Symphony Preview: Czech list

This weekend (November 17–19), guest conductor Christian Reif leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violinist Randall Goosby in a program of works by three very different composers who all hail from towns that are now part of the Czech Republic.

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

The concerts open with the first-ever SLSO performance of the 1938 “Suita rustica,” Op. 19, by Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–1940). If you’ve never heard of her before that’s not surprising. Her untimely death from typhoid at the age of 25 was at least partly responsible for her lack of wider recognition, although given the maturity and number of her compositions, it’s not entirely clear why, in the late 20th century, her work apparently gained little traction outside of the Czech Republic.

Vítězslava Kaprálová
Public Domain

Maybe audiences weren’t entirely sure what to make of her combination of Czech folk elements with what were then seen as “modernist” sounds. Or maybe it was just symptomatic of the difficulty women composers have had, until very recently, getting serious attention.

It’s a pity in any case, because after listening to the recording of the “Suita rustica” by Jiří Pinkas and the Brno Philharmonic in the SLSOs playlist, I’m strongly motivated to seek out more of Kaprálová’s music. This lively and colorful three-movement work neatly merges the traditional with the contemporary in a way that’s hard to resist.

Up next is the 1945 Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957).  Like Kaprálová, Korngold was born in the city of Brünn, Austria-Hungary—now Brno, Czech Republic. Unlike her, he wrote in a far more traditional and clearly Austrian style. The second son of music critic Julius Korngold (1860–1945), Korngold was a skilled pianist at age 5 and was composing by age 7. He was much admired by, among others, Jean Sibelius, Giacomo Puccini, Richard Strauss, and Gustav Mahler (who recommended that he study with Alexander von Zemlinksy).

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Korngold composed his first ballet at age 11 and his most famous opera, “Die tote Stadt,” at 23. In 1934 director Max Reinhardt enticed him to Hollywood to write the music for his lavish film version of “A Midsummer Night's Dream” (well worth seeing, despite the many cuts in Shakespeare's text). He returned to Austria but was drawn back to California in 1938 to write the score for “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” While he was there, Hitler's Anschluss of Austria took place, and Korngold became an émigré ("We thought of ourselves as Viennese," he would recall later. "Hitler made us Jewish.")

Korngold is most remembered these days, though, as a film composer. The lush, late-19th century romanticism of his scores came to typify the big budget movies of the 1930s and 1940s, especially action/adventure films like “Captain Blood” (1945), “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), and “The Sea Hawk” (1940). He scored his share of straightforward dramas, as well, including “Kings Row” (1942), “Of Human Bondage” (1946), and “Escape Me Never” (1947).

Korngold returned to the concert world for the final decade of his life, but like many other notable composers throughout history, was not shy about recycling his own musical material. For his Violin Concerto he repurposed melodies from the films “Juarez” (1939), “Anthony Adverse” (1936), “Another Dawn” (1937), and—in the lively finale—"The Prince and the Pauper” (1937). The concerto had its world premiere right here in St. Louis in 1947 with Jascha Heifetz as the soloist and the French-American conductor Vladimir Golschmann on the podium. Golschmann was music director of the SLSO from 1931 to 1958 (the longest-reigning SLSO music director to date) and made a number of recordings with the orchestra.

This weekend's soloist, Randall Goolsby, is no stranger to the Korngold concerto, having recently played it with both the Oslo Philharmonic and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. The 27-year-old American violinist also appears to be a rising star on the concert scene, having just recorded concertos by Max Bruch and Florence Price with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Phildelphia Orchestra for Decca.

Wrapping everything up is the Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, by the most thoroughly Czech composer of them all, Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904). Dvořák’s Seventh has always been a favorite of mine, for reasons that are difficult to articulate. I can’t hear it without thinking of a long journey down a dark mountain river. Flashes of light illuminate the trip, but we don’t see the sun until the work’s final moments, when the tonality changes from D minor to D major.

Composed between December 1884 and March 1885, the symphony was written for the Philharmonic Society of London, which had just made the composer an honorary member. Indeed, as a letter to his friend Antonin Rus indicates, he was a bit obsessed with the project. “Everywhere I go,” he wrote, “I think of nothing else than my work, which must be such as to shake the world, and with God’s help it will be so.”

