like serenity to the second. That he and the orchestra did this despite a bizarre vocal outburst from an audience member down on the first floor is a tribute to their extraordinary concentration on the music.  His style was fluid, his sound both translucent and powerful.

When Stéphane Denève made his SLSO debut back in 2003 his soloist for Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D major was Piotr Anderszewski. “The give and take between Denève and soloist Piotr Anderszewski was lovely to behold,” I wrote at the time [https://www.waxwingwebs.com/thedoge/slso030919.html], “and the resulting performance a solid display of teamwork among soloist, conductor and orchestra.” Nearly two decades later it’s clear that (to paraphrase Mr. Shakespeare) age cannot wither nor custom stale their solid partnership.

One of those Bach recordings I referred to above, by the way, was a 2002 Erato disc of Partitas 1, 3, and 6. Anderszewski gave us a sample of that as an encore: the “Sarabande” BWV 825. The simple elegance and subtle voicing of the performance was a perfect counterpart to the Allegro vivace finale of the Bartók concerto. It was also appropriate, given that Bartók once said that Bach “showed us the transcendent significance of counterpoint.”

Many SLSO concerts have threads of connectivity running through them. This one, perhaps, had more than most.

Next at Powell Hall: Stéphane Denève returns for the season finale, conducting the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and Children’s Chorus in another major piece of unfinished business from 2020, the 1846 "légende dramatique" by Hector Berlioz, "La damnation de Faust.” The soloists will be the same team originally slotted for 2020: soprano Isabel Leonard as Marguerite, tenor Michael Spyres as Faust, and bass John Relyea as Méphistophélès. Performances are Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8 pm, May 5 and 6.

The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3. It will also be the last SLSO performance in Powell until renovation is completed in 2025.

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

Symphony Preview: Just folks

Folk traditions, in one form or another, serve as the basis for the penultimate St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) program this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, April 29 and 30). Music Director Stéphane Denève conducts with piano soloist Piotr Anderszewski.

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

The program opens with the local premiere of the tone poem “Apu” by Gabriela Lena Frank, Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, founder of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and a graduate of my alma mater, Rice University.

Gabriela Lena Frank
Photo by Mariah Tauger

Ms. Frank's background is one of ethnic diversity, as her biography clearly attests:

Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.

In short, as Frank says in an interview for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, “I don't look like most composers in classical music. I'm not white; I'm a woman; and I'm alive... And: I'm hearing-impaired.”

The Peruvian side of her background is on display in “Apu,” as it was in her "Leyendas," selections from which were performed here in 2020 as part of the SLSO’s chamber music series. “In Andean Perú,” says Frank in her program notes, “spirits are said to inhabit rocks, rivers, and mountain peaks…The apu is one of the more well-known spirits that is sometimes portrayed as a minor deity with a mischievous side who is rarely seen.”

Like the supernatural practical jokers in other folk traditions around the world, Apu is probably someone you want to keep happy. “Simple folk song and a solemn prayer often successfully placate the apu,” says Frank, “to ensure safe passage through the mountains.” That song is the subject of the first movement, Pinkillo Serrano, while the prayer is heard in the second movement, Haillí. Apu himself shows up in the final movement, traipsing through the tuned percussion instruments and generally raising a ruckus before evaporating like the morning dew.

You won’t find a recording of “Apu” on the Spotify playlist, but fortunately you can watch Marin Alsop conduct the 2017 world premiere performance by the National Youth Orchestra on YouTube.

Since Frank cites Béla Bartók as a source of inspiration, it’s only right that the next item on the program is the "Piano Concerto No. 3", which he wrote during the final year of his life (1945) in New York. Unlike his first two concertos, which he wrote for himself (he was a formidable pianist), the third was composed for his second wife, Ditta. The hope, according to Geoffrey Norris in a 2016 article for The Gramophone, was "that it would give her some sort of legacy after his death, both in terms of her own profile as a pianist (though she seems never to have played it in public) and in the income she might accrue from royalties when it was taken up by others."

