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: Nicholas McGegan on a box of Bachs and other Baroque notes

This weekend, December 3-5, Nicholas McGegan returns to Powell Hall for a program of music by JS Bach and his less-famous son CPE Bach. I talked with McGegan via Zoom on November 18th. Here’s a somewhat condensed transcript of that conversation. The complete video interview is available on Chuck’s Culture Channel on YouTube.

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

L-R: Nicholas McGegan and Chuck Lavazzi

Chuck Lavazzi (CL): On December 3rd through 5th, you will be here with the St Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) performing music by a pair of Bachs. The famous Johann Sebastian and one of his many musical sons Carl Philipp Emanuel. And since that's the upcoming event, let's talk a little bit about both of those guys. And I'd like to start with CPE Bach because he was a remarkable character and is probably not that well known to a lot of concertgoers.

Nicholas McGegan (NM): No, he's not. I think if his name was not Bach he might, in a way, be just as well known. There's no reason why he should be under his father's shadow, as it were. He's a wonderful composer in his own right. In terms of the kind of music he wrote and when he lived, he's kind of between two periods a little bit. He's not exactly what we think of as Baroque music, which is what, obviously, Johann Sebastian wrote. And he's not quite classical. He's an in-betweeny, if you like. Some people call it Rococo. But that makes it sound like mice in China, that it's all very pretty and stuff. His music is very daring, full of surprises. Sometimes very hard-driven. But also full of Empfindsamkeit is what the Germans call it, sensibility. It wears its heart on the sleeve, particularly in the slow movements.

CL: The Empfindsamer Stil

NM: Yeah, the sensibility. It's half of the Jane Austen novel. Without the sense. It's the sensibility. And he was much admired by Haydn, particularly, and he lived a really a very long time. He was born in 1714, but he died only four years before Mozart died, in 1788. So he had a long career. He worked for a good many years for King Frederick the Great of Prussia in Berlin, which was very much a full-time job because when the flute playing king wasn't destroying the Austrians and being rather good at the art of war, he seems to have been an extremely good flute player. And he'd certainly played a flute concerto every day of his life if he could. And so his musicians were kept very busy providing the flute concertos, making sure that they didn't have any bits he couldn't play.

CL: Yes, very important . [laughter]

NM: But he must've been really good, and he composed a little bit, too--maybe corrected by one of his lackeys. But then, CP Bach took over from his father in law, Georg Philipp Telemann, as the main Mr. Music Man, if you like, for Hamburg. So he had a very glittering career. He was famous as a keyboard player, but also as a theorist. He wrote a wonderful book on how to play the harpsichord and continuo, playing the harpsichord in the orchestra. And he also wrote a lot of music which is not performed today. He wrote many Passions, just like his father wrote the “St. John Passion” and “St. Matthew Passion.” He had to produce one every year for 20 years. And they're a lot more modest than-- or should we just say - let's be honest - a lot shorter than the Matthew Passion. The Hamburgers maybe were less patient. They only wanted them to last an hour. But he wrote a lot of those. He wrote oratorios. The only thing he never wrote-- just like his dad didn't, he didn't write any opera.

CL: I know he also wrote quite a few symphonies, and we have a couple of them on the program.

MM: He did indeed. First for strings,  then he published much grander ones with lots of wind instruments. And we're doing one of each. We're doing  one of the string symphonies, which was written and dedicated to the Baron van Swieten who was the person who later in life wrote the librettos for Haydn's “Creation” and “Seasons” and was a great lover of what, in those days, they referred to as ancient music. In other words, people like JS Bach. And he was a great friend and supporter of Mozart. His symphonies are extremely, let's say, wild. The one with winds is definitely what's called the sturm und drang, storm and stress style. This is very much away from the sort of comfy elegant music of some of the earlier part of the 18th century, or the slightly pre-classical music of his much younger brother, Johann Christian, who was a great influence on Mozart. This is wild, pushing the boundaries music-- and virtuoso too. You could tell that decaf had not been invented.

CL: Well, coffee houses were very popular back then.

NM: Very popular, but it was the real thing. So you can't get too comfy in his music, and I think that's something that Haydn learned. Just constantly astonish, leading your audience up the garden path; give them something they're not expecting. And it's a terrific style he had. He also is another wonderful link because he had a number of students on the keyboard, two of whom were Mendelssohn's great-aunts. One of the last pieces that CP Bach wrote was a double concerto for Mendelssohn's great-aunts. And the Bach connection goes, obviously, from JS Bach through to his son, CP Bach, and to Wilhelm Friedemann, another of the sons, and then down through the Levy's and Itzigs, the very wealthy Berlin families who then, in the early 19th century, had Felix and Fanny, the two famous Mendelssohns at the beginning of the 19th century. They got the Bach bug big time, but they got it directly, as it were, through relatives and from Bach's children.

"Bach Carl Philipp Emanuel 1"
by Franz Conrad Löhr (1735–1812)[1]
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, M.589.
Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Commons

CL: This brings up something else that I think you talked about on the SLSO Zoom seminar Wednesday (November 16), is that Bach's music was really not well known after his death, and it tended to disappear for quite a while until it started getting revived by people like Mendelssohn.

NM: Absolutely, I mean, a lot of composers go into that sort of slump, if you like. Vivaldi's another case. If you'd asked Beethoven who Vivaldi was, he probably wouldn't have had the first idea. But Beethoven did know who Bach was because he kept a copy of the 48 Preludes and Fugues by his bed. And he'd studied that. But really, the only composer who kept a good deal of popularity after his death was Handel, but not the operatic Handel, the one that we know and love as much these days, but the oratorio one. And so oratorios like Messiah and so on, continued to be performed, and have continued to be performed up to the present day. But most composers go out of fashion, and I think you can say that that happened to JS Bach big time.

CL: In fact, two of the pieces you're going to play in the second half, the Brandenburg Concertos, just really sat on a shelf for many years.

NM: They did. And I think one of the reasons for this, is that JS Bach, relatively speaking, published very little of his music. It's slightly odd, in the sense that he lived so many years in Leipzig, which really to some extent still is the center of the European book trade. The Leipzig book fair is still a big deal, and it certainly was in Bach's day. If you wanted a book published, or you wanted to find a book, you went to Leipzig, and somebody would have a copy. That's where the publishers exhibited their wares. And so Bach's published works are merely works for the ages. He published organ preludes, he published French Suites, German Suites. These are publishing monuments, not terribly practical. Music that was meant to be played, generally just circulated in manuscript, and that's what happened to the Brandenburgs. Now, first of all, let's get the fact that the Brandenburgs, he didn't write them as Brandenburgs, he wrote them as concertos for next Thursday, wherever he happened to be. The earliest one is Brandenburg 1, some of which dates from 1713 when he was in Weimar. And then he went to the Court of the Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, who being a Calvinist had no organ in his chapel, so there was no sacred music to write. But the prince himself played the viola de gamba, and could even have played in Brandenburg 6, in fact, there's a gamba part. And so what the Brandenburgs really is, is a marketing piece.