His obsession paid off handsomely. The symphony’s premiere took place on April 22, 1885, with the composer conducting the Philharmonic Society Orchestra at St. James’s Hall and it was, as Alec Robertson writes in his 1962 biography of Dvořák, “a huge success. The work, which pleased conservatives and progressives alike, was favourably compared to Schubert’s C major symphony, and declared to be more immediately appealing than the Brahms F major [Symphony No. 3, Op. 90, published in 1884].”

Anton and Anna Dvořák in London, 1886
en.wikipedia.org

That placed him in some pretty august company. Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, D. 944, which was first published in 1828 (but not performed until eleven years later), was nicknamed “The Great” to distinguish it from an earlier symphony in the same key. By the 1880s, it had achieved the status of greatness among audiences and critics alike. As for the Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90, the critic Eduard Hanslick called it “artistically the most nearly perfect” of the composer’s symphonies. Dvořák himself was among the work’s greatest admirers, describing it to his publisher Simrock as “[surpassing] his first two symphonies; if not, perhaps, in grandeur and powerful conception—then certainly in—beauty.”

The Dvořák Seventh got similar responses from critics both past and present. In his chapter on Dvořák in the first volume of Robert Simpson’s “The Symphony” (Pelican Books, 1966), Julius Harrison doesn’t hesitate to call it “the finest of them all… Dvořák now scales the heights of Parnassus as he was never to do again.” Robertson calls it “undoubtedly a great work.” I agree, of course, and I think you will probably do so as well.

I’m not sure what approach Reif will take to the  Seventh, although Simon Thompson (writing for Bachtrak) called his performance of it last year with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra “smooth as silk” with the finale “feeling like a rich overflowing towards which the whole evening had been building.” If it’s anything like the legendary 1960 recording by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in the SLSOs playlist (one of my personal favorites), it should be memorable.

The Essentials: Christian Reif conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violinist Randall Goosby in the “Suita rustica” by Vítězslava Kaprálová, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto, and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am, Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, November 17 through 19, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. The concert will also be broadcast Saturday night at 7:30 on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

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

Review: Spectacular Ravel and Tchaikovsky with John Storgårds, Marc-André Hameiln, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

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

John Storgårds

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

"Nothing," wrote Mary Ann Evans (a.k.a. George Eliot) "is so good as it seems beforehand." Had she seen the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in action on Saturday, November 11th 2017 (unlikely, given that she died in 1880), she might have revised that aphorism a bit.

I'll admit that I was looking forward to this concert. The program included my favorite Tchaikovsky symphony -- the Fourth, in F minor -- as well as Ravel's endlessly inventive Piano Concerto in G, and the guest conductor, John Storgårds, impressed me mightily when I last saw him in back in April. I was not, however, expecting to be quite as blown away as I was.

Things got off to a fine start with the local premiere of the Tänzchen im alten Stil ("Little Dance in the Old Style"), composed in 1918 by one of the great names in Hollywood film music, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It's an ingratiating gloss on the classic Viennese waltz, with a slyly humorous beginning and a middle section with echt romantisch solos for cello and horn, followed by a coda that cleverly combines both themes.

Mr. Storgårds gave it a very idiomatic treatment, complete with those small pauses between the first and second beat (luftpausen) that characterize the Viennese waltz. The orchestra played beautifully, including solos in the opening section from Associate Principal Flute Andrea Kaplan, Associate Principal Clarinet Diana Haskell, and bassoonist Vincent Karamanov. Principal Cello Daniel Lee and Associate Principal Horn Thomas Jöstlein carried out their solos with equal aplomb.

When pianist Marc-André Hamelin joined the orchestra for the Ravel concerto, though, it quickly became clear that the evening wasn't just gong to be good, it was going to be great.

Marc-André Hamelin

When Ravel wrote the concerto, he set out to make it technically challenging, hoping that it would force him to improve his own game at the keyboard. That didn't happen; Paris Conservatoire piano professor Marguerite Long played at the 1932 Paris premiere. But it did create a work that demands, especially in the wistful second movement, a pianist with technique and soul.

Mr. Hamelin displayed both Saturday night, dashing off the flashy stuff in the first and third movements with ease while caressing that long-limbed waltz theme in the second. He was completely in synch with Mr. Storgårds's loving and rhythmically free approach to that movement as well as his more dynamic interpretation of the other two. Mr. Storgårds also highlighted lots of little details like Principal Harp Allegra Lilly's solo in the first movement and the run up the piano keyboard to the first restatement of the main theme.

