Symphony Review: Nicholas McGegan brings a pair of theatrical hits by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to Powell

As our little group approached Powell Hall Friday night (March 10th), a tour bus pulled up with what appeared to be a group of students who were there to take in a St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert. If so, their chaperones made a good choice.

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

With early music guru Nicholas McGegan (who has a long association with the SLSO) at the podium, this fast-paced and entertaining pair of works for orchestra and chorus by Beethoven and Mendelssohn would certainly have made for an ideal introduction to classical music and the whole SLSO experience. At just over 90 minutes (including intermission), it was a bit shorter than the typical evening at the symphony (normal run time is around 2 hours or so) and the music was listener friendly. No experience was required, and a good time was had by all.

Sarah Price

The evening began with the Beethoven’s “Selections from Egmont,” op. 84, composed on commission for an 1810 revival of Goethe’s 1788 tragedy. The play is a fictionalized account of the execution of Lamoral, Count of Egmont, Prince of Gavere (1522–1568), who was beheaded for resisting Spanish rule and the imposition of the Inquisition on the Netherlands. Running around a half-hour, Beethoven’s Op. 84 consists of a noble and emotionally charged overture along with two songs (for the fictional character of Clärchen, Egmont’s love interest), four entr’actes (scene change music), two bits of underscoring, and a final “Victory Symphony.” That last bit is essentially a repeat of the final 90 seconds of the overture and follows Egmont’s call for independence.

McGegan approached all this with that combination of unbridled joy and meticulous attention to detail which has characterized his work here in the past. The opening of the overture set the tone for the performance overall. Marked Sostenuto ma non troppo (“Sustained, but not too much,” literally), it was majestically slow—which made the gradual build to the main theme all the more commanding. The two-note “execution” violin motif just before the Allegro con brio coda was striking decisive and the coda itself was stirring, with nice accents by Ann Choomack on piccolo.

After a long pause for latecomers (who had, perhaps, not noticed that the concert started at 7:30 rather than 8) soprano Danielle Yilmaz gave a defiant performance of “Die Trommel gerühret” (“Beat the drums”), in which Clärchen declares her love and support for Egmont in militaristic terms. Clärchen’s other song, “Freudvoll und leidvoll” (“Full of joy, full of sorrow”), got an equally strong performance from soprano Sarah Price. She let us hear the emotional ambiguity of the lyrics, which move from waver between doubt (Andante con moto) and ecstasy (Allegro assai vivace) before finally settling on the latter.

Enrico Lagasca
Photo: Jiyang Chen

The entr’actes and underscore pieces were all neatly done, with some fine oboe solos by Jelena Dirks and excellent playing by the horns, especially in “Clärchen’s death.” The “Victory Symphony” brought it all to an electrifying finish.

The second half of the concert belonged to Mendelssohn’s 1843 revision of his setting for chorus and orchestra of Goethe’s 1799 dramatic poem “Die Erste Walpurgisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”). In what was, surprisingly, the work’s first performance here, McGegan led the orchestra and chorus in a real barnburner of a performance. It was sung in English, as many of Mendelssohn’s choral works were even in his day. The multi-lingual composer knew he was a Hot Property in Britain and made sure his music would work just as well in English or German.

The story deals with a group of German Druids who prefer to celebrate Beltane eve in the old-fashioned way, without interference from Christian authorities. Their solution is to scare the Christian forces away by disguising themselves as assorted imps, devils, and demons. The opportunities for high drama here are obvious, and Mendelssohn made the most of them in a score filled with big, commanding choruses and an orchestra unusually rich in brass and percussion parts. “It’s very high energy music,” observed McGegan in an interview for my video blog. “Mendelssohn lives in the era before decaf.”

The sturm und drang gets off to a rousing start with the turbulent “Overture: bad weather.” The “dark and stormy night” tone painting is reminiscent of the “Hebrides” Overture—not exactly surprising, since it was written at around the same time—and McGegan’s reading was so vivid you could almost feel the wind and rain. His entire podium presence, in fact, was a wonderful mix of precise cueing and physical enthusiasm.

There are a few solo numbers in “The First Walpurgis Night,” but the chorus is the real star of the show. Under the direction of Webster University’s Trent Patterson, the SLSO singers displayed just the right mix of power and precision that’s called for here. Their enunciation was admirably crisp, although it wasn’t obvious just how good it was until I heard the Saturday night broadcast, since Powell Hall’s acoustics can muddy things a bit.

That said, the soloists were impressive as well. Tenor Thomas Cooley was a radiant Druid welcoming the spring as well as a comically petrified Christian soldier who decided “onward” is not his preferred direction. Bass-baritone Enrico Lagasca was an imposing Priest, although he was having a bit of trouble with his high notes on Friday (I suspect allergies might have been the issue). In any case, he sounded fine in Saturday night’s broadcast.

The SLSO Chorus
Photo: Dilip Vishwanat for the SLSO

For my money, though, the most impressive performance was that of alto Victoria Carmichael (of the SLSO Chorus) as “An aged woman of the people” warning of the violence that can be expected from the Christians if the Druids are discovered: “On their ramparts they will slaughter / Mother, father, son, and daughter!” That’s potent stuff that calls for exactly the kind of forceful delivery it got from Carmichael.

It was good to see and hear the chorus in action again, especially in music that gives them a chance to display their strength as an ensemble. And I have always found McGegan to be a welcome presence on the podium. His association with the SLSO goes back a long way—to a 1986 “Messiah” in fact—so his rapport with the band has, by now, a kind of cozy familiarity.

Next at Powell Hall: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Vikingur Ólafsson in a one-night-only preview of the program they will take on the orchestra's March European tour. The concert consists of Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges Suite, Grieg's Piano Concerto, and Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances." The concert takes place on Thursday, March 16, at 7:30 pm. Stephanie Childress will conduct the SLSO Youth Orchestra and Concerto Competition winner Ayan Amerin in the Allegro non troppo from the Violin Concerto in D major by Brahms and the Symphony No. 5 by Shostakovich on Sunday, March 19 at 3 pm. The regular concert season resumes in mid-April.

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

Symphony Preview: All Goethe all the time

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was, as the late Philip Weller notes in the Grove Dictionary of Music, “[O]ne of the most important literary and cultural figures of his age…recognized during his lifetime for his accomplishments of almost universal breadth.” This weekend (Friday and Saturday, March 10 and 11) Nicholas McGegan will conduct the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and vocal soloists in a pair of big, dramatic works inspired by Goethe.

