Symphony Preview: Mix and match

Back in the days when I was still doing a weekly show at KDHX, I loved to put together different and often seemingly unrelated songs into sets designed to highlight the relationships among them.  St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Stéphane Denève often takes a similar approach to his programming, zooming in on connections that aren’t obvious at first glance. Or at first hearing, as the case may be.

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

Berlioz in 1832
Painting by Émile Signol

You’ll witness and exceptionally fine example of this in concerts that open the new SLSO season this weekend (Friday and Sunday, September 27 and 29). The first half opens with the “Marche hongroise” (“Hungarian March”) from Part I of  the 1846 opera/oratorio hybrid “La damnation de Faust” (“The Damnation of Faust”) by Hector Berlioz (1803–1869). In the context of the full work (performed so splendidly by the SLSO in 2023), the sound of the Hungarian army tramping off to war gives Faust the opportunity to compare the enthusiasm of the soldiers with his own indifference to worldly joys. “Et quel feu dans leurs yeux,” he muses. “Tout cœur frémit à leur chant de victoire ; Le mien seul reste froid, insensible à la gloire.” (“And what fire burns in their eyes! Every heart throbs to their song of victory; Only mine remains cold, insensitive to glory.”)

Played more often as an instrumental excerpt, as it will be this weekend, it’s a rousing piece that shows off the composer’s flair for colorful orchestration. It doesn’t sound particularly Hungarian, but it’s so much fun that it hardly matters. And Berlioz wasn’t really interested in cultural fidelity anyway.

Brahms c. 1872
Photographer unknown
Public Domain

More authentically Hungarian are the 21 “Hungarian Dances” by Johannes Brahms. Based mostly on Hungarian folk tunes, the dances were originally composed for piano duet and published in four sets between 1869 and 1880. They were then orchestrated by various composers, including Brahms. This weekend we’ll hear the only ones orchestrated by the composer himself: No. 1 in G minor, No. 3 in F major, and No. 10 F major (E major in the original piano version).

As George S. Bozarth and Walter Frisch write in Grove Online, Brahms was first “exposed to the style hongrois, a blending of Hungarian musical gestures and gypsy performing style…when Hungarian political refugees on their way to the USA passed through Hamburg after the suppression of the revolutions of 1848.” Which makes the local premiere of the “Nomad Concerto” by Mason Bates a logical way to conclude the first half of the program.

Composed for and premiered in January 2024 by this weekend’s soloist, violinist Gil Shaham (brother-in-law of former SLSO Music Director David Robertson), this four-movement work, as the composer writes at his web site, “explores the mysterious and soulful music of the wanderer”:

Envisioned to showcase the legendary Old World sound of Gil Shaham, the concerto is informed by a diverse range of traveling cultures from Eastern Europe to the Middle East.  In the same way that nomadic musics have continually reimagined themselves, the many styles informing the concerto are swirled together into a unique soundworld.

The ”Nomad Concerto” is too new to be available on the usual streaming sources, including YouTube, so I’m unable to offer my own impressions of the work. That said, Peter Dobrin, reviewing the world premiere for The Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote that “Bates in this new piece once again proves a composer unusually commanding of atmosphere and emotion.” So you now know as much about it as I do.

This won’t be the first appearance of a Mason Bates work on an SLSO program, though. His 2015 “Anthology of Fantastic Zoology” got its impressive local debut by the band under the baton of Leonard Slatkin in 2023. As I wrote back then “his is an eclectic and inventive voice that is very much welcome these days. I hope to see and hear more of his work here in the future.” It looks like I got my wish.

Mason Bates
Photo: Ryan Schude, courtesy of the SLSO

After intermission it’s back to Berlioz with his splendiferous 1830 “Symphonie Fantastique.” I have always loved it to pieces, despite the rather unsavory story of its origins (tl;dr: it’s the result of the composer’s amatory pursuit of the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson in a manner that would get him a restraining order these days, if not an actual prosecution). Maestro Denève conducted a bang-up reading of this work in May 2019 so I admit to looking forward to his latest thoughts on the matter.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violinist Gil Shaham in the St. Louis premiere of the “Nomad Concerto” by Mason Bates. The concert includes Berlioz’s “Hungarian Marche” from “The Damnation of Faust” and the “Symphonie Fantastique, as well as three “Hungarian Dances by Brahms. Performances are Friday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, September 25 and 27, at the Stifel Theatre downtown.

On Saturday, September 26, at 8 pm Mason Bates, in his alter ego of DJ Masonic, joins St. Louis DJ Alexis Tucci for “Symphonie Electronique.” Described as “a genre-defying electronic dance music party with SLSO musicians and the audience,” “Symphonie Electronique” takes place at The Hawthorn nightclub on Washington Avenue downtown.

Symphony Preview: Distant drums

In Act I, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s comedy “Much Ado About Nothing,” Leonato, the Governor of Messina, plays down his niece Beatrice’s insulting description of Benedick, saying that there is “a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”

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

You can hear that wit in the opening measures of the work that opens the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this Friday and Saturday (March 22 and 23) as Music Director Stéphane Denève leads the band in a performance of the overture to Hector Berlioz's 1862 operatic treatment of “Much Ado About Nothing,” "Béatrice et Bénedict.” The short, playful opening theme immediately calls to mind the thrust and parry of the verbal duel that invariably begins when Beatrice and Benedick meet.

Berlioz in 1832
Painting by Émile Signol

Berlioz wrote the libretto himself (even though he neither spoke nor read English all that well), considerably condensing the original "battle of the sexes" comedy in the process. Huge swathes of plot were axed, along with great comic characters like Constable Dogberry to create what the composer called “a caprice written with a point of a needle.” Written just after the monumental “Les Troyens,” the opera had great success at its Baden-Baden premiere as well as in Weimar a few months later. There was no French performance until 1890, though, and "Béatrice et Bénedict.” has never really made it into the standard repertoire.

The overture has fared better in concert halls. It gets high marks for the skill with which Berlioz uses themes from his score to create a kind of vitamin pill version of the opera, with all the comedic and dramatic ingredients combined into a single eight-minute tone poem. “Though drawn from no less than six different arias or ensembles,” writes Michel Austin at The Hector Berlioz website, “the music is seamlessly fused by Berlioz into a coherent symphonic whole, much as Weber had done in his overtures to Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, and Oberon."

Julia Wolfe
Photo: Peter Serling

Up next is the local premiere of “Pretty” by contemporary American composer Julia Wolfe (b. 1958). A co-commission by the SLSO, Berlin Philharmonic (where the world premiere took place last June), Houston Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the work’s title is frankly ironic. One might even say that it’s at war with the actual music which, based on the brief excerpts I’ve heard at the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, is a high-energy jamboree that’s anything but “pretty” in the conventional sense.

“The word ‘pretty’ has had a complicated relationship to women,” writes the composer on her website.  “It implies an attractiveness without any rough edges, without strength or power…My Pretty is a raucous celebration – embracing the grit of fiddling, the relentlessness of work rhythms, and inspired by the distortion and reverberation of rock and roll.”