And speaking of solos, let's direct some applause to Cally Banham for that yearning English horn line in the second movement.

The concert concluded with what can only be called a kick-ass performance of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. Written in 1876-77, at a time when the composer's mood swung between hope and despair, this is the most compact and dramatically expressive of all his symphonies. From the commanding "fate" motive first intoned by the brasses at the beginning to the nearly hysterical triumph of the finale, this is a piece that grabs you by the lapels and doesn't let go until the end.

Which is exactly what Mr. Storgårds and the SLSO did Saturday night. If you were there, you know what I mean. Starting with a brilliant statement of the "fate" motive by the brass section, this was a Tchaikovsky Fourth that commanded one's attention and simply crackled with energy.

There were so many great moments in this express train of a performance that I really can't list them all here. I loved the relentless "march of doom" at the end of the first movement, for example, as well as the barn-burning intensity of the finale. For me, Mr. Storgårds delivered a Tchaikovsky Fourth against which all others must be measured, with the high drama of the music accentuated by the conductor's magisterial podium presence and big, dramatic, full upper-body gestures.

Everyone played their hearts out, both in the many solos and in the ensemble overall. The melancholy main theme of the second movement was beautifully rendered by Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks and Associate Principal Bassoon Andy Gott. The string section played the pizzicato third movement with intense concentration (you could see it on their faces as well as hear it) and impressive precision. The horn and brass sections were stunning all the way through. And Thomas Stubbs deserves a particular shout-out for doing such a great job with the insanely fast cymbal part in the finale.

Not surprisingly, the applause following this was thunderous as the audience leapt to its feet. I don't think standing ovations at Powell Hall are always justified, but I had no hesitation about joining in this time.

Since this was Veteran's Day (originally Armistice Day, which I've always felt was more appropriate), the concert was preceded by a short speech honoring the Gold Star families present by SLSO trumpeter Jeff Strong, who is a former member of the US Marine Band. It was tastefully done, and an appropriate reminder.

Next at Powell: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with Joélle Harvey, soprano; Kelley O'Connor, mezzo-soprano; Stuart Skelton, tenor; and Shenyang, bass-baritone in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 3 p.m., November 18 and 19. There's also a free Youth Orchestra concert Friday at 8 p.m. with Resident Conductor Gemma New at the baton. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: Self-improvement program

Maurice Ravel birthday party, New York City, March 8, 1928
L-R: Oscar Fried, conductor; Eva Gauthier, singer;
Ravel at piano; Manoah Leide-Tedesco, composer-conductor;
and composer George Gershwin

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This weekend (November 10 - 12, 2017) at Powell Hall, guest conductor John Storgårds takes the podium as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra plays a varied program featuring the local premiere of a piece that's almost 100 years old, one of Tchaikovsky's Greatest Hits, and a popular piano concerto that was the result of a failed attempt at self-improvement by Maurice Ravel.

The Ravel work in question is the Concerto in G, written mostly between 1929 and 1932. It's one of only two piano concertos in his catalog (the other is the Concerto in D for the left hand, written at around the same time) and it represented an attempt by Ravel to improve his own less than stellar skill as a pianist.

Ravel, as Washington University's Hugh Macdonald has written, was not a virtuoso at the keyboard. “In his public appearances as a concert pianist,” notes Mr. Macdonald, “he had preferred to play easier pieces like the Sonatine and was all too conscious that his technique was not up to his most demanding works, such as Gaspard de la nuit. But rather than write a piece within his own capacity, he decided to write a concerto of proper difficulty and simply acquire the technique to play it.” Thus was born the Concerto in G.

The composition process was apparently long and difficult, having begun as early as 1911, according to Mr. Macdonald:

"Gustave Samazeuilh recounted that in 1911 he and Ravel spent a holiday in the Basque region (where both of them had come from) and that Ravel sketched a “Basque Concerto” for piano and orchestra. Without the right idea for a central linking movement the work was abandoned, to reappear 20 years later as the G-major Concerto. This at least suggests a Basque origin for some of the themes, although it is easier, without any general familiarity with Basque music, to recognize that the livelier themes emerge from Ravel's preoccupation with the brilliant percussive qualities of the piano itself and that the languorous melodies betray his gift for giving a peculiarly sophisticated edge to the language of jazz."