CL: A resume, in fact.

NM: A resume. One is that if you wanted to publish anything, or you wanted to get something to look like a finished piece of music, in those days you'd publish them in half dozens, occasionally in dozens. So that you have the Twelve Concertos by Corelli. You have the Six Concertos of Handel, Opus 3. The Twelve Concertos, Opus 6. So to have six Brandenburgs is sort of the standard unit, as it were, to show what you mean. He could have published them, but no one could have played them. They're very, very, very difficult, and need a very fancy orchestra that most people couldn't have afforded in those days. But it is, on the other hand, a resume, as you say. It's his, "This is what I can do. This is some of the wildest concertos that you'll ever hear." Put them in a nice book. Write a lovely preface. A very obsequious preface in French to the Marquess. Dated exactly 300 years ago, incidentally. It's March the 24th. Happens to be Telemann's birthday. Very good reasons for playing them, I think, and sent them off to the marquess who was a close relative of the king of Prussia, not Frederick the great, but his rather eccentric father and apparently put them on the shelf. And that was it. He may have opened the score. He may not have done. He might've received things like this every couple of weeks. Lots of people would like to work for a member of the Royal family and they send in their CV, some saying, "I'm really good as a wine waiter." And some saying, "Oh, I've written some concertos. You might like them." So they sat in the library, and they didn't really get opened. They went through various hands until the middle of the 19th century.

CL:  You talked about how someone might've said, "I'm a great wine waiter." Composers were kind of seen at the time and musicians just as potential employees, probably not much more respectable than a wine waiter really.

NM:  Yes. I mean, he was the boss. But it was quite normal, for example, in 18th century England to put out a wish to have a servant who could be a valet and horn player. There are even pictures of people pretty much doing that because you want to have a really good doorbell, you hired two horn players who would stand. There's even a house in Devon where there are two hooks beside the door for the two horns so that the servants could rush down and go, "Toot, toot, toot," when somebody's carriage arrived to welcome them.

CL: As long as we're talking about these concerti, let's not fail to mention who's going to be playing them the third through the fifth. The viola parts are going to be played by Andrew Francois and Beth Guterman Chu.

NM: . Wonderful members of the St. Louis Symphony. And it's unusual to have concertos for violas. On the other hand, composers themselves loved playing the viola. Bach loved playing the viola. We know that. And Mozart loved playing the viola almost more than the violin. The Sinfonia concertante, for example, he played the viola. So even though the viola doesn't have much of a solo repertoire, it loves being in the ensemble. And I'm sure Bach wrote this for himself to play with a mate because it's definitely very intimate. It's a musician's piece. You can just imagine this. It's the smallest of the Brandenburgs, not really designed for a concert hall at all, more like a drawing room and it's written for six or seven musicians to have a good time.

"Statue of J.S. Bach in Leipzig" by Zarafa
at the English language Wikipedia.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Common

CL: Yeah. Well, in fact, Beth Guterman Chu was talking about how, at least in the second movement, it felt like an intimate conversation among friends.

NM: Oh, sure. And these people, travel wasn't so easy in the 18th century. So if were at the prince's court, you were there most of the time. You'd get to know your colleagues and you're going to get to know them very well until you would want to have music to play in the little ensemble that he had. Bach only had about 10 musicians there. So it's known as an orchestra but it's not what we would think of as an orchestra, more like an expanded chamber group.

CL:  We don't want to also forget Yin Xiong, who is playing the cello part.

NM: The cello part plays with the violas a lot. The gambas sort of sit in the background being super sophisticated. String instruments like the violin, the viola, at lesser extent the cello, were not regarded as aristocrats' instruments. The viola de gamba was the aristocratic instrument. It was played by princes. It was played also by women, the most famous being, I think her name is Madame Henriette, or possibly Madame Victoire. One of the daughters of Louis XV played the viola de gamba. And she has her viola de gamba on a little tuffet, like with muffet because obviously she's got those dresses they used to wear that looked as if they would quite like to be a sofa. It's hard to get a gamba between your knees if that's what you're wearing. But you could play it on a tuffet. And lots of pieces are dedicated to her. There was also in England a famous lady called Anna Ford, who actually played the viola de gamba in public. But the cello was also an aristocratic instrument later on. And, indeed, three or four Princes of Wales, including the present one, have at some time in their lives played the cello. I know that the present one plays the cello because I was at university at the same time as he was. And I actually nearly had to conduct him playing the cello once in an orchestra. Just escaped it. Can you imagine trying to tell a prince he was flat and wanting to keep your head?

CL: Likely an issue there. So this brings me to another thing I wanted to talk about. It's not specifically about this concert. But it's something you brought up yesterday in the call. The whole soundscape surrounding music of this period has changed. I mean, the soundscape of our world has changed in general. In fact, there was an excellent book with that title by R. Murray Schafer that came out in 1993 [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/585024.The_Soundscape] chronicling how the world has gotten increasingly louder over the past few hundred years. But these were all works intended to be performed in very small rooms for very small audiences. And there are issues, I would think, trying to scale them up for, say a 2,500-seat hall, like Powell Symphony Hall.

NM: Yeah. Certainly, things have changed a lot. It's not only sound, but light has also changed. We've got something called electricity. I think Paris was the first city to get streetlights, had about 50 of them. We can imagine everybody else just wandered around in the dark. We can't imagine that now. Of course, there were many fewer people. And you simply, in the 18th century, couldn't light a concert hall that held 2,500 people. You could light a theatre because you lit the stage. And you lit the individual boxes. But everything else was-- I should think we would think of it as pretty dingy.

So concert halls tended to be pretty small. Can you imagine lighting every single lightbulb individually in Powell Hall, how long that would take? And a candle burns half an hour, constantly needing to be changed. So aristocrat's houses had chambers, the knights' rooms or princes' rooms or ballrooms, but they would hold relatively small number of people. And the great thing about a prince's concert is in order for it to be classy, you want to keep as many people out as you can. You wouldn't want anybody less than an archduchess actually to be listening. It would lower the tone. And even if there was only one prince there and he was the guy paying you, that was enough. You could also be sure that CP Bach working in Berlin JS Bach in Cothen and the Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy for Haydn, these were all people who loved music. And a lot of them played themselves. And so we're talking a very sophisticated audience who would, should we say, get the complications of Bach whether they were actually playing it and had to experience how hard it is to play, or just listening to the intricacies of it. And being up close and personal to something like a Brandenburg really helps you hear just how intricate these pieces are. Orchestra music comes in the later part of the 18th century, but even then Haydn's concert hall is seven or eight hundred. That was considered a large space because they couldn't light anything bigger, and so-- nor could the orchestra see.

