Symphony Review: Doing right by D

Lately, circumstances have conspired to delay the composition of these reviews. The downside of that is that anything I didn’t make a note of at the concert has gone down the old memory hole. The upside is that it gives me time to reflect on what I saw and heard. Sometimes temporal distance lends enchantment, sometimes not.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts last Saturday and Sunday (January 25 and 26) definitely went up on the enchantment scale. There were only two works on the program: the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), paired with another uncompromising essay in D major, the Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911).

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

Stéphane Denève conducts
Photo by Virginia Harold

Both works left audiences and many critics a bit nonplussed at their premieres. Both were widely regarded as too long, too complex, and just too darned non-traditional. Both have since been redeemed by history.

One big complaint about Beethoven’s concerto back in 1806 was that its first movement, which clocks in at around 25 minutes, was longer than most concertos in their entirety. Audiences found the expanded symphonic structure difficult to follow, and in all fairness, Beethoven did push the recognized boundaries of the form to their limits. Until his past weekend, I often felt the same way.

Stéphane Denève and soloist James Ehnes made me see the piece differently this time around. I found myself completely captivated, and not just by that first movement. The entire concerto unfolded in a panoply of drama, romance, and in the Rondo (Allegro) finale, bumptious fun. Ehnes completely nailed the daunting octaves of the violin’s entrance and displayed a wide dynamic and emotional range throughout the work. 

Beethoven left room for two cadenzas in the concerto, with the result that the soloist has a plethora of choices, including (as Anthony Marwood did here in 2019) improvising his own. Ehnes chose cadenzas by the great violinist/composer Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962), and while they’re clearly products of a later era, they nevertheless effectively complement the concerto’s early 19th century esthetics. Ehnes played them and the rest of the concerto with the mix of flash and finesse I have seen him display in previous appearances with the SLSO. 

He cuts a more conservative figure on stage than some violin virtuosi, but there was plenty of passion and joy in his actual performance. The audience apparently agreed. Ehnes responded to their ovation with a quiet contrast to the finale of the concerto: the third movement (Largo) from the Violin Sonata No. 3, BWV 1005, by Bach.

Violinist James Ehnes
Photo by B Ealovega

Equally impressive was Denève’s interpretation of the work overall. This was a performance with a strong sense of momentum, beautifully shaped and with lucidity that gave me the sense of hearing and “seeing” Beethoven’s architecture more clearly than I had in the past.

He brought that same sense of clarity to his reading of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Like Beethoven’s concerto, Mahler’s symphony—originally billed as a five-movement “symphonic poem”—was poorly received at its 1889 premiere with Mahler himself conducting the Budapest Philharmonic. 

Multiple revisions followed. The final four-movement version, now labeled as the Symphony No. 1, was premiered in Berlin in 1896. That’s the version commonly performed today and the one we heard last weekend.

And a wonderful performance it was, too. The mysterious opening, emerging (miraculously) from near-complete silence, commanded attention from the start and made the statement of the main theme (adapted from Mahler’s song “Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld”) that much more effective. The second movement was cheerfully bucolic, the mood aided by the way the low strings leaned into the first beat of their accompaniment of the Austrian ländler melody.

The third movement funeral march, with its fugal treatment of a minor-key version of a tune better known as “Frère Jacques,” dripped with that mix of sarcasm and schmaltz that made my jaw drop when I first heard it back in the 1960s. It ended as it began, pianissimo, followed after the shortest of pauses (per the composer’s instructions in the score) by the fortissimo “all hell breaks loose” opening for the fourth movement.

This was powerful stuff, with the usual high standard of playing by members of the orchestra. Mahler’s sonic canvases may be massive, but they’re filled with marvelous details that allow soloists and ensembles to shine. Examples from last Saturday’s performance include Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks, Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo, and Principal Bass Erik Harris in the third movement; the offstage trumpets in the eerie opening; and the eight (count ‘em, eight!) horns in the finale standing, and per Mahler’s instructions, playing loudly enough to drown out the trumpets (“Die Hörner Alles, auch die Trompeten ũbertönen”).