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

Goethe age 38 by Angelica Kauffmann
commons.wikimedia.org

The works in question are the overture and incidental music Beethoven composed on commission for an 1810 revival of Goethe’s 1788 tragedy “Egmont” and Mendelssohn’s 1843 revision of his setting for chorus and orchestra of the 1799 dramatic poem “Die Erste Walpurgisnacht” (“The First Walpurgis Night”). The two works have much in common, including the fact that they both deal with the issues of political and religious freedom. Which makes them rather relevant right now.

The protagonist of Goethe’s play is the historical Lamoral, Count of Egmont, Prince of Gavere (1522–1568), who was beheaded for resisting Spanish rule and the imposition of the Inquisition on the Netherlands. In Goethe’s fictionalized version of events, Egmont becomes a heroic defender of individual freedom who, before his execution, delivers a rousing speech demanding national independence.  

The story appealed tremendously to Beethoven, a dedicated republican (in the classical sense of “anti-monarchist”) who was chafing at the occupation of Vienna by the French in 1809. That appeal and Beethoven’s great admiration for Goethe combined to produce a noble and emotionally charged overture along with two songs (for the fictional character of Klärchen, Egmont’s love interest), four entr’actes (scene change music), two bits of underscoring, and a final “Victory Symphony.” That last bit is essentially a repeat of the final 90 seconds of the overture and follows Egmont’s call for independence.

In an interview on my YouTube channel, McGegan described the entire score as “top-rate Beethoven…right up there in the vintage period of middle Beethoven.” Chronologically it falls between the Sixth (“Pastoral”) Symphony and the exuberant Seventh, which the authors of the Grove entry on Beethoven describe as time of “ever-increasing technical virtuosity.” Certainly the combination of high drama, lyricism, and tragedy in these ten short movements is immensely appealing even if you’re not familiar with the play. Which, of course, most of us are not.

Goethe loved the music but was less impressed by Beethoven himself when they finally met in the summer of 1812 at Teplitz. McGegan notes that he found the composer “a little bit feral,” while Beethoven, for his part, found the elegant writer “too much of a toady…too courtly for his taste.” It’s a reminder, I suppose, that it’s not always wise to meet one’s heroes in person.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

After intermission the full chorus joins the band for the local premiere of the English language version of “The First Walpurgis Night." Once again the issue is freedom in general and freedom from religious persecution in particular.

But first a bit of history. “Walpurgis Night” refers to the evening of the feast day of Saint Walpurga, a British healer who (to quote McGegan) “ended up in Germany as a sort of missionary to the Goths and all those tribes who wore horns on their heads.” After her canonization her name was tacked on to the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane, traditionally celebrated on May 1st. It’s one of the old cross-quarter days, so called because they fall between the equinoxes and solstices. Beltane comes between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice.

The business of rebranding the old pagan holidays was common as the early Church went about the business of “Christianizing” the heathens. As marketing decisions go it was pretty smart. It’s much easier to convert folks if you don’t mess with their holidays. As the Encyclopedia Britannica relates:

Walburga [sic] is traditionally associated with May 1 because of a medieval account of her being canonized upon the translation of her remains from their place of burial to a church circa 870. Although it is likely that the date of her canonization is purely coincidental to the date of the pagan celebrations of spring, people were able to celebrate both events under church law without fear of reprisal.

“The First Walpurgis Night” deals with a group of German Druids who prefer to celebrate Beltane eve in the old-fashioned way, without interference from Christian authorities. Their solution is to scare the Christian forces away by disguising themselves as assorted imps, devils, and demons. “Help, my comrades,” sings a Christian guard (naturally, he’s a tenor), “see a legion / Yonder comes from Satan’s region!” Thrown into panic by the combination of the Druid’s costumes and their own imaginations, the would-be persecutors take it on the lam, leaving the Druids free to celebrate spring in their own way, thanks very much.

All this unfurls in nine scenes plus an overture that sets the scene. There are parts for solo alto, tenor, and bass-baritone, but for the most part the story of “The First Walpurgis Night” is told by the chorus. “It’s a really good sing for the choir,” observes McGegan. “It’s very high energy music…Mendelssohn lives in the era before decaf.” It’s also quite an entertaining and highly theatrical work, so it will be good to hear it sung in English.  Projected translations are great, but they can create a slight distance between the music and the audience.

Portrait of Mendelssohn by
James Warren Childe, 1839
en.wikipedia.org

About the English translation: it's not clear whether the chorus will be singing the one the multilingual Mendelssohn had prepared when he composed the work or the one William Bartholomew did in 1899. Either way, it will make the work that much more accessible.

The guest choral conductor this weekend is Trent Patterson, Director of Choral Studies and Music Education at the Webster University Department of Music.  Patterson is also the choral director at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Webster Groves, where four Webster music students serve as Scholar Singers in the Emmanuel Choir.

The Essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Beethoven’s overture and incidental music to “Egmont” and Mendelssohn’s “The First Walpurgis Night.” Soloists in the Beethoven are sopranos Sarah Price and Danielle Yilmaz. For the Mendelssohn the solo singers are alto Victoria Carmichael, tenor Thomas Cooley, and bass-baritone Enrico Lagasca. Performances are Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8 pm, March 10 and 11 at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

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

Symphony Preview: Darkest before the dawn

“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,” wrote Robert Burns back in 1785, “Gang aft agley.” Today I might add “and of symphony orchestras as well.”

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

This weekend, composer/conductor Sir James MacMillan (b. 1959) was originally scheduled to conduct the St. LouisSymphony Orchestra in a program that would have included two of his own compositions: “The World’s Ransoming” for English horn (cor anglais) and orchestra, with SLSO Principal English horn Cally Banham as soloist, and his Violin Concerto No. 2 with Nicola Benedetti, who gave the work its world premiere last fall.

Portrait of Mendelssohn by
James Warren Childe
(1778–1862), 1839
en.wikipedia.org

The good news is that Banham is still on the program. The bad news is that Benedetti is not, due to illness. Replacing the concerto will be “The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave),” op. 26 by Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847). Given that both MacMillan and the inspiration for Mendelssohn’s overture are Scottish, that seems appropriate.