So what we think of as a concerto is something like the Tchaikovsky piano concerto. These, though, were concertos because they feature a single or a small group of instruments, in these cases, small groups of instruments, what in the 18th century would have been called concerti grossi, big concertos rather than just one solo, like “The Seasons” of Vivaldi and an audience of maybe 25 people sitting round. It's a very different aural experience. And when you're trying to project that into a space of a couple of thousands, the size of the coliseum in Rome, if you like, you have to do them in a slightly different way. In the same way, as if you were not using a microphone, if you're talking to a small group, you're talking in one way. If you're talking to two and a half thousand people, you're talking in a different way. You're enunciating, you're speaking more slowly, and so on. I've done all the Brandenburgs in Powell Hall and they worked fine, but it would be a very different experience. I always wished that the artist was on stage. Now, funnily enough, the hall where Bach played in the palace in Cothen still survived. We can see how big it was. Architecturally, it was altered in the early 19th century. It's been modernized, but it hasn't been made any bigger. And we don't even know if that was the room they were actually played in. It could have been done in a smaller one. I was quite recently in a palace just north of Berlin, where Frederick the Great lived when he was a young man. And there is a music room, but it was too big--35 feet by 35 or something. He had a much smaller room around the corner where he really liked to play, which is the size of the average living room.

CL: So as a conductor, are there adjustments you have to consciously make? Are ways that you have to think differently about this music because you're performing for such a large group?

NM: Well, one thing you have to do is not to try to aggrandize it so that you sort of sling it to the back of the hall. What you want to do is to encourage the audience maybe to move a couple of inches further towards us, sit on the edge of their chair, and just get used to the intimacy of the music.

CL: Draw the audience in as they sit, as opposed to trying to push the music out.

NM: Yeah. Yeah, I think it would be great if everyone was in theyou first 10 rows, frankly. The harpsichord is the ideal instrument for a small room. If you had a Bösendorfer or a great big Steinway on stage trying to play this, it would just drown everything out. On the other hand, a harpsichord trying to play the Tchaikovsky piano concerto would be extremely silly. First of all, you wouldn't have enough notes. You have no dynamics. And harpsichords are designed for small spaces. So I hope they won't mic the harpsichord to make it artificially loud because, in vast places, it needs to be there as part of the sound, but it's not adding any extra chords or anything like that because Bach's already fully scored. It’s continuo, so. It adds a bit of pep to the rhythm as well.

CL: And we have a harpsichordist, Mark Schuldiner. Have you worked with him before?

NM: Yes. Several times in St Louis, he came down when we were doing, I think it was the Vivaldi “Gloria,” and he actually played the organ. But I also know him from Chicago because one of the things he does besides playing very well-- is he also is an excellent tuner. And I was doing a concert of 17th Century Jewish music from Venice. And there was suddenly Mark providing all the keyboards. So it was great to see him again. So this is the third time I've worked with him. He's terrific. So that will be great fun to see him again. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump down from Chicago with the harpsichord. I don't know if he's bringing his own harpsichord. We'll find out.

CL: Okay. I think that's mostly what I had on my list of things to bring up. I do want to say this. I have seen you many times at Powell Hall and one of the things I always notice, you don't just walk out on stage, you bound out on stage. I mean at one point commented on the fact that you ran out on stage, and you walked up to the podium, and you rubbed your hands together and I said it was like he was saying, "Oh, this is going to be such fun."

NM: Well, it's going to be, I hope. I'm not sure I'm quite the bounder. I don't bound quite as much, but I do a little bit more than I used to because I had a hip replacement, so I can bounce a bit more. I'm not quite the Bugs Bunny me going out there, that that might have been a number of years ago.

I think we should also mention Yin Xiong again. She's going to be playing this remarkable CP Bach cello concerto. It's an unusual piece because there aren't that many concertos for the cello compared to the violin. And CP Bach's ones also are written for several instruments. He would write a concerto which could be played on the cello, on the keyboard, or the flute. The music is essentially the same, he's adapting them perfectly for whichever instrument it is. So he had to write a flute concerto, of course, because the king probably paid him to. But then he said, "Well, why not make it for the cello as well? We've got a mate who plays the cello, and I'm sure he'd love to have this concerto." And then he said, "Well, I'm a great keyboard player. I could play it on the harpsichord." So it gives it a bit more of a shelf life.

I have to say, the one she's playing in A major is my favorite of the three, very sparkly in the last winter, especially, but with a very, very deep, sad, miserable, back to that very sensitive, full of sensibility slow movement, wearing your heart on your sleeve, which of course, as the 18th century goes on, becomes increasingly part of the makeup of how people thought. In Goethe, you've got “The Sorrows of the Young Werther,” which is all about wearing your skin inside out, and feelings, deep feelings. And that's very much something, of course, that CP Bach got from Daddy. The slow movement of Brandenburg 6 is a very deep, beautiful, quiet piece, but he traded on it. And the slow movements of nearly all the pieces that we're playing, the CP Bach pieces, come to that format, and they're really wonderful.

CL: So you can see the seeds of what would eventually become the century of the Romantic sensibility.

NM: Absolutely. And it's not the sort of music that's merely elegant. They had beating hearts, and they loved and lost just as we do.

CL: Yes. We tend to have this artificial image of these stiffly-posed people in wigs and elaborate gowns, and we, yeah, forget that they were just as human as the rest of us.

NM: Yeah. And the ones we're thinking of are only the rich ones. Can you imagine what it'd be like if you're basically living on the street or making one of those dresses by candlelight, working through the night, sewing the silk for something that the queen might wear once.

CL: Yes. It isn't the way it looks in those Hollywood movies from the '50s, but [laughter]--

NM: Yeah, the scarlet pimpernel is not how it was for everybody.

CL: Yes. I always say that I'm glad I was not born before the age of relatively painless dentistry, myself.

NM: Yes. Young, rich, and good teeth is what you needed.

CL: Nic McGegan, thanks for taking some time to talk to me. Once again, you are going to be conducting music by CPE Bach and Johann Sebastian Bach, December 3rd through the 5th at Powell Hall, slso.org for more information. I look forward to seeing you on stage again because you always, as I alluded to earlier, have this tremendous joy and enthusiasm for the music. And you know that that really communicates itself through the audience.