That’s rock ‘n’ roll, baby!

Symphony Preview: Big D

"The Germans," observed the great violinist Joseph Joachim, "have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising, is Beethoven's." This weekend (Saturday and Sunday, January 24 and 26) James Ehnes joins the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Stéphane Denève for the Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) along with another uncompromising essay in D major, the Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler (1860–1911).

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

The following comments are adapted from my own writing on both works over the last fifteen years.

Like many of the great 19th century composers, Beethoven wrote only one concerto for the violin, but it’s prime stuff. 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 might have even been obliged sight read the thorny solo part.

The premiere took place on December 23, 1806, at the Theater an der Wien as part of what Brockway and Weinstock (in the 1967 edition of  "Men of Music") call, with classic understatement, "a singular program":

[The concerto's] first movement was a feature of the opening half of the entertainment, and the second and third movement were given during the second half. Intervening was, among other compositions, a sonata by Franz Clement, played on one string of a violin held upside down.

"Beethoven Letronne" by Blasius Höfel
Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Common

Needless to say, this sort of cheesy showbiz was not the way the composer intended his work to be performed. Not surprisingly, it was poorly received and didn't begin to enter the standard repertoire until nearly two decades after Beethoven’s death. And that was likely because it was championed by Joachim, who first played it in 1844 (at the age of 12) at a concert in London with Felix Mendelssohn at the podium. Joachim also wrote cadenzas for the work that are still frequently performed.

Now the concerto is 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.

There is, interestingly, a rarely heard alternate version of the Violin Concerto. As Michael Rodman writes at Allmusic.com, Beethoven later made a transcription of the concerto for piano and orchestra. He added a long cadenza for the soloist that included the tympani and published it as Op. 61a

The revised concerto was first performed in Vienna in 1807, but despite the occasional high-profile recording like the one Peter Serkin did with Seiji Ozawa and the New Philharmonia in the late 1960s, it remains, as the reviewer of that release notes at Classics Today, "a curio."

Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, first performed in 1889, closes the program in spectacular fashion. Clocking in at just under an hour, the First is probably the most economical of Mahler’s symphonies. It’s also, to paraphrase Anna Russell, a kind of Mahler vitamin pill, combining all the composer’s characteristic gestures in one compact work.

Mahler circa 1889
By E. Bieber - Kohut, Adolph (1900)
Public Domain

It’s all here: the vivid invocation of the natural world, the heaven-storming despair, the macabre humor, the jocular impressions of village bands and sounds that would later be labeled “klezmer,” and  a wildly triumphant finale with a full complement of brass—including an expanded horn section—standing and gloriously blazing away. The subtitle “Titan” that’s often applied to this work may have originally referred to a novel of the same title by Jean-Paul Richter, but I think it’s simply an apt description of this music. Its impact is Titanic in every sense of the word.

As music depicting a journey from darkness to the light, the Mahler First feels very welcome at a time when geopolitical darkness seems to be closing in on us. Its hushed, expectant opening, its birdcalls, and what Chicago Symphony Orchestra program annotator Phillip Huscher calls "the gentle hum of the universe, tuned to A-natural and scattered over seven octaves"—all these things bring to mind a world emerging from darkness into light.

Speaking of that opening sequence: if it sounds familiar that’s because it's remarkably close to the little sequence that underscores the words "Space: the final frontier" in the theme of the classic TV show Star Trek. If you doubt me, take a few minutes to view CBC Radio 2 host Tom Allen's tongue-in-cheek video documentary on the lineage of that theme; it's fascinating stuff. 

And since both ST:TOS and Mahler’s First are fundamentally optimistic, that seems only right.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soloist James Ehnes in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, January 25 and 26, at the Stifel Theatre downtown.

