Symphony Preview: Sous le ciel de Paris

This weekend (November 15 and 16) Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the second of two programs devoted almost entirely to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). It’s all Mozart all the time—except for the 12 minutes or so that will be Anna Clyne (b. 1980).

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

An English-born composer now residing in the USA, Clyne’s name is one that should be familiar to SLSO regulars. The orchestra has played a number of her works over the last decade or so, usually to appreciative (and well-deserved) applause. In fact, the Clyne work we’ll hear this weekend was the first of her compositions that the SLSO played.

That work is “Within Her Arms” for string orchestra. Written as an elegy for the death of the Clyne’s mother in 2008, the piece is (as I wrote back then) a kind of memory play. Its somewhat mysterious music, which at times seems to harken back to Vaughn Williams or even Thomas Tallis, rises from a whisper to a roar before finally fading away, slowly, into nothingness. “The rest,” as Hamlet says, “is silence.”

Anna Clyne
Photo by Christina Kernohan courtesy of the SLSO

“Within Her Arms” is the only work on the program that’s missing from the SLSO’s Spotify playlist. Which is a bit surprising since there’s quite a splendid performance of it there by the adventurous chamber orchestra The Knights. When you listen to the SLSO’s playlist, just pause it and play “Within Her Arms” right before Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”) for the full effect.

The concerts open with Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, K. 16, penned when Mozart was eight years old and known primarily as a piano prodigy. It’s a modest and charming three-movement piece that sounds more like work of Johann Christian Bach (1735–1782) than Mozart. Still the somewhat enigmatic second movement does include, according to the anonymous program annotator for the Kamuela Philharmonic Society Orchestra, “a four-note motif that also appears in several later Mozart compositions, including his Symphony No. 33, and the finale of his Jupiter Symphony.” And it does end with a jolly little Presto.

Up next is the more substantial Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. It was, I believe, last presented by the SLSO in 2017, at which time I described it as engrossing, menacing, and filled with the kind of high drama that audiences would come to love so much in the ensuing decades of the 19th century. Beethoven, for one, loved this concerto, performing it often and composing two cadenzas for it, Mozart's own having been lost to history. It is, in fact, sufficiently "modern" for its time that Viennese audiences might have been put off by it, had it not been the work of a man who was at the peak of popularity.

Mozart, age 6
Painter unknown

The soloist this weekend will be the talented young (born in 1990) pianist Behzod Abduraimov. I last saw him in 2018 when he played the Grieg Concerto with Gemma New on the podium. At the time, I praised the ideal mix of technical flash and sensitivity in his performance. Which bodes well for this weekend.

Next, it’s the overture to Mozart’s early opera “Mitridate, re di Ponto” (“Mithridates, King of Pontus”), which is filled with engaging tunes that belie the work’s tragic finale. First performed at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan, it was something of a hit despite the fact that the composer was only 14. Mozart’s more mature operas have overshadowed it since then and revivals are rare.

The concerts will close with the Symphony No. 31 in D Major, K.297 (300a) ("Paris") composed in the City of Light in June, 1778. Mozart and his ailing mother Anna Maria had arrived there after a concert tour in search of additional professional opportunities, but the pickings were slim, and the pair soon found themselves in debt. The arrival of a commission for a new symphony from Jean LeGros, the director of the high-profile Concert Spirituel, was therefore a welcome development.

The audience at the symphony's June 18th public premiere was enthusiastic, if Mozart's account is accurate. The work was interrupted by applause several times (both between and within movements) and the composer was ebullient. "I was so happy," he wrote to his father, "that as soon as the symphony was over, I went off to the Palais Royal, where I had a large ice, said the Rosary as I had vowed to do—and went home.”

His joy was short-lived. Although Anna Maria was at first invigorated by the weather and the attentions of old friends like the tenor Anton Raaff and horn player Franz Joseph Heina and his wife, even small outings tired her out. A day at the Jardin du Luxembourg with the Heinas on the 10^th left her exhausted and her health began to worsen.

Behzod Abduraimov
Photo: Evgeny Eutykhov courtesy of the SLSO

As Mozart scholar and conductor Jane Glover relates in “Mozart’s Women” (Harper-Collins, 2006), by June 26th the situation was grave enough that Mozart “was told that she should make her final confession, which she did on the 30^th. At 10:21 on the evening of 3 July, with a nurse and Heina and her beloved Wolfgang beside her, Anna Maria died.” She was only 58.

You won’t hear any of the mental anguish Mozart must have felt as he watched his mother’s health deteriorate, though, in this vigorous and graceful three-movement work. Instead, you hear the Parisian sunshine and revel in the composer’s use of what the BBC’s Tom Service calls “the biggest orchestra Mozart had used in a symphonic context.” Service’s article includes an excellent analysis of the piece, in fact, and I highly recommend it as a bit of pre-concert reading.

The Essentials: The SLSO’s Mozart celebration concludes this weekend (Friday and Saturday, November 15 and 16, at 7:30 pm) with Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”), and Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. Behzod Abduraimov will be the soloist. Performances take place at the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Saturday’s 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: Come together

It’s quite a mixed bag this weekend (October 18 and 19) as guest conductor David Danzmayr makes his third appearance with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since his notable local debut in 2021. During its relatively brief span (around ninety minutes, including intermission), the band will play works from the 18^th, 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries from England, France, Scotland, and Germany.

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

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, 1905
By Adam Cuerden
Public Domain

The concerts open with the “Ballade” in A minor, Op. 33, by British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912). Composed in 1897 just after Coleridge-Taylor left the Royal College of Music, the work was commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival, where it met with considerable success. Coleridge-Taylor went on to become a celebrated composer, conductor, and teacher—a career tragically cut short by his death from pneumonia at the age of 37.

The son of Daniel Hugh Taylor, a doctor from Sierra Leone, and Alice Hare Martin, an Englishwoman, Coleridge-Taylor (as Stephen Banfield and Jeremy Dibble write in Grove Online) “saw it as his mission in life to help establish the dignity of the black man.” The black American poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar was an especially strong influence in this regard, helping the composer become more aware of his heritage. That led to works such as “African Romances (1897),” the “African Suite” (1898), and “Toussaint l'ouverture (1901),” described as “a musical illustration of the 18th-century slave who led the liberation of Haiti.”

All that was still to come, though, when he wrote the “Ballade.” The title might suggest something soft and dreamy, but the music itself is dramatic and exceptionally attractive. The opening theme, marked Allegro energico, ma non troppo presto, is played by the strings over agitated trills in the woodwinds. It gets developed and expanded a bit before giving way to the contrasting second theme, moderato ma con passione. Both themes get a fairly conventional sonata form treatment, complete with abbreviated development and recapitulation sections, before winding up with a slam-bang coda (Piu presto. Con fuoco.).