NM: Thank you. I can't wait to come back because I was supposed to have a concert last February, which is of course just when the symphony was not performing, so I missed out on my annual jaunt to St. Louis. But I get to come now, and that's absolutely terrific. Can't wait. And with a live audience too.

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

Symphony Preview: Vivaldi in excelsis

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

Caricature of Antonio Vivaldi by
Pier Leone Ghezzi in 1723.

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This weekend (December 1 and 2) and next (December 8--10) the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is giving us a mini Baroque festival with the emphasis on the music of one of the most prolific composers of the period, Antonio Vivaldi (1678--1741). He was a guy whose life and reputation had enough ups and downs to rival some roller-coasters.

It started the day he was born. Atypically for the time, he was baptized immediately after his birth in the family home in Venice. It's not entirely clear why--the earthquake that struck the city that day is one explanation, as is the possibility that he was a sickly newborn and not expected to survive--but in any case the official church baptism would wait for two months.

The young Vivaldi was a frail child, possibly suffering from asthma, but he nevertheless proved to be an adept violinist early in life. He joined the priesthood as a teenager and by the age of 25 was appointed maestro di violino (violin master) at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy), a girls' orphanage in Venice. He would remain there for the next three decades, cranking out the vast majority of his huge output, including around 500 concertos for various combinations of instruments.

Judging from the difficulty of many of those pieces, girls at the Ospedale were pretty respectable musicians. Here's the French politician and writer Charles de Brosses enthusing about them, cited in an article by Hugo Ticciati at The Guardian: "There is nothing so charming as to see a young and pretty nun in her white robe, with a sprig of pomegranate blossoms over her ear, leading the orchestra and beating time with all the grace and precision imaginable." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, no less, described the music he heard there as "voluptuous and affecting." Vivaldi's skill at the violin was much admired as well.

Even so, Vivaldi's relationship with the board of directors as the Ospedale was apparently rocky. His contract came up for renewal every year and the vote was often close. They actually failed to renew it in 1709, but two years later, seeing the error of their ways, hired him again. This time the vote was unanimous.

Over the years, Vivaldi's fame spread to the major European music capitals, including Paris, Prague, and Vienna. But towards the end of his life his compositions were seen as unfashionable and dated. He wound up dying in poverty in Vienna. Interest in his work faded, and copies of his music were hard to come by. "For nearly 200 years," writes Peter Gutmann at classicalnotes.net, "Vivaldi was a historical footnote, although a somewhat influential one...His only lasting recognition came from the fervent admiration of Bach, who modeled his own concerto style after Vivaldi's and adapted for keyboard nine Vivaldi violin concerti (even though Bach devotees tended to disparage the source)."

The St. Louis Symphony Chorus

That began to change in the early 20th century when his cause was taken up by, among others, the composer Alfredo Casella and the famed conductor Arturo Toscanini. These days, works like the Gloria for chorus and orchestra (which we'll hear this weekend) and The Four Seasons (next weekend) are concert standards.

This weekend's concerts offer a real feast for Vivaldi fans. In addition to the Gloria, there are three concertos, four opera arias (he claimed that he wrote over 90, although only 46 survive), and a number from a cantata written as a commission for the marriage of Louis XV of France. René Spencer Saller offers detailed descriptions of all of them in her program notes , so I won't try to duplicate that here. Instead I'll just note that the soloists for all the concerti are members of the SLSO, which doesn't happen often enough, in my view.

Conducting all this will be the wonderfully energetic Nicholas McGegan, who invariably lights up a concert stage with his enthusiasm. When I saw him bound out to the podium for a program of Baroque favorites back in 2013, I marveled at how his face lit up with a cherubic smile. His body language was saying: "this is going to be FUN!" That kind of spirit is as infectious as the cold I'm currently trying to shake.

"Vivaldi," Igor Stravinsky once declared, "is greatly overrated--a dull fellow who could compose the same form so many times over." I beg to differ. After this weekend, I expect you will as well.

The Essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in an all-Vivaldi program, featuring Vivaldi's Gloria, Friday and Saturday, December 1 and 2, at 8 pm. The performance takes place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preivew: All roads lead to Mozart

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Nicholas McGegan, who is conducting the St. Louis Symphony in a program of (mostly) Mozart this weekend, is clearly a man who enjoys his work. When I've seen him conduct the orchestra, he practically bounds out to the podium, his face alight with a cherubic smile. His body language shouts: "this is going to be FUN!" And so it always is.

Mozart, party animal

That couldn't be more appropriate for Mozart, a fellow who certainly knew how to enjoy himself. The portrait of Mozart as a potty-mouthed party animal in Peter Shaffer's popular play "Amadeus" may be distorted, but it's a distortion based on reality. Even as a child, some of Mozart's letters home were, as Brockway and Weinstock write in "Men of Music," "so coarse (to our taste but not to that of the eighteenth century) that their editors have scarcely left on unbowdlerized. Mozart is often in high, and very often in ribald, spirits."

Those high spirits are clearly in evidence from the very beginning of the "Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major," K. 271, that closes the first half of this weekend's concerts. "This is an astonishing and delightful opening," writes Charles Rosen of the Allegro first movement in "The Classical Style, "surprising not only for its use of the soloist at the very outset, but also for the wit with which he enters, as he replies to the orchestral fanfare." The second movement is dramatic and even tragic, but the Rondeau: Presto finale, with an unexpectedly graceful minuet in the middle, once again shows Mozart in jolly form.

The soloist for the concerto is Music Director David Robertson's wife, Orli Shaham. A frequent guest at Powell, Ms. Shaham is a versatile pianist, as comfortable with contemporary music as she is with the established classics. She also has a theatrical keyboard style that's fun to watch, which should mesh nicely with Mr. McGegan's exuberance.

The other Mozart music on the program is a bit more solemn: three entr'actes written in 1774 for the five-act drama "Thamos, King of Egypt" by Tobias Philipp, baron von Gebler. The play is filled with skullduggery and backstabbing in ancient Egypt, so Mozart's incidental music is appropriately dramatic. "Gebler’s play," writes John Henken in program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "is a Masonic allegory, and though not yet a Mason himself, Mozart gave it much of the expressive symbolism he later lavished on The Magic Flute. This is particularly apparent in the first Interlude, with its richly rhetorical chords, slippery chromaticism, muscular tension, and its contrast of light and dark." Whether or not Mozart ever saw a production of the play with his music is unknown.