Last heard here in 2017, Mendelssohn's overture powerfully summons up the wild and brooding Scottish islands that the composer visited in 1829. His specific inspiration was a visit to Fingal’s Cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa. “With its echoing acoustics, which emphasised the sound of rumbling waves,” writes Hannah Neplova of the BBC Music Magazine, “Fingal's Cave made a deep impression on Mendelssohn, who later sent his sister Fanny a postcard, with the work's opening theme, that read: 'In order to make you understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, I send you the following, which came into my head there.'”

The actual overture would take three years to write, with the final revised version getting its first performance in Berlin in 1833, with the composer at the podium. Given the overture’s enduring popularity, it looks like it was worth the wait.

The dark and stormy atmosphere of “The Hebrides” turns out to be a good prelude to the musical darkness of “The World’s Ransoming.” Composed in 1995/96 on a commission from the London Symphony Orchestra, it is as the composer relates in his program notes, the first of a series of three works related to the events and liturgies of the Easter Triduum—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil:

The World’s Ransoming focuses on Maundy Thursday and its musical material includes references to plainsongs for that day, Pange lingua and Ubi caritas as well as a Bach chorale (Ach wie nichtig) which I have heard being sung in the eucharistic procession to the altar of repose. The cor anglais part emerges from the orchestra to carry the lamenting ritual through a long, slow and delicately scored introduction and then through a process of metric gear-changes as the music becomes more animated.

Sir James MacMillan
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

The title of the work refers to the final lines of Pange lingua (by St. Thomas Aquinas) which describe Christ’s blood “shed for the world’s ransoming.”

The sense of anxiety and lamentation is strong in this music, enhanced by the dark and melancholy sound of the English horn. The piece opens with angry growling sixteenth notes in the low woodwinds that quickly expand to the flutes and brass sections. Violent interjections from the tympani lead to a massive dissonant outburst that quickly subsides to make way for the elaborately melismatic solo line of the English horn. More violent outbursts pop up as well as a weird setting of the Bach chorale for muted brass, wood blocks, and agogo bells that has an unsettling feel of Shostakovich-style mockery.

It all ends with a flurry of sixteenth and thirty-second notes in the woodwinds, a last despairing solo from the cor anglais, and finally, a few measures of whacks on large plywood cubes. The composer says that these “[set] the scene for the next piece in the cycle, the Cello Concerto.” Heard all by themselves, they bring the work to an oddly enigmatic conclusion.

The Easter theme continues after intermission with the “Russian Easter Overture,” Op. 26, written by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) in 1888, the same year as his Greatest Hit, “Scheherazade”.  Like both “The Hebrides” and “The Ransoming of the World,” this is music that begins in sonic darkness—in this case, the darkness of Passion Saturday, which precedes the unbridled celebration of Easter Sunday, the major holiday of the Orthodox Christian year.

The work is so well-known and so vividly described by the composer in chapter 20 of his autobiography “My Musical Life” (where it title is given as the “Easter Sunday Overture" in the 1923 Judah A. Joffee translation) that I’m going to just refer you there. It’s quite an interesting read, especially the part wherein the composer (who was not a believer) points out that his sonic description of Easter is as much about the holiday’s pagan origins as it is about its importance in the Christian calendar:

And all these Easter loaves and twists and the glowing tapers…. How far a cry from the philosophic and socialistic teaching of Christ! This legendary and heathen side of the holiday, this transition from the gloomy and mysterious evening of Passion Saturday to the unbridled pagan-religious merry-making on the morn of Easter Sunday, is what I was eager to reproduce in my Overture.

Portrait of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1898
by Valentin Serov (detail)
en.wikipedia.org

He went on to add that “in order to appreciate my Overture even ever so slightly, it is necessary that the hearer should have attended Easter morning-service at least once and, at that, not in a domestic chapel, but in a cathedral thronged with people from every walk of life with several priests conducting the cathedral service.” Most of us haven’t had that experience, but at least you can hear a fine performance of it by Yuri Termirkanov and the New York Philharmonic on my Spotify playlist. Or, if you want a closer look, check out the YouTube performance by USSR Symphony Orchestra conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov, which comes with a synchronized score.

Christianity—or at least Dante’s version of it in the “Inferno” section of his “Divine Comedy”—pops up again in the evening’s Big Finish, “Francesca Da Rimini: Symphonic Fantasy after Dante,” op. 32, composed in 1876 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). “I wrote it with love and love has turned out pretty well, I think,” he wrote to his brother Modest in October of that year. Audiences have generally agreed; this big, highly charged tone poem is often performed and is well represented on recordings.

Francesca Da Rimini (original name Francesca Da Polenta) was a real noblewoman in 13th-century Italy. The daughter of Guido da Polenta, ruler of Ravenna, Francesca was married off to one Gianciotto Malatesta, whose family ran the show in Rimini, just to the south. As is sometimes the case in marriages of political convenience, this union was not an especially happy one, and Francesca became embroiled in an affair with Gianciotto’s brother Paolo. Giancotto discovered the pair in flagrante delicto and, in a classic display of poor impulse control, murdered them both.

Tchaikovsky circa 1872
en.wikipedia.org

In the medieval moral universe, this meant that Francesca and Paolo were condemned to the second circle of Hell. In Canto V of “inferno” Dante (in the John Ciardi translation) describes this as:

a place stripped bare of every light
And roaring on the naked dark like seas
Wracked by a war of winds. Their hellish flight
Of storm and counterstorm through time foregone,
Sweeps the souls of the damned before its charge.

Here are “those who sinned in the flesh, the carnal and lusty / Who betrayed reason to their appetite.”  This does not, apparently, include guys like Giancotto, who simply betrayed reason for a little casual murder.

But I digress.

Tchaikovsky’s tone poem opens and closes with a vivid depiction of Dante’s “storm and counterstorm” in which strings and winds swirl madly over blasts of brass and percussion. This brackets a lavishly romantic section in which, as in Dante’s original, Francesca tells the story of her ill-fated romance. Dante is so moved that:

I felt my senses reel
And faint away with anguish. I was swept
By such a swoon as death is, and I fell,
As a corpse might fall, to the dead floor of Hell.

Tchaikovsky translates that into an especially violent and impassioned coda, with multiple brass chords and cymbal crashes depicting the poet’s collapse.