On the whole, the “Ballade” is a bit reminiscent of Grieg’s Symphony No. 1 from 1863, although since Grieg suppressed it, I don’t think it’s likely that Coleridge-Taylor would have been familiar with that work. “Ballade” should get things off to a rousing start, in any event.

Saint-Saëns in 1900
By Petit, Pierre (1831-1909)
Photographer Restored by
Adam Cuerden

Next, it’s time for the program’s Big Work, the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22, by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921). It’s the most popular of Saint-Saëns's five piano concertos, and when you listen to the recording by Pascal Rogé and the Royal Philharmonic under Charles Dutoit on the SLSO Spotify playlist you’ll understand why.

Like the Coleridge-Taylor “Ballade,” the concerto starts big and bold, Andante sostenuto, with a flashy solo keyboard fantasia of the sort that Bach might have written followed by an equally dramatic entrance by the full orchestra. The second movement, Allo scherzando, trips along merrily and sparkles like Champagne. The Presto tarantella finale provides a real workout for the soloist. Done well, the concerto is always a crowd pleaser and likely to induce standing ovations.

This week's soloist, Conrad Tao, played the Second Concerto here in 2014, with Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin at the podium.  Back then I called his performance “a model of power and delicacy.”  At the time, Tao was only 20 and just getting started on what has proven to be a spectacular career as a pianist and composer, so it will be interesting to see whether or not that intervening decade has changed his approach to this work. Oh yeah: he’s also a fellow Midwesterner, born in Urbana, Illinois in 1994.

The second half of the program begins at the other end of the sonic spectrum from the big, outgoing romanticism of Coleridge-Taylor and Saint-Saëns. Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan (b. 1953) wrote his evanescent orchestral miniature “One” in 2012 for the 20^th anniversary of The Britten Sinfonia, an innovative chamber ensemble the aim of which was “pushing the boundaries of what a chamber orchestra can do.” It’s dedicated to the Sinfonia’s then-Artistic Director David Butcher (now CEO of the legendary Hallé Orchestra).

Sir James MacMillan
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Best known for "Veni, Veni, Emmanuel," his 1992 percussion concerto closely identified with the celebrated deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie, MacMillan is solidly opposed to the academic abstraction that often made audiences react to the phrase “contemporary music” the way Dracula reacted to garlic. Specifically, MacMillan disdains composers who are “deeply suspicious of any significant move towards tonality, any hint of pulse that is actually discernible, and any music which communicates successfully with a non-specialist audience.”

There is certainly nothing dry or obscure in “One,” which evokes a universe of ethereal beauty with impressively minimal resources. The title refers, I believe, to the fact that MacMillan’s orchestration creates the illusion of single voices engaging in a kind of bucolic “call and response” over a vast outdoor space. In reality, each “voice” consists of multiple instruments playing together. “I pluribus unum” (“from many, one”), if you will. The Celtic-inspired melody starts, stops, then starts again with different instrumental combinations.

“One” concludes with the melody played pianissimo at the very top of their registers by the flutes and violins, then rapidly descending through the orchestra to land in bassoons and basses playing at the bottom of theirs. There’s a last one-measure rest followed by a brief section marked tutti: misterioso that includes flutter-tongued clarinets and trumpets along with ad lib pizzicatos in the violins (“Not together. Each player to enter in rapid succession, starting with section principal”). “One” ends with an ambiguously dissonant pianissimo chord from the full ensemble.

My description hardly does it justice, but fortunately you can hear an authoritative 2014 performance by the Britten Sinfonia conducted by the composer in the SLSO playlist. If you read music, you can watch that same recording synchronized with the score on YouTube.

Finally, it’s back to the familiar with the Symphony No. 5 (“Reformation”) by Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847). The symphony’s nickname (which came from the composer’s sister Fanny) refers to the fact that it was originally intended for a celebration of the 300th anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The document is a cornerstone of the Lutheran faith, and the celebration in Berlin on June 25th, 1830, was a Very Big Deal, backed up by the Prussian King Frederick William III. Having a new symphony played as part of the festivities would have been a major coup for the 21-year-old composer.

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

Mendelssohn started work on the symphony in January of 1830 but was sidetracked by a case of measles—a serious business in those days before vaccines. The composer made a full recovery, but not in time to submit the work for the big event. He finally conducted the premiere in Berlin in 1832, but reviews were unenthusiastic and the composer himself ultimately turned against it, declaring the only one of his compositions he “would most like to see burnt.”

History’s verdict has been a bit kinder. “Happily for us,” writes the anonymous program annotator at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “the ‘Reformation’ Symphony has survived, and it can give great satisfaction as a four-movement symphony with or without its references to the great events it was intended to celebrate.”  It might not be quite as popular as the “Italian” or “Scotch” symphonies, but it probably deserves to be. It has much to offer, as you can hear in the excellent recording by John Eliot Gardiner and the London Symphony on the SLSO playlist.

The Essentials: David Danzmayr conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Conrad Tao in Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Ballade,” Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2, James MacMillan’s “One,” and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5 (“Reformation”). Performances are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, October 18 and 19, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri–St. Louis campus. The Saturday night performance will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available afterwards for streaming on the SLSO web site

Symphony Preview: The big chill

A chilly wind blows through St. Louis this weekend as temperatures drop back to something more closely approximating the norm for late April. By sheer coincidence the musical equivalent of a brisk northern breeze blows through the Touhill Center, as well, as frequent guest John Stogårds steps up to the podium of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) to conduct concerts dominated by his fellow Finn Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) and Danish composer Per Nørgård (b. 1932).

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

Sibelius in 1913
By Daniel Nyblin (1856–1923) 
Public Domain, 

It may be a bit of a cliché, but for me the music of Sibelius conjures up images of pines, snow, and brisk northern winds. You can hear that in the Sibelius works that open and close the program which are, respectively, “Rakastava (The Lover)” and the Symphony No. 7.  That same feeling is present in the work that precedes the Sibelius Seventh, Nørgård’s 2007 composition “Lysning (Glade)” for strings and percussion, albeit with a more contemporary harmonic palette.

Sibelius was notoriously self-critical, often revising works and even destroying those he deemed inferior. His Symphony No. 8, for example, was never completed and was eventually burned by the composer. “Rakastava” didn’t suffer that dire fate, but the original four-movement 1894 version, for unaccompanied male chorus, was never published. The composer produced a version for men's chorus and string orchestra in that same year, and for mixed choir in 1898, but none of them really caught on.