Haydn in 1792
Artist: Joseph Hardy

Also on the bill this weekend is the "Symphony No. 98 in B-flat major," written in 1792 by Mozart's older contemporary (and admirer) Joseph Haydn. It was part of a dozen symphonies (the last ones he wrote, in fact) composed for a pair of trips to London in the last decade of the eighteenth century that were highly successful, both in terms of critical reception and income. It's notable for, among other things, a second movement that might contain a passing reference to the British national anthem. "The slow movement," writes Philip Huscher in program notes for the Chicago Symphony, "opens with a veiled reference to the first two phrases of 'God save the King,' which Haydn had heard played by a wind band 'in the street during a wild snowstorm' while he was putting the finishing touches on the symphony. Donald Tovey, the British critic and writer, thought that the slow movement, which toys with quoting from Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, was Haydn’s way of paying homage to his friend. Whatever Haydn’s intent, this music is like a great hymn."

The symphony is also notable for its final movement. "At the very end," writes Mr. Huscher, "Haydn uncharacteristically takes the spotlight. Since it was still Haydn’s habit in 1792 to conduct his symphonies from the keyboard, where he would normally provide the unobtrusive harmonies of the continuo part, he wrote a few measures of rippling arpeggios for himself to play. Like all of Haydn’s inside jokes, it’s over in a flash. Apparently the London audience loved it, for, as Haydn’s journal boasted, in a newly learned English that would have impressed Mozart, 'the new Symphony in B-flat was given, and the first and last Allegros encort.'" Playing the role of Haydn this weekend will be Ms. Shaham. Somehow, I don't think she quite looks the part of a 60-year-old Austrian, but I expect her performance will make you forget that.

Gluck in 1775
Artist: Joseph Duplessis

The concerts open with thirteen dances from Christoph Willibald Gluck's 1761 ballet "Don Juan," as arranged by Mr. McGegan. As Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, Gluck's ballet is based on Molière's play "Le Festin de pierre" ("The Stone Guest"), many elements of which would find their way into Lorenzo DaPonte's libretto for Mozart's "Don Giovanni" over two decades later. "The most arresting music," notes Mr. Schiavo, "comes at the end of the ballet, when the preternatural statue confronts Don Juan and effects his doom. Here furious scale figures, piercing harmonies and menacing tones of the wind instruments make for strong musical drama."

Compared to what Gluck's contemporaries were writing back then, those final movements are highly arresting and melodramatic. Audiences seem to have found it to be rather strong stuff, though. "Gluck’s audience," wrote David Hurwitz in a 2009 article for "Listen" magazine, "was fascinated by the work, as much for the dancing and decor as for the music itself. It exercised a certain horrid fascination — some listeners actually found the piece ugly, but still couldn’t resist it." He goes on to observe that "Gluck’s music inspired a whole new generation of composers. Mozart’s own 'hell scene' in Don Giovanni reveals the clear influence of Gluck’s earlier effort, and not just because it’s in the same key. It is the music’s expressive intensity that links the two composers."

This weekend, it seems, all roads lead to Mozart.

The Essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with piano soloist Orli Shaham, on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., November 6 and 7. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Concert Review: Nicholas McGegan presents Bach family values with the SLSO, January 30 and 31, 2015

Nicholas McGegan
nicholasmcgegan.com / Steve Sherman

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Nicholas McGegan
What: Music of the Bach family
When: January 30 and 31, 2015
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis

Sons who go into the family business are often less successful than their fathers. In the case of the J.S. Bach family, though, it was just the opposite. Four of the ten Bach children who survived to adulthood went on to careers as composers and the two represented in this weekend's St. Louis Symphony concerts—Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714-1788) and Johann Christian (1735-1782)—went on to eclipse dad in popularity, at least during their lives.

These days, of course, the work of the Bach sons is heard far less often than that of Papa Bach who, according to bachtrack.com, was the third most-performed composer in 2014. So it was quite a treat to hear guest conductor Nicholas McGegan and the SLSO perform their music alongside that of their far more famous father. If what's on the bill this weekend is at all representative, I'd say that while J.C. showed less of his dad's influence (not surprising as J.S. died when the boy was only 15), C.P.E was by far the more adventurous and original composer.

Andrea Kaplan
stlsymphony.org

J.C. Bach was represented by his "Sinfonia concertante in C major for Flute, Oboe, Violin, Cello, and Orchestra" (Warburton catalog number C43, in case you're keeping track) written in 1775 and first performed in March of that year in London, where J.C. made his home for many years (hence his sobriquet "The London Bach"). The sinfonia concertante—a symphonic work with two or more soloists—was a form on which the composer lavished a fair amount of attention (he wrote eighteen of them).

This one is certainly a classic example. The four soloists all get plenty of chances to show off (although I think the winds get the best stuff) and the piece is, overall, a typically charming example of the galante style, a school of composition characterized by elegant melodies and a lack of complex counterpoint. It's not especially absorbing music, but exceptionally well crafted.

That said the orchestra, and soloists, under Mr. McGegan's meticulous and energetic direction, made a credible case for the piece Friday morning. The soloists, all drawn from the SLSO, were Jennifer Nichtman on flute, Philip Ross on oboe, Ann Fink on violin, and Melissa Brooks on cello. Their playing had the kind of polish and grace that was a perfect match for the galante style.

Asako Kuboki
stlsymphony.org

Although written at around the same time as J.C. Bach's "Sinfonia concertante," C.P.E. Bach's "Sinfonia in D" (183/1 in Alfred Wotquenne's 1906 catalog of C.P.E.'s music) looks both backward to the Baroque legacy of his father and forward to the drama of the Romantic period. Filled with dramatic pauses and surprising modulations, the "Sinfonia" sounds rather modern even now. Mr. McGegan's interpretation was dramatic but never exaggerated, perfectly capturing the essence of this remarkable music.

If J.C. Bach perfectly captured a moment in musical history, C.P.E. Bach had an idiosyncratic vision that feels timeless. Maybe that's why we're seeing a major resurgence of interest in C.P.E. these days, with an uptick in recordings and performances and a new critical edition of his works published by the Packard Humanities Institute, in cooperation with the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, and Harvard University. Let's hope we see more of his works on local stages.

J.S. Bach was represented by three works this weekend: the "Sinfonia" (essentially the overture) to his secular cantata "Non sa che sia dolore" (BWV 209), the "Concerto in D minor for Oboe, Violin, and Strings" (BWV 1060), and his popular "Orchestral Suite No. 3" (BWV 1068). The "Sinfonia" featured a bravura solo performance by Associate Principal Flute Andrea Kaplan while the "Concerto" was distinguished by the impeccable playing of SLSO second violinist Asako Kuboki and Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks. Their performance styles were very different—Ms. Dirks seemed to be more engaged with the orchestra while Mr. Kuboki apeared more focused on the score—but the results were uniformly excellent.

