Symphony Review: The SLSO honors musical nomads in the season opener

“A wandering minstrel I,” sings Nanki-Poo as he introduces himself in “The Mikado”; “A thing of shreds and patches.”

You wouldn’t call the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra “a thing of shreds and patches,” but with Music Director Stéphane Denève at the podium for the opening concert of the season last Sunday they were certainly doing some musical wandering. Certainly the first half of the program paid considerable homage to those famous wanderers, the Roma, with concert standards inspired by Hungarian folk tunes and the “Nomad Concerto” by Mason Bates.

Stéphane Denève
Photo: Dilip Vishwanat

Which is rather appropriate for an orchestra that will continue to lead a nomadic existence until the renovation of Powell Hall is completed next fall.

Things got off to an energetic start with a rousing performance of the “Rákóczi March”, a.k.a. the “Marche hongroise” from Part I of  the 1846 opera/oratorio hybrid “La damnation de Faust” (“The Damnation of Faust”) by Hector Berlioz (1803–1869). It’s the sort of orchestral showpiece that never fails to get an enthusiastic response—which it did.

Up next was another favorite, a set of the “Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). Originally composed for piano duet and published in four sets between 1869 and 1880, the dances were orchestrated by various composers, including Brahms. Denève selected the three that the composer orchestrated (Nos. 1, 3, and 10) and played them attacca—i.e., without pause.

It was a smart choice, highlighting the contrast between the energetic first and tenth dances (marked Allegro molto and Presto, respectively) and the more introspective third (Allegretto). The result was a kind of “mini suite” that showed off both the composer’s orchestration and the virtuosity of the band. I was very taken with the flutes (including Ebonee Thomas, who seemed to be holding down the currently vacant Principal position for this concert) in the Dance No. 1, and the playful oboes and bassoons (under Associate Principals Phil Ross and Andy Gott, respectively) were a delight in Dance No. 3.  

Denève gave the dances the “full Roma” treatment, with just the right touches of rubato evoking the music’s folk origins.

The first half concluded with the “Nomad Concerto” by Mason Bates (b. 1977), composed for and premiered in January 2024 by this weekend’s soloist, violinist Gil Shaham. “Envisioned to showcase the legendary Old World sound of Gil Shaham,” writes Bates at his web site, “the concerto is informed by a diverse range of traveling cultures from Eastern Europe to the Middle East.”

Gil Shaham
Photo: Chris Lee

Running just under 30 minutes, the four-movement concerto is, as promised, an ideal virtuoso vehicle for Shaham. The last time I saw him with SLSO in January 2017 I praised his singing tone and the obvious joy of his playing. That’s still true, but this time I was also impressed by the versatility he displayed in delivering the wide range of sounds Bates has written for him. In the first movement (“Song of the balloon man”) his was wistfully Chaplinesque. He and the orchestra exchanged rapid-fire motifs in the brief “Magician at the bazaar” in a way that summoned up visions of flash paper going off all over the string section.  The third movement (“Desert vision: oasis) used the orchestra’s lower voices to suggest an arid expanse of wilderness, with the violin offering brief relief in the form of a yearning  version of the Jewish folk tune “Ani Ma’amin” (“I believe”).

Shaham and the band really cut loose, though, in the concluding movement, “Le jazz manouche.” Inspired by the sound of the legendary 1930s–1940s jazz combo Quintette du Hot Club de France—especially guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli—the score has the soloist and orchestra trading licks the way an actual combo would. Shaham and the first violins seemed to be having an especially good time playing off each other here. Will James on jazz percussion and Peter Henderson on piano added considerably to the period atmosphere.

As much as I loved Shaham’s performance, though, I found it difficult to become involved with Bates’s score.  It felt more like a quasi-Impressionist collection of motifs that suggested but never really achieved the status of themes. It reminded me a bit of Debussy, except without the melodies and harmonic infrastructure.