The Essentials: James MacMillan conducts the orchestra along with SLSO Principal English Horn Cally Banham in Mendelssohn’s “The Hebrides,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture,” Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimini,” and MacMillan’s “The World’s Ransoming.” Performances are Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8 pm, February 10 and 11, at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday performance will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

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

Symphony Preview: Chalk, cheese, and haggis

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

Version 3 of "Island of the Dead"
en.wikipedia.org

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In the first half of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this weekend (February 1 and 2), guest conductor Matthias Pintscher will lead the band in a pair of works by Russian Romantic composers who, while close friends, were still as different as chalk and cheese.

Aleksandr Scriabin
en.wikipedia.org

The composers in question are Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and Aleksandr Scriabin (1872-1915). Rachmaninoff, famously, was so stung by the harsh criticism of his first symphony that he spiraled into a depression that was cured only after extensive hypnotherapy. Scriabin, on the other hand, was a raging egomaniac unacquainted with self-doubt. Rachmaninoff was a stable family man. Scriabin was an eccentric who fathered illegitimate children while separated from his wife. Rachmaninoff was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church with strong moral beliefs. Scriabin was a Theosophy-addled mystic who began to see himself as divine.

Basically, Rachmaninoff was sane while Scriabin was a loony.

At the time Scriabin wrote the work that represents him this weekend, though, he hadn't yet achieved those heights of weirdness. Written in 1896, when the composer was only 24, his one and only Piano Concerto shares what SLSO program annotator Tim Munro calls the "inward-looking nature" of Chopin, whom Scriabin greatly admired. "Its restrained music," he writes, "allows few outbursts, holding its hand close, asking us as listeners to lean in, to observe closely." In a detailed analysis for the Pianist Musings blog, pianist and composer Kathryn Louderback adds that Scriabin "masterfully orchestrated the piece so the piano is enhanced, yet the orchestra also shines on its own. AND he created his own sound based on Classical and Romantic roots injected with his own style."

Rachmaninoff in 1900
en.wikipedia.org

The soloist this weekend is Kirill Gerstein, whose previous appearances here have included a surprisingly lyrical Tchaikovsky 1st back in 2013, a bravura performance of British composer Thomas Adès's "In Seven Days" in 2012, and a brilliantly improvisatory "Rhapsody in Blue" in 2014--a performance repeated here and recorded for CD on the Myrios label in 2017. 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), which would seem to make him a good bet for a work like the Scriabin concerto, which looks back to Chopin while still anticipating the composer's more radical later works.

The Rachmaninoff tone poem that opens the concerts this weekend draws its inspiration not from an earlier composer, but rather from a painting. Written in 1908, when the composer was 35, "Isle of the Dead" is based on a landscape of the same name that was the most popular thing created by the Swiss Symbolist artist Arnold Böcklin. The stark depiction of an island necropolis towards which a white-robed figure is being rowed apparently struck a sympathetic chord over a century ago and is still compelling today. Böcklin painted five different versions of it (one of which was destroyed in World War II) in the 1880s, and reproductions were apparently common in an early 20th century Europe still reeling from war and influenza.

Dominated by the "Dies Irae" theme that shows up in so much of Rachmaninoff's work, "Isle of the Dead" captures the ominous and majestic feel of the painting remarkably well, considering that the composer had seen only a black and white print of the original. A rocking 5/8 theme, suggestive of the sea and the boat, begins in the low strings and gradually takes over the orchestra. A more lyrical second theme (intended to represent the life force) rises in the strings about half way through, only to be beaten down by a series of relentless brass-and-percussion hammer blows. The piece ends with a return to the eternal sea.

The ruins of Holyrood Abbey
By Kaihsu at English Wikipedia

The Mendelssohn piece on the program--the "Symphony No. 3 in A minor", op. 56, "Scottish"--also drew some inspiration from death and ruin. Although most of it wasn't written until 1842, Mendelssohn got the idea for the slow introduction to the first movement when he visited the ruined Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh on an 1829 walking tour of Scotland. "In the evening twilight," he wrote, "we went today to the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved...Everything round is broken and mouldering and the bright sky shines in. I believe I today found in that old chapel the beginning of my 'Scottish' Symphony."

That opening theme aside, though, the "Scottish" nature of the symphony is a subject of some debate among critics and program annotators. Some, like the Eric Bromberger (in program notes for the San Diego Symphony), feel that "no one is sure what that nickname means. This music tells no tale, paints no picture, nor does it quote Scottish tunes." British composer and conductor Julius Harrison (in "The Symphony," edited by Robert Simpson, 1967), on the other hand, thought the symphony "illustrates the near-scenic aspect of Mendelssohn's romantic art" and felt that the jaunty clarinet theme of the Vivace non troppo second movement has "a touch of 'Charlie is My Darling' about its dotted quavers--something Mendelssohn may have remembered and set down."

I fall more into the late Mr. Harrison's camp, but wherever you come down on the "Scottishness" of this music there's no getting around its unflagging appeal and elegant construction. To hear this music is to love it.

The Essentials: Matthias Pintscher conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Kirill Gerstein Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, February 1 and 2. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Review: Young at heart

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

Matthew Halls
Photo by Eric Richmond

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

The accent was on youth this past Sunday (February 18, 2018) as guest conductor Matthew Halls made his St. Louis Symphony Orchestra debut with a program of music by a trio of early 19th-century composers who flourished early, died young, and left behind a sizeable body of music.

The concert opened with Symphony No. 3 in D major by Franz Schubert, dashed off in July 1815, when the composer was 18 years old. It opens with a slow, majestic introduction but the mood quickly turns sunny with a lilting main theme on the clarinet and remains cheerful for the next 25 minutes or so.

Conducting without a baton (as he did for the entire concert), Mr. Halls summoned those dramatic opening chords with a big, sweeping two-armed gesture and took the Adagio maestoso introduction at a relaxed pace that made the brisk first appearance of that main theme, expertly played by Associate Principal clarinet Diana Haskell, that much more energizing. It's marked Allegro con brio, which roughly translates as "quickly with energy," and it had energy in abundance.

In fact, his entire approach to the symphony made the most of the strong contrasts in the score. The Allegretto second movement was gracefully balletic, with a folksy charm in the contrasting middle section, while the Menuetto third movement danced along with subtle shadings of tempo and dynamics. The Presto vivace finale, with its tarantella-style 6/8 rhythm, raced along with fleet-footed playing by the strings and a satisfying sonic blend overall. Mr. Halls had Ms. Haskell stand for well-earned applause at the end along with her fellow woodwind leaders Philip Ross (Associate Principal oboe) and Andrew Gott (Associate Principal bassoon), but the fact is that everyone played extremely well.

