Symphony Review: A jolly evening of "Music You Know" at the St. Louis Symphony

Celeste Golden Boyer
celestegoldenboyer.com

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Since the inception of the "Music You Know" programming in November of 2014, I have become a great admirer of the St. Louis Symphony's concert series devoted mostly to relatively short works -- most of which are likely to be familiar to SLSO regulars -- paired with an equally accessible new piece.

Yesterday (Friday, April 19, 2016) was the last concert in the 2015/2016 series sponsored by the Whitaker Foundation, and like those that have gone before, it was a jolly business all the way around, with Maestro David Robertson conducting and chatting about the music in between selections.

The fun began with a pretty much perfect run through the lively and tune-filled overture to Leonard Bernstein's 1956 operetta Candide. A standard encore for the orchestra on its tours, the piece is an ideal distillation of Bernstein's skills as a melodist and orchestrator, as well as a display of the sunny optimism once characteristic of America.

Up next was an equally accomplished performance of the "Dance of the Hours" from Amilcare Ponchielli's 1876 opera La Gioconda. It was distinguished by, among other things, some lovely work by harpists Allegra Lilly and Megan Stout in the opening measures, along with pristine playing throughout the piece. It has become hard to take this music seriously after the comic demolition jobs it received from Walt Disney in Fantasia in 1940 and Allan Sherman in his 1963 LP My Son, The Nut, but a performance this good makes it easier to banish thoughts of dancing ostriches and Camp Granada.

The first half concluded with the Chaconne in G minor for Violin and Orchestra, a work attributed to Baroque composer Tomaso Vitali, despite the fact that it contains some very un-baroque key changes. Whatever its origins, Second Associate Concertmaster Celeste Golden Boyer did a splendid job with the solo part, delivering all the dark passion inherent in the music.

The second half started with another winner, the prelude to Engelbert Humperdinck's 1893 opera Hänsel und Gretel. Humperdinck (the original German composer, not the 1960s singer who appropriated his name) was a protégé of Richard Wagner, and there's more than a hint of Die Meistersinger in the piece, especially in the big contrapuntal section towards the end. It's big, complex music and the SLSO musicians more than did it justice. A shout-out is due to Roger Kaza's horns for the powerful, burnished sound of their many exposed passages here.

David Robertson
stlsymphony.org

More images from Fantasia are inevitably summoned up by the next selection, Paul Dukas's popular 1897 tone poem The Sorcerer's Apprentice, partly because -- as Mr. Robertson reminded us -- the music so vividly depicts the story that Disney's animators put on the screen. It's a piece filled with brilliant orchestral details, from the delicate opening measures for flutes, clarinet, harps, and strings, to the comically animated broom depicted by the bassoons, to the massive orchestral climaxes as the hapless apprentice tries to bring that broom under control. This was another bravura performance by the orchestra, with tips of the hat due to (among others) Andrew Cuneo's bassoons and the flutes under Associate Principal Andrea Kaplan.

The new work was next: Cyrillic Dreams by cellist and composer Stefan Freund, an associate professor at the University of Missouri and co-founder of the new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound. Inspired by a visit to Moscow and St. Petersburg, the work is essentially a short concerto grosso in which a solo string quartet consisting of the leaders of the first violins, second violins, violas, and cellos is set against the orchestral strings. The work opens with soaring, yearning opening theme on cello, which is then taken up by the viola, the violins, and eventually the full orchestra. Over the ensuing nine minutes the music rises to rapturous heights in a way that reminded me of the Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis by Vaughan Williams.

Stefan Freund

The solo quartet consisted of Principal Cello Daniel Lee, Assistant Principal Viola Jonathan Chu, Associate Principal Second Violin Kristin Ahlstrom (substituting for the originally scheduled Allison Harney), and (substituting for the originally scheduled David Halen) Associate Concertmaster Heidi Harris. They sang with their instruments flawlessly, as did the entire string section. If only the audience member with the nonstop cough had been polite enough to leave the auditorium instead of hacking all the way through the piece, the experience would have been ideal.

The evening came to an appropriately blazing finish with the horns and brasses in particularly fine form in Wouter Hutschenruyter's orchestral arrangement of "The Ride of the Valkyries" from Wagner's Die Walküre.

