Digital Symphony Review: The SLSOs Bryan Miller tribute concert comes to HD video

Last November 27 and 28, Gemma New, the former Resident Conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO), returned to Powell Hall to conduct the first of a special pair of concerts honoring the life and work of the late St. Louis Post-Dispatch music critic Sarah Bryan Miller. A live HD video recording of that concert is now available from the orchestra’s web site.

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

A former professional mezzo-soprano and life-long singer, Bryan (as she preferred to be called) died on November 28, 2020 after a long and valiant battle with cancer. She left the SLSO a substantial bequest, which was used to establish the Sarah Bryan Miller Fund to support vocal soloists and performances of choral repertoire with the SLSO. That weekend’s concerts, which featured two works for solo mezzo-soprano, represented the first use of that fund. If you missed this exceptional program in 2021, this is a golden opportunity to experience it in the comfort of your own home.

Mezzo Sasha Cooke in Sea Pictures

The concert opens with the 1898 version of Elgar’s song cycle “Sea Pictures.” Although it uses poems by five different writers (including the composer’s wife, Alice), both the sea and mortality are consistent presences. The latter is often in the subtext or just in the dark orchestral colors of the lower strings and percussion, but it’s always there.

Still, there is a wide variety of moods and imagery in “Sea Pictures,” and mezzo Sasha Cooke (who was so very good in Bernstin's Symhony No. 2 here in 2019) masterfully does them all justice. Her voice is rich and fluid and her acting skills (as you would expect from someone with her opera credentials) vividly bring out the joy of “In Haven (Capri)” (text by Alice Elgar), the religious ecstasy of “Sabbath Morning at Sea” (text by Elizabeth Barrett Browning), and in Richard Garnett’s “Where Corals Lie,” that unfocused, distant stare of someone who is halfway between life and death. Principal Harp Allegra Lilly’s playing here strongly reinforces that feeling.

When I saw this live, Cooke was sometimes overwhelmed by Elgar’s large orchestra, but that’s not an issue with the clear, well-balanced sound in this video, which also makes the lyrics more understandable than they were live. As a bonus, you get a close-up view of Cooke’s impassioned performance that was impossible in the original concert.

Balance issues are also absent in the next work, Jake Heggie’s “The Work at Hand” from 2015. Based on a poem of the same name by late Laura Morefield (1961-2011), who had just been diagnosed with cancer, “The Work at Hand” is, in the words of the composer, “about the difficult and deeply human experience of knowing it is time to say goodbye and let go.” He calls the poet’s language and imagery “particularly striking: origami, the yoga Warrior 1 position, and a shimmering reconnection to nature.”

Elizabeth Chung

Here, again, Cooke is always fully in the moment, making the complex and beautiful text truly live. And the combination of Heggie’s more transparent orchestration and the high quality of the audio engineering make it easy for her to be easily heard and understood. Closed captioning is available, but I doubt that most of you will need it.

Heggie’s arrangement of his own original for voice, cello and orchestra (the latter replacing the piano) is quite imaginative, treating each of the poem’s three stanzas as separate entities; a sensible decision, given their contrasting moods. His use of woodblocks and other “Japanese” touches sets the tone for “Part One: Original Origami”; the militaristic feel of “Part Two: Warrior One” reflects the poet’s vision of defiance; and the ethereal sounds of the harp, woodwinds, and vibraphone provide an otherworldly ambiance for the quiet acceptance of “Part Three: The Slow Seconds.” A transcendent violin solo by Concertmaster David Halen) adds to that sensibility.

SLSO cellist Elizabeth Chung is also a powerful presence here, especially in the highly dramatic solo part that opens and closes the first section.

Despite the fact that the Heggie work was a local premiere and that the Elgar might as well have been (it was last performed by the SLSO 35 years ago), New and the band do a grand job of bringing them to life. If you have seen New in action before, you know she is a theatrical conductor who engages on a very physical level with the score. Her big, sweeping gestures are a kind of 3-D metaphor for the music. The camera also allows you to see the way her deep involvement with the music is reflected in her face—a view normally available only to the musicians.

That striking visual presentation only works, though, because of the rigorous effort that has clearly gone into preparing the piece in advance. Much like a theatrical director, a conductor does the vast majority of their work out of sight of the audience.