Finally, in 1912, he recycled “Rakastava” into a three-movement work for strings and percussion (tympani and triangle) and this time it was a hit. The work “captivated audiences” and is now “regarded as a minor masterpiece.” But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the recording by Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra on the SLSO’s Spotify playlist and I think you’ll agree. The romantic yearning of the first movement (“The Lover”) has an unsettled feel that’s accentuated by the occasional interruptions for the melodic flow by an agitated motif in the lower strings and tympani. The brief second movement (“The Path of the Beloved”) is an ethereal scherzo reminiscent of Mendelssohn. And the sense of melancholy in the final movement (“Good Night!... Farewell!”) becomes tragic about halfway through before setting into quiet resignation.

It’s emotionally complex music with just an occasional frisson of the cold north wind.

Per Nørgård
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Nørgård’s “Glade,” which opens the second half of the evening, feels a bit bleak, as well, but not consistently. There is, rather, a mix of light and shade of the sort you might encounter in a forest clearing. “There is a balance between the number of darker and lighter sections,” writes the composer, “as each ‘light’ section presents the same material as the ‘dark’ section before it—but heard from different instrumental colorings and nuances.” The unresolved feeling of the final moments of the work makes it a perfect companion for the Sibelius Symphony No. 7 that follows it and concludes the concert.

Sibelius completed his seventh and final symphony in 1924 after considerable labor and revisions. This brief (around 22 minutes) one-movement work is, as conductor Joshua Weilerstein writes, “a piece that is barely a symphony at all, and yet carries symphonic logic throughout.” Indeed, at its premiere (with Sibelius conducting) it was billed as “Fantasia Sinfonica” (“Symphonic Fantasy”) No. 1. It wasn’t until a year later that the composer decided that it was, in fact, an actual symphony—and one of which he was proud. “A great success,” he wrote after the first performance. “There is no denying it: my new work is one of the best. Tone and ‘colour’ both powerful.”

A lot of ink and pixels have been spilled in analyses of the Sibelius Seventh over the past century, with much argument about what its actual form might be, what it really means, and other questions that are such great fodder for academic papers and blog posts. Weilerstein’s “Sticky Notes” episode on the work has the advantage of being clear and filled with musical illustrations. I recommend it.

Issues of structure and other musical nuts and bolts aside, though, the ultimate question for the listener is: what does it sound like and how does it feel? To me it sounds and feels mercurial, constantly shifting emotions, defying expectations, and ultimately ambiguous. Now it’s lamenting, now it’s breaking into a little folk dance, now it’s triumphant, and now it’s…over. And it’s not all that clear what actually happened.

Sir Simon Rattle, who conducts the performance in the SLSO playlist, says the Symphony No. 7 ends with an existential scream while Weilerstein says “it is a cosmic ending, almost like the launch of the note C into outer space.” I say it just…stops. And leaves us to decide what happens after that. Grey skies and whistling winds will probably figure into it somehow.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

That said, the concert won’t be all stormy weather. The first half concludes with the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 19, by Ludwig van Beethoven (1771–1827), a work with a sunny outlook and strong echoes of Mozart, and especially in the finale, Haydn. Written before but published after the Concerto No. 1, it marks the beginning of Beethoven's dual careers as pianist and composer of concerti for his instrument of choice.

Outside of that finale, Haydn is mostly hiding in this work, though. It's ultimately all Beethoven. That's particularly obvious in the dramatic cadenza, written around 14 years after the concerto.

The last time the SLSO performed the Second Concerto, the ebullient Nicholas McGegan with conducted with South Korean (b. 1994) virtuoso Seong-Jin Cho at the keyboard. This time the soloist will be the remarkable Marie-Ange Nguci (b. 1998), whose biography is impressive, to say the least.

Clearly a prodigy, the Franco-Albanian pianist was only 13 when she won her first competition, the 2011 Lagny-sur-Marne International Piano Competition. That same year she was accepted into Nicholas Angelich’s class at the Paris Conservatoire. Today, she holds degrees in Musicology, Musical Analysis, and Music Pedagogy (Paris Sorbonne, Paris Conservatoire), an MBA in Cultural Management, and a performance diploma in ondes martenot (essentially a Theremin with a keyboard; Messiaen famously used it in his 1949 “Turangalîla-Symphonie”).

Oh, yeah: she’s also studying conducting at Vienna’s University of Music and Performing Arts.

“En Miror” (“In the mirror”), her 2017 debut album on the Mirare label, consists of piano music by composers known for their skills as organists and improvisers: César Franck, J.S. Bach, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Thierry Escaich. And her busy concert schedule includes appearances with the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Macao Symphony Orchestra. It’s impressive, one must admit.

The Essentials: John Storgårds conducts the orchestra and soloist Marie-Ange Nguci in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The concert also includes the Symphony No. 7 and “Rakastava (The Lover)” by Sibelius along with “Lysning (Glade)” by contemporary Danish composer Per Nørgård. Performances take place Friday at 10:30 am, Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, April 19 through 21, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. The Saturday evening concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

Symphony Preview: Distant drums

In Act I, scene 1 of Shakespeare’s comedy “Much Ado About Nothing,” Leonato, the Governor of Messina, plays down his niece Beatrice’s insulting description of Benedick, saying that there is “a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her. They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.”

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

You can hear that wit in the opening measures of the work that opens the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this Friday and Saturday (March 22 and 23) as Music Director Stéphane Denève leads the band in a performance of the overture to Hector Berlioz's 1862 operatic treatment of “Much Ado About Nothing,” "Béatrice et Bénedict.” The short, playful opening theme immediately calls to mind the thrust and parry of the verbal duel that invariably begins when Beatrice and Benedick meet.

Berlioz in 1832
Painting by Émile Signol

Berlioz wrote the libretto himself (even though he neither spoke nor read English all that well), considerably condensing the original "battle of the sexes" comedy in the process. Huge swathes of plot were axed, along with great comic characters like Constable Dogberry to create what the composer called “a caprice written with a point of a needle.” Written just after the monumental “Les Troyens,” the opera had great success at its Baden-Baden premiere as well as in Weimar a few months later. There was no French performance until 1890, though, and "Béatrice et Bénedict.” has never really made it into the standard repertoire.

The overture has fared better in concert halls. It gets high marks for the skill with which Berlioz uses themes from his score to create a kind of vitamin pill version of the opera, with all the comedic and dramatic ingredients combined into a single eight-minute tone poem. “Though drawn from no less than six different arias or ensembles,” writes Michel Austin at The Hector Berlioz website, “the music is seamlessly fused by Berlioz into a coherent symphonic whole, much as Weber had done in his overtures to Der Freischütz, Euryanthe, and Oberon."