"Just look at this orchestra's recent birth rate," quipped Mr. Robertson at one point during the evening: "They are a happy group of active people." Indeed they are, and their joy in making music inevitably spills over into the audience.

Next at Powell Hall: David Robertson conducts orchestra with tympani soloist Shannon Wood on Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., April 30 and May 1. The program consists of William Kraft's Timpani Concerto No. 2, "The Grand Encounter," and Schubert's Symphony No. 9. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand.

Symphony Preview: Somethig old / something new / it's new music / from Mizzou

You might have noticed that there's no Friday, April 29, performance this weekend of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert featuring William Kraft's Timpani Concerto No. 2 and Schubert's Symphony No. 9. That's because Friday's "Storytelling" program is the last of the season's Whitaker Foundation "Music You Know" concerts. David Robertson is on the podium, SLSO violinist Celeste Golden Boyer is the soloist, and here's what you can expect.

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Leonard Bernstein in 1971
en.wikipedia.org

Bernstein: Candide Overture -- Leonard Bernstein's 1956 operetta Candide, based on the satire by Voltaire, has been through almost as many changes as its titular hero. By the time it opened on Broadway, it had already gone through a string of lyricists (including Dorothy Parker and James Agee) and over a dozen revisions by Lillian Hellman of her original book. Various incarnations of the show continued to pop up for the ensuing decades, including a 1973 Harold Prince "revival" that jettisoned half of the score and (after moving to the Broadway Theatre the following year) ended up over $150,000 in the red despite a string of Tony and Critics Circle awards. Somehow, the lively and tune-filled overture has remained largely intact.

Ponchielli: "Dance of the Hours" from La Gioconda -- Fans of Disney's Fantasia will, of course, recognize this as the music that accompanies a zoological ballet, while fans of the late Allan Sherman will immediately think of his hit "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah (A Letter from Camp)." Some of us think of both simultaneously, but that's another story. In Ponchielli's opera (which still gets performed now and then, especially in Italy), the title of which translates literally as "The Happy Woman," the ballet sequence comes towards the end of an otherwise dramatically grim Act III, the action of which includes the apparent suicide of the protagonist.

Vitali (orch. Charlier): Chaconne in G minor for Violin and Orchestra -- The chaconne is a series of variations on a repeating figure in the bass line. The form was popular during the Baroque period, which is when Tomaso Antonio Vitali (March 7, 1663 -- May 9, 1745) was composing. This chaconne is just about the only one of his works which is played with any frequency these days--which is somewhat ironic, given that it's not entirely clear whether or not he actually wrote it. This arrangement is by Léopold Charlier, about whom even less is known than about Vitali. Celeste Golden Boyer will be the violin soloist.

Not this guy

Humperdinck: Prelude to Hänsel und Gretel -- Engelbert Humperdinck (the original German composer, not the 1960s singer who appropriated his name) was a protégé of Richard Wagner, so it's not surprising that the prelude to his 1893 opera sounds more than a little bit like the one his mentor wrote for Die Meistersinger (note, in particular, the contrapuntal section towards the end). It's big, complex music for a modest fairytale story.

Dukas: The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- Speaking of Fantasia, Paul Dukas's popular 1897 tone poem has, perhaps, become far too closely associated with a certain animated rodent for its own good, so it's always good to hear it live, in an environment in which those delicate opening measures can emerge from complete silence. The inspiration for both the music and Disney's animation was a 1797 poem by Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling. Dukas wrote other works that deserve at least as much attention as this one, by the way. His 1896 Symphony in C, for example, is a very dramatic and colorful piece that deserves far more attention than it has gotten.

Stefan Freund
music.missouri.edu

Stefan Freund: Cyrillic Dreams -- The "Music You Know" concerts always include at least one work that you probably don't know, but should. This time around, that work is by a composer who is an associate professor at the University of Missouri, the cellist and one of the co-founders of the new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, artistic director of the Mizzou New Music Initiative, and the principal conductor and music director of the Columbia Civic Orchestra. Which is not a bad collection of accomplishments for someone in his early forties. The composer is quoted in Eddie Silva's program notes as saying that Cyrillic Dreams was inspired by a series of dreams in which he was surrounded by the daunting and foreign letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, as well as by "the colorful domes and clamorous bells of Moscow and St. Petersburg," which he visited in 2008.

