Symphony Preview: Chalk, cheese, and haggis

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

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

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

Aleksandr Scriabin
en.wikipedia.org

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

Basically, Rachmaninoff was sane while Scriabin was a loony.

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

Rachmaninoff in 1900
en.wikipedia.org

The soloist this weekend is Kirill Gerstein, whose previous appearances here have included a surprisingly lyrical Tchaikovsky 1st back in 2013, a bravura performance of British composer Thomas Adès's "In Seven Days" in 2012, and a brilliantly improvisatory "Rhapsody in Blue" in 2014--a performance repeated here and recorded for CD on the Myrios label in 2017. A Gilmore Artist Award winner, Mr. Gerstein has shown himself to be equally at home with both Romantic classics and new music (some of which he has commissioned himself), which would seem to make him a good bet for a work like the Scriabin concerto, which looks back to Chopin while still anticipating the composer's more radical later works.

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

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

The ruins of Holyrood Abbey
By Kaihsu at English Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

Symphony Preview: The SLSO deals a pair of threes Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18, 2015

This weekend's St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts offer a pair of threes: Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3" and Scriabin's "Symphony No. 3" ("The Divine Poem"). Both were written during the first decade of the 20th century when their creators were in their thirties. Both composers were Russian Romantics who were prodigious pianists. And both made significant contributions to the literature for both piano and orchestra.

Aleksandr Scriabin
en.wikipedia.org

(They both also experienced synaesthesia—the association of specific colors with certain musical keys—but that's another story.)

The personalities, however, of Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) and Aleksandr Scriabin (1872-1915) were radically different, even though they were close friends from their days at the Moscow Conservatory. Rachmaninoff, famously, was so stung by the harsh criticism of his "Symphony No. 1" that he spiraled into a depression that was cured only after extensive hypnotherapy. Scriabin, on the other hand, was a raging egomaniac unacquainted with self-doubt. Rachmaninoff was a stable family man. Scriabin was an eccentric who fathered illegitimate children while separated from his wife. Rachmaninoff was a member of the Russian Orthodox Church with strong moral beliefs. Scriabin was a Theosophy-addled mystic who began to see himself as divine.

Basically, Rachmaninoff was sane while Scriabin, as Paul Schiavo writes in his program notes, "was, by any measure, quite mad."

How mad? Well, he became convinced that he could levitate and walk on water, for one thing. "I am the apotheosis of world creation," he said of himself. "I am the aim of aims, the end of ends." And at the time of his death in 1915 at the age of 43 (brought on by septicemia stemming from a sore on his upper lip), Scriabin was working on a "Universe Symphony". It would be a multi-media experience that would be performed in the Himalayas and would result in "a grandiose religious synthesis of all arts which would herald the birth of a new world." "The universe," as Scriabin's biographer Faubion Bowers wrote, "would be completely destroyed by it, and mankind plunged into the holocaust of finality." All we have are sketches of the first part, titled "Mysterium". Which might be just as well.

The intent behind the "Symphony No. 3," while less apocalyptic, was certainly ambitious. "The Divine Poem," ran a note presumably written by Scriabin and distributed at the work's 1905 Moscow premiere, "represents the evolution of the human spirit, which, freed from the legends and mysteries of the past that it has surmounted and overthrown, passes through pantheism and achieves a joyful and exhilarating affirmation of its liberty and its unity with the universe."

"The Divine Poem," writes Philip Huscher in his program notes for a Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance from this January, "is the longest work Scriabin wrote. It is scored for a very large orchestra, handled with the care and imagination of a much more experienced orchestrator. It is also the first of his works to be called a poem, signaling the shift from abstract symphony to a new, unnameable [sic] kind of music."

The symphony consists of a short introduction and three movements, all played without pause and running around fifty minutes. Scriabin titled the movements "Struggles," "Delights," and "Divine Play." Mr. Schiavo has a nicely detailed analysis of it in his notes for the SLSO program as does Mr. Huscher in his notes for the CSO. The former is heavier on musical detail while the latter includes fascinating quotes by the composer (Scriabin found few subjects more worthy of comment than Scriabin). They're both worth reading.

Although Scriabin died young, his compositions—especially his solo piano works—anticipated the twentieth century's near-total collapse of conventional notions of harmony (at least among "classical" composers) in ways that those of his longer-lived friend did not. He did it, however, in ways that were completely idiosyncratic, creating his own personal notions of harmony, including his famous "Mystic chord"—C, F♯, B♭, E, A, D. 

That failed to endear him to the serialists and others looking for a more rational and mathematical system.  "The strength of Alexander [sic] Scriabin," wrote Vladimir Horowitz for a 1956 recording of his sonatas, "…was unashamed Byronic romanticism.  It is one of those peculiar ironies that this strength in an earlier era may have turned out in retrospect to be his weakness in the age in which we live.  Today, in a more material age, unfortunately the tendency is to regard romanticism in any form with indulgent tolerance."

By the time Rachmaninoff got around to writing his "Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor," Op. 30, in 1909 he had fully recovered from the crippling depression brought on by the failure of his "Symphony No. 1" over a decade earlier and had achieved international recognition as both a virtuoso pianist and a composer. He wrote the concerto at his family's country estate, Ivanovka, in the summer of 1909 for a concert tour of the USA. The concerto's first two performances took place that November with the New York Symphony Society conducted by Walter Damrosch (the premiere) and Gustav Mahler (several weeks later).

