Symphony Review: A hot time in the cold town with Slatkin and the SLSO

Before he started his pre-concert chat with the audience at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concert Saturday night (January 13) Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin smiled and said, “Look how many of you made it!”

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

He was referring to the fact that despite a light snowfall and Antarctic wind chill values, the Busch Concert Hall at the Touhill Center was packed (it was officially sold out, but bad weather always results in some no-shows). The audience was rewarded for braving the deep freeze by an impeccably  performed and consistently entertaining program of music from (mostly) the 1920s.

La création du monde

It was second of three concerts demonstrating the influence of what Slatkin calls “vernacular music”—jazz, folk, spirituals, theatre, and popular music in general—on the classical canon. It consisted of three infrequently heard works by European composers inspired by American jazz and dance tunes and was followed by one big whopping hit by an American composer inspired by a visit to Paris. It would have gotten serious points for variety even if it hadn’t been so well done.

It all started with the 1923 ballet “La création du monde” (The Creation of the World) by Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), a work heavily influenced by the composer’s brief infatuation with jazz and ragtime (even though the latter was in its sunset years by then).  With a scenario by Blaise Cendrars based on the poet’s 1922 collection of African folk tales, the ballet featured Picasso-esque sets and costumes by Fernand Léger that looked impressive but were clumsy and awkward for the dancers. Which may explain why “La création du monde” is rarely seen but often heard.

Scored for a small wind ensemble, percussion (including a typical jazz drum kit), and a string quartet with the alto sax replacing the viola, it’s a piece in which every player can be clearly heard. But it’s also one in which quasi-independent instrumental lines often converge into what could, in less skilled hands, turn into mere cacophony. That makes it a bit of a challenge for both the players and the audience.

Section I, with its fast-moving fugue, is a good example. Keeping the individual lines clear here looks tricky in the score, but Slatkin and the musicians kept everything clearly delineated. This is music that requires close attention by the listener, and this neatly balanced performance made that easy. The roster of fine performers included Nathan Nabb on sax, Peter Henderson on piano, Kevin Ritenauer on the drum kit, and Jelena Dirks on oboe.

Ebony Concerto

Parenthetical note: the tune of the oboe’s soulful, blues-drenched solo sounded so much like the one Gershwin wrote for his Concerto in F two years later that I suspect Milhaud’s theme might have been on his mind at the time.

Jazz was certainly on the mind of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) in 1945 when he wrote his brief “Ebony Concerto” for clarinetist Woody Herman and his band. It crams a lot of musical variety into its ten minutes without overwhelming the listener with its ingenious mix of 1940’s jazz and the composer’s neoclassicism.

It also defies expectations by using the soloist more as a featured member of the band than as an individual player. There were long stretches in which SLSO Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews was more observer than participant, with prominent musical roles taken over by the large sax section. Still, when Andrews was given the chance to cut loose and strut his stuff, he did so beautifully, showing his wide expressive and dynamic range. I don’t often think of Stravinsky’s neoclassical works as being “fun,” but I can’t think of a better way to describe this one.

Intermission and another stage change brought the “Kleine Dreigroschenmusik” (“Little Threepenny Music”) by Kurt Weill (1900–1950). Scored for a 1920’s dance band with a bandoneon (a conertina much favored by Agentine tango composers) added for a bit of spice, it’s a suite of tunes from Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 “play with music” “Der Dreigroschenoper” (“The Threepenny Opera”) that the composer put together in 1929 at the request of legendary conductor Otto Klemperer. Without Bertolt Brecht’s pungent lyrics, most of the tunes sound deceptively cheerful, although even without its words, the “Kanonensong” (“Canon Song”) still feels dark and threatening.

Slatkin and the band gave us a performance marked by crisp, precise playing, careful attention to Weill’s small touches of humor, and more outstanding solo work. A tip of the hat is also due to Winnie Cheung on bandoneon. Her instrument is only called for in three of the eight movements, but the obvious joy in her performance was contagious.

Kleine Dreigroschenmusik

When Weill and Brecht were completing work on “Der Dreigroschenoper” George Gershwin (1898–1937) was putting the finishing touches on the work that concluded Saturday night’s show, “An American in Paris.” As someone who loves visiting the City of Light, I have to say that Gershwin did a bang-up job of capturing city's lively sidewalk cafes and bustling boulevards as well as (in the blues-infused central section) the charm of Paris at night.

Slatkin could probably conduct this score blindfolded at this point. His 1974 recording with the SLSO (“that orchestra is all gone now,” he quipped, “but the conductor is still here”) is one of the best you can buy, especially in the digitally remastered version that came out last summer. His performance Saturday night was a perfect balance of lush romanticism and a scrupulous attention to orchestral detail. It was the perfect way to end an evening that was both engaging and revelatory.

As a bonus, we got an encore: an orchestration by Leonard Slatkin’s father Felix (1915–1963), the St. Louis-born violinist and concertmaster for Twentieth Century Fox Studios, of Alfred Newman’s main theme for the 1943 film “The Song of Bernadette.” It features prominent solos for the violin and cello which, on the original soundtrack, were played by Leonard Slatkin’s father and mother (Eleanor Aller). 

Saturday night those parts played with great warmth by concertmaster David Halen and Principal Cello Daniel Lee. Newman’s music was shamelessly moving as only a vintage Hollywood score can be, especially when played this well. The arrangement was reconstructed from the soundtrack (a major accomplishment all by itself) by Leonard Slatkin's wife, composer Cindy McTee.

Finally, here’s a laurel wreath for the stage crew. Saturday’s concert effectively featured four different ensembles: Milhaud’s augmented quartet, Stravinsky’s 1940’s big band (plus harp), Weill’s 1920’s cabaret band, and Gershwin’s big, late Romantic orchestra. That meant three big stage changes with the biggest of the lot (from Weill to Gershwin) taking place while the audience watched. It’s a tribute to their professionalism that these changes all went quickly and smoothly, with the precision of a well-oiled machine.