Jazz was certainly in the air in Paris in the late 1920s and Ravel got a taste of the real thing during a 1928 tour of the USA, so much is understandably made about the jazzy influences in the concerto; possible Basque influences, not so much. Regardless of the source of the concerto's inspiration, though, the result is characteristically Ravel: inventive, witty, and brilliantly orchestrated.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Ravel's attempts to bring his keyboard skills up to the level required by the concerto came to naught, unfortunately. He was already in his mid fifties-a time in life when learning new skills becomes more difficult-and his health was declining, resulting in memory problems and difficulty concentrating. So when it came time for the French premiere of the concerto, the solo role went to Marguerite Long, who taught piano at the Paris Conservatoire between 1906 and 1940. And even she found it a challenge.

“It is a difficult work,” she observed in the posthumously published Au Piano avec Maurice Ravel, “especially in respect of the second movement where one has no respite. I told Ravel one day how anxious I was, after all the fantasy and brilliant orchestration of the first part, to be able to maintain the cantabile of the melody of the piano alone during such a long slow flowing phrase... 'That flowing phrase!' Ravel cried. 'How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me!'"

At the Steinway for this weekend's concerts will be Canadian pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin, last seen here in 2009. He has made a number of recordings for Hyperion, concentrating on some of the more obscure composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the inventive American Frederic Rzewski, virtuoso pianist Leopold Godowski, and one of my own favorites, Charles-Valentin Alkan. That seems apt preparation for a work as eclectic as the Ravel concerto.

The concerts will open with the first local performance of Tänzchen im alten Stil ("Little Dance in the Old Style"), composed in 1918 by one of the great names in Hollywood film music, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Written when the composer was just beginning to make a name for himself and long before the rise of Hitler would drive him to expatriate status in the USA, this short (around seven minutes) piece looks back nostalgically to the “old style” of the Viennese waltz and, as Benjamin Pesetsky tells us in the program notes , features a “gorgeous cello solo that would be equally at home in a Brahms symphony or a silver-screen love theme.” If you've ever heard Korngold's popular Violin Concerto or his classic film scores (like The Adventures of Robin Hood or The Prince and the Pauper), you know what to expect.

The concerts will conclude with my favorite Tchaikovsky symphony-his Fourth, in F minor, last heard in Powell Hall in March 2015, with David Robertson at the baton. I'm going to basically reprise what I wrote about it back then because it's still valid and because I am occasionally given to bouts of sloth.

"Tchaikovsky with wife Antonina Miliukova"
by Ivan Grigoryevich Dyagovchenko
Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Commons

Tchaikovsky began writing the symphony during a winter of discontent (to paraphrase Shakespeare) in 1876-77. "Since we last met," he wrote to his friend Ivan Klimenko on May 8, 1877, "I am very much changed-especially mentally. Not a kopek's worth of fun and gaiety is left in me. Life is terribly empty, tedious, and tawdry. My mind turns towards matrimony, or indeed any other steady bond. The only thing that has not changed is my love for composing. If the conditions of my life were different, if my desire to create were not balked at every step...I might write something really decent."

His disastrous attempt at marriage in 1877 to a former student, Antonina Miliukova didn't help matters any. He was gay, she didn't get it, and the entire business collapsed after only a few months. Still, by the beginning of 1878, all that Sturm und Drang had resulted in the creation of "something really decent." Although initially dismissed by critics who were baffled by the first movement's length (at just over 17 minutes, it takes up about half of the symphony's total time) and unusual structure, the Fourth would gradually gain acceptance and acclaim. It's now one of Tchaikovsky's most popular symphonies.

As well it should be. The composer poured all of his hope and despair into this most compact and dramatically expressive of all his symphonies. From the commanding "fate" motive first intoned by the brasses at the beginning to the nearly hysterical triumph of the finale, this is a piece that grabs you by the lapels and doesn't let go until the end. I've loved this work from the first time I heard it in a recording by Sir John Barbirolli and the Halle Orchestra on my parents' old console stereo some fifty years ago. I think you will as well.