Gemma New conducting Scheherazade

That same combination of discipline and visual drama also make Rimski-Korsakov’s popular "Scheherazade," the concluding work on the program, an experience to be savored and one which is likely to live long in my memory.

New is truly in her element here, with a majestic, high-energy rendition of the composer’s colorful fairy-tale world of the "One Thousand and One Nights.” The opening duet for harp and violin is magical, thanks to Lilly and Halen, and the main body of the movement, depicting “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” carries with it an almost visceral sense of the vast ocean and the rocking vessel. “The Story of the Kalandar Prince” is filled with a sense of adventure,with outstanding opening and closing solos by Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo and Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks. “The Young Prince and Princess” has just the right amount of romance without a trace of treacle and with some graceful dancing from the muted trumpets, flute, and tambourine. The final movement is a high-definition, big-screen evocation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s rich collage of images: a fair in Baghdad (including some brilliant double- and triple-tonguing from the trumpet section); a shipwreck; and the final, gentle triumph of Scheherazade. Some of New’s tempos here are breathtakingly fast and pack a potent punch.

You will be less than astonished to know that it brings the entire house quickly to its feet. That included everyone in our party when we saw it live.

This video is part of a series of recordings of recent live concerts. Ticket information and a complete list of videos in the series is available at the SLSO web site.

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

Symphony Preview: Sailing to Byzantium

If you’re looking for things to be thankful for this week, how about our own St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO)? This Saturday and Sunday (November 26 and 27) while many of us are still working on that leftover turkey, they’re presenting a pair of concerts under the baton of previous Resident Conductor Gemma New (), who has gone on to a lead some big-name bands since her time here.

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

We can also be thankful for the life and work of the late St. LouisPost-Dispatch music critic Sarah Bryan Miller, to whose memory these concerts are dedicated. A former professional mezzo-soprano and life-long singer, Bryan (as she preferred to be called) died almost exactly one year ago (November 28, 2020) after a long and valiant battle with cancer. Bryan and I were both members of the Music Critics Association of North America and the St. Louis Theater Circle and I greatly admired both her dedication to the local music scene and her critical insights. She will be greatly missed.

Sarah Bryan Miller

Following her death, the SLSO established the Sarah Bryan Miller Fund to support vocal soloists and performances of choral repertoire with the SLSO. This weekend’s concerts, which feature two works for solo mezzo-soprano, represent the first use of that fund.

The program opens with music inspired by the work of a woman fighting her own battle against cancer. Originally performed in 2015, Jake Heggie’s “The Work at Hand” is a setting for mezzo-soprano and cello (with either piano or orchestral accompaniment) of a poem of the same name by late Laura Morefield (1961-2011) whose mother, as Caitlin Custer writes in her program notes, was a close friend of the composer. Here’s how Heggie describes the composition for Bohdi Tree Concerts:

The Work at Hand is one of Laura’s post-diagnosis poems. It is about the difficult and deeply human experience of knowing it is time to say goodbye and let go: resenting, fighting, struggling, and then finding peace in acceptance. The language and imagery she chose is particularly striking: origami, the yoga Warrior 1 position, and a shimmering reconnection to nature.

Each of the three movements of “The Work at Hand” is based on a stanza from the poem. “Part One: Original Origami” opens and closes with an angry, tormented cello solo that contrasts sharply with the lyrical vocal line as the narrator imagines her “long goodbye” as a work of origami, “folding advice until it reveals hope, creasing resilience side by side with laughter”. In “Part Two: Warrior One,” an aggressive march reflects the poet’s vision of defiance (“A warrior keeps her back leg strong, connected to the earth…as her front leg leans into the territory of the enemy”) before dissolving into a kind of resignation with the words “as far as, as long as, her breath will take her.” A sense of resignation mixes with quiet acceptance in “Part Three: The Slow Seconds” as the soloist sings of the poet’s desire “to unfold a small quilt of sunlight onto the cool green and sit very still, to let the light of heaven flow over me like honey until my bones are on fire with the beauty of it all.”