War pops up once again as the backdrop for the work that concludes this weekend's concerts, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, op. 73 (“Emperor”). Indeed, the concerto was composed under the cloud of war and occupation.

When Beethoven was writing the concerto in 1809, Vienna was not so much the fabled “City of Dreams” as a metropolis of nightmares. The French laid siege to it with shelling so fierce that at one point the composer took refuge in his brother's house and covered his head with pillows to escape the din. The royal family—including Beethoven's friend and patron Archduke Rudolf—fled, along with many of the notable families with whom the composer had become close.

Left alone and, once the French occupation began, in difficult financial circumstances due to rapid inflation, Beethoven had little else to do but compose. The fifth concerto is probably the most famous work to emerge from this difficult period, although the Op. 81a piano sonata (“Les Adieux”) is probably a close second. Both were dedicated to Rudolph.

Beethoven
As if you didn't know.

Much has been written about the Concerto No. 5 and, in fact, the program notes this week (based on earlier notes by Paul Schiavo and Yvonne Frindle) provide quite a good map of the composer’s stunning musical landscape. The magisterial first movement, the wistful second, and the jolly concluding rondo all show Beethoven at his best.

The soloist this weekend is Tom Borrow (b. 2000), a 2024 Artist-In-Residence with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and winner of the Terence Judd-Hallé Orchestra Award 2023. His big professional break came in 2019, when he was called in at the last minute (the last 36 hours, to be precise) to replace Khatia Buniatishvili in a series of twelve concerts with the Israel Philharmonic. "Tom Borrow is already a star,” wrote Yossi Schiffman of the Israel Broadcasting Corporation, “and we will all surely hear more about him."

I was unable to locate anything by Borrow on Spotify but he does appear in several videos on YouTube, including the second and third movements of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major from that legendary 2019 concert.

The Essentials: 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. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday 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: Berlioz goes to Hell

UPDATE A/O March 12th: The SLSO has cancelled this concert in response to a directive from the City of St. Louis to prohibit all gatherings of more than 1,000 people.

---

The one and only work on the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) program this weekend (March 13th and 14th) was described by Maestro Stéphane Denève in an interview last year as "almost psychedelic. It's extremely evocative and it's so powerful and it's very difficult." That remarkable work is the unusual (if not unique) 1846 opera/oratorio hybrid "The Damnation of Faust," by Hector Berlioz.

Berlioz in 1832
Painting by Émile Signol

If you're the sort of person who reads these previews and attends the symphony on even an occasional basis, you probably don't need me to tell you who Faust was. The legend of the elderly scholar who sells his soul to Mephistopheles in return for youth, vitality, and greater knowledge goes back at least as far as the late 16th century. It might have even been inspired by a real early 16th century alchemist named Johann Georg Faust. I say "might" because at this chronological distance, legend and history start to merge, like far-away objects on the highway.

What intrigued Berlioz, in any case, was neither history nor legend but rather Book One of Goethe's 1808 two-part "Faust: A Tragedy" in an 1827 French translation by Gerard de Nerval. In his "Memoirs," Berlioz wrote that "this marvellous book fascinated me from the first. I could not put it down. I read it incessantly, at meals, in the theatre, in the street."

Not while actually crossing the street, one hopes.

As described in Tim Munro's notes for this week's concerts, Berlioz spent years on what would eventually become the gripping mashup of symphony, oratorio, and opera that you'll hear this weekend. It calls for a huge orchestra--around 100 players will be on the Powell Hall stage--and makes sometimes extreme demands on the musicians. Add in the adult chorus, the children's chorus, and the soloists, and you have forces that are massive even by Berlioz standards.

Berlioz called it a "légende dramatique," and while it has occasionally been staged, it's mostly heard in a concert setting, as it will be this weekend.

Ultimately, "The Damnation of Faust" is a masterful piece of musical storytelling that requires little introduction. That said, if you want to familiarize yourself with the work in advance, there are plenty of resources on line. Mr. Munro's notes have a detailed summary of the story and there's a complete live, semi-staged performance on YouTube conducted by Jonas Kaufmann with José van Dam as Faust. If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can listen to all of Sir Georg Solti's recording with the Chicago Symphony for free. Thanks to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, there's even a downloadable version of the original French text with a line-by-line English translation.

You won't need that at Powell Hall this weekend, of course, because the translation will be projected on a screen above the stage.

The SLSO Chorus
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Mr. Denève has assembled an all-star cast for this performance. The role of Faust will be sung by American-born tenor Michael Spyres, who has just recorded the role with the Strasbourg Philharmonic under John Nelson. Marguerite, the object of his lust, will be mezzo Isabel Leonard, who sang Ravel's "Shéhérazade" with the New York Philharmonic last week. She has performed at the Metropolitan Opera and also on "Sesame Street" (although not at the same time).

Bass John Relya will be the cynically sinister Méphistophélès. A veteran of the opera stage and recital hall, the list of conductors he has worked with reads like a current "who's who" of international luminaries. The head shot on his web page even looks a bit wicked.

Completing the cast is baritone Anthony Clark Evans in the cameo role Brander, a student who sings a somewhat crass song in Scene 6 about a rat whose high life in the kitchen comes to an abrupt end:

Certain rat, dans une cuisine
Etabli, comme un vrai frater,
S'y traitait si bien que sa mine
Eût fait envie au gros Luther.
Mais un beau jour le pauvre diable,
Empoisonné sauta dehors
Aussi triste, aussi misérable
Que s'il eût eu l'amour au corps.

Which roughly translates as:

A rat once in a kitchen
Set itself up like a real monk,
And did itself so well that the sight of it
Would have moved the fat Luther to envy.
But one fine day the poor devil,
Ate poison, and leaped out
Just as wretched and frantic
As if it had been [in] heat.

This motivates Méphistophélès to reply with one of the more famous numbers from "Damnation," " Une puce gentille" ("A charming flea"), about a flea who rises above his station with rather more success than the poor rat.

But I digress.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus Children's Choirs, and vocal soloists on Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, March 13 and 14 in "The Damnation of Faust." It should run around two hours and fifteen minutes, plus intermission. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center.

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

Review: Fantastic symphony, fastastic night

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

Stéphane Denève
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

In remarks from the podium before the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert Friday night (May 10, 2019) Stéphane Denève, who takes over as Music Director in the fall, promised "a fantastic night together." I'm happy to say that he made good on that promise.

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

The concerts opened with the local premiere of the tone poem "Nyx," written in 2011 by composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. The title refers to the Greek goddess of the night, a powerful figure in mythology and the mother of all the other gods, and the music undoubtedly has a kind of dark, elemental power that's extremely appealing. A joint commission by Radio France, the Barbican Centre, the Atlanta Symphony, Carnegie Hall, and the Finnish Broadcasting Company, the work is a kind of concerto for orchestra, clearly written with a virtuoso ensemble in mind. The SLSO is just that kind of ensemble, and it made the piece positively sparkle.