The concert concluded with the Big Event, Berlioz’s splendiferous 1830 “Symphonie Fantastique.” Denève and the orchestra played this wildly hallucinatory work (Leonard Bernstein once dubbed it "the first psychedelic symphony in history”) back in 2019, as the closer of his last concert as Music Director Designate (he became the official MD that fall). At the time I described Denève’s interpretation as consistently engrossing, filled with interesting details (something that would prove to be a hallmark of his work on the podium) and concluding with a downright hair-raising final two movements. I’m repeating myself here because all of that still applies to what we experienced last Sunday.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra season continues October 4th and 6th at the Touhill Performing Arts Center; check out my preview for more information or head over to the SLSO web site.

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

The reign in Spain, part 2: Reviews of the St. Louis Symphony's Spanish tour

David Robertson

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If you follow the peregrinations of our St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, you are no doubt aware that they have just completed a tour of Spain, playing gigs in Valencia, Madrid, and Oviedo.

Reviews have been hard to find. My wife, who can read and speak Spanish and is also more canny about Google searches than I am, has only managed to turn up two so far. I included a link to the first one—a largely negative review of the orchestra's first Spanish tour concert in Valencia on February 8th—in a previous blog post.

Since then, a review has surfaced of the orchestra's performance in Oviedo (the last stop on their tour) of the same program presented at their first stop in Valencia. It's the America-themed evening featuring music by John Adams, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Dvorak. I liked it a lot when I heard it here in January and it appears Aurelio M. Seco, writing for the classical music web site codalario.com, agrees.

You can read the full review at the codalario web site but the bottom line is that Mr. Seco's view is very positive and strikingly similar to my own in many ways.

He praises Maestro Robertson for his "remarkable talent on the stage and his evident communicative gift" and violin soloist Gil Shaham for his "beautiful, clear sound."  He also comments on the close communication between Mr. Shaham and Mr. Robertson, something I noted in my own review.

His view of the music itself is a bit more mixed. He finds John Adams's The Chairman Dances, Foxtrot for Orchestra interesting but a bit too repetitious to sustain interest and repeats some of the usual criticisms of the structural weaknesses of Dvorak's "New World" symphony. He's very taken with Korngold's Violin Concerto, though, because of its "attractive aesthetic, cinematographic nature, and rich expressive moments."

In any case, he had great things to say about the St. Louis Symphony's playing and Mr. Robertson's conducting, which is a nice change from the Valencia review. And, unlike the Valencia critic, he didn't feel compelled to make snarky comments about Mr. Robertson's Spanish pronunciation.

We will continue to look for reviews and I'll post them here as they turn up.

The reign in Spain, part 1: Reviews of the St. Louis Symphony's Spanish tour

Violinist Gil Shaham

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If you follow the peregrinations of our St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, you are no doubt aware that they have just completed a tour of Spain, playing gigs in Valencia, Madrid, and Oviedo.

Wondering how the band was received by the local critics, I asked my wife (who can actually read and speak Spanish) to do some Spanish-language Googling for me. So far the only thing that has surfaced is a critique of their February 8th appearance in Valencia by Justo Romero, the senior critic at Levante-EMV in Valencia and originally published there. It's not available at the Levante-EMV web site for some reason but was retrieved from beckmesser.com, which appears to be an arts aggregator of some sort.

Anyway, Sherry says he pretty much disliked everything and everyone except for Gil Shaham. As far as I can tell from the clunky Google Translate English version, he singles out nearly every section of the orchestra for some sort of criticism and hates both Maestro Robertson's podium style and his artistic decisions.

As my own review of this same program clearly indicates, I don't agree.

As this was the orchestra's first concert after their transatlantic flight, it's possible they weren't in peak form (I am certainly not in peak form after one of those), and I will admit that some of his comments single out issues that I have brought up as well in the past. But it feels to me like the reviewer is making mountains out of molehills to some extent. When a critic goes out of his way to make snarky comments about the conductor's Spanish pronunciation, one is perhaps justified in raising an eyebrow. I know that if a foreign conductor said "thank you" in heavily accented English, I wouldn't regard the quality of his or her accent as worthy of mention in my review.

Anyway, Sherry and I will continue to look for reviews and I'll post them here as they turn up.