The first half of the concert concluded with the Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F minor, which Carl Maria von Weber wrote in 1811 at the age of 24. As befits a composer best known for his operas, the concerto is a work that often feels like it should be sung, with a dark and technically challenging first movement, a second that could pass for an opera aria, and a flashy Rondo finale.

Scott Andrews

SLSO Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews was the soloist, delivering a performance that had plenty of heart and soul (to cite an old song title) along with an easy virtuosity that allowed him to sail through the concerto's many difficult passages with an Astaire-like grace. He had a sensitive, singing tone in the lyrical second movement and approached the Rondo finale with a playful joy. He got great support from Mr. Halls and the orchestra, including some lovely playing from Roger Kaza and his fellow horns.

The concert ended with big, passionate interpretation of the Symphony No. 1 in C minor by Felix Mendelssohn from 1824. The composer was only 15 when he wrote it, but as he already had a dozen string symphonies to his credit at that point you could hardly call it the work of a beginner. It has, in fact, a maturity that belies Mendelssohn's youth, and Mr. Halls gave it a sense of weight and majesty that I have not always heard in other interpretations.

Conducting without a score, he drew a muscular, bold sound from the orchestra from the dramatic opening right through to the dynamic final movement with its powerful sense of momentum and sophisticated double fugue. There were many wonderful moments here, such as the almost inaudibly soft string pizzicati in the final movement and the elegant woodwind chorale in the Andante second movement. The sharp contrast between the vigorous outer sections and the gentle center of the third movement Menuetto was especially striking, generating a kind of tension that called to mind the transition into the finale of the fifth symphony of Beethoven, whose final symphony appeared the same year as Mendelssohn's first.

One could take issue with some of Mr. Halls' choices, but the sheer power of the overall result spoke for itself. As SLSO conducting debuts go, this one was pretty auspicious, and I look forward to seeing more of Mr. Halls in the future.

Next at Powell Hall: Kevin McBeth conducts the St. Louis Symphony IN UNISON Chorus and soloist Oleta Adams in Lift Every Voice, a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on Friday, February 23, at 7:30 pm; note that as this is being written, the concert is standing room only. On Saturday at 7 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, February 24 and 25, the SLSO presents a showing of the Alfred Hitchcock classic North by Northwest with the score performed live by the orchestra. All concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: Forever young

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

Mendelssohn, age 12
Painting by Carl Joseph Begas

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Youth is the theme at Powell Hall this weekend (February 17 and 18, 2018) as Matthew Halls makes his St. Louis Symphony Orchestra debut conducting Schubert's Symphony No. 3 (written when the composer was 18), Weber's Clarinet Concerto No. 1 (age 24), and Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 1 (age 15; the picture above is Mendelssohn at age 12).

All three of this weekend's composers were guys who bloomed early and died young. Schubert passed away at the age of 30, Mendelssohn at 38, and Weber was the relative Methuselah of the bunch, dying just short of 40. And yet, despite their short time on this earth, all three produced an impressive body of music. Schubert led the pack with over 1000 compositions (not bad for someone whose career lasted only 20 years), but Mendelssohn and Weber were no slackers, either.

As you might have guessed from the amount of music he wrote, Schubert composed very quickly. His "Symphony No. 3" was dashed off in the summer of 1815 (mostly between July 11th and 19th) and was probably first performed by an amateur orchestra that was meeting at the house of the violinist Otto Hatwig. Like most of Schubert's symphonies, it didn't get an official public performance until well after the composer's death.

The symphony opens with the kind of slow dramatic introduction for which Haydn was so famous, but the mood quickly turns sunny with a chirping main theme on the clarinet and remains cheerful for the next 25 minutes or so. The Allegretto second movement is lilting and graceful, the third movement is almost too boisterous to truly justify its Menuetto designation, and the finale gallops along to a rapid tarantella rhythm. If this doesn't bring a smile to your lips, you're a hopeless grouch.

Carl Maria von Weber's first clarinet concerto (he wrote two, along with a concertino for the instrument) dates from 1811 and was written for the virtuoso Heinrich Joseph Baermann, whose playing also inspired pieces by Meyerbeer, Franz Danzi, and even Mendelssohn. Unlike the Schubert symphony, the Weber concerto is dramatic and operatic, with a dark and technically challenging first movement, a second that could pass for an opera aria, and a flashy Rondo finale. It's quite a workout, and should offer a chance for the soloist, SLSO Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews, to strut his stuff.

Carl Maria von Weber
Painting by Ferdinand Schimon

Mendelssohn's 1824 C minor symphony might bear the number "one," but the reality is that he had already written over a dozen string symphonies at that early point in his life, so he was hardly a newcomer to the form. That said, there's no doubt, as the anonymous annotator for the Utah Symphony points out, that the influences of Mozart and Beethoven can be heard here. Mendelssohn's love of Bach shows up as well, most notably in the fugal passages in the final movement. Mendelssohn put his own personal melodic spin on it, though, especially in the lyrical second movement, with what John Palmer at Allmusic calls its "beautifully transparent" orchestration.

Adding to the youthful feel of this weekend's concerts is the fact that guest conductor Matthew Halls, making his SLSO debut, is no geezer himself. Although he's only in his early 40s, he has already performed with orchestras around the world.

Originally a keyboard player and early music specialist, he has since expanded his repertoire to include Mozart, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, and even Messiaen and Michael Tippet. Reviewing his Beethoven Symphony No. 9 with the Toronto Symphony, the Toronto Star said that he "captured much of the energy and excitement that its first audience must have felt at its premiere nearly 200 years ago." It will be interesting to see if he brings that same fresh perspective to this weekend's program.

The Essentials: Matthew Halls conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and clarinet soloist Scott Andrews Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, February 17 and 18. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Review: The big score

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

David Robertson and the score of Elegie
Photo by Tim Munro

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

There was a sparse crowd for David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert Friday night (January 26, 2018), presumably because the program was heavily weighted towards newer music. That's a shame, because those who stayed away missed the USA premiere of the moving 2016 Elegie: Remembrance for Orchestra by Peter Ruzicka, a highly personal take on Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto by Julian Rachlin, and Harmonielehre, the first big, multi-movement orchestral work by John Adams.