A more prosperous Bartók in 1927

That was probably a good bet. Although Bartók's three concertos have never been as popular as those of Big Guns like Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, they have always had their ardent supporters. And the third concerto is probably the most accessible of the three. It is, in Norris's words "altogether of a gentler, more reflective if scarcely (in the outer movements) less dynamic mien" than the first two. "András Schiff," he notes, "describes it as 'a wise man's farewell.’" And so it was; when the composer died on September 26, 1945, it fell to his friend, the violinist and composer Tibor Serly, to complete the final 17 measures. The concerto was his last musical will and testament.

That's not to say it's funereal. Lively dance-like elements dominate both the opening and closing movements, and the Adagio religioso that separates them is classic Bartók "night music", with emotionally intense chorales flanking a middle section that evokes the nocturnal sounds of nature. And all the way through, you can hear the influences of the folk music he collected during his life.

That brings us to the Big Finale, the score for the 1913 ballet "Le Sacre du Printemps” (“The Rite of Spring”) by Igor Stravinsky. The third in a series of series of successful collaborations between Stravinsky and impresario Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (the previous two being "The Firebird" from 1910 and "Petruska" from 1911), "Sacre" was, like “Apu” and the Bartók concerto, inspired by folk elements (Russian ones, to be precise).

The first performance of “Sacre”—at the newly opened Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on May 29, 1913, with Pierre Monteux conducting—became a notorious succès de scandale. "It is arguably," writes Paul-John Ramos at classic.net, "the most famous debacle in western artistic history":

Audience members found the quiet, yet active, introduction ridiculous. When the curtain rose and [choreographer Vaslav] Nijinsky's dances began, the auditorium went into a rage, their sophistication insulted… Debris was thrown, as well as punches. The work was performed in full, but only with the help of Nijinsky calling steps from atop an offstage chair.

Later performances were less riotous. In fact, when Monteux conducted a concert performance in the Casino de Paris the following year, Stravinsky was carried from the hall in triumph on the shoulders of audience members. Today the music sounds less radical but still packs a tremendous dramatic punch, as was the case when David Robertson opened the 2011-2012 SLSO season with it.

Stravinsky in 1903
By Unknown Photograf -
archives de FinitoR
Public Domain, Link

A wide assortment of performances of both the orchestral score and the ballet are available online. The SLSO picked the composer’s own 1962 Columbia Symphony Orchestra recording for its Spotify playlist, but I find it rather bloodless. As he got older and more austere in his musical language, Stravinsky the conductor tended to treat the music of his younger self as something that needed taming.  For my playlist, I have instead chosen a thoroughly unbuttoned 2005 recording by Peter Eötvös and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie.

I have also included the 1929 recording by Monteux himself with the Grande Orchestre Symphonique for its glimpse of what it was like to play this insane music before it became a standard repertoire item. On his “Sticky Notes” podcast, Joshua Weilerstein points out that the rhythmic instability Stravinsky wrote into the work’s final moments by using “off balance meters that have 5 or 7 beats in the bar” can be lost in more streamlined recent performances. “You can almost hear the panic” in this performance, observes Weilerstein, “but in a way this recording, which is unstable and not together, has more of that visceral excitement that Stravinsky surely wanted.” For a deeper dive into the music, there's also a version of Leonard Bernstein's 1958 New York Philharmonic recording synchronized with pages from the score.

As for videos of the ballet itself, you can see not one but two recreations of Nijinsky's original choreography performed by the Orchestra and dancers of the Ballet Mariinski Theater under Valery Gergiev at the Mariinski Theater in 2008 and at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2013. The sound and videography are great in both cases. It's as close as you'll ever get to seeing what so excited and outraged audiences over a century ago.