Julia Wolfe
Photo: Peter Serling

Up next is the local premiere of “Pretty” by contemporary American composer Julia Wolfe (b. 1958). A co-commission by the SLSO, Berlin Philharmonic (where the world premiere took place last June), Houston Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, the work’s title is frankly ironic. One might even say that it’s at war with the actual music which, based on the brief excerpts I’ve heard at the Berlin Philharmonic’s Digital Concert Hall, is a high-energy jamboree that’s anything but “pretty” in the conventional sense.

“The word ‘pretty’ has had a complicated relationship to women,” writes the composer on her website.  “It implies an attractiveness without any rough edges, without strength or power…My Pretty is a raucous celebration – embracing the grit of fiddling, the relentlessness of work rhythms, and inspired by the distortion and reverberation of rock and roll.”

War pops up once again as the backdrop for the work that concludes this weekend's concerts, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, op. 73 (“Emperor”). Indeed, the concerto was composed under the cloud of war and occupation.

When Beethoven was writing the concerto in 1809, Vienna was not so much the fabled “City of Dreams” as a metropolis of nightmares. The French laid siege to it with shelling so fierce that at one point the composer took refuge in his brother's house and covered his head with pillows to escape the din. The royal family—including Beethoven's friend and patron Archduke Rudolf—fled, along with many of the notable families with whom the composer had become close.

Left alone and, once the French occupation began, in difficult financial circumstances due to rapid inflation, Beethoven had little else to do but compose. The fifth concerto is probably the most famous work to emerge from this difficult period, although the Op. 81a piano sonata (“Les Adieux”) is probably a close second. Both were dedicated to Rudolph.

Beethoven
As if you didn't know.

Much has been written about the Concerto No. 5 and, in fact, the program notes this week (based on earlier notes by Paul Schiavo and Yvonne Frindle) provide quite a good map of the composer’s stunning musical landscape. The magisterial first movement, the wistful second, and the jolly concluding rondo all show Beethoven at his best.

The soloist this weekend is Tom Borrow (b. 2000), a 2024 Artist-In-Residence with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and winner of the Terence Judd-Hallé Orchestra Award 2023. His big professional break came in 2019, when he was called in at the last minute (the last 36 hours, to be precise) to replace Khatia Buniatishvili in a series of twelve concerts with the Israel Philharmonic. "Tom Borrow is already a star,” wrote Yossi Schiffman of the Israel Broadcasting Corporation, “and we will all surely hear more about him."

I was unable to locate anything by Borrow on Spotify but he does appear in several videos on YouTube, including the second and third movements of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major from that legendary 2019 concert.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soloist Tom Borrow in the Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) by Beethoven, along with the overture to "Béatrice et Bénedict” by Berlioz and the local premiere of “Pretty” by Julia Wolfe. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the UMSL campus. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming for a limited time afterward at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra site.

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

Symphony Preview: Moonlight over Edinburgh

This weekend guest conductor Elim Chan leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Ingrid Fliter in a concert that brackets the second installment of the orchestra’s Beethoven piano concerto cycle with a pair of works that evoke strong visual images.

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

Elizabeth Orgonek
Photo: Kajaka Studios

The concerts open with the first of those two highly visual pieces, “Moondog” by contemporary American composer Elizabeth Ogonek (b. 1989). Written for and premiered by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra this past January, “Moondog” is too new to be available anywhere online, so the best I can do is refer you to Steve Holt’s interview with the composer for the SFSO.

In it, Ogonek notes that a “moondog” is “kind of halo that happens around the moon because of the way the ice crystals in clouds refract light” and that her intention was to “do a vocalese [a melody without words] for the orchestra. I wanted to evoke this sense of nighttime and dreaminess.”

“My three orchestral gods are Stravinsky, Debussy, and Sibelius,” she says in response to question about what her music sounds like. “I’m a very visual composer. I think when people hear my music, they can get that sense. It tends to be sort of cinematic, not in a “movie music” kind of way, but just visually evocative.” The whole interview is worth a read, but those are the bullet points.

Trivia note: As some of you may be old enough to recall, Moondog (real name: Louis Thomas Hardin, 1916–1999) was also an eccentric composer/performer whose

Next is the Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37, of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). A dramatic work that was the beginning of Beethoven’s break with the influences of Mozart and Haydn, the Third Concerto shows the composer in a role for which he is not, in my experience, always given enough credit: that of an "early adopter" of technology.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

The technology in question is that of the piano. At the time Beethoven was writing the C minor concerto (around 1800, although he had ideas for it a few years earlier), major technological advances were being made in the design and construction of the instrument. It was becoming bigger and heavier; the sound was getting more robust and the range of notes wider. When Beethoven began composing in the 1780s, the piano (then called the fortepiano) was basically an amped-up harpsichord with strings that were struck instead of plucked and a range of around four or five octaves. By the time he died in 1827, the piano had evolved into something closely resembling the contemporary concert grand, with a range of nearly eight octaves and the ability to produce the kind of thunderous climaxes that composers like Franz Liszt loved so much.

A major player in this technological revolution was the English firm of John Broadwood and Sons. As part of their marketing campaign, they sent their new pianos to Beethoven, with the result that Beethoven made use of the expanded range of notes for his new concerto. “As originally composed,” wrote René Spencer Saller in program notes for the SLSOs 2016 performance of the work, “his Third Concerto requires the soloist to play a high G, which is believed to be the earliest instance of that particular note in the piano repertory.”

That said, it’s hard to be sure exactly what the piano part looked like for the concerto’s 1803 premiere at the Theater an der Wien since it hadn’t been written down yet. Beethoven was the soloist and played the whole thing from memory, which drove Ignaz von Seyfried (his student and page turner) to distraction. “I saw empty pages with here and there what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs,” he would later recall, “unintelligible to me, scribbled to serve as clues for him… So, whenever he reached the end of some invisible passage, he gave me a surreptitious nod and I turned the page.” Fortunately, it became one of those stories that get funnier after the fact. “My anxiety not to miss such a nod amused him greatly,” wrote Seyfried, “and the recollection of it at our convivial dinner after the concert sent him into gales of laughter.”

The soloist for the concerto’s second Viennese performance a year later was Ferdinand Ries (another pupil) when, happily, everything was written down and there were no blank pages.

The ruins of Holyrood Abbey
By Kaihsu at English Wikipedia

The concerts conclude with the Symphony No. 3 in A minor, op. 56, ("Scottish") by Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847). Although not completed until 1842, the symphony’s genesis dates back to an 1829 walking tour of the British Isles, when Scotland in general and Edinburgh in particular made a strong impression on him. He got the idea for the slow introduction to the first movement when he visited the ruined Holyrood Chapel in Edinburgh. "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."