"Beautiful" is a word I find myself applying all too rarely to much of what has been written for the concert hall in the last half-century or so, but beautiful is exactly what Mr. Ruzicka's Elegie is. Inspired by the "Porazzi theme," an enigmatic 13-bar fragment that Richard Wagner is said to have written the night before he died, the Elegie is scored for percussion, three flutes, and a string ensemble in which each player has a slightly different melodic line.

That sounds like a gimmick and rather looks like one, since the resulting score is around 3 feet tall and requires an extra-large podium, but the sound is breathtaking. The music begins so softly that it's almost inaudible and then, for the next nine minutes, alternates between sharply dissonant passages and bits of Wagner's original melody in a more conventional harmonic form. The music rises to a climax and then slowly subsides to a quiet, resigned conclusion, like the final breath of life. It was magical, and I'd be happy to hear it again.

Julian Rachlin in Tel Aviv
Photo from Wikipedia, public domain

Which is something I also don't find myself thinking very often about recent music.

Up next was the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, a piece which is so well known that performances of it can become, as Mr. Robertson wryly observed in his pre-concert talk, a kind of "musical wallpaper." It's a fair point; it has been played so many times by so many great musicians that it can be difficult for any one performer to make us listen to it with fresh ears.

And yet, that's exactly what soloist Julian Rachlin did Friday night. Decked out in a double-breasted tux, black tie, and red pocket square, Mr. Rachlin cut a dashingly retro Fritz Kreisler-esque figure on the stage, and played with an idiosyncratic style that created the illusion of improvising the music on the spot rather than playing a work written over 160 years ago. This was especially apparent in the first-movement cadenza, with its wide dynamic range and marked dramatic contrasts.

Mr. Robertson had said earlier that what he liked most about Mr. Rachlin was that the violinist seemed to actually speak via his instrument. And, in fact, what we got from Mr. Rachlin Friday night was as much a conversation with Mr. Robertson and the orchestra as it was a performance. Closely attuned to Mr. Robertson and the band, Mr. Rachlin delivered a subtly shaded reading that made this venerable warhorse sound almost new, and did it with impeccable virtuosity.

John Adams
Photo by Vern Evans

I loved it, and so did the rest of the audience, who applauded long and enthusiastically enough to warrant an encore: Eugene Ysaÿe's dramatic Sonata No. 3 for solo violin. At nearly seven minutes, it was a lengthy choice for an encore, as well as a technically challenging one, and was very well received.

The second half of the concert was devoted to John Adams's Harmonielehre. The title refers to the music theory book of the same name by Arnold Schoenberg, the inventor of serialism and the teacher of Mr. Adams's teacher Leon Kirchner. Since Mr. Adams explicitly rejected serialism, the title can be seen as a kind of ironic declaration of independence from the 12-tone row. The work was also an attempt to find some kind of rapprochement between the simplicity of minimalism and the harmonic richness that Wagner (also Mr. Ruzicka's source of inspiration) created in his later works, mostly notably Tristan und Isolde, with its famed opening chord.

This is big, dramatic music that has its origins not in the arid mathematical world of serialism but in the more romantic world of dreams and Jungian psychology. The dramatic opening and closing movements, as a result, are musical realizations of dreams that Mr. Adams had when composing the work, while the middle movement, titled "The Anfortas Wound," is explicitly Jungian. In composing it, Mr. Adams notes that he "was deeply affected by Jung's discussion of the character of Anfortas, the king whose wounds could never be healed. As a critical archetype, Anfortas symbolized a condition of sickness of the soul that curses it with a feeling of impotence and depression."

Peter Ruzicka
Photo by Anne Kirchbach

Mr. Robertson and the SLSO have performed and recorded Harmonielehre (for the orchestra's Arch Media label) in the past, so the high quality of Friday night's performance was no surprise. I have never been a big fan of Mr. Adams's style, but even I was swept away by the power of this music. That second movement--with its meandering theme that rises, falls, and never goes anywhere--was the epitome of despair. And the final moments of the last movement, with Principal Horn Thomas Jöstlein and the rest of his section playing pavillons en l'air (bells up, to get a more potent sound), were just plain thrilling.

Up next: members of St. Louis Symphony perform next at the Pulitzer Foundation, with concerts of chamber works by George Crumb, Toro Takemitsu, and Kaija Saariaho on Tuesday and Wednesday, January 30 and 31. The full orchestra plays at Powell Hall Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 8 pm, February 2 and 3, with an all-French program under the baton of Music Director Designate Stéphane Dèneve.

Symphony Preview: Everything old is new again

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

Peter Ruzicka

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The big draw for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this Friday and Saturday (January 26 and 27, 2018) is clearly Mendelssohn's popular 1844 Violin Concerto, with Lithuanian conductor and violinist Julian Rachlin in the solo spotlight and David Robertson conducting. The music on the rest of the program, though, is more recent--and that's what will be the focus of this preview.

How recent? Well, the concerts open the US premiere with Elegie: Remembrance for Orchestra by German composer Peter Ruzicka, which had its world premiere in 2016 by the Staatskapelle Dresden with our own David Robertson on the podium. And the entire second half of the evening consists of Harmonielehre, a sprawling 40-minute piece for large orchestra by John Adams that was first performed by the San Francisco Symphony in 1985. The SLSO gave the work its local premiere in 2005 and recorded it in 2007.

Ruzicka's Elegie is a short (nine-minute) work for strings along with three flutes and percussion that's based on 13 bars of piano music that Richard Wagner wrote just before his death. I'd like to tell you something about what Elegie sounds like, but it's so new that there are simply no recordings available--or none that I can find, anyway. Even that great repository of copyright violations and unofficial recordings, YouTube, has nothing. Fortunately, René Spencer Saller is able to quote the composer's own words for us in her program notes:

The last 13 bars that Richard Wagner wrote and played for his friends at the Palazzo Vendramin on the evening before his death are a declaration of love for [his wife] Cosima in the form of a mysterious question. The Elegie appears like a musical self-observation referring, as from afar, to Tristan and the circumstances surrounding its composition. Wagner's piano sketch has occupied me for a long time. Its openness and indefiniteness caused me to pursue the thought, and to undergo a highly personal musical rapprochement and distancing. For this, I selected the sonic potential of a string orchestra, underlain by the impulses and "shadowy sounds" of three flutes and percussion. Wagner's question ultimately remains. And it still seems unanswerable, even today.