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

Pro-Life

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, Women of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, and St. Louis Children’s Chorus conducted by David Robertson
What: Mahler, Symphony No. 3
When: October 5 and 6, 2012
Where: Powell Hall

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A warmly expansive and well-played Mahler Symphony No. 3 this weekend by David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony was enhanced by fine solo work and the voices of the St. Louis Children's Chorus and the Women of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus. This is music you don't hear that often because of the size and disposition of the forces, so the decision to present it was a welcome one, to say the least.

Many composers have taken their inspiration from nature, but it took the vision of Mahler to turn that inspiration into a massive six-movement pantheistic hymn. Clocking in at close to 100 minutes, this is no jolly pastoral picture in the mode of Beethoven or Dvorak, but rather a vast expression of what George Bernard Shaw (who, ironically, considered Mahler "expensively second-rate") described as the “Life Force”, moving from primal chaos to perfection. Granted, Shaw’s perfection was human while Mahler’s is divine, but the journeys are similar.

The 3rd presents its share of interpretive challenges. To pick just one example, the episodic first movement (originally titled “Pan Awakes: Summer Marches In”) could without a strong hand at the tiller easily degenerate into a series of musical tableaux. As conductor Bruno Walter (a strong Mahler advocate) once noted, “[i]n regard to this one movement—and to this one alone—I must admit that the effort to take it in musically is frequently thwarted by the intrusion of non-musical matter, of fantastic images, that break the musical texture.” Mr. Robertson held it all together, though, and brought it to a rousing conclusion, assisted by some first-rate solo work from (among others) Timothy Myers on trombone and Cally Banham on English horn.

The audience clearly loved it. A ripple of spontaneous applause broke out, prompting a smiling Mr. Robertson to turn to the house and say “it’s OK”, after which the ripple became a wave.

And so it continued for the remainder of the evening. The “Tempo di Menuetto” second movement (original title: “What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me”) was appropriately bucolic. The more boisterous third movement “Scherzando” (“What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me”) with its nostalgic offstage posthorn interludes (played in this case by a trumpet) was a nice study in contrasts.

The following two vocal movements bring humanity into the picture. The first is a nocturnal setting for contralto of lines from Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra about how Joy goes deeper and lasts longer than Woe (performed with great feeling by mezzo Susan Graham). The second is a sunny contrasting setting of a poem from Das Knaben Wunderhorn (Youth’s Magic Horn, a collection of folk poetry that dominated Mahler’s work for much of the 1890s) about how St. Peter (sung by the soloist from the previous movement) is readily forgiven by a loving Christ.

The angels are portrayed by the women’s and children’s choruses, with the latter mostly singing “bimm, bamm” in imitation of the tuned bells also called for in the score. In keeping with Mahler’s requirements, the bells and kids were placed house right behind the dress circle boxes, providing a nice antiphonal effect for those seated in the orchestra and dress circle. That poses a bit of a challenge for both the performers and conductor, but Mr. Robertson and company came through beautifully.

The final movement is perhaps the toughest nut to crack for both the conductor and the audience. Unfolding with deliberate slowness (it’s marked “Slow. Peacefully. With feeling.”) over a half-hour, this remarkable movement was seen by the composer as “the peak, the highest level from which one can view the world.” It’s serene, all embracing, and, although it requires a lot from an audience that has already gone through a substantial musical sojourn, it ultimately leads to a powerful and ecstatic conclusion that makes it all worthwhile.

For me, Friday night’s performance just missed that last bit of ecstasy. I don’t know how much of that was Mr. Robertson’s somewhat leisurely approach to the work as a whole and how much might have been what sounded rather like fatigue from some of the players, particularly in the brass section (from which much is demanded). I couldn’t help wonder whether it might have been best to put an intermission after the first movement (as is sometimes done) to give both players and audience members a chance to rest and reflect.