Salonen is a horn player, so it's not surprising that the horn section had some of the most elaborate writing, although there are also long, complex passages for clarinet. Thomas Jöstlein and the other five members of the horn section played their part brilliantly, and Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews deserves a medal of some sort for his impressive solos. Rapid, whirling passages for the high woodwinds were delivered with panache and precision, and a fanciful duet for celesta and harp was nicely done by Peter Henderson and Allegra Lilly, respectively.

In short, congratulations are in order for the entire band.

Mezzo Rinat Shaham
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Up next was Ravel's 1903 song cycle "Shéhérazade," inspired by the protagonist of the "1001 Nights." The lyrics by Symbolist poet Tristan Klingsor (real name: Arthur Justin Léon Leclère) are a bit heavy on the kind of pulp fiction Orientalism that I associate with Sax Rohmer, but combined with Ravel's colorful and sensuous music it can be irresistible in the hands of a skilled singer.

This weekend's soloist, mezzo Rinat Shaham, is exactly that sort of singer. In a strapless pale gown, Ms. Shaham cut a striking figure on stage, but it was her complete emotional investment in the lyrics, in combination with her supple voice, that made this such a memorable performance. Ms. Shaham's extensive operatic background was evident in the way she started and remained completely in character for each of the three songs, from the wide-eyed wonder of "Asie" ("Asia"), to the longing of "La flûte enchantée," to the regret of "L'indifférent" ("The Indifferent One"). Mr. Denève led the orchestra in backing her up with some exquisite playing, including a fine solo by Principal Flute Mark Sparks in "La flûte enchantée."

The final concert of the season usually features a popular blockbuster of some sort. This year it was Hector Berlioz's 1830 "Symphonie Fantastique," a wildly imaginative piece that Leonard Bernstein once famously described as "the first psychedelic symphony in history." Inspired by the composer's own obsessive (to put it mildly) pursuit of the Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, the work tells the tale a young musician who dreams about his ideal woman (first movement), pursues her at a ball (second), and then flees to the country to escape his longing (third). Overdosing on opium, he dreams he is being beheaded for her murder (fourth movement) and then literally goes to Hell (fifth), where he encounters his love for the last time, now transformed into a demon and presiding over a witches' Sabbath.

Like "Nyx," it's a genuine orchestral showpiece, with a large orchestra that includes instruments rarely heard in concerts, from the little E-flat clarinet to the coarse-sounding ophicleide (now usually replaced by the tuba) and tuned iron bells. Berlioz also asks the players to employ uncommon techniques, such as having the strings play col legno (with the wood of their bows instead of the strings) in the finale.

The musicians of the SLSO have demonstrated in the past that this music holds no terrors for them, so it's no surprise that they covered themselves with glory Friday night. Up on the podium, Mr. Denève delivered a consistently engrossing reading filled with interesting details and concluding with a downright hair raising final two movements, played attacca (in quick succession, without pause) for maximum dramatic effect. It clocked in at close to an hour--a bit long for this work--but felt much shorter.

This was the final concert of the regular St. Louis Symphony Orchestra season. Post-season activity continues at Powell Hall through June, though; check the SLSO web site for details.

Symphony Preview: Three faces of Eve

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

Mezzo Rinat Shaham

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concludes its regular concert season this weekend (May 10-12, 2019) as Music Director Designate Stéphane Denève conducts three works inspired by exotic women. Only one of them was real, though, and even she wasn't exactly what the composer hoped for.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The concerts open with the local premiere of the tone poem "Nyx," written in 2011 by composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who will take over the post of Music Director at the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra next year. The title refers to the Greek goddess of the night, a powerful figure in mythology and the mother of all the other gods. "She is an extremely nebulous figure altogether; we have no sense of her character or personality," writes Mr. Salonen in his program notes:

It is this very quality that has long fascinated me and made me decide to name my new orchestral piece after her. I'm not trying to describe this mythical goddess in any precise way musically. However, the almost constant flickering and rapid changing of textures and moods as well as a certain elusive character of many musical gestures may well be related to the subject.

He goes on to note that his real challenge in composing the piece was "to write complex counterpoint for almost one hundred musicians playing tutti at full throttle without losing clarity of the different layers and lines." The score calls for a big ensemble with a lot of percussion instruments, including glockenspiel, tam-tam, tom-tom, vibraphone and bongos. It certainly makes a glorious noise, as you can hear in the composer's own recording.

As to whether it achieves that clarity, the composer says "I leave it to the listener to judge how well I succeeded." I think he did, and conjured up something dark, elemental, and potent in the process. Come see for yourself this weekend and decide.

Maurice Ravel in 1925
en.wikipedia.org

The legendary woman behind the next work, Ravel's song cycle "Shéhérazade," surely needs no introduction. The musical immortality of the fictional author of the "1001 and One Nights" was guaranteed by Rimsky-Korsakov's colorful 1888 symphony/tone poem, but Ravel's much shorter and more transparently scored set of three songs deserves to be heard far more often than it is.

Ravel was fascinated by Scheherazade and her stories. His first published work, in 1898, was an orchestral overture named for her. It was not well received, convincing the composer that a planned opera based on the "1001 Nights" would be a non-starter.

It all might have ended there if it hadn't been for La Société des Apaches, a group of artists, writers, and musicians in Paris circa 1900 who would hang out every Saturday at the home of the artist Paul Sordes. In addition to Ravel, the group's membership included the Symbolist poet Tristan Klingsor (real name: Arthur Justin Léon Leclère) who, in 1903, published a collection of 100 free-verse poems titled "Shéhérazade." Ravel read them, liked them, and decided to set three of them to music.

Ravel's compositional approach, as Thomas May writes in this weekend's program notes, was unusual. Impressed by the conversational rhythms of the music his colleague Debussy had written for "Pelléas et Mélisande," "Ravel had Klingsor recite his texts out loud to accentuate their beautiful rhythms and the sensuality of the sounds of the words. He was intent on translating these aspects into his musical setting." The resulting music unspools in a languorous, exotic line that mimics and enhances the feel of spoken French. As Caroline Rae writes in notes for the Phliharmonia Orchestra:

Ravel's magically evocative setting of Klingsor's texts brims with mystery and desire. All three songs are tranquil and reflective, opening and closing in a veiled piano, while the sensuous orchestral sound combines with a rich harmonic palette, in which added seconds, sevenths and ninths abound, to create a sense of yearning and nostalgia...moving from rich voluptuousness and gentle lyricism to languid sensuousness.