Next from the SLSO: Leonard Slatkin and the orchestra return to the Touhill for two concerts. Slatkin conducts a joint performance by the orchestra and youth orchestra on Saturday, January 20, at 7:30 pm, with music by Brahms, Copland, and Tchaikovsky. On Sunday, January 21, at 3 pm, Slatkin conducts the orchestra and pianist Jeffrey Siegel in Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in a program that also includes John Alden Carpenter’s “Krazy Kat” ballet, Paul Turok’s “A Jopin Overture,” and selections from Mary Lou Willams’s “Zodiac Suite” with guest artists The Aaron Diehl Trio.

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

Symphony Preview: And (almost) all that jazz

This Saturday (January 13) St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin presents the second of three concerts demonstrating the influence of what Slatkin calls “vernacular” music—jazz, folk, spirituals, theatre, and popular music in general—on the classical canon. In the first half of Saturday’s concert, the emphasis is on jazz.

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

Darius Milhaud, 1923
By Agence de presse Meurisse
Public Domain

The evening opens the ballet “La création du monde” (The Creation of the World) by Darius Milhaud (1892–1974). A member of that group of somewhat eccentric French anti-Romantic composers known as "les six" (the others were Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Georges Auric, Germaine Tailleferre, and Louis Durey), Milhaud enjoyed a brief infatuation with jazz that began with a 1920 performance of the Billy Arnold Jazz Band in London and reached its apex during a USA tour two years later when the composer heard jazz bands in Harlem.

“The music I heard was absolutely different from anything I had ever heard before and was a revelation to me” he wrote in his 1953 biography “Notes Without Music.”

Against the beat of the drums the melodic lines crisscrossed in a breathless pattern of broken and twisted rhythms... Its effect on me was so overwhelming that I could not tear myself away… When I went back to France, I never wearied of playing over and over, on a little portable phonograph shaped like a camera. Black Swan records I had purchased in a little shop in Harlem. More than ever I was resolved to use jazz for a chamber work.

“La creation” was the result of that resolution. Upon his return to Paris Milhaud got in touch with Blaise Cendrars, who had published Anthologie nègre (a collection of African folk tales) the year before. Cendrars’s scenario involved “giant gods, trees which impregnate the earth with their seed, leaves transformed into animals, men and girls emerging from the trees and performing a mating dance, until they disperse, leaving a single couple on stage, united in love.” Milhaud’s score, for a band of 19 soloists, makes prominent use of the piano, sax, and percussion.

It went over well enough in jazz-infatuated Paris but, as Svend Brown wrote in program notes for a 2007 performance of the score by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the ballet “was more a chic succès de scandale than a true success. The costumes designed by Fernand Léger (who also created the set) worked magnificently visually, but were hell to dance in—heavy and inflexible, they made it difficult to move freely.”

Woody Herman, 1943
By General Artists Corporation-management 
Public Domain

Which may explain why “La création du monde” is rarely seen but often heard. The small size of the ensemble will be a test of the SLSO’s mettle, but it will also offer an opportunity for many of the section principal players to shine.

Speaking of which, SLSO Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews steps into the spotlight next in the “Ebony Concerto” by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971). Written in 1945 for Woody Herman and his band The Herd (who premiered it in 1946 at Carnegie Hall), it’s a pithy work that crams a lot of musical variety into its ten minutes without overwhelming the listener. Yes, it’s jazzy, but it’s jazz heard through a heavy Stravinsky filter.

That filter made things a bit challenging for Herman and The Herd. “The piece was extremely difficult and the band struggled mightily,” writes an anonymous author at the Carnegie Hall web site. “After the first rehearsal,” recalls Herman, “we were all so embarrassed [that] we were nearly crying.” Check out the YouTube video of the recording by Pierre Boulez and the Ensemble InterContemporain with its synchronized display of the score to see the kind of thing that made grown men cry.

Fortunately, it all came together at the concert, which also included plenty of The Herd’s popular hits.

Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, 1942
By Wide World Photos
Public Domain

Next, we head back to the theatre for the “Kleine Dreigroschenmusik” (“Little Threepenny Music”) by Kurt Weill (1900–1950). Scored for winds and percussion, it’s a suite of tunes from Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 1928 “play with music” “Der Dreigroschen Oper” (“The Threepenny Opera”) that the composer put together in 1929 at the request of legendary conductor Otto Klemperer. In fact it’s Klemperer who conducts the performance on the SLSO’s Spotify playlist

Without the bitterly satirical lyrics that Brecht wrote for them, Weill’s suite is a mix of a half dozen appealing “ear worms” marinated in the spirit of 1920s popular song and dance and bookended with a dramatic overture and finale. But the suite’s accessibility doesn’t necessarily mean that Weill’s motivation in creating the site was largely mercenary.

Weill might have felt that his music would be more properly appreciated outside of the theatre, where he could use a larger ensemble and rely on the skills of conservatory-trained musicians. Given the success of his theatrical works, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that he had studied composition with Ferrucio Busoni and wrote extensively for the concert hall before he embraced the stage.

When Weill and Brecht were completing work on “Der Dreigroschen Oper” George Gershwin (1898–1937) was putting the finishing touches on his first major orchestral work, “An American in Paris,” which closes Saturday night’s concert. Begun during a trip to Paris two years earlier, the work is a reminder of just how much solid craftsmanship lurks behind Gershwin’s irresistible tunes.

Gershwin in 1937
Photo: Carl Van Vechten
en.wikipedia.org

In a 1928 interview for Musical America Gershwin described “An American in Paris” as “a rhapsodic ballet” intended “to portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris, as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises, and absorbs the French atmosphere." As someone who has visited Paris several times and who has fallen in love with the City of Light, I’d say he succeeded completely.

The lively opening with its colorful evocation of the city's sidewalk cafes and bustling boulevards (complete with honking taxi horns in the percussion section) is a masterful bit of musical imagery. And the bluesy central section evokes not only the homesickness of the traveler but also the charm of Paris at night.

Plus, Gershwin’s orchestration is a reminder of how far he came in such a short period of time. This is, after all, a guy who went from being a Tin Pan Alley "song plugger" to an accomplished composer and orchestrator in only thirteen years. In another seven years he would write one of the mainstays of twentieth-century American opera, "Porgy and Bess.” Not shabby.