But how “Scottish” is the Symphony No. 3, really? The composer himself never referred to it as anything other than his third symphony, and as this week’s program notes remind us, he was “notoriously reluctant to assign explicit programs or narratives to his music.” Eric Bromberger (in notes for the San Diego Symphony), went so far as to declare that the work “tells no tale, paints no picture, nor does it quote Scottish tunes."

On the other hand, British composer and conductor Julius Harrison (in "The Symphony," edited by Robert Simpson, 1967) 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." Given that the composer’s 1829 walking tour included a bagpipe concert, a visit to Sir Walter Scott, and extensive hiking around the highlands, that wouldn’t be surprising.

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. It was the last Mendelssohn symphony to be performed in the composer’s lifetime (the Fourth and Fifth symphonies were performed before the Third but published after it). Not a bad swan song, as those things go.

The Essentials: Elim Chan conducts the SLSO and piano soloist Ingrid Fliter in a program consisting of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 (“Scottish”), and the symphonic poem “Moondog” by contemporary composer Elizabeth Ogonek. Performances take place at the Touhill Center on Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm, October 20 and 21.  The Friday morning performance will be broadcast Saturday evening on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming for a limited time at the SLSO web site.

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

Symphony Preview: On second thoughts

Written By Chuck Lavazzi

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

With Powell Symphony Hall closed for the next two years for extensive renovation and expansion, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is presenting its new season in two different venues: the 3100 seat Stifel Theatre (where the season opener was held) and the more intimate 1600 seat Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall at the Touhill Center on the UMSL campus.

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

This coming weekend (September 29 and 30), Stéphane Denève and the band make their first season appearance at the Touhill. In keeping with the smaller stage, it’s a program that demands smaller orchestral forces than the two Richard Strauss Big Band Extravaganzas last weekend.

The concert opens with the overture Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) wrote for the 1804 play “Coriolan” by the composer’s friend Heinrich von Collin. Like Shakespeare’s more familiar “Coriolanus,” it’s based on the story of the Roman general Caius Marcius Coriolanus, who led a rebellion against the decaying Roman Empire in the 5th century CE. Persuaded at the last to refrain from sacking Rome, he was treacherously killed by his allies.

Reflecting the arc of the play, Beethoven’s overture begins in heroic defiance and ends somber resignation. It’s not a curtain raiser so much as an independent tone poem which, as Brockway and Weinstock write in Men of Music, “crystalizes the essence of the drama as Beethoven felt it.” Although a popular piece, it hasn’t been performed by the SLSO since 2008 and never under Maestro Denève’s baton.

Hold your applause after the overture because the band will proceed directly (attacca) to the next item, “subito con forza” by contemporary Korean composer Unsuk Chin (b. 1961). The reason why the two works are linked will be apparent the moment you hear it, and I am disinclined to spoil that moment for you here. If you must have your spoilers, though, there’s an excellent performance by the Oslo Philharmonic under Klaus Mäkelä (complete with synchronized score) on YouTube. In any case, be prepared for Beethovenian “Easter eggs.”

Up next is Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15. It's officially his Piano Concerto No. 1 because it was the first of his five concerti to be published, but it was actually his second essay in the form, dating from 1797—two years after the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major. It is, as a result, more richly orchestrated, more sophisticated, and a bit less derivative of Mozart and Haydn than the B-flat major concerto. I think Haydn’s influence is most apparent in the allegro scherzando finale, both in the jollity of the music and in the fact that it’s a rondo—a favorite form of the composer. The noble opening theme of the first movement, though, strikes me as pure Beethoven.

The concerto was last heard here in January 2022, with Denève conducting and Shai Wasner at the piano. This time around the soloist will be the American pianist Jonathan Biss (b. 1980), whose recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas is a “must listen” for anyone seriously interested in the instrument to which the composer consigned his most profound thoughts. Biss is also a fine and exceptionally witty writer, as a stroll through his web site will reveal.

The program concludes with the Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120 by Robert Schumann (1810–1856). The composer started the first movement in May of 1841 (only two months after the successful premiere of his Symphony No. 1) and, with time out for holidays and the birth of his daughter Marie, wrote the last note that October. Its four movements are played without pause “as if written in one continuous arc” (Judith Chernaik, Schumann: The Faces and the Masks) and share enough common thematic material so that, to cite the SLSOs program notes, it “approaches the novel cyclical construction proposed by pianist and composer Franz Liszt.”  Chernaik describes it as “wonderfully linked together, full of poetry, haunting in its melodies, sure in its handling of each section of the orchestra…it was another masterpiece, as Schumann must have known.”

Schumann in 1850
en.wikipedia.org

Audiences, alas, failed to appreciate any of this when the symphony was first performed by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under the baton of concertmaster Ferdinand David on December 6th 1841. The response was unenthusiastic and largely the result of events beyond the composer’s control. Audiences heard the work only after the intermission of a long concert, the first half of which consisted of seven (!) works including Schumann’s “Overture, Scherzo and Finale,” Mendelssohn’s Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra (with Clara Schumann as soloist), a series of works for piano solo (Clara) and duo (Clara and celebrity guest Franz Liszt), and Liszt’s setting for male chorus of the patriotic “Rhineland.”

Not surprisingly, the audience, the musicians, and the critics were a bit worn down by the time Schumann’s symphony was finally played. “They failed completely to appreciate the work’s originality and power,” writes Chernaik. The tepid response made it hard for the composer to find a publisher for the work and he shelved it until 1851 during his tenure as Music Director at Düsseldorf. “I totally reorchestrated the symphony,” he wrote in a letter to the Dutch composer Johannes Verhulst, “and, of course, made it better and more effective than it was before.” It was this revision, first conducted by Schumann himself in 1853, that enjoyed the success the 1841 original failed to achieve. It’s now the one that everyone performs, including the SLSO this weekend.

Ah, but is it in fact “more effective than it was before”? When Schumann’s friend Brahms prepared an edition of the composer’s collected works in 1886, he had on hand an autograph of the original version (courtesy of Clara). Upon comparing them, he decided that he preferred the original. Clara strongly disagreed and the original remained unpublished until 2003. Fortunately, John Axelrod and the Bucharest Symphony courageously issued a recording of both versions on the Orchid label just a few days ago. You can listen to both of them on my Spotify playlist and decide for yourself.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and piano soloist Jonathan Biss in a program consisting of Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Piano Concerto No. 1 along with Unsuk Chin’s “subito con forza” and Schumann’s Symphony No. 4. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm, September 29 and 30 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the UMSL campus. The Saturday evening performance will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3. For more information, visit the SLSO web site.