It’s a beautiful image and only one of many in Morefield’s moving poem. You can read the whole thing in the program booklet for Heggie’s CD “Unexpected Shadows.” The performance of “The Work at Hand” in my Spotify playlist is from that album. It’s the original version with piano accompaniment. This weekend we’ll be hearing the orchestral version with mezzo Sasha Cooke and SLSO cellist Elizabeth Chung.

The concerts continue with Elgar’s Op. 37 song cycle “Sea Pictures.” Composed in 1844 for soprano solo and piano, the work was revised for mezzo-soprano and orchestra in 1898, largely to take advantage of the vocal prowess of Dame Clara Ellen Butt, and it’s that later version that’s on the bill this weekend. With Elgar at the podium, Butt sang at the premiere in Norwich dressed (according to Michael Kennedy’s 1968 “Portrait of Elgar”) as a mermaid.

“I’m not making this up, you know!” – Anna Russell

Dame Clara Butt

That sounds like the kind of thing for which the late Florence Foster Jenkins was (in)famous, but Clara Butt was a serious and powerful singer (“On a clear day you could have heard her across the English Channel!” – Thomas Beecham) and according to Kennedy, Elgar was very pleased with her performance.

Still, this seems a bit odd for a work which, while hardly solemn, is certainly far from frivolous.  The last three of its five movements even bring mortality back into the picture. Elgar sets poems by five different writers, including his wife Alice, that cover a wide variety of moods and imagery.

“Sea Slumber Song,” the first movement, is an occasionally uneasy lullaby set to a text by Roden Noel in which a mother sings “Hush thee, oh my child, / Forget the voices wild!... Foam glimmers faintly white / Upon the shelly sand / Of this elfin land.” The real-world inspiration for the poem, Kynance Cove in Cornwall, is evoked by gently rocking music in the lower strings. “In Haven (Capri)”, with a text by Alice Elgar, is a sweetly nostalgic evocation of the triumph of love as “storms are sweeping sea and land.” Plucked strings and a swaying rhythm are used to suggest the picturesque Italian island.

In the third movement, “Sabbath Morning at Sea” mortality begins to make its presence known. With a text by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the music builds gradually from a sense of mourning to a formidable religious fervor as the narrator, who is presumably saying farewell to life, rejoices that God “shall assist me to look higher, / Where keep the saints, with harp and song, / An endless sabbath morning.” The orchestra reflects the mood with a sweeping climax followed by calm final chords.

Death, in fact, is never far away from the last three songs. The music of “Where Corals Lie” sounds sweetly graceful, with the harp and strings accompanying a woodwind melody. But it’s deceptive; Richard Garnett’s text suggests that the narrator sees the “rolling worlds of wave and shell” not as a place to visit, but (as the final stanza implies) a place to stay: “Yet leave me, leave me, let me go / And see the land where corals lie.” And in “The Swimmer,” the most dramatic of the five movements, poet Adam Lindsay Gordon’s protagonist reflects on lost love as he strives against “seas that climb and the surfs that comb” along “a grim, grey coast and a seaboard ghastly, / And shores trod seldom by feet of men.” Elgar’s music is nearly cinematic in its vivid depiction of the storm and the swimmer’s battle with it.

The final moments are triumphant, but is it the triumph of this world or the next? The poet leaves it somewhat ambiguous because that’s what poets do. You can decide for yourself when you hear Cooke perform the work this weekend. Meanwhile, there’s a fine version by Alice Coote, Sir Mark Elder, and the Hallé Orchestra in my playlist and complete texts of the poems at the Oxford Lieder site.

Little needs to be said about this weekend’s finale. It’s Rimski-Korsakov’s popular "Scheherazade," Op. 35.

Scheherazade by Anna Rettberg
annarettberg.blogspot.com

Written in the summer of 1888, "Scheherazade" is one of those works that needs little in the way of introduction or explanation.  The four colorful movements vividly evoke the scenes from the "One Thousand and One Nights" that served as the work's inspiration. The composer himself sets the scene in a brief introduction, written for the first performance in St. Petersburg, with Rimsky-Korsakov conducting:

The Sultan Schariar, convinced that all women are false and faithless, vowed to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by entertaining her lord with fascinating tales, told seriatim, for a thousand and one nights. The Sultan, consumed with curiosity, postponed from day to day the execution of his wife, and finally repudiated his bloody vow entirely.