It's good thing that Ravel's music is so seductive because, as Mr. May notes, "Klingsor's poems are problematic for contemporary audiences sensitive to stereotypes of other cultures." Indeed. "Asie," ("Asia") the first (and longest) of the three songs, reads like something out of Sax Rohmer, with images of "beautiful silk turbans / Above dark faces with gleaming white teeth" ("de beaux turbans de soie / Sur des visages noirs aux dents claires"), "Plump mandarins sitting under parasols" ("Les mandarins ventrus sous les ombrelles") and a "cruel assassins smile / As an executioner lops off a guiltless head ("des assassins souriants / Du bourreau qui coupe un cou d'innocent"). It's a reminder that the Orientalism of authors and poets of a century ago had very little to do with the actual Orient.

Parenthetical note: "Shéhérazade" is nearly always sung by a soprano or mezzo-soprano. This weekend's soloist, for example, is mezzo Rinat Shaham, whose stage credits range from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" to Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle." But, as James M. Keller writes in notes for the San Francisco Symphony, Ravel might actually have had a male voice in mind:

From the outset, Ravel's Shéhérazade has been in the domain of sopranos (or mezzo-sopranos with a comfortable upper range), but in 1965 the late baritone Martial Singher wrote to the Ravel scholar Arbie Orenstein that the composer had something quite different in mind: "I had remarked to Ravel that the texts of those songs were certainly meant for a man. He confirmed (this must have happened about 1935) that he had had in mind a male voice when writing them, but that only women singers with strong musical backgrounds had been interested in them. "

Charles Kemble and Harriet Smithson
as Romeo and Juliet
By Francis (François-Antoine Conscience)

The concerts will conclude with a work inspired by a woman who wasn't at all mythological: the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson. To composer Hector Berlioz, though, she was something of a goddess. His pursuit of her, ill conceived and ultimately disastrous as it was, moved him to compose one of his greatest works, the "Symphonie Fantastique."

Berlioz's first exposure to Smithson came when he saw her play Ophelia in 1827 in a highly edited production of "Hamlet" by the actor Charles Kemble (who also played Hamlet) at the Odéon in Paris. Although considered a somewhat mediocre performer in Britain, she bowled the French over with her sensitive "mad" scene and completely transfixed poor Berlioz, even though he didn't understand a word of English.

He became infatuated with her immediately. He sent her letters. He sent hand-delivered notes. He did everything but mail himself to her in a box like poor Waldo in the Velvet Underground's "The Gift". The depth of his obsession can be seen in a letter he sent to his friend Ferdinand Hiller (quoted on Melissa Ide and Leslie Merriman's Interdisciplinary Shakespeare site):

... today it is a year since I saw HER for the last time_________oh! unhappy woman! how I loved you...trembling I write, HOW I LOVE YOU! If there is another world shall we find each other again?...Shall I ever see Shakespeare? Will she know me?...Will she understand the poetry of my love?...oh! Juliet, Ophelia, Belvidera, Jane Shore, names that hell repeats unceasingly...Oh! sublime ones! sublime ones! annihilate me! summon me to your golden clouds! deliver me!...Go, go Henriette Smithson and Hector Berlioz will be reunited in the oblivion of the tomb, which will not prevent other unhappy ones from SUFFERING AND DYING."

And so on.

Today he would have been hit (justifiably) with a restraining order. Instead, he wrote his "Symphonie Fantastique," a work Leonard Bernstein once famously described as "the first psychedelic symphony in history, the first musical description ever made of a trip, written one hundred thirty odd years before the Beatles."

Subtitled "An Episode in the Life of an Artist," the "Symphonie Fantastique" tells, in dramatic and musically explicit terms, the story of a "young vibrant musician" who becomes sexually obsessed with an "ideal" woman. He dreams of her in the first movement; unsuccessfully pursues her at a ball in the second; and flees to the country to escape his longing in the third. In the fourth movement "March of the Scaffold" (often performed by itself) he overdoses on opium (the LSD of the early 19th century) and dreams he is being beheaded for her murder. The work ends with the hallucinatory "Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath," in which the protagonist envisions himself at an infernal dance, presided over by the object of his affection, now transformed into a demon.

Even after the premiere of the "Symphonie Fantastique" Berlioz continued to pursue Smithson, going to far as to threaten to kill himself with an opium overdose if she didn't marry him. In 1833, after seeing a performance of "Lélio" (Berlioz's rarely-performed sequel to the "Symphonie Fantastique"), she finally agreed, but they did not live happily ever after. The marriage fell apart after a decade and both Smithson's health and fortunes went into decline. Some great music emerged from the wreckage, but I doubt that was any comfort to Ms. Smithson.

The Essentials: Music Director Designate Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and mezzo-soprano Rinat Shaham Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, May 10-12. Performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Review: The natural way

Bramwell Tovey
Photo from bramwelltovey.com

Share on Google+:

The weekend got off to a great start this morning (Friday, October 5th) as Bramwell Tovey conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a pair of big 19th-century symphonies by Beethoven and Berlioz. The onstage energy was a nice complement to the coffee and Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the foyer.

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

The concert opened with Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (the "Pastoral"), a work infused with the composer's love for nature. "How glad I am to be able to roam in wood and thicket, among the trees and flowers and rocks," he once wrote. "No one can love the country as I do." You can hear that love of the natural world everywhere in the sixth symphony: the imitation of birdsong in the second movement, the earthy peasant dance of the third, and the dramatic thunderstorm of the fourth. It's music that brims with love and good cheer.

It got a big, appealing, and beautifully thought-out performance from Mr. Tovey and the orchestra. There was just enough variety in the way individual phrases were shaped to give the music a nice sense of variety without ever engaging in exaggeration. Tempi were ideal, including (for example) a good, steady pulse in the Andante molto mosso second movement. "Andante" is often described as "at a walking pace," and it was easy to think of the composer strolling through the fields in this performance.

Mr. Tovey got outstanding performances from the musicians Friday morning. The strings sounded warm and solid and the woodwinds were at the top of their game. Thanks to Associate Principal Oboe Phil Ross, Principal Flute Mark Sparks, and clarinetists Scott Andrews and Benjamin Adler for those perky bird calls in the second movement.

Nature also plays a big role in the second work on the program, Berlioz's dramatic "Harold in Italy," Op. 16, for solo viola and orchestra. The "Harold" of the title is the protagonist in Lord Byron's epic poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," a character who is, as Thomas May points out in his program notes for the SLSO, "a melancholy young man who wanders through the Mediterranean seeking escape from his disillusionment with life." He's represented by the viola, which wanders into and out of Berlioz's vivid musical canvas without ever really becoming part of it.

Beth Guterman Chu
Photo courtesy of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

The soloist this weekend is SLSO Principal Viola Beth Guterman Chu who, according to her interview in the program, strongly identifies with the composer's depiction of Harold. "Harold is a dreamer," she observes. "He is melancholic, but also innocent. Playing the piece suits my musical temperament." I could certainly hear that sympathetic understanding of the character in her committed, virtuoso performance. While not flashy, the solo line nevertheless has significant technical challenges, which she overcame with apparent ease.

Mr. Tovey's interpretation brought out all the drama in this music. From the imposing musical mountains of the first movement to the wild abandon of the "Orgy of the Brigands" in the last, this was a performance of intense theatricality. Berlioz, an unapologetic man of the theatre himself, would undoubtedly have approved.