That said, this Mahler 3rd is a darned impressive achievement that bodes well for the rest of the season. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

The season continues next week (October 12–14) with a program of Beethoven, Ravel, and Debussy with guest conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and pianist Pascal Rogé.  For more information: stlsymphony.org

Move heaven and earth - but slowly

Mezzo Kelley O'Connor
Photo by Dario Acosta

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
What: Barber’s Prayers of Kierkegaard and Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”)
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: April 8 through 10, 2011

The ranting of wealthy and powerful fundamentalists and their political and media enablers aside, there’s no getting around the fact that the central message of Christianity is one of mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and love. This weekend’s St. Louis Symphony concerts offered a pair of powerful musical reminders of that message. The fact that one came from the pen of an Austrian Jew who converted to Catholicism out of professional expediency and the other from a gay American man is probably another illustration of how outsiders often see the truth more clearly than members of the tribe.

The big draw for these concerts, of course, was the Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”) by Gustav Mahler. For me, however, the most compelling moments came from Samuel Barber’s rarely heard Prayers of Kierkegaard from 1954. A setting for large orchestra, chorus, and multiple soloists (soprano, alto, and tenor) of four of the many original prayers by Christian existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855), Prayers pays homage to both Gregorian monophony and Baroque polyphony while remaining true to Barber’s late-Romantic musical language. It’s a fascinating and complex piece that makes a convincing case for Kierkegaard’s emphasis on the primacy of each individual’s experience of Divine love, without the clutter of organized religion.

Under the baton of David Robertson, the orchestra and chorus delivered a rock-solid performance. The choral writing sounded complex and tricky, which made the clarity and enunciation with which it was sung that much more impressive. The soloists – soprano Christine Brewer, alto Debby Lennon, and tenor Keith Boyer – all did fine work, although Ms. Brewer seemed a bit uncomfortable in her lower register.

This is only the second time the symphony has undertaken this remarkable work and the first time under Mr. Robertson’s direction. I hope he felt as much satisfaction conducting this performance as I did hearing it.

The Mahler was, I’m sorry to say, somewhat less satisfying. The “Resurrection” Symphony has long been a favorite of mine, going back to my first encounter with the classic Otto Klemperer recording from early 1960s. A kind of Mahler multivitamin, the “Resurrection” contains all the key elements of the Viennese master’s work: moments of chamber-music delicacy alternating with massive orchestral outbursts, vulgar marches, lilting Ländler, a darkly comic scherzo, and passages of sublime beauty, and an ecstatic choral finale of overwhelming power. And yet, in the musical equivalent of alchemy, Mahler's sense of architecture somehow transmutes it all in to a single, unified work that brilliantly encompasses the themes of death, rebirth, and transcendence.

Personally, I missed the transcendence. As was his wont that last time he conducted this work (in 2007), Mr. Robertson favored a loving emphasis on orchestral details coupled with tempi that were somewhere between slow and plodding. Individual moments (especially in the second movement) took on a crystalline clarity as a result, but so did the joins in Mahler’s somewhat episodic musical architecture. The work came to a complete standstill far too often for me, I’m afraid, despite first-rate work from all the performers.

Christine Brewer, looking and sounding revived and re-energized, once again served as soprano soloist, backed up by mezzo Kelley O’Connor – utterly compelling in the “Urlicht” (“Primal Light”) setting that begins the symphony’s fourth movement. Amy Kaiser’s Symphony Chorus sounded splendid once again.

In brief remarks before the symphony began, Ms. Kaiser noted that this weekend’s performances were dedicated to the late Richard Ashburner, long a member and supporter of the chorus. Their work was a fitting tribute to their former colleague.

A great Mahler 2nd – such as the one Leonard Slatkin did with the SLSO back in 1982 (happily still available on CD) – never fails to move me to tears in those final glorious moments of spiritual rebirth. This one left me impressed with the virtuosity of the players and clarity of Mr. Robertson’s artistic vision, but it left me dry-eyed as well.

