Review: The St. Louis Symphony digital series continues with musical light in the darkness

The pandemic forced the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) to halt its 2020 season last spring. Last fall they were able to resume concerts in Powell Hall by enforcing small houses and strict health measures. A local rise in COVID-19 cases forced them to cancel public performances of the last two concerts, but the SLSO performed them as scheduled to a house empty of everyone except the audio and video techs.

Stéphane Denève conducts Stravinsky

The resulting digital concerts are being offered on demand at the SLSO web site. The program from last November 13th and 14th went live on March 11th, and it’s a winner on all counts, with SLSO Music Director Stéphane Denève leading the band in superb renditions of music by Russian composers Igor Stravinsky and Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American composer George Walker, who died at the age of 96 in 2018.

The concert opens with the "Dumbarton Oaks" concerto by Stravinsky. Written on commission for Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss and first performed at a private concert at their Dumbarton Oaks estate, this chamber concerto is a sprightly and cheerful homage to the Brandenburg Concertos of Bach in general and the third concerto in particular.

The lighthearted tone of the piece hides a sad truth, though. The year before its 1938 premiere, Stravinsky’s wife and eldest daughter died of tuberculosis—the same disease that would put the composer in the hospital for five months and prevent him from conducting that first performance. It’s a reminder of how little correlation there can be between a composer’s life and their work.

Because the piece is scored for only 16 musicians, it demands prodigious playing from all concerned, and the that’s exactly what Stravinsky’s music gets in this exemplary performance. Even the most rhythmically tricky passages are crystal clear and Maestro Denève’s interpretation bubbles with piquant energy.

The concerto asks a lot of the solo wind players—flute, clarinet, and bassoon—if only because they are solo parts and therefore more visible. They’re done with real elan here by Jennifer Nichtman, Scott Andrews, and Andrew Cuneo, respectively. The multi-camera videography lets the viewer get close enough see their expertise as well as hear it.

Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO strings

Up next is Walker’s "Lyric for Strings". Inspired by the death of the composer’s grandmother, the piece is both elegiac and uplifting. The ethereal beauty of the strings combines with Maestro Denève’s conducting to produce an intensely moving experience.

The orchestra also has an impressive version of Walker’s “Lyric” for a chamber ensemble of nine players on their YouTube channel as part of the “Songs of America” series. Former SLSO resident conductor Gemma New conducts that one, which was recorded at the Soldier’s Memorial downtown.

The concert concludes with Tchaikovsky’s popular Serenade for Strings in C major, Op. 48. Inspired by the composer’s love of Mozart, the Serenade mixes elegance, melodic beauty, and more than a touch of melancholy, especially in third movement Élégie.

Stéphane Denève’s nuanced interpretation, with the wide dynamic and expressive range I have come to expect from him, does full justice to Tchaikovsky’s many moods. The famous Valse second movement was delightfully graceful and romantic, and the crackling energy of the final movement would surely have guaranteed a standing ovation, had there been an audience present.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s irresistible mix of Stravinsky, George Walker, and Tchaikovsky runs just over one hour and is available on demand through April 10th. For information on the rest of the SLSO’s digital series as well as the new spring series of live concerts: slso.org.

Roll over, Beethoven

Andrey Boreyko

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Andrey Boreyko with violinist Adele Anthony
What:  Music of Stephanie Berg, Nielsen, and Beethoven
When: Friday and Saturday, January 10 and 11, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

The first of the St. Louis Symphony's "Beethoven Festival" concerts this weekend brought exciting performances by guest conductor Andrey Boreyko of three works, each separated by nearly a century: Beethoven's "Symphony No. 7 in A major", Op. 92 (first performed in 1813), Carl Nielsen's Op. 33 "Violin Concerto" (1912 premiere), and "Ravish and Mayhem", a colorful little tone poem by Missouri composer Stephanie Berg from 2012 that opened the evening.

New music at the symphony isn't often greeted with wild applause. More often the reaction is polite (if somewhat baffled) approval from audience members who aren't sure whether they missed something important or whether, as Anna Russell once observed, the composer was just trying to get away with something.

Stephanie Berg

Not so with "Ravish and Mayhem," which drew enthusiastic ovations for both the orchestra and—when Mr. Boreyko persuaded her to appear on stage—Ms. Berg as well. Inspired, according to the composer, by a vision of "an ancient Middle Eastern street festival," this unabashedly cinematic and vivid piece was a delight from the opening Coplandesque fanfares and melismatic woodwind figures to the brass glissandi near the end that conjured up images of trumpeting elephants.

Yes, dear friends, it was the 21st century version of Ketèlbey's 1920 hit "In a Persian Market." And I mean that in the best way possible. Many contemporary composers, in my view, could benefit from trying to be a bit more like the late British master of "light music" and a bit less like (say) Karlheinz Stockhausen.
The symphony musicians handled this new work with the same ease they display with well-worn favorites. There were especially notable contributions by Andrea Kaplan (flute), Ann Choomack (piccolo), Scott Andrews (clarinet), and Diana Haskell (E-flat clarinet) in the lively opening section.

Next was Carl Nielsen's violin concerto, a work that, like many of the Danish master's symphonies and other larger works, often defies expectations in ways that can leave audience members a bit confused. Which might explain why the concerto wasn't heard at Powell until 2001 (nearly 90 years after its premiere) and hasn't returned since Robert Spano conducted a performance with Yang Liu in October of 2002. Adele Anthony was the soloist this time, and she gave us a thoroughly idiomatic and assured reading (as you might expect from a Carl Nielsen International Violin Competition winner), dashing off the cadenza and final pages of the Allegro cavalleresco that closes the first half of the concerto so impressively that she was awarded with a spontaneous burst of applause.

Adele Anthony

Personally, I've always loved Nielsen's music. I find the composer's joy in the unexpected and characteristic melodic voice immensely appealing. It would be nice to see more of it on the stage at Powell.

The evening closed with an exhilarating Beethoven "Symphony No. 7," beautifully shaped by Mr. Boreyko. He last conducted the orchestra in an all-Tchaikovsky program in November of 2012 that was distinguished by an electrifying performance of the "Violin Concerto" by Vadim Gluzman and a "Symphony No. 1" that exploited all of the work's extremes in tempi and dynamics while still pulling everything together into a coherent whole. The Beethoven Seventh comes from a more restrained emotional world than the Tchaikovsky First, but Mr. Boreyko nevertheless found and effectively exploited all the drama inherent in the music.

He displayed an unerring ability to build to an effective climax, both within movements (as in the opening Poco sostenuto) and in the overall structure of the symphony. The white-hot intensity of the finale was simply the inevitable conclusion of an arc that had been built from the first notes of the first movement—the conclusion of which got a round of spontaneous applause—and which ran through the steady rhythmic pulse of the second and the fleet-footed romp of the third. An enthusiastic and thoroughly justified standing ovation followed.

It's likely that the orchestra that first performed Beethoven's seventh was somewhat smaller than 73 musicians assembled for this weekend's performance, but they played with the crisp articulation and precision of a much smaller ensemble. Timpanist Shannon Wood, in particular, deserves a shout-out for exactitude and endurance during that remarkable final movement.

The Beethoven Festival continues this coming weekend with the "Piano Concerto No. 5" (the "Emperor") along with Weber's "Euryanthe Overture" and Bartók's "Concerto for Orchestra." Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducts with soloist Louis Lortie . Performances are Friday at 10:30 AM (a Krispy Kreme coffee concert), Saturday at 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM, January 17-19. For more information: stlsymphony.org.