Review: The St. Louis Symphony's all-American program is even better the second time around

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

Violinist Gil Shaham

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If this past weekend's St. Louis Symphony Orchestra program (January 14 and 15, 2017) provoked a strong sense of déjà vu in the audience, it's because the orchestra presented a nearly identical program three years ago.  The two major works—Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violin Concerto and Dvořák's New World symphony—were the same, as were the conductor (David Robertson) and the soloist (Gil Shaham).

The only difference, in fact, was in the short opening work.  Three years ago it was Ingram Marshall's Bright Kingdom.  This time around it was The Chairman Dances, Foxtrot for Orchestra by John Adams.  But that was familiar as well, having last been performed by the orchestra under Mr. Robertson in the fall of 2013.  Even Gil Shaham's unlisted encore was the same: Schön Rosmarin, Fritz Kreisler's pastiche of the waltzes of Joseph Lanner.

For some background on the music itself, check out my symphony preview article.  For my thoughts on the performances, read on.

So how much has changed over the years?  Looking back at my original review of the Korngold and the Dvořák, I'd say the short answer is "not much." 

Mr. Shaham is as thoroughly in command of this music as he was the last time he played it here, with a singing tone and a real and obvious joy in his performance.  He flew through the virtuoso fireworks of the first and third movements easily and brought out all the yearning of the second movement Romance.  Back in 2014, I commented that Mr. Shaham was sometimes swamped by the orchestra, but I didn’t hear such balance problems this time around—probably because I was seated on the orchestra floor as opposed to the dress circle.  In Powell Hall, location can be everything when it comes to vocal and instrumental soloists.

In an interview during the intermission of Saturday night's broadcast of the concert, Mr. Robertson noted that, although the concerto is scored for a large, late-romantic orchestra, performing it requires the kind of intimate give and take between the soloist and the ensemble that is more characteristic of chamber music—and which makes each performance a unique event.  You could see that in the close communication between Mr. Shaham and Mr. Robertson when we attended the concert on Sunday afternoon.  They were physically close as well, with Mr. Shaham sometimes playing very close to the podium.

They were, in short, a joy to see and hear.

Three years ago, I dubbed Mr. Robertson's Dvořák 9^th a "world class" interpretation, and I'm just as enthusiastic this time around.  His approach has, if anything, gotten even more nuanced and refined over the last few years, with wonderful little details that I don't recall hearing in 2014.  The profound hush of the transition to the second subject in the Largo second movement is a good example, as are the many subtle shadings he brought to the exuberant Scherzo third movement.

The orchestra played very well, some issues in the horns not withstanding, and all the important solo passages were sheer perfection.  That includes the flute passages in the first movement by Mark Sparks and Jennifer Nichtman, Scott Andrews’s fine clarinet work in the fourth movement, and Cally Banham's plaintive rendition of The Most Famous English Horn Solo in the World in the Largo.

As for The Chairman Dances, Mr. Robertson and his forces brought out the whimsy in this odd little number, which was cut from the 1987 opera Nixon in China.  It was originally intended to accompany a surrealistic scene in which a painting of Chairman Mao comes to life and dances with his widow during a state dinner. 

There's a kind of quirky nostalgia to the music, which rises to a big orchestral climax before slowly fading out to the sounds of woodblock and sandpaper, as though Mao were doing a soft shoe number as he fades away.  It's rhythmically tricky stuff, and the percussion section—including Peter Henderson on piano—did a fine job with it.

The concerts concluded with another unlisted encore, the original version of the lively and tune-filled overture to Leonard Bernstein's often-revised 1956 operetta Candide.  The piece seems to be a favorite of Mr. Robertson's, and he and the band gave it a cheerfully unbuttoned (but still precise) reading.

The orchestra is taking this weekend's program on its road trip to Spain next month, with performances in Valencia, Madrid, and Oviedo.  If what we heard Sunday is any indication, they'll represent both our town and our nation well. 

I also have to say that, given the poisonous nature of our current political climate, it's good to see that while all the works on this program were written on these shores, three of the five composers represented were born elsewhere.  And two of them were immigrants fleeing fascism.  It's a reminder that America has always been a far more heterogeneous nation than some people want to admit.