Rachmaninoff in 1900
en.wikipedia.org

The Rachmaninoff Third is the K2 of piano concerti. Fiercely difficult, it's a reminder of what a prodigious pianist Rachmaninoff was. For many years after its premiere, its only real advocate was the composer himself. Even the virtuoso to whom the piece is dedicated, Josef Hofmann, never attempted to perform it in public. It wasn't until the great Vladimir Horowitz recorded it in 1930 and began to actively promote it that it started to rise in popularity. These days it's so much a part of the standard repertoire that two of the finalists in the 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (Fei-Fei Dong and Sean Chen) picked it for their final-round concerts.

Still, it's not the sort of thing a pianist takes on lightly. Our soloist this weekend, Macedonian pianist Simon Trpcheski, is no stranger to the work, having recorded it for the Avie label with this weekend's guest conductor, Vasily Petrenko (who conducted a very impressive Rachmaninoff "Isle of the Dead" here in October, 2011). It also can't hurt that the orchestra played the work as recently as May of 2012 (under Peter Oundjian, with Stephen Hough as the keyboard).

An interesting local note: when the concerto had its St. Louis premiere on January 27, 1928, the soloist was Horowitz (the "young Russian pianist," to quote Post-Dispatch critic Thomas B. Sherman). The pianist had arrived in the USA just two weeks previously and had already created a sensation with the New York Philharmonic under Sir Thomas Beecham. Mr. Sherman loved Horowitz ("a powerful tone and a sparkling and expertly controlled technique") but hated the concerto, calling it "as dull a thing as the noted Muscovite expatriate has ever done". History has rather overruled him that one.

The essentials: Vasily Petrenko conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with pianist Simon Trpcheski in Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor" and Scriabin's Symphony No. 3, "Le Poème divin," on Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18, at 8 p.m. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Seconds

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with Stephen Hough, piano
What: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Scriabin’s Symphony No. 2
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: April 29 and 30, 2011

It has always seemed to me that one hallmark of a great orchestra is its ability to make a persuasive case not only for the standards of the repertoire but for more obscure works as well. It’s one thing to present a polished performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (as the SLSO did last weekend); it’s quite another to deliver an equally exciting reading of the less popular Concerto No. 2 and then follow it up with a compelling Scriabin Symphony No. 2, a work the symphony hasn’t done in over forty years.

Although dwarfed in popularity by its predecessor, Tchaikovsky’s Second is a work with ample charms of its own, starting with a slam-bang opening movement featuring a grandly optimistic first theme, a charmingly contrasting second, and long virtuoso passages for the piano that verge on the excessive. On Friday night, the audience expressed their admiration for soloist Stephen Hough by breaking into spontaneous applause at the end of that movement. I suspect Tchaikovsky would have approved—you can’t generate that much excitement and then expect folks to sit on their hands.

Tchaikovsky also knew what he was about with the following Andante non troppo, which features a lyrical, quasi-operatic duet for violin and cello (beautifully rendered by David Halen and Daniel Lee). Maybe it’s just the romantic in me, but I can’t help but wonder whether the loving interaction of the two instruments wasn’t Tchaikovsky’s way of expressing his affection for his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, with whom he shared a long, intensely Platonic, and almost entirely epistolary relationship. Perhaps that’s why he was particularly fond of the movement.

Ward Stare

The final Allegro con fuoco wrapped everything up with more virtuoso fireworks, resulting in a well-deserved standing ovation for both Mr. Hough and Resident Conductor Ward Stare.

Mr. Stare is clearly a rising star in the conducting firmament. I had the pleasure of sharing the Powell Hall stage with him for Peter and the Wolf back in 2008 and he struck me then as a precise, no-nonsense but nevertheless good-humored presence on the podium who communicated effectively without undue theatrics. I saw nothing Friday night that would cause me to revise that opinion anywhere but upwards. It’s a shame he’s only doing one subscription program next season, even if it is a fascinating one combining music by Vivaldi, Schubert, and Osvaldo Golijov.

Mr. Stare really took the spotlight in the second half of the program, turning in a tremendously persuasive performance of Alexander Scriabin’s sometimes discursive but always intriguing Symphony No. 2. The work dates from 1902, when Scriabin was still to some extent finding his own way as a composer, but the lush orchestration, restless harmonies, and orgiastic excess that characterize much of his orchestral music were already present. His eccentric personal philosophy and multi-media experiments such as the Poem of Fire (which included a “color organ” of his own design) were still in the future, but it’s easy to hear their genesis in the exotic hothouse atmosphere of this work.

Laid out in either four or five movements (depending on how you count them) the Second is somewhat reminiscent of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, complete with elaborate bird calls from the flutes in the second movement, a violent thunderstorm in the third, and a blazing finale that brings back the sun in all its pantheistic glory. Scriabin’s countryside sounds considerably more exotic and erotic than Beethoven’s—this is the man who would write The Poem of Ecstasy a few years later, after all—but it’s hard not to hear some parallels.

Top-notch orchestras and conductors make the familiar seem new and the unfamiliar sound like something they’ve been doing all their lives. This weekend’s concerts clearly place both the St. Louis Symphony and Ward Stare in that category. It’s a pity that a larger crowd didn’t turn out to hear them. Work of this quality deserves a wider audience.

No doubt that wider audience will turn out for the final concerts of the season May 5 through 8, when David Robertson will conduct the orchestra and chorus in Orff’s ever-popular Carmina Burana, along with the world premiere of Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 3. For more information, you can call 314-534-1700, visit slso.org, or follow @slso on Twitter.