As my friend Dean Minderman pointed out to me in a recent email, this is one of just eight works by living composers on this year's schedule, and marks the second time in three seasons the SLSO has played a work by a Missouri composer. The last time it was Stephanie Berg's entertaining Ravish and Mayem back in 2014.

Wagner: "Ride of the Valkyries" (arr. Hutschenruyter) from Die Walküre -- Maybe you associate this music with the words "kill da waabit." Or possibly with "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Or maybe just with the image of women in helmets singing very forcefully. It is, in any case, an integral part of the musical DNA of the Western world and an appropriately rousing final work for the concert.

The Essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with violin soloist Celeste Golden Boyer on Friday, April 29, at 8 p.m. The performance takes place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand.

Romantic classics get supercharged with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin with violinist David Halen
What: Music of Bruch, Berlioz, and Cindy McTee
When: October 17 and 19, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis

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This weekend brought electrifying performances of a pair of 19th century classics: Max Bruch's "Violin Concerto No. 1" and Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique." Rounding out the concerts was a bit of old Bach wine in new bottles by Cindy McTee, whose "Double Play" was such a delightful discovery last January.

Composed about three decades apart (the Berlioz premiered in 1830, the Bruch in 1868), the two big Romantic works have little in common aside from the fact that their respective composers were around the same age (30) at their premiers.

The Bruch concerto is a warm, heartfelt, and utterly irresistible work that marries virtuoso flash with genuine emotion. The Adagio second movement, in particular, is a piece of almost heartbreaking beauty. The Berlioz, on the other hand, is a hair-raising study in dramatic excess. I dearly love both works, but the Bruch is far and away the more moving. It's rather like the difference between an action movie and a romantic drama.

David Halen
stlsymphony.org

The solo role in Bruch's romance requires a performer who has both solid technique and emotional depth—which is exactly what it got in this weekend's soloist, SLSO Concertmaster David Halen. He has, as I noted when he did the Mendelssohn concerto back in February of 2012, a mix of technical facility and intense concentration that pulled me in immediately and kept me there throughout the work. He attacked the dramatic entrances in the first movement with tremendous vigor, sang the lyrical second, and simply danced through the joyous Allegro energico finale. He got great support from Mr. Slatkin and the orchestra as well. The standing ovation at the end was immediate and completely justified.

"If Hector Berlioz had been born in 20th-century America instead of 19th-century France," writes Reneé Spencer Saller in her program notes, "he would have wound up in prison or a mental institution." He might also have ended up as the object of a sexual harassment suit, given his dogged pursuit of Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson. It was his obsession with her that inspired the creation of the "Symphonie" and eventually led to their disastrous marriage—but that's another story.

The music, unlike the romantic obsession that inspired it, was a great success, although it was fiercely controversial. Parisians had just gotten used to the idea of Beethoven when along came this wildly dramatic bit of excess scored for a massive orchestra and accompanied by a lurid narrative about 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, where he encounters his love for the last time, now transformed into a demon and presiding over a witches' Sabbath.

To tell this wild tale, Berlioz used an orchestra that was not only large but also included 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. He 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.

All that means that the "Symphonie Fantastique" is a real test of an orchestra's mettle, and the SLSO musicians were more than up to the challenge. There are many great solo passages throughout the work. Cally Banham, for example, was wonderfully plaintive in the famous English horn solo in the bucolic "Scène aux Champs" third movement, as was oboist Barbara Orland with the offstage echo part (played from the house right balcony). The bassoon section was wonderfully menacing in the fourth movement "Marche au suplice" and Diana Haskell's E-flat clarinet was delightfully grotesque in the fifth movement transformation of the "idée fixe" theme which represents the narrator's beloved. Flautists Mark Sparks and Ann Choomack (doubling on piccolo) also did fine work in the second movement waltz, along with harpists Allegra Lilly and Megan Stout.