After reading that a few times, I'm still not at all sure what to expect. The "Tristan" he mentions is Wagner's 1857 opera Tristan und Isolde, a work notable, as I wrote a few years ago, for both its Freudian erotic subtext and the way in which its opening chord anticipated the expanded harmonic palette of post-Wagnerian composers like Richard Strauss and Mahler.

The expansion eventually led to an active hostility to conventional notions of harmony and melody that is still more popular than it probably deserves to be in some compositional circles. What that might have to do with what we will hear this weekend, though, is not at all clear.

What is clear to me, after having listened to some of Mr. Ruzicka's other work, is that he doesn't seem to have much use for those conventional notions of harmony and melody even though, as his anonymous biographer at ArchivMusik notes, he often uses music by composers of the past as jumping-off points for his own works. His 1990 Metamorphoses for Large Orchestra, for example, has a kind of eerie stillness and a suspension of the usual concept of time that I associate with the work of Bruckner. His 1972 Feed Back, on the other hand, sounds like an explosion in a metal foundry combined with sound effects that wouldn't sound out of place in a Carl Stallings cartoon score. From his description, it sounds like Elegie might resemble the former more than the latter, but we'll see.

Mr. Ruzicka himself is an interesting character. Born in 1948 in Düsseldorf and currently professor of music at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg, his resume has the usual list of awards and notable job postings you see with any composer whose work has become prominent enough to capture the attention of major orchestras. What's less typical is that his education included studies in theater and law. The latter led to a law doctorate in 1977. As Chauncey used to remark to Edgar on The Bullwinkle Show, that's something you don't see every day.

John Adams

Whatever the Ruzicka work sounds like, it will almost certainly be different from John Adams's Harmonielehre. The title refers to the music theory book of the same name by Arnold Schoenberg, the inventor of serialism and the teacher of Mr. Adams's teacher Leon Kirchner. Since Mr. Adams explicitly rejected serialism, the title can be seen as a kind of ironic declaration of independence from the 12-tone row.

If you're heard any of the other works by Mr. Adams which David Robertson and the SLSO have performed locally, you will know what to expect. Adams himself, who always writes with impressive clarity, describes the piece as:

a large, three-movement work for orchestra that marries the developmental techniques of Minimalism with the harmonic and expressive world of fin de siècle late Romanticism. It was a conceit that could only be attempted once. The shades of Mahler, Sibelius, Debussy, and the young Schoenberg are everywhere in this strange piece. This is a work that looks at the past in what I suspect is "postmodernist" spirit, but, unlike Grand Pianola Music or [the opera] Nixon in China, it does so entirely without irony.

This is big, dramatic music that has its origins not in the arid mathematical world of serialism but in the more romantic world of dreams and Jungian psychology. The dramatic opening and closing movements, as a result, are musical realizations of dreams that Mr. Adams had when composing the work, while the middle movement, titled "The Anfortas Wound," is explicitly Jungian. In composing it, Mr. Adams notes that he "was deeply affected by Jung's discussion of the character of Anfortas, the king whose wounds could never be healed. As a critical archetype, Anfortas symbolized a condition of sickness of the soul that curses it with a feeling of impotence and depression."

Sandwiched between the contemporary sounds of Ruzicka and Adams will be the Mendelssohn concerto, a favorite of audiences for generations. The SLSO first performed it back in 1912. The soloist that first time was Albert Spalding, but when the orchestra played it in 1914 the soloist was none other than the noted virtuoso and composer Fritz Kreisler. Tickets for the princely sum of $1 and $2 were available, as the vintage program page reproduced in this week's program advertises, at the Main Floor Gallery of Famous-Barr.

The Essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violin soloist Julian Rachlin Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, January 26 and 27. The Saturday night performance will be broadcast, as usual, on St. Louis Public Radio. On Sunday at 3 pm, the orchestra is joined by The 442s and Compositions for L.I.F.E. for Rapped and Remixed, a modern-day twist on Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet ballet score. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Review: Nathalie Stutzmann brings a unique, joyous approach to familiar classics in her St. Louis Symphony debut

Nathalie Stutzmann conducing the
Monte Carlo Philharmonic
Photo: nathaliestutzmann.com

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The St. Louis Symphony concerts this weekend (April 22-24, 2016) offered a remarkable study in contrasts, with familiar classics by Mendelssohn, Sibelius, and Dvořák getting novel, idiosyncratic, and very compelling interpretations by French singer and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann in her SLSO debut.

Ms. Stutzmann's dual career path as both a singer and conductor is unusual, if not unique.  And while I don't want to read too much into that, it's hard not to hear in her performances the kind of direct emotional connection that I get from an accomplished singer. 

In the cabaret world we talk a lot about the importance of having a strong emotional connection to the music and lyrics of our songs.  That's the kind of strong connection I heard in Ms. Stutzmann's approach to the oft-heard works on the program this weekend.  It made me hear them in different ways that shed new light on the music.  In this respect she reminded me of the late Leopold Stokowski, whose work I admired tremendously even when it wasn't entirely to my taste—which was sometimes the case with Ms. Stutzmann.

The exceptionally delicate and slow opening of Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) Overture, for example, suggested an overblown and even lethargic approach to this depiction of the Scottish seacoast.  But while Ms. Stutzmann's extreme contrasts of tempo and dynamics sometimes felt more appropriate to Bruckner than Mendelssohn, the overall result was fascinating and even revelatory at times. To pick just one example: the full-orchestra climaxes, with Shannon Wood's tympani projecting forcefully over the rest of the band from his position on an elevated platform upstage center, vividly evoked the stormy landscape that had so impressed Mendelssohn.  I wouldn't call this a definitive interpretation by any means, but I'm glad I heard it.

Karen Gomyo
Photo: karengomyo.com

There was a similar interpretive freedom in the Sibelius Violin Concerto which, like the Mendelssohn, opened so quietly that the first few notes were almost inaudible, with soloist Karen Gomyo's entrance seemingly floating in from another plane of existence.  This was another ear-opening performance, with orchestral details revealed in high contrast.  It made the long-winded first movement feel even more discursive than it usually does, but the overall result was stunning in its impact.

It helped that Ms. Gomyo is such a technically proficient and artistically committed performer. The violin was Jean Sibelius’s first musical love and his concerto is both thoroughly idiomatic and incredibly demanding.  The long solo passages in the first movement and virtuoso fireworks in the finale will test the mettle of the best performers.  Ms. Gomyo handled it all with aplomb, delivering the intense passion of the second movement and fireworks of the third with equal credibility.  She was also completely in synch with Ms. Stutzmann, often moving and (seemingly) even breathing together.