“Sacre” was originally scheduled as the season closer in 2020, but the pandemic put that plan on hold. It will be good to finally hear Denève’s approach to this remarkable piece at last.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève returns to conduct Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Apu,” Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (with soloist Piotr Anderszewski), and Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps.” Performances are Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, April 29 and 30. The Saturday performance will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classical 107.3.

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

Symphony Review: Exotic sounds dominate a lively St. Louis Symphony concert

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concerts last weekend (April 12 and 13) opened with a pair of local premieres—one of which no doubt came as a surprise to most of the audience as it wasn’t listed in the program.

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

Members of the Metropolitan Opera sing
the Ukrainian anthem

That unlisted item was “Shche ne vmerla Ukrainas” (“Ukraine Has Not Ye Perished”), more commonly known as the Ukrainian national anthem. Formally adopted in 1991, the anthem has music by priest and composer Mykhailo Verbytsky and a text by poet Pavlo Chubynsky. As Stan Moore wrote in a recent article for the British radio station Classic FM, “one of the world’s mightiest patriotic songs.”

The rousing performance by Stéphane Denève and the SLSO Saturday night certainly demonstrated the truth of that. With all of the musicians and the vast majority of the audience standing in support of the beleaguered nation, it was a moving experience—and a reminder of the “parlous times” [in which we live. English translations of the text vary widely, but this one by Ihor W. Slabicky at the Toronto Ukrainian Genealogy Group site feels extremely relevant right now:

Ukraine's glory hasn't perished, nor her freedom
Upon us, fellow compatriots, fate shall smile once more.
Our enemies will vanish, like dew in the morning sun,
And we too shall rule, brothers, in a free land of our own.

We'll lay down our souls and bodies to attain our freedom,
And we'll show that we, brothers, are of the Kozak nation.

“Alle Menschen werden Brüder,” as Schiller wrote two centuries ago.

Up next was the scheduled local premiere, which was also a world premiere: the “Goddess Triptych” by contemporary (b. 1969) American composer Stacy Garrop. Written for the SLSO and commissioned by the League of American Orchestras, the work is a brief (15 minutes) suite depicting scenes from the legends of three Hindu goddesses: Durga, Lakshmi, and Ganga. Scored for a massive orchestra with a substantial percussion battery (including a thunder sheet and a LOT of drums), the “Triptych” tells its tales in the kind of vivid detail which would have impressed even Richard Strauss.

“Durga Battles a Buffalo Demon” starts big and gets bigger as the eighteen-armed goddess engages in violent conflict with the fearsome demon. The orchestra unleashes a wild array of sounds, including a semi-musical scraping noise created by strumming the undampened bass strings of a piano. Durga finally beheads the demon in what Denève, in his pre-concert talk, called “the loudest sound I have ever heard from an orchestra,” after which the strummed piano strings have the last word, slowly fading into silence.

Stacy Garrop
Photo: Joe Francavalla

In “Lakshmi Sits on a Lotus Blossom,” a contemplative piccolo solo (neatly done by Ann Choomack, who also had some fine moments later in the concert) introduces us to the four-handed goddess of beauty, fertility, and fortune as she meditates serenely in the middle of a lotus blossom. Playing at the top of her register, Principal Harp Allegra Lilly joined Choomack to suggest Lakshmi floating in some ethereal, sparkling light. The brass and percussion sections joined the harp to depict Lakshmi opening her lower two hands to spill gold coins from her palms, after which the meditative mood returned.

In final section, “Ganga Cascades from the Heavens,” the titular personification of the river Ganges dances through the skies to the sound of scurrying strings until Vishnu, in the brasses, kicks a hole in the wall of heaven and Ganga plummets to earth in rapidly descending string figures accompanied by a rainstick. Shiva breaks the fall of Ganga’s massive liquid column and she flows off into multiple melodic streams.

Does this sound like a film soundtrack? Yes, it does; but in a good way. The form of the symphonic poem—music inspired by and descriptive of a non-musical source—has been in decline for far too long. It’s good to see new composers taking it up again, especially when it’s done with the degree of imagination and inventiveness Garrop shows in her “Goddess Triptych.” I was pleased to see that Garrop herself was present Saturday night to share in the richly deserved standing ovation.