Slatkin and the SLSO recorded “An American in Paris” 50 years ago as part of the orchestra’s multi-LP set of Gershwin’s complete orchestral works for Vox (now available in digitally remastered format on ArchivMusic). Although the SLSO’s playlist for this Saturday’s concert does not feature that recording (opting instead Leonard Bernstein’s sonically dated version from 1959), it is also available on Spotify

The Essentials: Leonard Slatkin conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and clarinet soloist Scott Andrews in works by Darius Milhaud, Igor Stravinsky, Kurt Weill, and George Gershwin on Saturday, January 13, at 7:30 pm at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. For more information, visit the SLSO web site.

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

Symphony Preview: Mass in the vernacular

This Friday (January 12), St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin steps up to the podium in the Touhill Center to present the first of a three-concert series that, as he said in a recent interview with yours truly, “focuses on the intersection between vernacular and, for lack of a better term, classical music.”

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

By “vernacular,” he means pretty much anything that isn’t part of the “classical” canon—jazz, folk, spirituals, theatre, and popular music in general. It’s a broad category but, as anyone who has listened to Slatkin’s radio show “The Slatkin Shuffle” knows, his musical interests are nothing if not eclectic.

Antheil and some Ballet Mécanique "noisemakers"
By Unknown author - Unknown Newspaper
Public Domain 

That’s clear from the very beginning of the program Friday morning, January 12, as the orchestra delivers a jolt of sonic caffeine in the form of the 1955 revision of the 1925 “Jazz Symphony” by American composer George Antheil (1900–1959). Episodic and only twelve minutes long, it’s not really a symphony and not, for the most part, especially jazzy. It is, however, raucous, cheerfully vulgar, and often a bit wacky in a way that anticipates the cartoon soundtracks of Carl Stallings.

First performed as part of a 1927 Carnegie Hall concert that included his infamous “Ballet Mécanique” (the 1925 Paris premiere of which caused riots that may or may not have been staged), the “Jazz Symphony” was performed by the Harlem Sinfonietta under W.C. Handy (composer of “The St. Louis Blues”). The performance went over well with both critics and fellow composers like Gershwin and Copland but was overshadowed in the press by equipment failures during “Ballet Mécanique” that turned what might have been a succès de scandale into something more akin to a Marx Brothers movie

But I digress. The slightly tamer 1955 version of the “Jazz Symphony” is still pretty wild and wooly, but if you’d like to hear what the original sounds like it’s available at Spotify.

Composer Jeff Beal

Up next is “Body in Motion,” a violin concerto by Jeff Beal (b. 1963). As this is the work’s world premiere, I have no idea what it will sound like. So the best I can do is to quote the composer, as cited in this weekend’s program notes:

The first image that came to me when developing the materials for this new violin concerto was one of water. I love the way water presents a visual tension between the hypnotic, peaceful, and—in the case of a windy lake or sea—a sense of constant, fluid motion. I began to think of both the orchestra and soloist as active natural forces.

Beal is probably best known for his music for the TV series "House of Cards," but he also has extensive film and more recently, concert credits. Local audiences may recall SLSO’s world premiere of his song cycle “The Paper-Lined Shack” back in 2019. That was also conducted by Slatkin whom Beal (in a 2019 interview with me) descried as “an important mentor in my life.… His parents were very involved with film music, so he's not afraid to reach out to a film composer to write a piece of concert music. That's very special to me.”

More to the point, as far as Friday’s concert goes, is this quote: “I really feel—and I know Leonard feels this way too—that the more we can break down the barriers between "high" art and "low" art and the more we can have the story telling drive what gets played, I think that's the way music is going. I'm not the only one doing this and it's nice that this is starting to happen.”

Duke Ellington, 1973
By Hans Bernhard (Schnobby)
Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

Another St. Louis premiere is next: “Three Black Kings,” the last composition by the legendary Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (1899–1974). Left uncompleted at the time of his death, the three-movement suite was described by his son Mercer (who finished the work, along with Luther Henderson) as a musical eulogy to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had been assassinated six years earlier. Dr. King is the last of the three titular kings, the first two being “King of the Magi” (specifically Balthazar) and “King Solomon.”

Balthazar’s music is energetic and restless, driven by a four-note xylophone ostinato later taken up by the full orchestra. The prominent role for percussion suggests a kind of primitivism, while the insistent rhythmic drive reminds us of the long journey of the three magi. As the scene shifts to King Solomon, the music becomes more lyrical and romantic, possibly indicating that Ellington was thinking of Solomon’s hundreds of wives and concubines.

Dr. King’s music is marked as “Slow Gospel, 4 beat,” but the 12/8 rhythm gives it an extra bit of swing that makes me think of the choir swaying back and forth at a church service. It rises to heroic heights, which seems only appropriate for one of the more well-known of the far too numerous martyrs to the cause of racial justice in the USA.

“It’s kind of like three little tone poems,” said Slatkin in our interview.  “I've done it now a couple times. Extraordinary man, extraordinary thinker.” Too true.

Friday’s concert concludes, as does each of the three in the series, with the sounds of George Gershwin. That’s partly a nod to Gershwin’s importance in bringing jazz and other vernacular sounds to the concert hall and partly a tribute to the 1974 recording of Gershwin’s complete orchestral works that Slatkin did with the SLSO. Although these have never been out of print, the ArchivMusic reissue from this past June has been remastered in 192kHz / 24-bit high definition. Whether it’s still in the original surround sound format (or quadraphonic, as they called it Back in the Day), I have no idea.

That said, the work you’ll hear Friday wasn’t part of those historic recordings. It’s “Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture,” written in 1942 by Robert Russell Bennett (1894–1981), who is probably best known for the many orchestrations he did for Broadway and Hollywood musicals. It’s relatively faithful to Gershwin’s own orchestrations of what is arguably his masterpiece, but I’m a bit baffled as to why we’re not hearing the suite that was recorded back in 1974: the composer’s own “Porgy and Bess” suite from 1936.

It's always possible that with two local premiers already on the bill and one work (“Three Black Kings”) that hasn’t been heard here in 1995, Bennett’s more familiar music seemed a better bet. In any case, it’s a great lineup. And you can always listen to Slatkin and the SLSO play "Catfish Row" on Spotify.

The Essentials: Leonard Slatkin conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violin soloist Kelly Hall-Tompkins in works by George Antheil, Jeff Beal, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin on Friday, January 12, at 10:30 am at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. For more information, visit the SLSO web site.