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

Bravo! Vail Episode 3: Life, death, and bobbleheads

[Being the third in a series of dispatches from the 2023 Bravo! Vail Music Festival, attended by yours truly as part of a delegation from the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA)]

For most of my fellow music critics, Thursday July 13th began around 9:30 am watching Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and piano soloist Bruce Liu in their first and only rehearsal of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, which was performed that evening. I don’t arise that early, though, so I didn’t manage to join the group until the 12:30 meet and greet with Nézet-Séguin.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, his bobblehead, and
the MCANA crowd

We didn’t have much time with him, but what we had was lively and informative. Offstage Nézet-Séguin radiated the same kind of enthusiasm and charm he dispenses on stage, happily answering questions from our group and posing for a selfie. He also told an amusing anecdote about the festival’s first foray into opera, Puccini’s political drama “Tosca.” “The audiences were so new to the opera,” he recalled, “that when Scarpia [one of opera’s more repellent villains] came to take a bow nobody applauded and they all booed. But they all loved it, and that’s our mission—building audiences everywhere.”

He also noted that “you’re getting the best of the weather here. It can be very unpredictable but this week it’s predictably beautiful.”

Each of us also got an official Yannick Nézet-Séguin bobblehead (complete with a tiny version of his characteristic red-tipped baton). Mine currently resides next to my only other bobblehead, Harry Houdini. “The head is OK,” quipped Nézet-Séguin, whose podium style is very physically active, “but the body doesn’t move enough.”

All of this did, however, make us late for our next event, a free Community Concert at the Vail Interfaith Chapel by the Viano String Quartet (violinists Lucy Wang and Hao Zhou, violist Aiden Kane, and cellist Tate Zawadiuk). As a result we missed all of the opening piece, Reena Esmail’s “Zeher” (“Poison”), along with over half of Bartók’s String Quartet No. 3 Sz. 85. What we did hear was pretty impressive, though.

Happily, we did get to enjoy all of Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1 in E minor (“From My Life”). Violist Kane jokingly referred to it as “Smetana’s Viola Concerto” because of the prominent part for her instrument, but the music itself is serious stuff.

The Viano Quartet
Photo courtesy of Bravo! Vail

Smetana wrote his first and only string quartet near the end of his life as his hearing and health were failing. It’s overtly programmatic, tracing the composer’s life from his initial delight in his art (first movement), his love of his native Bohemia’s folk music and dances (second movement), his happy marriage to his first wife, Kateřina (third movement), and in the last movement, his tinnitus (graphically illustrated by a sustained E in the violin), subsequent hearing loss, and the decline in his health.

That’s a lot of emotional territory to cover, and the Viano Quartet covered it thoroughly, displaying a strong connection with the work’s wide emotional range.

The concert concluded with an arrangement of “In Other Words” (the 1954 jazz standard better known these days as “Fly Me to the Moon”) by violinist Zhou. A lively mix of mainstream jazz with just a touch of vintage Quintette du Hot Club de France and a slick cello solo, it was the perfect contrast to the tragedy of the Smetana quartet.

Thursday evening found us back at the Ford Amphitheater for a mostly Rachmaninoff evening. I say “mostly” because the concert opened with the brief (six minutes) “Fanfare Ritmico” written at the turn of the millennium by American composer Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962). Quoted in the program, the composer says that the piece “celebrates the rhythm and speed (tempo) of life…This fanfare celebrates that rhythmic motion of man and machine, and the energy that permeates every moment of our being.”

Energy the fanfare has aplenty, to be sure. Scored for orchestra and a massive percussion battery (four percussionists playing 26 instruments plus tympani), it sometimes felt less like a work for percussion and orchestra and one for percussion vs. orchestra. It essentially consists of a five-note motif that dashes around the stage at breakneck pace, sometimes in massive sonic blasts, sometimes in delicate moments for a handful of instruments.

Higdon’s orchestration is inventive and the performance by the Philadelphians was quite the feat of virtuosity. You couldn’t call it great music, but it was fun while it lasted.

Up next was a work that has become a favorite of mine over the years, Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances." I have found it oddly compelling since I first heard it during my undergraduate days on a 1961 LP recording by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy, who conducted the work's first performance in 1941. I was immediately struck by the "late night" feel of the piece—and not just because of the chimes in the last movement. It was only later that I learned that Rachmaninoff had, in fact, originally titled the three sections "Noon," "Twilight," and "Midnight." The composer dropped the titles, preferring to let the music speak for itself, and it does so eloquently.

The work is filled with evidence of Rachmaninoff's genius as an orchestrator, with elaborate and complex string writing, inventive use of brasses and winds (including a short but poignant solo for alto sax), and an effective but never overwhelming use of the large percussion battery. The final movement is a struggle between the “Dies Irae” and the “Resurrection” theme from Rachmaninoff’s 1915 “All-night Vigil,” which while emphatically resolved in favor of the latter, still seems to carry the sense of a life approaching its conclusion.

Nézet-Séguin’s approach leaned heavily on the melancholy and emotional extremes of the music, with strong contrasts in dynamics and tempi and, of course, lots of rubato. This was particularly effective in the second dance, Andante con moto (Tempo di valse), which swelled and swooned as it built slowly to a forceful restatement of the main theme and an energetic coda. Orchestral details were very clear throughout, allowing us to hear more of that exceptional skill the band displayed in Higdon’s “Fanfare.”

André Watts in 1971
Photo: James Kriegsmann, New York
Public Domain, 

The Lento assai sections of the final dance were unusually slow, creating a strong sense of yearning—perhaps for the life that was departing, perhaps for the one that the deeply religious composer no doubt felt was to come. It added to the impact of the final moments in any case.

This was not a “Symphonic Dances” reading that was much to my taste, but it must be acknowledged that Nézet-Séguin made a persuasive case for it. And the audience loved it.

In program notes for a 2019 performance, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Stéphane Denève described the “Symphonic Dances” as “redeeming—it's a piece of hope. The ending is an Alleluia, a triumph over death. It was his last work, and maybe, because he composed this piece, he felt he could die." That was the feeling I got from this performance.

After intermission, Rachmaninoff’s wildly popular Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor Op. 18, concluded the concert. But first, “Old Mortality” was back among us again.

“One shining light has gone now into the sky; a new star is coming.” That’s how Nézet-Séguin introduced piano soloist Bruce Liu to the audience. The light in question was that of legendary pianist André Watts, who had died the previous day at the age of 77.

Those of us d'un certain âge (sounds more classy than “old”) remember Watts well. As someone who was born only two years later than him, I remember him as being around my entire life—because he was. When he made his famous debut playing the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, he was only 16 and I, at age 14, was just beginning to seriously love “classical” music. Watts went on to become a star and I went on to become, eventually, a music critic. And so it goes.