Jelena Dirks
www.loree-paris.com

Mr. McGegan and his forces brought the concert to an energetic close with a thoroughly entertaining reading of the "Orchestral Suite No. 3," highlighted by spectacular work from Karin Bliznik and her fellow trumpeters. Those smaller high-pitched instruments are hard to play at any time, I expect, let alone in the morning. Concertmaster David Halen had an impressive solo in the opening "Overture." Mr. McGegan brought him to his feet for a solo bow at the end, along with the trumpet section and oboists Barbara Orland and Cally Banham.

Next at Powell Hall: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with piano soloist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in music of Debussy, Dvorak, and Harold Macmillan on Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., February 7 and 8. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Preview: Bach family values at Powell Hall Friday and Saturday, January 30 and 31, 2015

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As anyone who has ever taken a "music depreciation" course knows, Johann Sebastian Bach was almost as prolific a father as he was a composer. This weekend, Nicholas McGegan leads the St. Louis Symphony in a concert that's a genuine Bach family affair, featuring music by both J.S. Bach and two of his musical sons.

"Statue of J.S. Bach in Leipzig" by Zarafa
at the English language Wikipedia.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Common

Bach and his two wives, Maria Barbara and Anna Magdalena, had a total of twenty children, ten of whom survived to adulthood (yes, child mortality in 18th century Germany was fierce). Four of the ten went on to careers as composers and the two represented in this weekend's concerts—Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian—went on to eclipse dad in popularity, at least during their lives.

But that, as they say, was then. Now, performances of the music of Bach's offspring are relatively rare. According to bachtrack.com, for example, J.S. Bach was the third most performed composer in 2014. The kids didn't even make the top ten. No surprise, then, that the "Sinfonia concertante in C major for Flute, Oboe, Violin, Cello, and Orchestra" by J.C. on the bill this weekend is getting its SLSO premiere and the "Sinfonia in D Major" by C.P.E. hasn't been heard here since 1987.

C.P.E. Bach was born in 1714, when his dad was not quite 31. By the time he began composing in his 20s, musical styles were changing. While still heavily influenced by his father's strict contrapuntal principles, C.P.E. wrote music that was much more expressive and dramatic than anything J.S. would ever have considered. He was a proponent of something called empfindsamer Stil (literally, "sensitive style"), an approach characterized, in the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica, by "an emphasis upon the expression of a variety of deeply felt emotions within a musical work." In that respect, C.P.E. looks forward not only to the Classical period but to the Romantic as well.

"Bach Carl Philipp Emanuel 1"
by Franz Conrad Löhr (1735–1812)[1]
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,
Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, M.589.
Licensed under Public Domain
via Wikimedia Commons

Even today, some of his music has a decidedly "modern" feel. C.P.E. Bach's compositional style, as musicologist Ann Richards has written, "is miles away from the elegance and balance we associate with this period. Timelines are crisscrossed, he is endlessly stopping and starting, wrong-footing the listener and causing his audience to reconsider its relation to the music. In that sense, it's very postmodern, a kind of meta-music." As you'll hear this weekend, C.P.E.'s "Sinfonia in D Major" (which dates from around the time of the American revolution) is typical, filled with the idiosyncratic and unconventional touches that characterize his work.

Right around the time that C.P.E. was writing that "Sinfonia", J.C. Bach was writing his contribution to this weekend's program, the "Sinfonia concertante in C major for Flute, Oboe, Violin, Cello, and Orchestra." J.C. Bach was born towards the end of J.S. Bach's life. His father was fifty when J.C. was born and would die when the boy was only fifteen. As a result, his music owes less to J.S. than does that of his older sibling. J.C. wrote mostly in the "galante" style, which Merriam Webster concisely defines as "a light and elegant free homophonic style of musical composition in the 18th century with rococo ornamentation as contrasted with the serious fugal style of the baroque era." Galante music pretty much abandoned counterpoint in favor of melody and accompaniment. It would, when combined with a renewed interest in counterpoint, form the basis of the Classical style that would find its greatest expression in the instrumental works of Haydn and Mozart.

J.C. Bach is sometimes referred to as the "London" Bach because he spent so much time there, eventually becoming music master to King George III's wife Charlotte. Unlike his older brother, J.C. outlived his earlier professional success. The galante style began to go out of style in the 1770s and J.C., swindled out of his wealth by his steward, died in poverty. Fortunately, Queen Charlotte covered the expense of his funeral and set up a small pension for his widow.

Johann Christian Bach, painted in London by
Thomas Gainsborough, 1776
(National Portrait Gallery, London)
en.wikipedia.org

There are three pieces by J.S. Bach on the bill as well: the "Sinfonia" (essentially the overture) to his secular cantata "Non sa che sia dolore" (BWV 209), the "Concerto in D minor for Oboe, Violin, and Strings" (BWV 1060), and his popular "Orchestral Suite No. 3."

Apparently written for the Leipzig Collegium Musicum (of which Bach was then the director) in 1729, the suite is an appealing collection of four dances preceded by a short "French overture" (the name possibly refers to the fact that the form first appears in the operas of Jean Baptiste Lully) with its characteristic majestic opening followed by a main section. As Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, it's the most popular of the four suites, with a second movement that has become famous all on its own under the title "Air on the G String."

"At the season's New Year's Eve concert," recalls SLSO Principal Trumpet Karin Bliznik in an interview in the program book, "David Robertson excerpted and dedicated the Air--movement II of the Suite--to one of our ailing but now recovering colleagues. What a great reminder of the universal healing elements of classical music." She's also happy about the prominent role played by her instrument in the suite, reminding us that this is "the first of the orchestral suites to include not just one but three trumpets."

Finally, a quick note about guest conductor Nicholas McGegan. A specialist in what was once called "early music" Mr. McGegan is, as I have noted before, one of the most ebullient podium personalities you are ever likely to see. He bounds on to the stage, his face alight with a cherubic smile, his body language was saying: "this is going to be FUN!" If you think Baroque music is a stodgy business, you've never seen it conducted by Mr. McGegan.

The essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program of music by the Johann Sebastian Bach family on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., January 30 and 31. Soloists are Andrea Kaplan and Jennifer Nitchman, flutes; Jelena Dirks and Philip Ross, oboe; Asako Kuboki and Ann Fink, violin; and Melissa Brooks, cello. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

St. Louis classical calendar for the week of January 26, 2015

CMSSL at the Sheldon Ballroom

The Chamber Music Society of St. Louis presents "Baroque'n Strings" on Monday and Tuesday, January 26 and 27, at 7:30 PM. "Special Guest Artist – Nicholas McGegan, harpsichord with harpsichordist Charles Metz, guitarist Beau Bledsoe, and bassoonist Felicia Foland." The concert takes place at The Sheldon Ballroom, 3648 Washington. For more information: chambermusicstl.org.

Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program of music by the Johann Sebastian Bach family on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., January 30 and 31. Soloists are Andrea Kaplan and Jennifer Nitchman, flutes; Jelena Dirks and Philip Ross, oboe; Asako Kuboki and Ann Fink, violin; and Melissa Brooks, cello. "The masterpieces of Johann Sebastian Bach and family are highlighted in this program led by St. Louis audience favorite Nicholas McGegan. Seven of the STL Symphony's own musicians take center stage as soloists in this program of classics from the Baroque era including J.C. Bach's Sinfonia concertante for Flute, Oboe, Violin, Cello and Orchestra" The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Peter Henderson

The Sheldon Concert Hall presents "Sheldon Classics: Africa" on Wednesday, January 28, at 8 p.m. "St. Louis Symphony principal percussionist Will James is joined by pianist Peter Henderson and other members of the St. Louis Symphony for music inspired by the rhythms and sounds of Africa. Will James will play two works for solo marimba, and Peter Henderson will play music by Scott Joplin, William Grant Still and St. Louis' own Fred Onovwerosuoke." The Sheldon is at 3648 Washington in Grand Center. For more information: thesheldon.org.

The Tavern of Fine Arts presents "Unfinished Business: An Evening of French and German Song" on Saturday, January 31, at 8 p.m. "Join tenor Phil Touchette and pianist Jon Garrett for an evening of French and German artsong for which Phil has been chomping at the bit to finally perform in public! The evening begins with six songs of Henri Duparc (including "L'invitation au voyage" and "Phidylé"), followed by Robert Schumann's "Dichterliebe" (Op. 48) and will conclude with opera arias by Mozart, Franz Lehár and Engelbert Humperdinck." The Tavern of Fine Arts is at 313 Belt in the Debaliviere Place neighborhood. For more information: tavern-of-fine-arts.blogspot.com.

Far away places with strange-sounding names

Who: The St. Louis Symphony conducted by Nicholas McGegan with violin soloist Stefan Jackiw
What: Music of von Weber, Mozart, Rameau, and Haydn
When: Friday and Saturday, November 8 and 9
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

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Nicholas McGegan, who is conducting the St. Louis Symphony in a program of (mostly) 18th-century classics this weekend, is clearly a man who enjoys his work.  As he bounded out to the podium for this morning's Krispy Kreme Coffee Concert, his face alight with a cherubic smile, his body language was saying: "this is going to be FUN!"  And so it was.

From the lively presto 16th-note figure in the strings that opens the overture to von Weber's 1811 singspiel "Abu Hassan" at the top of the program to the rousing brass and percussion coda of Haydn's "Symphony No. 100" in G major (known as the "military" because of all that hardware) at the end, this was a concert that radiated joy.  Mr. McGegan and the players were having such a good time it was impossible not to enter into the spirit of the thing.

"Intimations of exotic locales and cultures," writes Paul Schiavo in his program notes, "particularly those considered the orient, constitute a distinctive and especially colorful strand in Western music." These concerts, in fact, offer a window onto the pervasive fascination with the cultures of the near east in general and Turkey in particular that pops up often in 17th and 18th century music.

von Weber

The reasons for that fascination are partly political. Austria and Turkey (a.k.a. the Ottoman Empire) were at war on and off from the around 1526 until almost the end of the 18th century, when the 1797 Treaty of Sistova left both nations in sufficient disarray to discourage any more military adventures. In Europe and (especially) Austria, therefore, all things Turkish and Middle Eastern were seen as exotic and not a little dangerous—which naturally made them interesting to composers and other creative types.

The "Abu Hassan" overture, then, was a perfect choice for an opener. The one-act farce for which it was written (Lewis Foreman of the University of Birmingham calls it a "vigorous romp with a Fedeauesque sub-plot") doesn't get performed much these days, but the overture is a tune-filled favorite. Mr. McGegan and the orchestra gave an appropriately lean and lively account of it.

Conducting without a baton throughout the concert, Mr. McGegan artfully shaped phrases and cued musicians with his hands and fingers, molding the music like modeling clay. He's a strong physical presence on the podium, making particularly expressive use of his upper body. He's not the dancer some visceral conductors are, staying more or less in one spot, but he vibrates with energy nevertheless. And, as I say, he just radiates infectious good cheer.

Following the Weber was Mozart's "Violin Concerto No. 5" in A major, K. 219 (from 1775). The first two movements aren't particularly exotic, although the Adagio second movement is longer and does have a more elaborate orchestral introduction than any of Mozart's other violin concertos. It's the third movement Rondeau, however, that has caused some writers to dub it the "Turkish" concerto. In the middle section, Mozart changes the time signature to 2/4 and uses some exotic melodic effects, including having cellos and basses slap their strings with the wood of the bow (Mozart calls it "coll'arco roverscio"). To my ears is sounds more Gypsy than Turkish, but back in the day it yelled "Ottoman".

Soloist Stefan Jackiw—a much-praised young American violinist making his SLSO debut—took a more lyrical approach to the work than I expected, starting with his first entrance in the opening movement. It's marked "adagio" in the score, but here it felt a bit slower and more expressive than I would have expected. His first-movement cadenza, as well, was a fascinating combination of lyricism and virtuoso display. It all added up to an almost Romantic slant to the piece—and one for which he and Mr. McGegan made a most persuasive case.

The audience apparently agreed, offering enthusiastic applause. Mr. Jackiw responded with an encore: a deeply felt "Largo" from the "Sonata for solo violin No. 3" in C major, BWV 1005.

Rameau

After intermission, it was a step back in time to 1735-36 with a suite from Jean-Philippe Rameau's opéra-ballet "Les Indes Galantes" ("The Gallant Indians"). The opéra-ballet was a kind of musical theatre hybrid popular in late 17th and early 18th century France in which dance was prominent. It consisted of a prologue followed by three or four semi-independent acts united by a common theme. For "Les Indes Galantes," the theme is romantic triangles in such exotic locales as Turkey, Peru, Persia, and, in a fourth act added for the 1736 revival, America ("Les Sauvages," "The Savages of America").

The nine selections assembled for this concert offered a nice balance of airs and dances and presented plenty of opportunities for individual players to shine. That included the oboes (Phil Ross and Michelle Duskey) and bassoons (Andy Gott and Felicia Foland) in the "Air pour les Amours," flautists Andrea Kaplan and Ann Choomack in the "Prélude pour l'adoration du Soleil," concertmaster David Halen and Ms. Kaplan in the "Airs pour Zéphire," and principal trumpet Karin Bliznik in the concluding "Chaconne." Maryse Carlin provided the fine harpsichord continuo.