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

Symphony Preview: New rule for New Year's Eve

The annual New Year’s Eve concert by St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) has been a celebratory event for many years now. It was cancelled last year because of the pandemic but it’s back again in 2021, with Music Director Stéphane Denève at the podium, just as he was in 2019. But regulars will notice a few changes.

[Preview the music with my commercial-free Spotify playlist.]

Stefan Freund

To begin with, 2021 brings us not one but two New Year’s Eve Celebrations: the usual concert at 7:30 and a new matinee at 2 pm. The program is identical for both, but the addition of the afternoon performance should allow more music lovers to attend (the evening is usually sold out in advance) and make it easier to include bring the entire family. Adults with nighttime party plans should also appreciate it.

The second big change is that this year some of the program is being announced in advance. In the past the orchestra’s playlist was a closely guarded secret until concert time. Most of it still is, but at least we know that the evening will bring us two major works by Gershwin and a new piece by Missouri composer Stefan Freund: the “Voyageur Fantasy” for horn and orchestra, a work inspired by the folk songs of Missouri’s French Canadian settlers.

The Freund work is receiving its world premiere, so I have no idea what it will sound like. I will, therefore, refer you to the conversation between Freund and SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza, the evening’s soloist, on the SLSO Stories site, for details.

The two big Gershwin pieces, on the other hand, are old friends for most of us: the 1924 “Rhapsody in Blue” and the 1928 tone poem “An American in Paris.” Both will be heard in versions that differ from the composer’s original but, what the heck, it’s New Year’s Eve and I’m disinclined to be a curmudgeon.

“Rhapsody in Blue” first saw the light of day as part of "An Experiment in Modern Music," as bandleader Paul Whiteman billed the February 12, 1924 concert by his Palais Royal Orchestra at New York's Aeolian Hall. The “Rhapsody” was the most memorable piece to emerge from Whiteman's experiment although there were some other fun nuggets in it as well. You can hear them on Spotify in a recreation of the entire concert under the baton of Maurice Peress that was released in 1987.

In 1924 Gershwin was still new to the classical game and not comfortable with arranging his own music, so the orchestration for that world premiere was done by composer Ferde Grofé (best known for his “Grand Canyon Suite”). It was a snappy, very1920s arrangement for jazz band—which is what Whiteman’s group actually was, the ersatz French name notwithstanding. Grofé went on to produce two more arrangements, one for theatre orchestra in 1926 and one for a full symphonic orchestra in 1942.

The 1942 version is, as far as I can tell, the one Denève will be conducting New Year’s Eve. Indeed, that’s the only version most people ever heard until 1971, when Samuel Adler recorded his own reconstruction of the original jazz band arrangement.  The soloist will be Michelle Cann, a member of the Curtis Institute faculty who is very active as an orchestral soloist, recitalist, and radio host. This will be her St. Louis debut.

By the time Gershwin completed “An American in Paris” in 1928, he was much more confident of his ability to handle an orchestra. Begun during a trip to Paris two years earlier, the work is a reminder of just how much solid craftsmanship lurks behind Gershwin’s irresistible tunes.

Gershwin in 1937
Photo: Carl Van Vechten
en.wikipedia.org

"This new piece," observed Gershwin in a 1928 interview in Musical America, "really a rhapsodic ballet, is written very freely and is the most modern music I've yet attempted. The opening will be developed in typical French style, in the manner of Debussy and The Six, though the themes are all original. My purpose here is to portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris, as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises, and absorbs the French atmosphere."

As someone who has visited Paris several times and who has fallen in love with the City of Light, I have to say it works beautifully. The lively opening with its colorful evocation of the city's lively sidewalk cafes and bustling boulevards (complete with honking taxi horns in the percussion section) is a masterful bit of musical imagery. And the bluesy central section evokes not only the homesickness of the traveler but also the charm of Paris at night.

Gershwin’s orchestration of "An American in Paris" is a reminder of how far he came in such a short period of time. This is, after all, a guy who went from being a Tin Pan Alley "song plugger" to an accomplished composer and orchestrator in only thirteen years. In another seven years he would write one of the mainstays of twentieth century American opera, "Porgy and Bess.”

Even so, others couldn’t resist tinkering with Gershwin’s score. Conductor Walter Damrosch cut 120 bars before the first performance, and Frank Campbell-Watson produced a revision that is still the standard for most orchestras. Restorations of the composer’s original were created by Jack Gibbons in 2000 and by Mark Clague, director of the Gershwin initiative at the University of Michigan, in 2017, but neither seems to have gotten much traction. So this December 31st, we’ll be welcoming in the new year with Gershwin by way of Campbell-Watson.

There’s much more to the New Year’s Eve program, as you’ll discover when you attend one of the concerts or listen to the live broadcast on St. Louis Public radio at 7:30 on New Year’s Eve. Either way, have a glass of something bubbly and join us to bid a farewell to 2021 that will be fond and/or relieved.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and piano soloist Michelle Cann in the annual New Year’s Eve Celebration at 2 pm and 7:30 pm on Friday, December 31st at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. The program includes Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” as well as Stefan Freund’s “Voyageur Fantasy” with horn soloist Roger Kaza and Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.” The evening concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio.

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

Symphony Preview: All-American boys at Powell Hall October 16-18, 2015

Aaron Copland in 1970
en.wikipedia.org

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It's an all-American weekend at Powell Hall this Friday through Sunday as St. Louis Symphony Resident Conductor Steven Jarvi leads the orchestra in a program of Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, and George Gershwin. It includes two Big Pieces, one of which—Copland's 1926 "Piano Concerto"—is not heard all that often.

As Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, the concerto dates from a time when Copland—then a brash young man in his mid-20s—was making a name for himself with "works that vibrated with the exciting new rhythms of the Jazz Age." The popular style of more well-known works like "Rodeo," "Billy the Kid," and the "Symphony No. 3" was still a decade or more away, although you can still hear suggestions of that big, open sound in the opening measures of the concerto.