I think he might also have approved of Mr. Tovey's staging decisions. "Harold in Italy" isn't so much a viola concerto as a symphonic work in which the viola sometimes plays a prominent role. Rather than keep Ms. Chu on stage for the long stretches during which her instrument is silent, Mr. Tovey chose to have her enter, exit, and move across the stage according to her instrument's role in the music. The score directs the soloist to "stand in the fore-ground, near to the public and isolated from the orchestra" ("L'exeeutant doit étre place sur l'avant-scene, pres du public et isole de l'orchestre") but doesn't specify how to get there.

That could have been distracting or come across as a gimmick, but I thought it worked exceptionally well. In the first movement, for example, she was offstage until the viola's first appearance, at which point she entered stage right and, as directed in the score ("La Harpe doit étre placee pres de l' Alto solo"), stood next to harpist Allegra Lilly for their duet. In the second movement, for the sequence in which the viola plays ethereal glissandos against a plodding line in the basses (playing the role of marching pilgrims), Ms. Chu was far stage left, next to the basses. In both cases, the visual choices enhanced and clarified the music.

Besides, the composer himself was not averse to that sort of thing. The offstage string trio that accompanies the viola's final appearance in the finale, for example, was all his idea.

The Berlioz/Beethoven concert repeats Saturday night, October 6, at 8 pm, a performance which will also be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio. The on Sunday at 3 pm, Ben Whiteley conducts the orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists in "A Celebration of Muny at 100." The concerts take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: A weekend in the country

"Beethoven's Walk in Nature" by Julius Schmid
By Michael Martin Sypniewski [Public domain]
via Wikimedia Commons

Share on Google+

It's a big musical weekend with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra October 5-7, with two separate concerts. Friday and Saturday the orchestra performs Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (the "Pastoral," composed in stages between 1802 and 1808) and Berlioz's dramatic "Harold in Italy" (1834), Op. 16, for solo viola and orchestra. Then Sunday the SLSO Chorus and vocal soloists join the orchestra for a 100th birthday tribute to the Muny.

There's probably not much I can tell you about the "Pastoral" that you don't already know, but I'll give it a try with a few possibly Fun Facts.

FF #1: The first performance of the Symphony No. 6 took place at a concert on December 22nd 1807 at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, with the composer as both soloist and conductor. It wasn't a huge success. The hall was freezing cold, the musicians poorly prepared, and the program was a four-hour monster, including the premieres of not only the Symphony No. 6 but also the Piano Concerto No. 4, the "Choral Fantasy" for piano, chorus, and orchestra (a work often seen as a kind of "first draft" for the finale of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9), and the Symphony No. 5. No record survives of what the lines at the toilets were like.

FF #2: As the program annotator for the City of London Philharmonia reminds us, Beethoven used the third movement to poke fun at inept rural musicians (something Mozart also does in his "Musical Joke"). "Beethoven knew the efforts of amateur country bands well and was rather amused at the way they played. In the third movement, entitled 'peasants' merrymaking', he makes the oboe come in on the wrong beat and the bassoonists contributions comically mechanical."

FF #3: Many of Beethoven's compositions have subtitles, and nearly all of them were tacked on after the fact by other people. Not so the Symphony No. 6. The full title Beethoven gave the work translates as "Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life."

There's more background on the 6th in a symphony preview article I wrote for the SLSO's last performance of it back in 2015. Rather than repeat it all here, you can just check out the original post.

Berlioz in 1832
Painting by Émile Signol

Nature plays a big part in Berlioz's "Harold in Italy" as well. The "Harold" of the title is the protagonist in Lord Byron's "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," an epic narrative poem published between 1812 and 1818. Harold is, as Thomas May points out in his program notes for the SLSO, "a melancholy young man who wanders through the Mediterranean seeking escape from his disillusionment with life," so it's not surprising that the highly romantic Berlioz found himself attracted to the character. As Peter Gutmann writes in an article for classicalnotes.net:

Berlioz must have closely identified with Byron's title character, a melancholy dreamer who visits and comments upon sites of classical antiquity in search of meaning to counter his own world-weary disillusionment. Although Berlioz desperately had sought the Prix de Rome, once he got to Rome he wrote in his Mémoires that his life there was "a continual martyrdom"...His boredom soon turned to wanderlust, as he fled his residency to wander the Italian countryside, gathering impressions, dreams and inspirations that would infuse his new work.

The structure of "Harold in Italy" is fairly straightforward, with four movements that correspond to those of the traditional 19th-century symphony. Berlioz described the work as "Symphonie en quatre parties avec un alto principal" ("Symphony in Four Parts with Viola Obbligato") rather than a concerto and, in fact, the viola isn't so much a standout soloist as a partner with the orchestra. That's why the great virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, who originally asked Berlioz to write the work for him, rejected it when he got a look at a first draft and realized how often the violist wasn't playing.

Like his more popular "Symphonie Fantastique," Berlioz's "Harold in Italy" has an idée fixe--a recurring theme that's associated with Harold and which pops up repeatedly throughout the piece. In the "Symphonie Fantastique" the theme changes with the character of each movement. In "Harold," though, the theme remains (to quote Mr. Gutmann) "a fixed point of reference for the changing scenes through which the hero passes, coloring them with his poetic awareness, exuberance, introspection and anxiety."

Here's what Harold's theme looks like when we first hear it, after a long orchestral introduction:

Image from classicalnotes.net

Trivia point: yes, that's neither the familiar bass nor treble clef but rather the alto clef. Unless you have played the viola at some point in your life (which I once attempted, without much success), you've probably never seen it before. And probably never will again.

Playing that alto clef music will be SLSO Principal Viola Beth Guterman Chu. When the symphony's board polled the musicians about works they'd like to see on the 2018/2019 season, a number of them suggested both "Harold in Italy" and Ms. Chu as the soloist. I'm told she was very pleased and touched by the tribute from her fellow musicians.

Conducting Ms. Chu and the orchestra will be Bramwell Tovey, last seen here back in February when he conducted a highly theatrical version of Orff's "Carmina Burana" and a moving "Chichester Psalms" (Leonard Bernstein). A composer as well as a conductor, Mr. Tovey is the Principal Conductor of the B.B.C. Concert Orchestra and Music Director Emeritus of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra where he was formerly music director from 2000 to 2018. As of last month, he is also Artistic Advisor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic.

Image credit: St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

The final program for Sunday's Muny birthday party will be announced from the stage on Sunday afternoon. The SLSO press release, however, promises selections from "Annie Get Your Gun" (Irving Berlin), "Girl Crazy" (George and Ira Gershwin), "Show Boat" (Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II), and "The Pirates of Penzance" (Gilbert and Sullivan; huzzah!) as well as tunes from lesser-known musicals like "Eileen" (Victor Herbert), "The Desert Song" (Sigmund Romberg), "Of Thee I Sing" (George and Ira Gershwin; the first American musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama) "The Student Prince" (Romberg again), and "Sweet Adeline" (Kern and Hammerstein).