The concert concluded with a wonderfully entertaining performance of Haydn's Symphony No. 100 in G major, dubbed the "military" because the use of brass, timpani, and triangle in both the second movement and finale recalled the noisy percussion of the Janissary bands of the Turkish military. The effect is striking, even to modern ears—especially when performed with the kind of finesse it got Friday morning.

Back in Haydn's day it was apparently electrifying. According to a Morning Chronicle review of the March 31, 1795 premiere in London (where all of Haydn's last twelve symphonies were first performed), "the middle movement was again received with absolute shouts of applause. Encore! encore! encore! resounded from every seat".

The audience at Powell didn't demand encores, but they did give Mr. McGegan and company a standing ovation. They deserved it. There were so many wonderful touches in this performance: the sense of fun in the interplay between the winds and strings in the main theme of the first movement, the power of the dramatic interjections of the percussion in the second, and the wonderful lightness and precision of the 6/8 "Finale." This was "big band" Haydn with the fleet-footed sensibility of "original instrument" ensembles. I loved it, and I wasn't alone.

Next at Powell Hall: David Robertson leads the orchestra, chorus, and soloists in a concert performance of Benjamin Britten's opera "Peter Grimes" on Saturday, November 16, at 8 PM. It's a preview of the performance they'll be giving of the work at Carnegie Hall on Britten's 100th birthday on November 22nd. That'll be followed by "Symphony SLAM" on Sunday the 17th at 3 PM. The SLSO web site describes that as "a true fusion between visual art and music" in which music director David Robertson "pairs images of some of the Saint Louis Art Museum's beloved treasures with music from Britten and Bartók."  For more information: stlsymphony.org

Talking Turkey

Nicholas McGegan

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This weekend’s St. Louis Symphony concerts are a mix of the familiar and the exotic—or at least, what was seen as exotic in the 18th century.

The familiar part is the return of Nicholas McGegan to the podium.  Last seen at Powell Hall conducting an exuberant “Baroque fireworks” program last October, Mr. McGegan is a frequent visitor to St. Louis and a widely respected interpreter of music of the 17th and 18th centuries.  The London Independent has dubbed him “one of the finest Baroque conductors of his generation”, while Santa Barbara Scene magazine has called him “the go-to visitor/educator/conductor” for pre-19th century music.  Given that the “newest” piece on the bill this weekend premiered in 1811, Mr. McGegan should be very much in his element.

The exotic aspect of the program is the pervasive fascination with the cultures of the near east in general and Turkey in particular that pops up often in 17th and 18th century music.  The reasons for that are partly political.  Austria and Turkey (a.k.a. The Ottoman Empire) were at war on and off from the around 1526 until almost the end of the 18th century, when the 1797 Treaty of Sistova left both nations in sufficient disarray to discourage any more military adventures.  In Europe and (especially) Austria, therefore, all things Turkish and middle eastern were seen as exotic and not a little dangerous—which naturally made them interesting to composers and other creative types.

This weekend’s concerts open with the lively overture to Abu Hassan by Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826).  Based loosely on a story from the “Thousand and One Nights” (also the inspiration for Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade from two weeks ago), Abu Hassan (premiered in 1811) is a one act singspiel rather than an opera, which means there’s a mix of recitatives and spoken dialog.  Mozart’s Magic Flute is probably the most famous example of the genre.  Its silly story (Lewis Foreman of the University of Birmingham calls it a “vigorous romp with a Fedeauesque sub-plot”) has kept it out of the operatic mainstream, but the overture is a tune-filled favorite.

Next is Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 291, from 1776 or thereabouts.  There’s nothing particularly exotic about the first two movements, although the Adagio second movement is longer and has a more elaborate orchestral introduction than any of Mozart’s other violin concertos.  It’s the third movement Rondeau that has caused some writers to dub it the “Turkish” concerto.  In the middle section, Mozart changes the time signature to 2/4 and uses some exotic melodic effects, including having cellos and basses slap their strings with the wood of the bow (Mozart calls it “coll’arco roverscio”).  It might not sound that “Turkish” to modern ears, but back in the day it yelled “Ottoman”.

Stefan Jackiw

All three movements offer opportunities for the soloist to insert cadenzas.  I don’t know what Stefan Jackiw (a much-praised young American violinist making his SLSO debut) will do with them—will he improvise his own or use existing cadenzas Joachim or one of that crowd?  It will be interesting to see.

After intermission, it’s a step back in time to 1735-36 with a suite from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s (1683-1764) opéra-ballet Les Indes Galantes (The Gallant Indians). The opéra-ballet was a kind of musical theatre hybrid popular in late 17thand early 18th century France in which dance was prominent.  It consisted of a prologue followed by three or four semi-independent acts united by a common theme.  For Les Indes Galantes, the theme is romantic triangles in such exotic locales as Turkey ("Le Turc généreux," or "The Gracious Turk"), Peru ("Les Incas du Pérou," "The Incas of Peru"), Persia ("Les Fleurs," "The Flowers") and, in a fourth act added for the 1736 revival, America ("Les Sauvages," "The Savages of America").

That last act, as Paul Schiavo writes in his program notes, “presents Indians and Europeans joining amicably to smoke a peace pipe and praise the pleasures of love. This happy event is depicted in the “Dance of the Great Peace Pipe,” which leads to the grandest moment in Les Indes galantes. It comes as Indian and French warriors, Amazons and “shepherds and shepherdesses” join in a grand Chaconne, the dance traditionally used to close an opera-ballet in the Baroque era.”  Pretty enlightened for the time.

Finishing off the evening is Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 in G major, dubbed the “military” because the use of brass, timpani, and triangle in both the second movement and finale recalled the noisy percussion of the Janissary bands of the Turkish military.  The effect is striking, even to modern ears.  Back in Haydn’s day it was apparently electrifying. According to a Morning Chronicle review of the March 31, 1795 premiere in the London (where all of Haydn’s last twelve symphonies were first performed), “the middle movement was again received with absolute shouts of applause.  Encore! encore! encore! resounded form every seat”.  Clearly, the composer had yet another hit on his hands.

A lyria organizzata

The second movement might also have been a bit of joke on Haydn’s part, since the main theme of that movement came from a Concerto for Two Lira Organizzata (a raucous Italian hybrid of hurdy-gurdy and harmonium) he had written ten years earlier for the King of Naples.  Re-using the theme in an even nosier context might have appealed to his sense of humor.  This was, after all, the composer of the “Surprise” symphony and the Symphony No. 90, with its false ending designed to sucker the audience into applauding too soon (which it invariably does).

The St. Louis Symphony presents its “Turkish” program Friday at 10:30 AM (a coffee concert with Krispy Kreme doughnuts) and Saturday at 8 PM, November 8 and 9, at Powell Hall.  For more information: stlsymphony.org.