Serge Koussevitzky
en.wikipedia.org

"The Piano Concerto", writes Copland in the first volume of his 1984 autobiography (co-authored with Vivian Perlis), "was the last of my works to make explicit use of jazz materials. I have often described myself as a 'work-a-year' man—1926 was the year of the Concerto." He goes on to give a detailed description of how jazz elements are incorporated into the concerto, but since you can read much of that in Mr. Schiavo's notes there no reason for me to repeat it here.

The concerto was not particularly well received at its 1927 premiere with Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with the composer at the piano. "If I felt I had gone to the extreme of where jazz could take me," writes Copland, "the audiences and critics in Boston all thought I had gone too far. One critic actually accused Koussevitzky of being a malicious foreigner who wanted to show how bad American music was!" These days the concerto, while still not a core part of the repertory, rarely meets with that kind of hostility.

The soloist for the concerto will be Israeli pianist Inon Barnatan, who currently serves as the New York Philharmonic's first Artist-in-Association—a position that guarantees him three years of performances with that prestigious ensemble. The orchestra's outgoing Music Director, Alan Gilbert, has described Mr. Barnatan as "the complete artist: a wonderful pianist, a probing intellect, passionately committed, and a capable contemporary-music pianist as well." Which certainly makes him sound like a good match for this material.

Inon Barnatan
Photo: Marco Borggreve, inonbarnatan.com

In his discussion of the "Piano Concerto" in his autobiography, Copland goes on at some length to point out that he was "often critically paired with [George] Gershwin" and that some critics suggested that the latter's "Rhapsody in Blue" and "Concerto in F" might have influenced Copland's own work. But he and Gershwin had, in fact, no contact with each other. "On one occasion," notes Copland, "when we were finally face to face at some party, with the opportunity for conversation, we found nothing to say to each other!"

Which brings us to the second Big Piece on the program this weekend: Gershwin's wildly popular tone poem "An American in Paris." Begun during a trip to Paris in the same year that Copland spent working on his concerto and completed during a longer visit to the City of Light in 1928, the work is a reminder of just how much solid craftsmanship lurks behind Gershwin’s irresistible tunes.

"This new piece," observed Gershwin in a 1928 interview in Musical America, "really a rhapsodic ballet, is written very freely and is the most modern music I've yet attempted. The opening will be developed in typical French style, in the manner of Debussy and The Six, though the themes are all original. My purpose here is to portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris, as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises, and absorbs the French atmosphere."

Gershwin in 1937
Photo: Carl Van Vechten
en.wikipedia.org

As someone who has just returned from another trip to Paris, I have to say it works beautifully. The lively opening with its colorful evocation of the city's lively sidewalk cafes and bustling boulevards (complete with honking taxi horns in the percussion section) is a masterful bit of musical imagery. And the bluesy central section evokes not only the homesickness of the traveler but also the charm of Paris at night.

"An American in Paris" is also reminder of how far Gershwin came in such a short period of time. This is, after all, a guy who went from being a Tin Pan Alley "song plugger" to an accomplished composer and orchestrator in only thirteen years. In another seven years he would write one of the mainstays of twentieth century American opera, "Porgy and Bess". What might he have done had he not died so young?

The concerts open with a pair of suites by Leonard Bernstein: the "Three Dance Episodes" from his first major Broadway hit "On the Town" (which opened in December 1944) and the "Symphonic Suite" from his score for the 1955 Elia Kazan film "On the Waterfront."

Listening to the score for "On the Town" may feel like a nostalgic exercise now, but back in 1944 this story of three sailors out to see as much of New York as possible in one day had real resonance for a country that had been at war for four years. The D-Day invasion was just six months old and while the Third Reich was crumbling, the war with Japan still raged. Everyone in the audience understood that Chip, Ozzie, and Gabey were so desperate to see it all today because, for them, there might not be a tomorrow. You can hear that in the melancholy of the second movement ("Lonely Town") as well as in the frantic bustle of the finale ("Times Square: 1944").

Leonard Bernstein, 1945
Photo: Carl Van Vechten
en.wikipedia.org

"It was very hard for any of us on opening night to have a clear idea of what our show was really like," recall original cast members and lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green in the liner notes for the 1961 studio recording of the show for Columbia. "World War II was on, and the theme of young people caught in it, and the urgency of their desperately trying to cram a lifetime of adventure and romance into a moment, seemed to move the audience and give the show an underlying poignancy, while never having to ask for sympathy."

The music from "On the Waterfront"—Bernstein's only film score—shows a different side of his musical personality. It's haunting, lyrical, and, in its final pages, builds to exultant climax. In the film, the music accompanies a scene in which Marlon Brando's character, despite being beaten to a pulp by goons hired by Lee J. Cobb's crooked union organizer, shakily gets to his feat and defiantly returns to work. It's an inspiring moment, even if the film itself sometimes comes across as anti-union agitprop from a director who, a few years earlier, had cooperated with McCarthy's anticommunist witch-hunt.

The essentials: Steven Jarvi conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with piano soloist Inon Barnatan on Friday at 10:30 a.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m., October 16-18. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: A musical experiement recreated at Powell Hall Thanksgiving weekend

Whiteman in the trailer for the film
"Rhapsody in Blue"
en.wikipedia.org

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"An Experiment in Modern Music" was how bandleader Paul Whiteman billed the February 12, 1924 concert by his Palais Royal Orchestra at New York's Aeolian Hall. This weekend at Powell Hall, the St. Louis Symphony will recapture some of the excitement attendant on that legendary program.

The most memorable piece to emerge from Whiteman's experiment is, of course, Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" (although I have a fondness for the piece that preceded it: an arrangement of Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1" complete with plunking banjo). Until 1971, though, most people who heard the work weren't hearing what the New York audience heard in 1924. That's because it was Samuel Adler's 1971 recording that reconstructed the original Whiteman jazz band arrangement (by composer Ferde Grofe of "Grand Canyon Suite" fame) using parts from the original score. Before then, the "Rhapsody" was always heard in what conductor Maurice Peress (in the notes for his 1986 recreation of the Aeolian Hall concert for the Musicmasters label) calls the "Hollywood version" for symphony orchestra.

He (and I) grew up with that version—as have most classical music fans of a certain age. Hearing a reconstruction of the original, as you will this weekend at Powell, will probably come as something of a revelation. It certainly did to me when I first played that Adler disc. The jazz band version has a kind of snap and flash that the full orchestra can't seem to match, no matter how skilled the musicians.