Although much younger than either of us, Nézet-Séguin also remembers Watts well because when the conductor made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 2008, he was accompanying Watts in, of all things, the Rachmaninoff Second. “The coincidence is almost overwhelming emotionally,” he recalled. “So, this resonates very personally and as you can understand, in this entire concert and especially this performance, we all have André on our hearts.”

It's a beautiful sentiment. I wish I could say the performance of the concerto that followed was a fitting tribute to the late pianist, but honesty forbids me from doing so. From the famous seven-chord introduction, with its evocation of tolling bells, until nearly the end of the last movement, this was a performance that pushed the limits of the concept of “slow” and generally lacked energy.

Bruce Liu and Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Photo courtesy of Bravo! Vail

The opening of the first movement was so ponderous that there was little room for contrast with the more romantic second theme. Soloist Liu’s voicing brought out some inner details of the piano part that I hadn’t heard before, but otherwise it felt oddly passionless and affected.

The second movement (marked Adagio sostenuto) felt more Lento, if not downright Larghissimo, making it a serious test of the principal clarinet’s breath control in their long solo. On the positive side, Liu’s playing had a crystalline clarity. Still, this was easily the slowest I have ever heard this movement played, and the tempo sucked the life out of it.

The Allegro scherzando finale got off to a good start, but the entry of the familiar second theme (the basis for the 1945 Frank Sinatra hit “Full Moon and Empty Arms”) slowed it all to a crawl once again. Still, the final restatement of that theme at the end was tremendously effective.

My opinion aside, the performance was received with wild approval by the audience and led to an encore. Liu didn’t announce the title, but I think it was Rameau’s “Les tendres plaintes” (from the Suite in D Major in the Premier Livre de Pièces de Clavecin, in case you’re keeping score), which he recorded in 2022 for Deutsche Gramophon.

Next: Anna Clyne and Wolfgang Mozart, together again for the first time.

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

Symphony Review: The SLSO rocks out with Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring"

Back in the spring of 2020, Music Director Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) planned a season closer that included the score of a ballet that literally caused a riot at its 1913 premiere, “Le Sacre du Printemps” by Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971). Unfortunately, COVID-19 shut the season down in March and we never got to hear the orchestra’s much-anticipated performance of that remarkable score.

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

Until this past weekend (Saturday and Sunday, April 29 and 30), that is. Coming at the end of a concert that had already brought us pristine renditions of the colorful tone poem “Apu” by Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972) and the valedictory Piano Concerto No. 3 by Béla Bartók (1881–1945), “Sacre” was an exhilarating, pulse-pounding thrill ride. It not only delivered the big, ear-shattering climaxes, but it also honored the many intimate orchestral details that can get overlooked in performances that place too much emphasis on the more “rock and roll” moments of Stravinsky’s provocative big band blowout.

Stéphane Denève and the SLSO
"Sacre du Printemps" curtain call

I have always thought that a good “Sacre” ought to sound like it could go completely off the rails at any moment. The composer baked that into the score with crashing dissonances, frequent changes in the number of beats per bar, and unusual instrumental sonorities (like forcing the bassoon up to the top of its register in the opening measures). In the same manner as a properly executed “mad” scene in the theatre, “Sacre” should create the illusion that total chaos lurks around the corner while always being completely under control. By that standard, Saturday night’s performance wasn’t just good, it was legendary.

Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo handled that tough opening solo line expertly, setting the stage for a series of virtuoso performances by all the members of the orchestra. The eight (!) horns were in wonderful form, with special props to Tod Bowermaster and Victoria Knudtson doubling on Wagner tubas; ditto for Andrea Kaplan on the alto flute. They were working with instruments that, I expect, they rarely have to play and doing so expertly. Stravinsky’s score demands a lot from the players and got it from both the regular orchestra members and the additional musicians hired for this event.

Denève has a knack for taking familiar music and making it sound brand new, bringing out sonic details that are not always clear in other performances, making creative use of silence as a musical element, and generally shining new light on corners of the music that are sometimes in darkness—or (to push the simile to the breaking point) at least in dim light. His Beethoven Ninth in 2020 was an excellent example. So was this “Sacre.” It packed a powerful punch, but (to mix metaphors) did so in a velvet glove.

But then, the whole evening was immensely satisfying. It began with a scintillating run through Frank’s fanciful “Apu” which, like “Sacre,” is based in folk traditions. Unlike “Sacre,” it describes a mischievous spirit (the titular Apu) rather than a savage sacrifice. It delights rather than stuns, enchanting the ear with unusual orchestral combinations and a wide assortment of percussion instruments. There’s a particularly challenging passage for the marimba and xylophone in the final movement that was fun to watch as well as hear as Alan Stewart and Kevin Ritenauer jumped back and forth between instruments and occasionally played nearly on top of each other. The flutes and other wind instruments were kept quite busy as well, a nod by the composer to the dominance of that instrumental family in the folk music of Andean Perú.

The first half of the program concluded with the Bartók concerto. Like Frank, the Hungarian composer/pianist made extensive use of folk material and is cited by her as a primary source of inspiration.

L-R: Stéphane Denève, Piotr Anderszewski

Soloist Piotr Anderszewski was once dubbed “amusician of both power and sensitivity” in a New Yorker review of a recital of the works of Bach, a composer Anderszewski has recorded extensively. Saturday night he fully lived up to that description, dancing through the first and third movements with style and grace while bringing a hymn-like serenity to the second. That he and the orchestra did this despite a bizarre vocal outburst from an audience member down on the first floor is a tribute to their extraordinary concentration on the music.  His style was fluid, his sound both translucent and powerful.

When Stéphane Denève made his SLSO debut back in 2003 his soloist for Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D major was Piotr Anderszewski. “The give and take between Denève and soloist Piotr Anderszewski was lovely to behold,” I wrote at the time [https://www.waxwingwebs.com/thedoge/slso030919.html], “and the resulting performance a solid display of teamwork among soloist, conductor and orchestra.” Nearly two decades later it’s clear that (to paraphrase Mr. Shakespeare) age cannot wither nor custom stale their solid partnership.

One of those Bach recordings I referred to above, by the way, was a 2002 Erato disc of Partitas 1, 3, and 6. Anderszewski gave us a sample of that as an encore: the “Sarabande” BWV 825. The simple elegance and subtle voicing of the performance was a perfect counterpart to the Allegro vivace finale of the Bartók concerto. It was also appropriate, given that Bartók once said that Bach “showed us the transcendent significance of counterpoint.”

Many SLSO concerts have threads of connectivity running through them. This one, perhaps, had more than most.

Next at Powell Hall: Stéphane Denève returns for the season finale, conducting the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and Children’s Chorus in another major piece of unfinished business from 2020, the 1846 "légende dramatique" by Hector Berlioz, "La damnation de Faust.” The soloists will be the same team originally slotted for 2020: soprano Isabel Leonard as Marguerite, tenor Michael Spyres as Faust, and bass John Relyea as Méphistophélès. Performances are Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8 pm, May 5 and 6.