The Essentials: John Storgårds conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, along with pianist Marc-André Hamelin in music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Ravel, and Tchaikovsky Friday at 10:30 a.m, Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., November 10 - 12. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Coming to America

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson with violin soloist Gil Shaham
What: Music of Dvořák, Korngold, and Ingram Marshall
When: March 21 and 22, 2014
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

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Gil Shaham

Highlighting this weekend's St. Louis Symphony concerts is a pair impressive performances of works written right here in the good old USA (including one premiered in St. Louis) by visitors from abroad: Erich Wolfgang Korngold's 1945 "Violin Concerto" and Dvořák's 1893 "Symphony No. 9" ("From the New World").

Although separated by an almost fifty turbulent years in music history, the harmonic language of the two pieces isn't that much different—which is why the Korngold's concerto had to wait until the wave of Serialism and related compositional trends had begun to wane before it could start to get some respect.  Amply supplied with tunes recycled from Korngold's work as a film composer, the concerto has the late Romantic richness that you hear in the work of Richard Strauss and the other post Wagnerians coupled with ingenious and often unexpected bits of orchestration.  The celesta part (expertly played by Peter Henderson), for example, is large enough to almost make it a second solo instrument.  Combined with Allegra Lilly's fine harp work, the result was a kind of hallucinatory filigree that suggested a Hollywood dream sequence.

The concerto is probably familiar territory to soloist Gil Shaham (he recorded it with Andre Previn and the London Symphony back in 1994), so it's not surprising that he negotiated its many technically tricky passages with ease while not neglecting the lyricism that is at the heart of the piece.  "In spite of the demand for virtuosity in the finale," wrote the composer after hearing the concerto's premiere with Jascha Heifetz and the SLSO in 1947, "the work with its many melodic and lyric episodes was contemplated more for a Caruso than a Paganini."  There's a sense of longing in both the main theme of the first movement and (most notably) in all of the second movement "Romance" that needs to come through clearly, and we definitely got it from Mr. Shaham and Mr. Robertson Friday night.

That said, the balance between soloist and ensemble was less than ideal.  At least from our perch in row D of the dress circle, Mr. Shaham was often overwhelmed by the orchestra (which is, to be fair, a large one), even when he moved farther downstage.  I don't know how much of that was a performance issue and how much an acoustical one, although I'm inclined to suspect it's mostly the latter.

Mr. Shaham was warmly received by the audience Friday night, which applauded after every movement (something which was once commonplace in concert halls) and gave him a standing ovation at the end.  Mr. Shaham and Mr. Robertson responded with an encore: an echt Viennese (with really major luftpausen) of Kreisler's charming "Schön Rosmarin," including a bit of clowning around between Mr. Robertson and Mr. Shaham (who is, after all, his brother-in-law).

The concert concluded with a world class (or is that "new world class"?) Dvořák 9th from Mr. Robertson and the orchestra.  From the dramatically charged introduction to the electrifying final bars of the Allegro con fuoco, this was a "New World" that bristled with excitement and fine orchestral playing.  The famous "Goin' Home" English horn theme in the second movement was lovingly played by Cally Banham, the flute theme in the first movement got a particularly expressive treatment from Mark Sparks, and the brass section generally did itself proud.

Mr. Robertson intelligently shaped and paced this performance in ways that made the most of the work's strengths while minimizing its weaknesses (much as I love this piece, I understand how episodic it can be).  Tempi were well chosen, dynamics were just right—it all added up to a wonderfully coherent reading that revealed new aspects of a work which, I expect, many of us have heard so often that we could almost conduct it ourselves.

The concert opened with a relatively new work (it premiered in 2004): "Bright Kingdoms" by Connecticut-based composer Ingram Marshall.  Mr. Marshall is friend of composer John Adams (who is a major booster of Mr. Ingram's work) and a great lover of the compositional technique of mixing live and recorded sounds, which he's been doing since the 1970s.  Both approaches are evident in this music, which struck me as the sort of thing you might experience if you were listening to an Adams composition while someone in the next room was playing an old Tomita LP.

For me, the best thing about "Bright Kingdoms" was the lovely fugal central section for strings based on the hymn "Eventide" (most often heard with the words "Abide with Me").  The tune is also, apparently, the basis for a Swedish hymn, a distorted children's choir version of which is the basis for a long recorded section that takes up much of the final third of this 17-minute piece.  "Bright Kingdoms" rather wore out its welcome for me after that string chorale.  Judging from the polite applause, I probably wasn't the only one who thought so.