The soloist for the Gershwin has a fair amount of snap and flash himself. It's Kirill Gerstein, who gave us a surprisingly lyrical Tchaikovsky 1st last September and a bravura performance of British composer Thomas Adès's “In Seven Days" two years ago. A Gilmore Artist Award winner, Mr. Gerstein has shown himself to be equally at home with both Romantic classics and new music—some of which he has commissioned himself.

Bernstein in 1955
en.wikipedia.org

The other big familiar work on the program is Bernstein's "Symphonic Dances from West Side Story," an orchestral suite assembled from the score for the 1957 musical by Bernstein in 1960. The orchestration by TV and film veterans Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal is irresistibly colorful and the piece as a whole does a nice job of distilling the essence of the play down into a nine-movement set lasting just over 20 minutes.

There are two local premieres on the program this weekend as well: "Hell's Angels" (written in 1999 by Michael Daugherty) and "Try" (written in 2011 by Andrew Norman).

Symphony program annotator Michael Durchholz describes the former as "a roaring, chaotic mini-concerto based on the titular outlaw biker gang" which "substitutes long, tubular bassoons for the unmuffled drag-pipes of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, creating a commotion sure to upset the neighborhood. Somebody call the authorities!" The composer himself says it's “the musical tale of a gang of hot-rodding motorcycling bassoonists who ride into town and take over a concert hall.” Appearing in the roles of the biker gang are SLSO bassoonists Andrew Cuneo, Andrew Gott, and Felicia Foland, along with contrabassoonist Gregg Henegar. Mr. Cuneo is the Principal Bassoon, so presumably he gets the "black leather jacket with the eagle on the back" (to quote a famous Leiber and Stoller lyric).

Andrew Norman
andrewnormanmusic.com

"Try," on the other hand, is less aggressive. In his notes on the piece, composer Norman says the music is at lot like him. "It's messy, and fragmented," he writes, "and it certainly doesn't get things right on the first try. It does things over and over, trying them out in as many different ways as it can. It circles back on itself again and again in search of any idea that will stick, that will lead it forward to something new. And, at long last, after ten minutes of increasingly frantic trying, it finds one small, unlikely bit of musical material it likes enough to repeat and polish and hone until it finally (fingers crossed) gets it right."

Scored for solo piano and chamber ensemble (string quintet plus winds), "Try" will segue directly into "Rhapsody in Blue." Which makes more sense than you might think since Gershwin, like Norman, was still trying a lot of things out when he wrote the "Rhapsody." Indeed, at the February 12 premiere Gershwin—who was also the soloist—hadn't quite decided when he wanted the band to enter, so the piano part wasn't actually written down. When he wanted the band to play, he just nodded to Whiteman.

A final bonus with these concerts is that the music will be accompanied by a light show created by artist S. Katy tucker, known for her design work at (among other venues) Carnegie Hall, the San Francisco Opera, and the Sydney Symphony (where Mr. Robertson is Artistic Director and Chief Conductor). Far out.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra along with Kirill Gerstein, piano; bassoonists Andrew Cuneo, Andrew Gott, and Felicia Foland; and Gregg Henegar, contrabassonon; Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., November 28-30. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org. The Saturday performance will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio at 90.7 FM, HD 1, and web streaming.

It ain't necessarily Gershwin

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

What: The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess
When: July 7 – 13, 2014
Where: The Muny, St. Louis

The main thing you need to know about “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” is that it's not really the Gershwins' “Porgy and Bess.” Permit me to explain.

“Porgy and Bess” is a 1935 opera with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, and libretto by Heyward, based on an earlier stage adaptation of his 1925 novel “Porgy” about the tragic love triangle linking the crippled beggar Porgy, the brutish stevedore Crown, and the worldly but not very wise Bess. “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” is a 2011 musical theatre adaptation of the opera conceived and directed by Diane Paulus with a radically simplified version of Gershwin's score by Diedre Murray and a rewritten book by Susan-Lori Parks that deletes some characters and subplots but leaves the core story intact.

Nathaniel Stampley as Porgy
Photo: Michael J. Lutch

“Porgy and Bess” is a full-scale opera, sung through with a minimum of spoken dialog. Cast in three acts but usually performed in two, it runs over three and one-half hours with intermission. “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” is a standard musical, with most of the original narrative music replaced with speech. It runs just over two and one-half hours. “Porgy and Bess” has (depending on how its staged) only one or two real dance production numbers and not many built-in applause breaks. “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” has plenty of both, repeatedly bringing the drama to a halt while the cast poses and the audience claps on cue.

The result is a work that, compared to the original, feels somewhat downsized and diminished. Ms. Murray's musical edits are at best pointless and at worst pernicious, altering Gershwin's original melodies and rhythms in what seem to me to be arbitrary and unnecessary ways.   All of the best-known songs are still there—"Bess, You Is My Woman Now," "A Woman is a Sometime Thing," "I Got Plenty of Nothing," and "It Ain't Necessarily So," among others—but none of them has escaped some tinkering.  Some of the composer's most innovative ideas, like the orchestral fugue that accompanies the fight in which Crown murders Robbins, have been edited out of existence or, like the vivid musical depiction of the gathering storm in the second act, drowned out by stage business and sound effects.

Denisha Ballew as Serena, Alicia Hall Moran as Bess,
Kingsley Leggs as Sportin' Life
Photo: Michael J. Lutch

William David Brohn and Christopher Jahnke's arrangements don't help, replacing Gershwin's inventive orchestration with a generic contemporary keyboard-heavy sound. In addition, the brevity of the individual songs and frequent applause cues kills some of the dramatic momentum that the original creates with its continuous flow of melody.

That's not to say that all of the changes are negative. In Heyward's libretto the residents of Catfish Row often come across as naïve and even simple minded. Ms. Parks has given them a wisdom and dignity that makes them more three-dimensional without substantially changing the story. Some revisions—such as making Bess more actively involved in her own downfall, making Porgy less crippled, or turning Porgy's killing of Crown into an elaborate piece of stage combat involving the entire community—strike me as more questionable, but in general Ms. Parks's contributions add far more than they subtract.