Celeste Golden Boyer
stlsymphony.org

Well, I could go on, but you get the idea. Up on the podium, Mr. Slatkin, conducting without a score (and, during the third movement, without a baton), brought it all together with a wonderfully sympathetic and dynamic reading that did full justice to Berlioz's high drama without ever descending into exaggeration. His decision to place key "effects" instruments (such as the fifth movement bells) offstage worked very well, I thought, and added a very appropriate theatricality to the proceedings. The final pages were both alarming and thrilling—just as Berlioz would have wished.

The concerts opened with "Einstein's Dream," a 2004 work by Cindy McTee (Mr. Slatkin's wife), apparently a late substitution for the originally scheduled opener, Slatkin's own "Endgames" (which will have its world premiere with the Detroit Symphony in November). "Albert Einstein," writes the composer on her web site, "gave much thought to issues of space and time, and he dreamt of finding a theory of everything, or a broad, mathematical structure that would fully explain and link together all known phenomena. My piece celebrates this dream."

That celebration takes the form of a set of variations for strings, percussion, and recorded sound on the Bach chorale prelude "Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott" ("We all believe in one God"), "transposed," as Ms. McTee notes, "to the key of 'e' for Einstein." The theme is initially stated by the strings in the first section ("Warps and Curves in the Fabric of Space and Time") and then subjected to increasingly complex transformations in each of the following six sections.

In "Music of the Spheres," for example, the theme is played by the high strings over a pedal point in the cellos and basses while in the "Celestial Bells" live tubular bells are accompanied by recorded bell-like sounds and Ligeti-ish clusters in the strings. The leaping violin solo in "Pondering the Behavior of Light" (expertly played by Celeste Golden Boyer) is a homage to Einstein's own violin playing. In the final section, "Wondering at the Secrets," notes of the theme are slowed down and overlapped in a technique the composer calls "time-stretching." "What most intrigued me about musical time-stretching," she writes, "was its ability to shift the listener’s attention toward the inner components of the sound – the harmonics and the overlapping resonant regions – as if inviting a kind of meditation to wonder at the secrets."

If all of this sounds, to quote Mr. Slatkin's introductory remarks, like "one of those kind of pieces," rest assured that it wasn't. It was fascinating, ingenious, and even a bit mischievous at times. Like McTee's "Double Play," "Einstein's Dream" clearly shows a lively and playful intellect at work. I'm not sure it leaves much room for interpretation by the conductor, though, as the live musicians are required to stay in synch with the recorded tracks.

Next at Powell Hall: John Storgårds conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violin soloist Heidi Harris in Mendelssohn's "Violin Concerto" Sibelius's "Symphony No. 1," and Paufnik's "Landscapes" Friday and Saturday, October 24 and 25, at 8 p.m. The Saturday concert will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio. Steven Jarvi conducts the orchestra in "Never Play Music Right Next to the Zoo," a special Family Concert featuring Saint-Saëns's "Carnival of the Animals" on Sunday, October 26, at 3 p.m. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information, visit the web site.

Rhythm and hues

Celeste Golden Boyer

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson with violinist Celeste Golden Boyer and the Juan Carmona ensemble
What: Music of Chabrier, Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Juan Carmona
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: November 25 and 26, 2011

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A longer than usual Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra concert Friday night was also long on excitement. We had impressive violin technique by Second Associate Concertmaster Celeste Golden Boyer in Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, brilliant orchestral writing by Chabrier (España) and Ravel (Rhapsodie espagnole, Bolero), and visceral thrills from guitarist/composer Juan Carmona and his troupe in the North American premiere of Carmona’s Sinfonia Flamenca. The piece itself is a bit of a mixed bag, but there was no denying the vitality of the performance.

Originally composed in 2006, the Sinfonia incorporates a variety of different melodic and rhythmic flamenco traditions into a three-movement work for orchestra and solo ensemble. It is, as the composer himself acknowledges, “a risky undertaking because we’re mixing two different philosophies: the flamenco one, which is oral tradition from the grass roots, and the classical world, which is more intellectual and is written.” It also makes for a dicey acoustic mix since, at least in these performances, the flamenco musicians are amplified.