The regular symphony season continues next weekend as Andrey Boreyko conducts the orchestra and pianist Till Fellner in Shostakovich's eccentric Symphony No. 15 and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2.  Performances are Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., January 20 and 21; visit the SLSO web site for details and information on the Spain tour.

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.

A family affair

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Robertson with violinist Gil Shaham
What: Music of Johann Strauss, Jr., Haydn, and Beethoven
Where: Powell Symphony Hall
When: November 23-25, 2012

When Gil Shaham stopped to tune his violin after the massive workout that is the first movement of the Beethoven concerto his brother-in-law, maestro David Robertson, turned to the audience and quipped, "it's from 1699; you’d think it would be in tune by now." That one little moment was a distillation of the easy good humor that characterized not only the concerto but the Haydn Symphony No. 104 ("London") and the Strauss Tales from the Vienna Woods as well.

The fact that the Strauss was performed with the original zither solos at the beginning and end (gracefully done by Kurt von Eckroth) was just icing on the torte.

Like many of the great 19th century composers, Beethoven wrote only one concerto for the violin, but it’s a corker. He was, unfortunately, so tardy in completing it that the soloist at the work’s 1806 premiere, Franz Clement (for whom Beethoven had written the piece) had no time to rehearse and reportedly sight read the thorny solo part. Not surprisingly, the premiere was a flop (despite a showy encore in which Mr. Clement played the violin upside-down) and the concerto didn’t begin to enter the standard repertoire until nearly two decades after the composer’s death.

Now, of course, it’s recognized as a masterful blend of solo showpiece and symphonic statement, with a substantial first movement that accounts for over half of the concerto’s 45-minute running time, a mostly serene second, and a cheerfully flashy third. Mr. Shaham’s performance was technically flawless (with a spectacular run through the cadenza Fritz Kreisler wrote for the first movement) and deeply felt, as was Mr. Robertson’s conducting. The transition from the Larghetto to the concluding Rondo was especially dramatic, and the cheerful camaraderie between Mr. Shaham and Mr. Robertson in the finale was a joy to behold. Few things are more gratifying that seeing artists taking delight in their work.

The other big work on the program was Haydn’s 104th and final symphony, usually referred to as the "London", since it was the last of a series of twelve he wrote for his visit to the English capitol. First performed at the Haymarket Theatre on May 4th, 1795, it was a huge hit with critics and public alike. "The whole company was extremely pleased, and so was I," Haydn wrote in his journal, and then noted "I made four thousand guilders this evening." He was nothing if not practical.

The symphony is classic Haydn: structurally straightforward, melodically inventive, and filled with good humor. The finale, with its drone base and cheerful central theme (based on the first strain of the Croatian folk song "Oj, Jelena, Jelena") is especially irresistible. Mr. Robertson’s tempi were a bit on the slow side for my taste, but his interpretation was nevertheless wonderfully precise and winning, and the orchestra played beautifully.

The concert opened with one of the greatest hits of Johann Strauss, Jr., Tales from the Vienna Woods. It was one of six waltzes for which the composer wrote a solo part for the zither, an instrument which, while common enough in Strauss’s Vienna, is a bit harder to find in contemporary America. Happily, the symphony found Mr. von Eckroth, so we got to hear the work as the composer intended.

Or almost as he intended, anyway. Strauss probably didn’t have quite as large a band to work with as Mr. Robertson does and I expect that Mr. Robertson’s tempi might have given dancers pause. They worked very well in a concert setting, though. The result really did feel more like a miniature symphonic poem than a simple dance piece and made for a happy opening to a concert that overflowed with good cheer.

Next on the calendar: David Robertson welcomes pianist Kirill Gerstein (last seen here in a bravura reading of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in January of 2011) for the St. Louis premiere of Thomas Adès’ In Seven Days along with Richard Strauss’s Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks and Hindemith’s "Matis der Mahler" Symphony. Performances are Friday at 10:30 AM (a Coffee Concert with free Krispy Kreme doughnuts) and Saturday at 8, November 30 and December 1. For ticket information: stlsymphony.org