Yes, I know: some of these are actually operettas rather than musicals, but let's not be picky.

Joining the orchestra and chorus will be vocal soloists Justin Michael Austin, Daniel Berryman, Keith Boyer, Cree Carrico, Debby Lennon, Elizabeth Stanley, and Phil Touchette, who will perform favorites by Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Victor Herbert, and others. Ben Whiteley conducts.

The Essentials: Bramwell Tovey conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and viola soloist Beth Guterman Chu Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 8 pm, October 5 and 6. The program consists of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral") and Berlioz's "Harold in Italy." Then Ben Whiteley conducts the orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists in "A Celebration of Muny at 100" on Sunday, October 7, at 3 pm. The concerts take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Review: Lyric Opera's "Les Troyens" sounds great, looks bland

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

The Troy city wall, Act I
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Share on Google+:

Through December 3, Lyric Opera of Chicago is presenting its first-ever production of Hector Berlioz's mammoth 1858 drama Les Troyens. For many Chicago opera lovers, that makes it a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Which puts them one up on Berlioz.

As I wrote in my review of the 2014 San Francisco production of Les Troyens, by the time Berlioz died in 1869, only the last three of his five acts had been performed, and then only in a drastically truncated and badly produced version by the Théâtre Lyrique, the Paris Opéra having dithered over it too long. The first full production didn't take place until 1890, and even then it languished for most of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, taking on the reputation of (in the words of Berlioz biographer Ian Kemp) "a monster so unwieldy that it had to be split in two and trimmed to size."

Christine Goerke
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

That reputation wasn't entirely undeserved. Running around four hours and 45 minutes in Lyric's slightly trimmed version (a full-length production can run five hours and some change) and requiring a huge cast, massive orchestra, and (at least in the composer's original conception) elaborate stage machinery, Les Troyens requires both pockets and a talent pool of considerable depth.

The Lyric production certainly has that deep talent pool--and a good thing, since this modern dress version comes up short on visual impact. Troy is represented by a massive, semicircular, partly collapsed wall, mounted on a turntable and taking up the entire stage. Carthage is the same wall rebuilt and painted a bland white on the inside. The Trojan horse is literally a shadow of its legendary self, being reduced to a simple gobo that projects the horse's shadow on the ruined wall of Troy. The result is something less than the spectacle that Berlioz had in mind and that I had expected.

"Royal Hunt and Storm," Act IV
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

The story of Les Troyens begins on the eve of the fall of Troy, as the Greek army has apparently fled the scene, leaving behind only the fabled horse, which despite the dire warnings of Cassandra, the Trojans take into the city. The opera goes on to chronicle the fall of Troy, the suicide of the Trojan women, and Aeneas' tragic affair with the Carthaginian queen Dido. It ends with Dido's suicide and a chorus of vengeance by the Carthaginian people.

Through it all Berlioz (who wrote his own libretto, after Virgil's Aeneid) cannily mixes intimate solos and duets, massive choral scenes, elaborate ballet sequences, and vivid instrumental writing (he was, after all, a master orchestrator) in ways designed to keep the viewer engaged. Even without the visuals, this Troyens gives us the great sweep of historical events and the implacable hand of fate but never lets us lose sight of the intimate human relationships that are at the core of the story.

Susan Graham, Act III
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Heading the cast is mezzo Susan Graham as Dido, a part with which she has become strongly associated. When I saw her in the San Francisco production of Les Troyens two years ago, I wrote that her voice had a full, silky quality that, combined with her tasteful acting, made her character's heartbreak all too real. I see no reason to change that appraisal now.

Matching her in every respect was tenor Brandon Jovanovich as Aeneas. Although coping with a cold when we saw him, he displayed no signs of vocal strain. His long love duet with Dido in Act IV was flawless and his acting was never less than credible.

Susan Graham and Brandon Javanovich, Act V
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Soprano Christine Goerke was a deeply troubled Cassandra, almost physically incapacitated by the strength of her prophetic visions. The role is written for a mezzo, but Ms. Goerke was vocally powerful even if her lowest notes. Moreover, the migraine-level intensity of her prophecies made it easy to understand why they're deemed unbelievable, even by her doomed lover Chorebus. That role was sung with great authority by baritone Lucas Meachem.

Mezzo Okka von der Damerau brings a self-aware amusement to the role of Dido's sister Anna that made the character very engaging. Bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, who was so imposing as Dido's minister Narbal in San Francisco, reprises the role here with equal effect.

Christian Van Horn, Okka von der Damerau
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

There is a host of other fine performances in smaller roles, including tenors Mingjie Lei and Jonathan Johnson in the cameo roles of Iopas and Hylas, respectively. Each character has one lyrical spotlight aria, and both singers did very well by them. Bass-baritone Bradley Smoak, a familiar face at Opera Theatre of St. Louis, was properly fearsome as Hector's Ghost.

The chorus has a lot to do in Les Troyens, and Chorus Master Michael Black's singers deserve applause for singing with great clarity and force. Sir Andrew Davis leads a huge orchestra (including a sizeable complement of offstage players) in an authoritative interpretation of Berlioz's wonderfully varied and bracing score.

Mingjie Lei, Susan Graham, Brandon Jovanovich
Photo: Todd Rosenberg

Ballet plays an important role in Les Troyens as well. The French always loved seeing dances in their operas, but Berlioz uses dance for narrative purposes as well as for sheer spectacle. The "Royal Hunt and Storm" sequence of Act IV is probably the most famous example, with Dido and Aeneas becoming separated from a hunting party during a storm and consummating their lover affair in a sheltered grotto. Unfortunately, director Tim Albery has tossed out everything leading up to that consummation, instead choosing to show (in his words) "multiple Didos and Aeneases living out her dream of a passionate affair with him."

Practically speaking, that involved choreographer Helen Pickett's lithe dancers dashing about in what came close to a parody of an orgy with an impressively three-dimensional forest projected on the wall as scenery. It doesn't match up with the story vividly depicted in Berlioz's music very well.

There's a lot to admire in the Lyric's Troyens, but in the final analysis the decision to make it drably contemporary robbed it, at least for me, of some of the epic sweep of the narrative. For information on upcoming performances, visit the Lyric Opera web site.

Review: Leonard Slatkin brings home the passion of Berlioz's "Romeo et Juliette" Friday and Saturday, March 11 and 12, 2016

Leonard Slatkin
Photo: Alexander Ivanov / leonardslatkin.com

Even if I hadn't seen the video blog in which St. Louis Symphony Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin named Berlioz's 1838 Roméo et Juliette, Symphonie dramatique (op. 17) as one of his favorite works to conduct, I would have guessed as much from the fierce joy and commitment of the interpretation he gave this monumental work with the SLSO Orchestra and Chorus Friday night (March 11, 2016). If you'll pardon the expression, he and his forces completely killed it.