Next up on the symphony schedule: Maestro Robertson conducts Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 and Tchaikovsky’s ever popular Piano Concerto No. 1, with Yefim Bronfman at the keyboard April 15 through 17. For more information, you may call 314-534-1700, visit slso.org, or follow @slso on Twitter.

Triumph in Tragedy

Gustav Mahler

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra
What: Semyon Bychkov conducts Mahler's Symphony No. 6
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: January 4 and 5, 2011

During the thoroughly deserved standing ovation that followed Friday's performance of the Mahler Symphony No. 6 by Semyon Bychkov and the St. Louis Symphony, my wife turned to me and remarked, “Well - that was thrilling.” And so it was.

The Sixth is a daunting work, running between 70 and 90 minutes and jam-packed with compelling and original musical ideas. It demands rapt attention from listeners, Olympic-class endurance on the part of the players, and a strong grasp by the conductor of both Mahler's passion and his musical architecture. It is, in short, a work that is both exhilarating and exhausting for musicians and audience members alike.

Mr. Bychkov, in particular, looked physically drained after those last, searing moments of the finale, as though the famous “hammer blows” that felled Mahler's hero had nearly claimed him as collateral damage. For a moment or two it wasn't even clear whether he would come back out to acknowledge the waves of applause. Happily, there were no signs of strain in his conducting, which looked just as precise and in control as it did during last weekend's far lighter program of Schubert, Shostakovich and Beethoven. And the augmented forces of the symphony sounded brilliant.

Much has been written about how this work was the most personal of Mahler's symphonies - so much so that a huge body of lore and controversy has arisen in the 104 years since its premiere. There is, for example, the ongoing debate as to whether the Scherzo or the Andante should be performed as the second movement. Mahler apparently never quite made up his mind on the matter, and respectable recordings are available of both versions. Mr. Bychkov apparently decided to opt for the Scherzo/Andante approach, but only after the programs had already been printed, necessitating an insert with the final running order. It made dramatic sense to me but given the high quality of the performance I expect that, had he gone with Andante/Scherzo, he would have made that work as well.

Another problem orchestras have had to contend with is the question of how to produce the hammer blows called for in the finale. Mahler stipulated that the sound should be "brief and mighty, but dull in resonance and with a non-metallic character (like the fall of an axe)". The symphony's solution, while unsightly, was undeniably effective: a massive (around 8' tall) unfinished wooden box struck with an equally massive wooden hammer. The resulting sound had a visceral impact that the composer would probably have loved.

Mahler originally called for three blows in the final movement to act, among other things, as demarcation points in its massive structure (the movement runs nearly a half-hour) but at the work's premiere Essen the composer could not bring himself to conduct that final stroke of fate. It was dropped from the published score and while some conductors have elected to restore it, Mr. Bychkov let the deletion stand. Personally, I would have preferred all three, but I understand the logic behind his decision.

The emotional and sonic range of this symphony is massive - a fact which has tempted some conductors to personalize an already idiosyncratic work by exaggerating the highly charged drama. Happily, Mr. Bychkov does not appear to be one of them. I had the strong sense that he was letting Mahler speak for himself, bringing out all the intense emotion and loving details in the music without ever calling too much attention to the process.

The sheer numbers of musicians not withstanding, the Sixth is filled with little moments that place nearly every principal musician in the spotlight at one point or another. You can hear, in this piece, the beginnings of the kind of pointillist approach to orchestration that would reach its apogee if the music of Webern. Melodic fragments are often tossed between sections, with individual instruments sometimes getting in only a few notes before passing the baton.

In order for this sort of thing to work, you need an orchestra of virtuosi. As Friday's performance clearly demonstrated, we have that orchestra here. Every detail was perfectly in place, and the entire package neatly wrapped up by Mr. Bychkov. What a gift for all of us!

Semyon Bychkov conducted Mahler's Symphony No. 6 on Friday and Saturday, February 4 and 5, 2011. For information upcoming St. Louis Symphony concerts, you may cal 314-534-1700 or visit stlsymphony.org.