The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3. It will also be the last SLSO performance in Powell until renovation is completed in 2025.

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

Symphony Preview: Just folks

Folk traditions, in one form or another, serve as the basis for the penultimate St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) program this weekend (Saturday and Sunday, April 29 and 30). Music Director Stéphane Denève conducts with piano soloist Piotr Anderszewski.

[Preview the music with my Spotify playlist.]

The program opens with the local premiere of the tone poem “Apu” by Gabriela Lena Frank, Composer-in-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra, founder of the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and a graduate of my alma mater, Rice University.

Gabriela Lena Frank
Photo by Mariah Tauger

Ms. Frank's background is one of ethnic diversity, as her biography clearly attests:

Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist. She has traveled extensively throughout South America and her pieces often reflect and refract her studies of Latin American folklore, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.

In short, as Frank says in an interview for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, “I don't look like most composers in classical music. I'm not white; I'm a woman; and I'm alive... And: I'm hearing-impaired.”

The Peruvian side of her background is on display in “Apu,” as it was in her "Leyendas," selections from which were performed here in 2020 as part of the SLSO’s chamber music series. “In Andean Perú,” says Frank in her program notes, “spirits are said to inhabit rocks, rivers, and mountain peaks…The apu is one of the more well-known spirits that is sometimes portrayed as a minor deity with a mischievous side who is rarely seen.”

Like the supernatural practical jokers in other folk traditions around the world, Apu is probably someone you want to keep happy. “Simple folk song and a solemn prayer often successfully placate the apu,” says Frank, “to ensure safe passage through the mountains.” That song is the subject of the first movement, Pinkillo Serrano, while the prayer is heard in the second movement, Haillí. Apu himself shows up in the final movement, traipsing through the tuned percussion instruments and generally raising a ruckus before evaporating like the morning dew.

You won’t find a recording of “Apu” on the Spotify playlist, but fortunately you can watch Marin Alsop conduct the 2017 world premiere performance by the National Youth Orchestra on YouTube.

Since Frank cites Béla Bartók as a source of inspiration, it’s only right that the next item on the program is the "Piano Concerto No. 3", which he wrote during the final year of his life (1945) in New York. Unlike his first two concertos, which he wrote for himself (he was a formidable pianist), the third was composed for his second wife, Ditta. The hope, according to Geoffrey Norris in a 2016 article for The Gramophone, was "that it would give her some sort of legacy after his death, both in terms of her own profile as a pianist (though she seems never to have played it in public) and in the income she might accrue from royalties when it was taken up by others."

A more prosperous Bartók in 1927

That was probably a good bet. Although Bartók's three concertos have never been as popular as those of Big Guns like Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, they have always had their ardent supporters. And the third concerto is probably the most accessible of the three. It is, in Norris's words "altogether of a gentler, more reflective if scarcely (in the outer movements) less dynamic mien" than the first two. "András Schiff," he notes, "describes it as 'a wise man's farewell.’" And so it was; when the composer died on September 26, 1945, it fell to his friend, the violinist and composer Tibor Serly, to complete the final 17 measures. The concerto was his last musical will and testament.

That's not to say it's funereal. Lively dance-like elements dominate both the opening and closing movements, and the Adagio religioso that separates them is classic Bartók "night music", with emotionally intense chorales flanking a middle section that evokes the nocturnal sounds of nature. And all the way through, you can hear the influences of the folk music he collected during his life.

That brings us to the Big Finale, the score for the 1913 ballet "Le Sacre du Printemps” (“The Rite of Spring”) by Igor Stravinsky. The third in a series of series of successful collaborations between Stravinsky and impresario Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (the previous two being "The Firebird" from 1910 and "Petruska" from 1911), "Sacre" was, like “Apu” and the Bartók concerto, inspired by folk elements (Russian ones, to be precise).

The first performance of “Sacre”—at the newly opened Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on May 29, 1913, with Pierre Monteux conducting—became a notorious succès de scandale. "It is arguably," writes Paul-John Ramos at classic.net, "the most famous debacle in western artistic history":

Audience members found the quiet, yet active, introduction ridiculous. When the curtain rose and [choreographer Vaslav] Nijinsky's dances began, the auditorium went into a rage, their sophistication insulted… Debris was thrown, as well as punches. The work was performed in full, but only with the help of Nijinsky calling steps from atop an offstage chair.

Later performances were less riotous. In fact, when Monteux conducted a concert performance in the Casino de Paris the following year, Stravinsky was carried from the hall in triumph on the shoulders of audience members. Today the music sounds less radical but still packs a tremendous dramatic punch, as was the case when David Robertson opened the 2011-2012 SLSO season with it.

Stravinsky in 1903
By Unknown Photograf -
archives de FinitoR
Public Domain, Link

A wide assortment of performances of both the orchestral score and the ballet are available online. The SLSO picked the composer’s own 1962 Columbia Symphony Orchestra recording for its Spotify playlist, but I find it rather bloodless. As he got older and more austere in his musical language, Stravinsky the conductor tended to treat the music of his younger self as something that needed taming.  For my playlist, I have instead chosen a thoroughly unbuttoned 2005 recording by Peter Eötvös and the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie.

I have also included the 1929 recording by Monteux himself with the Grande Orchestre Symphonique for its glimpse of what it was like to play this insane music before it became a standard repertoire item. On his “Sticky Notes” podcast, Joshua Weilerstein points out that the rhythmic instability Stravinsky wrote into the work’s final moments by using “off balance meters that have 5 or 7 beats in the bar” can be lost in more streamlined recent performances. “You can almost hear the panic” in this performance, observes Weilerstein, “but in a way this recording, which is unstable and not together, has more of that visceral excitement that Stravinsky surely wanted.” For a deeper dive into the music, there's also a version of Leonard Bernstein's 1958 New York Philharmonic recording synchronized with pages from the score.

As for videos of the ballet itself, you can see not one but two recreations of Nijinsky's original choreography performed by the Orchestra and dancers of the Ballet Mariinski Theater under Valery Gergiev at the Mariinski Theater in 2008 and at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2013. The sound and videography are great in both cases. It's as close as you'll ever get to seeing what so excited and outraged audiences over a century ago.

“Sacre” was originally scheduled as the season closer in 2020, but the pandemic put that plan on hold. It will be good to finally hear Denève’s approach to this remarkable piece at last.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève returns to conduct Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Apu,” Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (with soloist Piotr Anderszewski), and Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps.” Performances are Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, April 29 and 30. The Saturday performance will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classical 107.3.

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