If you've never seen this remarkable mashup of symphony, oratorio, and opera performed live—and there's a good chance you haven't, given what a big undertaking it is—I hope you had a chance to experience this. With over 100 musicians on the stage and over 80 (by my count) in the chorus, this is a work which, while massive in scope, has moments of real delicacy and intimacy. Maestro Slatkin's interpretation was beautifully shaped and dramatically compelling, and the musicians played and sang with real perfection.

Tenor Sean Panikkar's description of Queen Mab in the second movement's "Grande fête chez Capulet" (essentially, "big party the Capulet's place") was delightfully droll. Mezzo Kelley O'Connor expertly captured the ecstasy of young love in the first movement's "Strophes," assisted by Allegra Lilly's flowing harp. And bass Renaud Delaigue was the passionate voice of morality in the imposing choral finale. Both the full chorus and the smaller chamber chorus that is featured in the first two movements sang with the power and clarity I have come to expect from them.

Maestro Slatkin's interpretation got off to a dramatic start, adopting a strikingly brisk tempo for the opening "Combats" section, which portrays the war between the Montagues and the Capulets with rapid-fire thrusts and parries from the strings and brasses. It proved to be emblematic of an overall approach that brought out all the drama in Berlioz's music.

The orchestra responded with some of the finest playing of the season, from the unearthly violin harmonics in the famous "Queen Mab" scherzo that makes up the fourth movement to the powerful brass declarations that announce the intervention of the Prince in the first. There were many impressive solo passages as well, such as Jelena Dirk's haunting oboe melody in the "Tristesse" ("sadness") section of the second movement and Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews's dramatic depiction of Juliet's awakening in the sixth movement.

The SLSO's Roméo et Juliette is history now, but the season continues this Friday through Sunday (March 18-20) as Jun Märkl conducts a program the features Schumann's Symphony No. 2 ("Rhenish") and Beethoven's Violin Concerto with Concertmaster David Halen as soloist. There's also a Pulitzer Series concert Wednesday at the Pulitzer Arts Center. For information these and other upcoming SLSO events, check out the web site.

Symphony Preview, March 11 and 12, 2016: Berlioz stalks Shakespeare

Leonard Slatkin
Photo: Niko Rodamel

The St. Louis Symphony's month-long Shakespeare Festival comes to a grand conclusion this Friday and Saturday with a complete performance of Hector Berlioz's "dramatic symphony" "Roméo et Juliette" with SLSO Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin at the podium. Never has a stalking incident had such a musically important outcome.

The stalking incident in question isn't the fictional one in Shakespeare's play but rather the real one in the life of Berlioz. It all began in 1827 when he saw the Irish actress Harriet Smithson as Ophelia in a highly edited production of "Hamlet" by the actor Charles Kemble (who also played Hamlet) at the Odéon in Paris. Although considered a somewhat mediocre performer in Britain, she bowled the French over with her sensitive "mad" scene and completely transfixed poor Berlioz, even though he didn't understand a word of English.

"Shakespeare, coming upon me unawares," wrote Berlioz in his "Memoirs," "struck me like a thunderbolt. The lightning flash of that discovery revealed to me at a stroke the whole heaven of art, illuminating it to its remotest corners. I recognized the meaning of grandeur, beauty, dramatic truth...I saw, I understood, I felt...that I was alive and that I must arise and walk."

His infatuation with Shakespeare, however, was lukewarm compared to his adoration of Smithson. He sent her letters. He sent hand-delivered notes. He did everything but mail himself to her in a box like poor Waldo in the Velvet Underground's "The Gift". The depth of his obsession can be seen in a letter he sent to his friend Ferdinand Hiller (quoted on Melissa Ide and Leslie Merriman's Interdisciplinary Shakespeare site):

... today it is a year since I saw HER for the last time_________oh! unhappy woman! how I loved you...trembling I write, HOW I LOVE YOU! If there is another world shall we find each other again?...Shall I ever see Shakespeare? Will she know me?...Will she understand the poetry of my love?...oh! Juliet, Ophelia, Belvidera, Jane Shore, names that hell repeats unceasingly..."
"Oh! sublime ones! sublime ones! annihilate me! summon me to your golden clouds! deliver me!..."
"Go, go Henriette Smithson and Hector Berlioz will be reunited in the oblivion of the tomb, which will not prevent other unhappy ones from SUFFERING AND DYING."

Today he would have been hit with a restraining order. Instead, he wrote his "Symphonie Fantastique" and continued to pursue her, even going to far as to threaten to kill himself with an opium overdose if she didn't marry him. In 1833, after seeing a performance of "Lélio" (Berlioz's rarely-performed sequel to the "Symphonie Fantastique"), she finally agreed, but they did not live happily ever after. The marriage fell apart after a decade and both Smithson's health and fortunes went into decline.

Charles Kemble and Harriet Smithson
as Romeo and Juliet
By Francis (François-Antoine Conscience)

Berlioz's love affair with Shakespeare never wavered though, and "Roméo et Juliette" is undoubtedly the greatest product of that love. Composed largely in 1838 to a libretto by poet Émile Deschamps, it's a grand mashup of opera, oratorio, and symphony that both looks backward to Beethoven's monumental "Symphony No. 9" and forward to the integrated music dramas of Wagner. In fact, the latter's "Tristan and Isolde" owes quite a bit to "Roméo et Juliette"—a debt Wagner acknowledged when he sent Berlioz a copy of the "Tristan" score with the following dedication: "Au grand et cher auteur de Roméo et Juliette, l'auteur reconnaissant de Tristan et Isolde" ("To the great and dear author of Romeo and Juliet, from the grateful author of Tristan and Isolde").

"Berlioz claimed not to understand Wagner’s 'strange thing,'" writes Renée Spencer Saller in her program notes. "Nine years after the Frenchman’s death, Wagner named a pet rooster 'Berlioz.'" Sic transit gloria mundi.

But I digress.

"Roméo et Juliette" is a big piece in every possible way. It's in seven movements, runs around ninety minutes, and calls for over 100 musicians and a full chorus. It's grand in scope and brilliant and innovative in its orchestration. Which is what you would expect given that, as Ms. Saller reminds us in her notes, Berlioz "literally wrote the book on orchestration. His Grand traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration moderne was originally published as 16 booklets beginning in late 1841."

There's no reason for me to provide a detailed description of the program of "Roméo et Juliette" here since Ms. Saller has already done a very thorough job in her notes. I'll just point out that it's an unfailingly colorful, gripping, and wholly original piece of music drama with a remarkable choral finale in which the Montagues and Capulets reconcile in a way only hinted at in the play. It's Berlioz's "Romeo and Juliet," not Shakespeare's, but no less compelling for all that.