Melding such radically different approaches requires, to my way of thinking, the kind of deep knowledge of the traditional orchestra and its instruments that would allow the larger group to be integrated with the soloists. I would think that Mr. Carmona, with his Paris Conservatory training would have that knowledge, but if so he has not seen fit to employ here. As it is, the Sinfonia Flamenca uses the orchestra largely as a homogenous back-up band for Mr. Carmona and his fellow performers.

Juan Carmona

But then, it’s Mr. Carmona and his fellow performers who generated the most excitement Friday night. Yes, the orchestra did their usual fine work and Mr. Robertson was so caught up in the music that he did almost as much dancing on the podium as Carmona ensemble member Nino de los Reyes did on the plywood platform set up for that purpose downstage. Ultimately, though, it was the energy, virtuosity, and intimate, chamber music-style give and take of the guest artists that won over me and (judging from the thunderous applause) the rest of the audience.

The official program lists the Carmona ensemble as follows: Juan Carmona, guitar; Paco Carmona, guitar; Domingo Patricio, flute; El Kiki, vocals; Nino de los Reyes, dancer; and Sergio Martinez, percussion. In reality, though, nearly all of them acted as percussionists at some point, given the importance of hand clapping, finger snapping, and (of course) the athletic, staccato dancing that codifies “flamenco” in the popular imagination. Mr. de los Reyes’s flashy footwork drew the most attention, but each of the six was striking in his own way. Given how hard it often was to hear Mr. Carmona and his players clearly (despite the amplification) it would have been nice to hear them perform by themselves as an encore instead of what we got, which was a repeat of a movement from the Sinfonia.

The remainder of the program was devoted to French music with a Spanish connection, opening with Emmanuel Chabrier’s infectiously cheerful España from 1883. The product of an Iberian vacation in 1882 (during which Chabrier was apparently obsessed with both Spanish music and Spanish women), España was an immense hit and a big boost for the composer’s career. Watching it performed live, I was reminded of what a skilled orchestrator Chabrier was. The music is filled with charming and witty touches as its irresistible melodies are tossed back and forth between sections. Mr. Robertson gave it a brisk but never rushed reading that allowed all the composer’s little touches to come through.

Up next was Saint-Saëns’s Introduction and Rondo capriccioso for violin and orchestra. Originally written for the legendary Spanish violinist and composer Pablo de Sarasate in 1863, the work’s attractive tunes and flashy writing have made it a hit with violinists and audiences ever since. As was the case last week, Mr. Robertson gave a symphony member the opportunity to step into a solo role. Second Associate Concertmaster Celeste Golden Boyer played with fierce concentration and great facility, earning a well-deserved standing ovation. As much as audiences love to see big-name soloists in front of the orchestra, it’s good to be reminded that we have world-class players in the home-town band.

Concluding both the first and second halves of the program were works by Maurice Ravel, who was born in the Basque region of France and spent much of his youth in Spain. His Rhapsodie espagnole, written in 1907 and 1908, was his first major orchestral work and, with its evocation of sultry nights, sensuous dances, and fiery festivals, demonstrates the ingenious use of instrumental color that would mark the rest of his career. The attention to detail and flexible interpretation of tempi that have served Mr. Robertson so well in the past did so here as well, delivering a performance that did full justice to the many moods of the appealing music and brought the first part of the evening to an impressive close.

Ravel’s ever-popular Bolero was the finale of the program and, really what is there to be said about it? Ravel himself apparently began to view it in somewhat the same way that Rachmaninoff came to view his equally popular “Prelude in C-sharp minor”: as a career milestone that eventually became a millstone. At least Ravel wasn’t obliged to perform it everywhere he went. It is, in any case, music that never fails to entertain, especially when the many solo passages are performed with the kind of consummate skill we got on Friday night. It generated the usually visceral excitement and sent us all home with smiles on our faces. And for that, we were all thankful.

Next at Powell Hall: December 2 through 4, Ward Stare is on the podium for Schubert’s Symphony No. 5 and the St. Louis premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s Sidereus, with Jennifer Koh as the violin soloist for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. For more information you may call 314-534-1700, visit stlsymphony.org, like the Saint Louis Symphony Facebook page, or follow @slso on Twitter.