The first half of the program ended with music that also has its share of exotic sounds: the Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, op. 103 (“Egyptian”), written during an 1896 winter trip to the monuments of Luxor by the peripatetic Camille Saint-Saëns. One of the souvenirs he brought back was "a Nubian love song which I heard sung by boatmen on the Nile.” It served as the basis for some unusual harmonic effects in the concerto’s long second movement which, in the composer’s words, “takes us, in effect, on a journey to the East and even, in the passage in F-sharp, to the Far East."

L-R: Stéphane Denève and Jean-Yves Thibaudet

The soloist this weekend was former SLSO Artist in Residence Jean-Yves Thibaudet. He and Maestro Denève have worked together many times in the past, as was apparent in their impeccable collaboration on this work.

Thibaudet demonstrated that he could produce the elegant arpeggios and power chords of the Allegro animato first movement with equal facility. The chromatic passages and the bell-like sounds of the Andante second movement came across with impressive clarity, and the Molto allegro finale overflowed with cheerful energy. Denève was with him all the way leading the musicians in a finely wrought interpretation with excellent sonic balance between soloist and ensemble.

The inevitable standing ovation was followed by a sweet encore: Elgar’s “Salut d’amour.” It was a perfect contrast to the vigor of the concerto’s finale.

After intermission came a double helping of ballet: Paul Dukas’s one act “La Péri” (including its famous brass fanfare) and a suite from Stravinsky’s “L'Oiseau de feu” (“The Firebird”). The two ballets were composed within a year of each other—“La Péri” in 1911 and “The Firebird” in 1910—and were both originally scheduled to be premiered by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris, although only “Firebird” made the final cut.

Based on Persian folklore, “La Péri” is the story of prince Iskender’s theft of the Flower of Immortality from a sleeping peri (a winged female fairy)—an action he comes to regret. The music is lush and suffused with some of same perfume of the cultural phenomenon of Orientalism that you hear in the Saint-Saëns concerto. The score has some very florid and tricky writing for the woodwind section, perfectly executed by the members of the band. The horns covered themselves with glory here, as they did throughout the evening, and the brass section was commanding in the opening fanfare. Denève drew out all the hothouse exoticism of the work in a very persuasive reading of this often neglected music.

Denève and the SLSO take bows after
Firebird

The evening that began with the Ukrainian anthem ended with a Russian ballet, which somehow felt appropriate. “Firebird” was the score that put Stravinsky on the map, musically speaking, and it remains one of his most popular works. Stravinsky prepared two concert suites from the ballet: one in 1910 and another in 1945. The noted Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet also created one in 1919, which the composer later revised. Denève chose the 1919 suite but with the slightly leaner 1945 orchestration.

Conducting without a score, Denève led the orchestra in a genuine rouser of a performance. The opening tempo hit just the right balance of energy and menace with the growling theme in the low strings that will eventually become the glowing, triumphant chords of the finale. The quick woodwind interchanges were meticulous. The big percussion bang that opens the “Infernal dance of King Kashchei” was like a thunderclap, coming as it did after the quiet conclusion of “The Princesses' Khorovod” (round dance). Andrew Cuneo’s bassoon solo in the “Berceuse” was haunting, and the finale was simply resplendent. Its impact was enhanced by the wide dynamic contrast between the hushed opening horn solo (marked dolce, cantabile—“sweet, singing”—and certainly played that way by Roger Kaza) and those fortississimo ( “very loud”) closing notes.

Next at Powell Hall: Stéphane Denève conducts and Jean-Yves Thibaudet returns as soloist for Gershwin’s Concerto in F. The program opens with “Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan” by contemporary American composer James Lee III and concludes with Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3. Performances take place Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 8 pm, March 18 and 19 at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

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