In a video blog on the SLSO YouTube channel, Maestro Slatkin describes "Roméo et Juliette" as one of his ten favorite works to conduct "because it has all the elements that make this composer great. It's symphonic in scope. There's a chorus. There are three soloists. There are incredibly inventive sounds—sounds that were occurring just after Beethoven had died, and yet there's no comparison between these two composers musically. 'Romeo and Juliet' is one of the wonders of the musical world".

The essentials: Leonard Slatkin conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Berlioz's "Roméo et Juliette" Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., March 11 and 12. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information, visit the SLSO web site.

Symphony Preview, February 19 and 20, 2016: The Shakespeare celebration begins

Shakespeare has inspired an astonishing amount of music over the centuries, and over the next four weeks the St. Louis Symphony, in partnership with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, is giving us a wonderfully varied sampler of it.

The "Chandos Portrait" of Shakespeare
en.wikipedia.org

The orchestra's four-concert Shakespeare series begins this Friday and Saturday with a program that spans over a hundred and fifty years, beginning with the overture to Hector Berlioz's 1862 opera "Béatrice et Bénedict," based on Shakespeare's comedy "Much Ado About Nothing."

Berlioz wrote the libretto himself (even though he neither spoke nor read English all that well), considerably condensing the original "battle of the sexes" comedy in the process. Huge swathes of plot were axed, along with great comic characters like Constable Dogberry. Nevertheless, it's still (to quote NPR's "World of Opera") "an appealing and insightful comedy" that combines "the signature brilliance and bombast" of Berlioz with " the sly, comedic insights" of Shakespeare's play. And while it doesn't make the world-wide top 50 at operabase.com, it does come in at number 32 in France, where both it and Berlioz's other big Shakespeare opera, "Romeo et Juliette," remain fairly popular.

The overture quotes extensively from the opera but, Berlioz being the skilled composer that he was, it's more than just a collection of tunes. "The Overture," writes Michel Austin at The Hector Berlioz web site, "is one of Berlioz's most delicate and subtle orchestral pieces, and its allusiveness constantly teases the listener...Though drawn from no less than six different arias or ensembles, the music is seamlessly fused by Berlioz into a coherent symphonic whole, much as Weber had done in his overtures to Der Freischütz, Euryanthe and Oberon." And it manages all that in just around eight minutes.

Harriet Smithson as Ophelia
en.wikipedia.org

Berlioz, as you may recall, became smitten with both Shakespeare and the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson at the same time. He wooed her for years and finally won her after convincing her to attend a performance of the work that she inspired, his titanic "Symphonie Fantastique". They were married after Berlioz threatened to kill himself with an opium overdose if she didn't say "yes". Alas, the marriage, unlike Berlioz's fascination with Shakespeare, did not last.

In addition to operas, Shakespeare has inspired his share of great incidental music to accompany his plays. Probably the best-known Shakespearean score was composed by Mendelssohn for a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1842. The symphony will be performing that next weekend, but this weekend we get selections from Sibelius's far less familiar score for a 1926 Royal Theatre of Copenhagen production of "The Tempest."

Written late in Shakespeare's career (it may, in fact, be the last thing he wrote without a collaborator) "The Tempest" has an autumnal feel to it. As Wikipedia notes, "early critics saw Prospero as a representation of Shakespeare, and his renunciation of magic as signaling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage." In this respect, Prospero's speech in Act IV becomes especially poignant:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And—like the baseless fabric of this vision—
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep

Sibelius in 1923
Photo by Henry B. Goodwin
en.wikipeida.org

It seems only fitting, then, that Sibelius's score for "The Tempest" was one of the last things he wrote before the great compositional silence that marked the last three decades of his life. As Prospero put down his books, so Sibelius put down his pen—but not before creating a big, impressive score of 34 pieces (plus an Epilogue written a year later), for vocalists, mixed-voice choir, harmonium, and a large orchestra.

The composer would later reduce the music to two suites, but for this St. Louis premiere performance Maestro Robertson has pulled selections together from both suites and combined them with readings from the play by actors whose names and voices will likely be familiar to St. Louis theatre lovers. St. Louis stage veteran Joneal Joplin will play Prospero, with the versatile Ben Nordstrom and Webster Conservatory student Sigrid Wise and the lovers Ferdinand and Miranda. The sprite Ariel will be played by another Webster Conservatory student,t August Stamper. They'll be directed by Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis Associate Artistic Director Bruce Longworth and dressed by Festival costumer Abby Dorning. Michael B. Perkins, whose work has enhanced local theatre and opera productions, will be providing video design.

After intermission, Shakespeare takes a back seat to the "Thousand and One Nights" as violinist Leila Josefowicz joins the orchestra for John Adams's "Scheherazade.2." First performed last March by Ms. Josefowicz and the New York Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert, this "Dramatic Symphony" was inspired by a visit to an exhibit at the Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris, the theme of which was the history of the Arabian Nights stories.

What Mr. Adams took away from the exhibit, however, was not the exotic orientalism that inspired Rimsky-Korsakov's famous "Scheherazade," but—as he writes on his web site—something much darker:

The casual brutality toward women that lies at the base of many of these tales prodded me to think about the many images of women oppressed or abused or violated that we see today in the news on a daily basis. In the old tale Scheherazade is the lucky one who, through her endless inventiveness, is able to save her life. But there is not much to celebrate here when one thinks that she is spared simply because of her cleverness and ability to keep on entertaining her warped, murderous husband...

So I was suddenly struck by the idea of a "dramatic symphony" in which the principal character role is taken by the solo violin—and she would be Scheherazade. While not having an actual story line or plot, the symphony follows a set of provocative images: a beautiful young woman with grit and personal power; a pursuit by "true believers;" a love scene which is both violent and tender; a scene in which she is tried by a court of religious zealots ("Scheherazade and the Men with Beards"), during which the men argue doctrine among themselves and rage and shout at her only to have her calmly respond to their accusations); and a final "escape, flight and sanctuary" which must be the archetypal dream of any woman importuned by a man or men.

John Adams
Photo: Lambert Orkis, earbox.com

You can find a more detailed description of the work in René Spencer Saller's program notes and a complete performance on YouTube. Mr. Adams's music has become quite challenging lately, so I'd recommend taking the time to read the former and hear the latter. This is a highly dramatic and emotionally charged piece, often quite intense and even disturbing. You will want to be prepared.

Ms. Josefowicz is not the only soloist in " Scheherazade.2," by the way. The work also features a prominent role for the cimbalom, a hammered dulcimer commonly used in Hungary and nearby nations like Poland, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Greece. The cimbalom is featured prominently in Zoltán Kodály's "Háry János" suite as well as in works by Stravinsky, Liszt, and Bartók. Adams uses it for a variety of atmospheric effects, including a somewhat delirious duet with the violin in the second movement, "A Long Desire (Love Scene)". The cimbalom soloist this weekend is Chester Englander.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violin soloist Leila Josefowicz in music by Sibelius, Berlioz, and John Adams at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., February 19 and 20. There will also be a special " Tales from Shakespeare" Family Series concert on Sunday at 3 p.m. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information: stlsymphony.org.