The result is a work that, while dramatically as good as (and sometimes better than) the original, is far less musically interesting. I don't think it serves George Gershwin very well.

That's the bad news. The good news is that this touring company is a strong one, with terrific voices and a fine ensemble of actors—something that, to be fair, you don't always get in the opera world. Better yet, most of the principals have some operatic background, so in some ways this cast combines the best of both worlds. It's a large company—26 members—so I'll confine myself to the leads and supporting performers.

Alvin Crawford as Crown
Photo: Michale J. Lutch

Nathaniel Stampley anchors the ensemble as a dynamic and strong-willed Porgy. Alicia Hall Moran's Bess has all the self-possessed sexuality the role needs, coupled with a strong undercurrent of sadness that makes her tragic downfall credible. Alvin Crawford is a swaggering and arrogant Crown and David Hughey is a warm and loving presence as the doomed Jake, whose desire to create a better life for his child leads to his death in that second act hurricane.

As Serena, Denisha Ballew sings a hair-raising “My Man's Gone Now” while Sumayya Ali's Clara makes a strong first impression in “Summertime.” I don't think it makes sense to turn it into a duet with Jake, but that's a separate issue. Danielle Lee Graves completes the trio of strong supporting women as Mariah, Catfish Row's unofficial spokeswoman and wise elder.

Kingsley Leggs's Sportin' Life is less flamboyant and more physically restrained than is usually the case with this role, which was originally conceived with Cab Calloway in mind and first performed by vaudeville veteran John Bubbles. It's obviously a directorial rather than an acting decision and does result in making the character less comical and more credibly seductive.

Speaking of direction, Ms. Paulus's downsizing might not be to my taste, but her blocking and pacing are first rate. The sets by Riccardo Hernandez replace the original realistic and oppressive tenement block with simple flats painted to suggest doors and windows. That has the advantage of allowing fast scene changes, although it's not always entirely clear where some scenes are taking place unless you already know the story well.

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

The bottom line is that “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” is a leaner, more streamlined, and unquestionably non-operatic treatment of a work that's generally regarded as Gershwin's magnum opus. If you've never seen the original or you have and can essentially treat this as an entirely different work, I'd say it's worth seeing. Calling it “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess,” though, strikes me as dishonest, as though the creators wanted the cachet of the Gershwin name without the musical substance that goes along with it. Maybe they should just call it “Porgy and Bess: the Musical.”

“The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” runs through Sunday, July 13, on the Muny's outdoor Stage in Forest Park. The show begins at 8:15 nightly. For more information: muny.com.

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

Muny Preview: Whose 'Porgy' is it, anyway?

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

Although George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" is now widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of 20th century opera, it took (to quote one of the opera's lyrics) "a long pull to get there".

With a book by DuBose Heyward (based on his own original novel and play) and music and lyrics by the Brothers Gershwin, the original 1935 Theatre Guild production was a financial failure, and critical reaction was mixed and, from a contemporary standpoint, clueless. New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson dismissed it out of hand, and the paper's music critic, Olin Downes, found the mix of vernacular musical elements and sophisticated symphonic form completely baffling (a position which he would later recant).

Despite revivals of interest in the 1940s and 1950s, Porgy and Bess remained an essentially marginal work until a 1976 production of the complete score by the Houston Grand Opera (which played the Muny in 1977)—one that restored nearly an hour of music that had been cut from earlier productions—demonstrated conclusively that Gershwin's crowning achievement was also a great work of musical art. "Seen alongside the humanity in the music and text of Porgy and Bess", wrote Leighton Kerner in 1989, "other American operas seem slight".

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

That said, the piece is still a major challenge for any opera company. The cast is large, the music complex, and the demands of the staging can be daunting. Low voices—bass/baritones and baritones—dominate the leading male roles, making projection a potential issue, as does Gershwin's penchant for polyphonic choral writing. Add in the fact that the opera runs, in its original uncut version, over three and one-half hours with intermission (closer to four if you do it in three acts), and you have a project guaranteed to give any producer nightmares.

Some have dealt with the opera's challenges by simply re-writing it. Before the Houston production reclaimed "Porgy" for the operatic world, it was routinely sliced and diced in ways that made it look more like a conventional Broadway musical—usually by replacing Gershwin's recitatives with spoken dialog and cutting scenes and characters. The co-production by Union Avenue Opera and the Black Rep back in 2007, for example, used an edited version, although they did at least retains some of Gershwin's more innovative ideas, most notably the Act II "storm" sequence in which six completely independent vocal lines slowly merge with the chorus to produce the spiritual "Oh, de Lawd shake the Heavens".

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

The "Porgy and Bess" at the Muny this week is not a local production but rather a national tour of a musical titled "The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess" that was originally directed by Diane Paulus for the American Repertory Theatre and then moved to Broadway in 2011. "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" takes revision "one step beyond," with wholesale re-writes of Hayward's libretto by playwright Susan-Lori Parks and similar radical surgery on Gershwin's music by cellist/composer Deidre Murray. New scenes have been added, including backstories for the characters that were not part of the original work. All of which means that, although prepared with the cooperation of the Gershwin and Hayward estates, "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess," might (as Stephen Sondheim observed in a caustic letter to the New York Times) more accurately be called "Diane Paulus's Porgy and Bess."

Will it work? I haven't seen it yet, so your guess is as good as mine. The New York premiere certainly stirred up some strong feelings, both pro and con. Writing in the New Yorker, for example, Hilton Als defended the revisions as "politically radical and dramaturgically original" and suggested that Mr. Sondheim was just being racially insensitive. "[T]he stories he tells involve white characters", wrote Mr. Als, "and his professional world is a white one." Ben Brantley, in his New York Times review, struck something of a middle ground, praising Audra McDonald's Bess more than the show itself. "Ms. McDonald's Bess," he wrote, "is — in a word — great; the show in which she appears is, at best, just pretty good."

The only way to know who's right, of course, is to see the show yourself. "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" is certainly shorter than the original opera (which hasn't been seen on the Muny stage since 1988), clocking in at around two and one-half hours, so if you go you'll be on your way home before 11 PM. Performances begin at 8:15 PM through Sunday, July 13, on the outdoor stage in Forest Park. For more information: muny.com.