Talk about your toxic masculinity.

Aside from the dazzling violin part, which represents the voice of Scheherazade herself, the piece is filled with brilliant orchestral writing, including some nice solo bits for the first-chair players. That's no surprise since Rimsky-Korsakov quite literally wrote the book on instrumentation. His "Principles of Orchestration" was begun in 1873, completed posthumously by Maximilian Steinberg in 1912, and finally published 1922. It's still available today, in both print and digital editions, from Dover Books.

The role of Scheherazade will be played, as it was the last time the SLSO performed the piece in 2018tru, by our own “trusty and well-beloved” Concertmaster David Halen.

The Essentials: Gemma New conducts the SLSO along with soloists Sasha Cooke (mezzo-soprano), Elizabeth Chung (cello), and David Halen (violin) in Jake Heggie’s “The Work at Hand,” Elgar’s “Sea Pictures,” and Rimski-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.” Performances are Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, November 27 and 28.

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

Protest at Powell: Brahms' German Requiem comes home

reason.com

Political controversy isn't something that pops up often in connection with the St. Louis Symphony, but last Saturday a brief and well-organized protest just before the second half of an all-Brahms program gained national attention—and made the #Brahms and #Requiem hashtags trending items on Twitter.

For those of you who somehow missed it, here, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch web site, is what happened at the Saturday, October 4th, concert by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus just after intermission, as guest conductor Markus Stenz prepared to lead the orchestra and chorus in Brahms' "German Requiem":

The orchestra and chorus were preparing to perform Johannes Brahms' Requiem just after intermission when two audience members in the middle aisle on the main floor began singing "Which Side are You On?" - an organized labor tune with origins in the infamous 1931 Harlan, Kentucky coal strike.

They soon were joined, in harmony, by other protesters, who stood at seats in various locations on the main floor and in the balcony.

The protesters then unfurled three hand-painted banners and hung them from the Dress Circle boxes. One banner listed the birth and death date of Brown, who was shot by Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9.

The five-minute interruption was met with a smattering of applause from some audience members, as well as members of the orchestra and chorus. Others simply watched as the orchestra remained silent.

The protest ended quietly as participants left voluntarily, chanting, "Black lives matter." Conductor Markus Stenz resumed the concert shortly thereafter.

You can see a video of the event on YouTube, courtesy of the St. Louis American.

Reactions afterwards varied, largely breaking along the racial and political lines that you might expect. Those who were convinced that Brown was the victim of police violence approved, those who were equally convinced that he was (as one concert-goer was overheard o say) "a thug" were outraged. For me, though, the most appropriate response came from Post-Dispatch music critic Sarah Bryan Miller in her review of the concert, where she simply noted that the "next words heard were sung from the stage, 'Selig sind, die da Leid tragen,' in Martin Luther's translation of the words of Jesus: 'Blest are they that mourn.'"

Brahms in 1853

What would Brahms have made of this? Speculation is dangerous, but it's worth noting that Brahms, an agnostic, made a great point of removing many of the explicitly Christian elements of the classic requiem mass. In fact, as teacher and essayist Nancy Thuleen writes in her article on the "German Requiem," Brahms "was heard to insist that his Requiem was intended for all humanity, despite (or indeed because of) its title; its innate themes of melancholy and consolation are applicable to any number of occasions." Including, perhaps, the occasion of mourning for a life lost.

As SLSO Chorus director Amy Kaiser points out in the concert's program notes, the "German Requiem" is "all about comfort for the living. People consider it a healing piece. There's no Dies irae. There is the sound of the last trumpet, but it's joyful, not fearful. A victory over death."

As I have noted previously, I'm one of the (apparently) small number of people in the world who still isn't sure what happened on the street in Ferguson, Missouri, back in August. But a young man is dead before his time, and if you're going to publicly mourn that event, doing it in company with Brahms isn't the worst idea in the world. It's a shame, though, that the protesters didn't feel they could stay for the rest of the concert; Brahms' music might have had a chance to demonstrate those healing powers of which Ms. Kaiser spoke. Heaven only knows, we could all use some of that these days.