The concluding work on the program, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70,  as always been a favorite of mine, for reasons that are difficult to articulate.  I can’t hear it without thinking of a long journey down a dark mountain river.  Flashes of light illuminate the trip, but we don’t see the sun until the work’s final moments, when the tonality changes from D minor to D major.

Maintaining a strong rhythmic pulse and a sense of momentum, then, have always been the hallmarks of a great Dvo?ák Seventh for me.  Ms. Stutzmann's interpretation had both, despite an opening tempo which felt a bit slow but turned out, in the end, to be exactly right for the musical structure she was creating.  By the time she got to the end of the energetic third movement Scherzo, she had built up such a head of steam that the decision to go straight to the final movement attacca (without pause) felt not just right but actually inevitable.   I wouldn't want this to be anyone's only exposure to Dvo?ák's masterpiece, given the number of fine recordings available out there, but it was entirely original and, taken on its own terms, entirely successful.

Ms. Stutzmann's style on the podium, by the way, is as uniquely personal as her conceptualization of the music.  She sways and dances with the music, virtually sculpting phrases out of the air with gestures that could be encompass everything from her fingers to her entire upper body.  And she does it all with a delighted smile that suggests a real pleasure in the business of making music.  That sense of joy on the part of a performer is always infectious and goes a long way towards winning over an audience.

Next at Powell Hall: David Robertson conducts the orchestra in two different programs April 29 – May 1.  With violin soloist Celeste Golden Boyer, he presents a Whitaker Foundation Music You Know concert on Friday, April 29, at 8 p.m. that features works by Ponchielli and Dukas as well as a new work by Stefan Freund.  On Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., he conducts the local premier of William Kraft's Tympani Concerto No. 2 with soloist Shannon Wood, as well as Schubert's monumental Symphony No. 9 ("The Great").  For more information, visit the symphony web site.

Symphony Preview: Something old, someone new

Nathalie Stutzmann

The St. Louis Symphony program this weekend (April 22-24, 2016) consists entirely of well-known classics: Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) overture, Sibelius's Violin Concerto, and one of my favorites, Dvořák's Symphony No. 7.

These pieces are popular for good reasons, not the least of which is the way each one conjures up a particular time and place. Mendelssohn's overture powerfully summons up the wild and brooding Scottish islands that the composer visited in 1829, the year before he wrote the overture. Sibelius does the same for the dark, brooding landscapes of his Finnish homeland in his concerto from over seven decades later. And for the nature-loving Dvořák, whose 1884 symphony brought him international acclaim, the Bohemian countryside is an ever-present character in his music.

This is, in short, a big weekend for musical travelogues.

While the music will be familiar, though, the figure on the podium will likely be considerably less so for local audiences. That's because this weekend's guest conductor, Nathalie Stutzmann, is not only new to St. Louis but relatively new to conducting as well. Born in 1965 in the Paris suburb of Suresnes, she showed talent as a singer at an early age, studying first with her mother, soprano Christiane Stutzmann, and then at the Nancy Conservatoire and later in Paris. Remarkably for a singer, she also studied piano, bassoon, and -- most remarkable of all -- conducting.

And she didn't study with just anyone. Her primary teachers have been the noted Finnish conductor and composer Jorma Panula (whose students include Esa-Pekka Salonen and Simon Rattle) and the legendary Seiji Ozawa. She even founded her own chamber orchestra, Orfeo 55, in 2009. The group plays both Baroque and modern instruments, and Stutzmann herself has said that, as a conductor, she feels a real affinity for "le grand repertoire" of the Romantics like Beethoven Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss.

Although Ms. Stutzmann has only been conducting professionally since 2008, she has already made quite an impression on the critics. For example, Em Skow, reviewing her US conducting debut -- Handel's Messiah with the National Symphony Orchestra -- waxed positively rhapsodic at DC Metro Theater Arts:

The evening's program notes summarized her as rigor and fantasy embodied in a conduct and I have to agree. It would do her a disservice to say she just connected to the layers of the work, or even to say that she moved others to do the same. The piece shown through her, radiating from her fingertips, dancing through her toes, bouncing through her arms, shoulders, and legs to the floor where even she had to hold on to the rail to steady herself at times. For her, three dimensions weren't enough to conduct with and her level of passion was truly an honor to witness.

"Her experience as a Romantic musician and her knowledge of older genres allow her to tackle Vivaldi and Mozart as well as Beethoven, Wagner or Brahms," writes Brian Fowler in a profile for medici.tv. "Her approach, both loose and rigourous, her science of phrasing and the emotional intensity of her interpretations, her exceptional mastery in the service of the passion she conveys: these are some of the elements that make her so popular in the eyes of her audience and the musicians she conducts."

If you'd like to experience her work before this weekend's concerts, Ms. Stutzmann has a YouTube channel with videos of her singing and conducting both Orfeo 55 and other notable orchestras.

Karen Gomyo

Karen Gomyo, the soloist for the Sibelius Violin Concerto, has come in for her share of critical praise as well. "A first-rate artist of real musical command, vitality, brilliance and intensity," wrote John Van Rhein at the Chicago Tribune in 2009, while the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Zachary Lewis called her "captivating, honest and soulful, fueled by abundant talent but not a vain display of technique" in 2011.

Even more to the point, though, Ms. Gomyo has gotten some raves for recent performances of the Sibelius concerto. Reviewing her appearance with the San Diego Symphony last December, for example, the San Diego Reader noted that the audience "was locked on Ms. Gomyo from start to finish because her performance brought us into those dark woods into which Sibelius, and all of us, have wandered from time to time." A 2013 performance with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra under Christopher Seaman made such an impact on the audience that the end of the first movement, as Anthony Bannon wrote for the Chautauqua Daily, "pulled several in the Amp to their feet for impulsive applause, eager to affirm the miracle of what was just heard."

All of which bodes well for the weekend. These are concerts filled with vital, compelling, and wonderfully dramatic works. It will be interesting to see what Ms. Stutzmann and Ms. Gomyo make of them. Performances at Powell Hall are Friday at 10:30 a.m. (a Krispy Kreme Coffee Concert with free coffee and doughnuts), Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m., April 22-24. Check the St. Louis Symphony website for details.