Sax and violins

Gershwin

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson with saxophonist Timothy McAllister and pianist John Kimura Parker
What: Music of John Adams and George Gershwin
Where: Powell Symphony Hall
When: October 5 and 6, 2013

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Saturday night’s concert began with Gershwin's fiery Cuban Overture and ended with an appropriate Latin encore from pianist John Kimura Parker—Joplin's wistful Solace: A Mexican Serenade.  In between was a high-energy evening from which the spirit of jazz was never entirely absent.

The official program for this weekend's symphony concerts featured music by two composers: George Gershwin and John Adams.  Although their musical styles could not be more different, they both broke from the musical establishments of their time and carved out their own personal compositional approaches.  Gershwin's music is more immediately appealing; Adams's more formal.  But hearing them together on the same program made me realize how much they have in common.

John Adams

Adams was represented by his whimsical The Chairman Dances: Foxtrot for Orchestra (composed for and then cut from Nixon in China) and the local premiere of his brand-new Saxophone Concerto, a joint commission from the SLSO; the Boston Symphony; the Sao Paulo Symphony; and David Robertson’s Other Orchestra, the Sydney Symphony (where it had its first performance in August).  The former got an appropriately charming and even danceable treatment from Mr. Robertson and his forces.

I found the concerto a tough nut to crack from a musical structure standpoint, largely because Adams’s compositional style has now developed to the point where entire movements are constructed from brief motifs (I hesitate to call them themes) that are so closely related it’s often hard to tell them apart.  The long first movement of the concerto, for example, unfolds from a short, snappy rising arpeggio for the solo sax.  That sense of rapid upward movement remains even when, towards the end, the mood shifts to the kind of sultry nocturne that wouldn’t be out of place in a film noir.  The second and final movement—based on a two-note descending figure often embellished with cascades of notes in the solo part—ups the ante with a hyperkinetic solo line that rises to a classic jazz wail just before the final notes.

Quoted in Paul Schiavo's program notes, Adams says that his "lifelong exposure to the great jazz saxophonists" inspired him to write the concerto.  And, in fact, it’s easy to hear echoes of Charlie Parker and the other great sax men of the '50s and '60s in this music with its driving beat, call and response sections, and improvisatory feel.  It sounds difficult as hell, but the brilliant playing of Timothy McAllister (for whom the work was written) was more than up to the challenge.  He may have been dressed for the symphony but his stance—knees bent, head thrust forward in concentration—was that of the jazz soloist entirely wrapped up in the music.

Timothy McAllister

My mental jury is still out on whether the concerto itself warrants repeated hearing, but I have no doubts about the excellence of Mr. McAllister’s performance.  Ditto for the symphony under Maestro Robertson.  Unlike Mr. McAllister, they haven’t been playing the music for several months now, which made the polish of their sound that much more impressive.  A good thing, too, since this weekend’s performances of the concerto were being recorded by Nonesuch for a CD that will include the performance of Adams’s City Noir that the orchestra recorded back in February.

The concert opener, Gershwin's Cuban Overture is, a kind of musical postcard of a 1932 trip to Havana.  Composers have been drawing on their travels for inspiration for centuries, of course.  Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien, Saint-Saëns's "Egyptian" piano concerto—the list goes on and on.  Gershwin did them all one better, though.  He brought back not only some Afro-Cuban tunes (including Ignacio Piñeiro's "Échale Salsita") but some traditional percussion instruments as well. The haul included a bongo, claves, gourd, and maracas—all of which are prominently featured in this sunny souvenir.

It has been over a decade since the symphony did this piece, but you’d hardly guess that from the high gloss of their performance.  The Cuban instruments came through surprisingly well, given that they were embedded with the rest of the percussion section at the back instead of being placed downstage in front of the conductor (as Gershwin requests in the autograph copy of his score).

John Kimura Parker

Closing the official program was Gershwin's 1925 Concerto in F with John Kimura Parker at the keyboard.  The concerto isn't particularly complex from a purely structural point of view, but I still find it amazing to contemplate that it was written only a year after the far more rudimentary Rhapsody in Blue. Gershwin's development as a serious composer took place with an almost supernatural rapidity, as though he somehow knew that his life on this planet would be tragically short (he died of a brain tumor just a few months short of his 40th birthday).

As it is, the Concerto is a beautifully crafted piece: lean, powerful, without a spare note.  Reviewing the December 3, 1925, premiere of the concerto for the New York World, critic Samuel Chotzinoff noted that Gershwin's "shortcomings are nothing in the face of the one thing he alone of all those writing the music of today possesses.  He actually expresses us.  He is the present, with all its audacity, impertinence, its feverish delight in its motion, its lapses into rhythmically exotic melancholy."  You can feel and hear that "jazz age" urgency in every note of this music.

Gershwin was a pretty formidable pianist, so the concerto bristles with technical challenges—none of which were an obstacle for Mr. Parker.  Working without a score, he approached this music with an ideal combination of concentration and joy.  I wasn’t sure I was going to be equally enthusiastic about Mr. Robertson’s interpretation—I was afraid that his tempo contrasts in the opening measure were going to kill the rhythmic drive—but I needn’t have worried.  He made it all work, and brought out some interesting nuances in the process.

There was impressive solo work by members of the orchestra as well as by Mr. Parker.  The famous muted blues trumpet solo in the second movement, for example, had all the mournful soul one could hope for in the hands of Karin Bliznik (singled out by Mr. Robertson for a bow during curtain calls), and its later echoes by Mark Sparks (flute) and Barbara Orland (oboe) were also quite effective.

Mr. Parker got spontaneous applause after the spectacular first movement and a “standing O" at the end.  He responded with that Joplin piece I mentioned at the top of this review as an encore, describing the great ragtime composer as the "third icon of American music" alongside Gershwin and Adams.  It was a romantic, rubato-filled reading that served as a nice contrast to the Gershwin and helped bring the evening back to its Afro-Latin beginnings.

Next on the regular calendar: British violinist Anthony Marwood is both soloist and conductor an all-Mozart program consisting of the Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 35 (“Haffner) as well as the 2nd and 3rd violin concertos.  Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, October 11-13. For ticket information: stlsymphony.org.