Next at Powell Hall:  David Robertson conducts the orchestra and soprano Karita Mattila in Wagner's Prelude to "Tristan and Isolde," Brahms's "Symphony No. 3," and Schoenberg's "Erwartung" on Friday  and Saturday at 8 PM March 28 and 29.  For more information: stlsymphony.org. 

New World records

Ingram Marshall

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This weekend David Robertson conducts the symphony in three "American" works. Granted, only one was written by an American; but all three were composed here and one even had its premiere in St. Louis.

The music that opens the concerts, Ingram Marshall's "Bright Kingdoms," was first performed in Oakland, California, back in 2004. It's unusual in that it uses both live and recorded sounds—a compositional technique that Mr. Marshall has been playing with since his days as a graduate student at Columbia University in the 1960s. In 1971 a summer study trip to Indonesia exposed him to gamelan music with its altered sense of time and so that, too, became part of his vocabulary.

In his notes for the 2004 premiere, Mr. Marshall wrote that the recorded sound consists of "processed recordings" of a Swedish children's choir, including a boy singing a hymn whose words, in English, are: "Through the bright kingdoms of this early, go we to paradise with song."

"Unconsciously," he went on, "the music turned out to be about innocence, the kingdoms of innocence and the dissolution of those kingdoms. Several sections of the piece are for orchestra alone, one in particular being a threnody for strings about half way through, another being a series of brightly orchestrated passages near the beginning that might be heard as 'kingdoms.' Otherwise, the orchestra and 'soundtrack' are cohabitants."

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

The orchestra has plenty of experience playing along with recorded sounds—they did an entire program of it last week with "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony II," for example—so this is nothing new for them. Although I expect Mr. Marshall's stuff might be a bit more challenging than "I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat."

Up next is Erich Wolfgang Korngold's "Violin Concerto in D major," op. 35, which first saw the light of day right here in Mound City back in 1947. Jascha Heifetz was the soloist, and on the podium was the French conductor Vladimir Golschmann. Golschmann was music director of the SLSO from 1931 to 1958 (the longest-reigning SLSO music director to date) and made a number of recordings with the orchestra.

Korngold's name will be familiar to classic film fans. Born in Moravia in 1897, Korngold was a child prodigy hailed as a "musical genius" by Gustav Mahler. He composed his first ballet at age 11 and his most famous opera, "Die tote Stadt," at 23. In 1934 director Max Reinhardt enticed Korngold to Hollywood to write the music for his lavish film version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (well worth seeing, despite the many cuts in Shakespeare's text). He returned to Austria, but was drawn back to California in 1938 to write the score for "The Adventures of Robin Hood." While he was there, Hitler's Anschluss of Austria took place, and Korngold became an émigré ("We thought of ourselves as Viennese," he would recall later; "Hitler made us Jewish.")

Dvořák with his friends and family in New York

Even if you didn't know Korngold was a film composer, you could guess it by the lush romantic sound of this music. You might also recognize some of the themes, as he recycled material from the films "Juarez" (1939), "Anthony Adverse" (1936), "Another Dawn" (1937), and—in the lively finale—"The Prince and the Pauper" (1937). It's flashy stuff and should fit nicely under the hands of soloist Gil Shaham (who is Mr. Robertson's brother-in-law).

Closing the concerts is the "Symphony No. 9 in E minor," op. 95, (“From the New World”) by Antonín Dvořák. The Czech master wrote it during a visit to America in the early 1890s and while he never explicitly quotes any American folk material, there's still something about this music that strongly suggests America. From the flute theme in the first movement that seems to echo "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," to the second movement Largo that has (at least for me) always evoked the majestic solitude of the plains (Dvořák said he wrote it after reading Longfellow's "Hiawatha"), to the "bluesy" flatted seventh chords of the finale, Dvořák "New World" symphony just shouts "USA"—even if it does so with a strong Czech accent.

Some critics have complained of the symphony's structural weaknesses and its episodic nature, but even they have had to confess that it's never anything less than tremendously appealing. It's one of the first "classical" works I ever encountered, and I've never lost my affection for it. If you've never heard it before, I'd bet it will strike you the same way.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violin soloist Gil Shaham in Marshall's Bright Kingdoms, Korngold's Violin Concerto, and Dvorak's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World" on Friday at 10:30 AM and at 8 PM, and Saturday at 8 PM March 21 and 22, at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information: stlsymphony.org. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 FM, HD 1, and on the Internet from the station web site.