Symphony Review: Travels in time and space with the SLSO

Location, location, location. It’s the real-estate agent’s mantra. And also, as it happens, a possible theme for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday night (January 28th).

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

Stéphane Denève and the SLSO curtain call

That is, at least, what Music Director Stéphane Denève suggested in his pre-concert remarks and, upon reflection, I’d say his point is well taken. The opening work, James Lee III’s “Visions of Cahokia,” is directly inspired by the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site just across the river in Illinois. Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium)” also hearkens back to an ancient civilization—specifically Athens in the late 4th century BCE. And the 1902 Symphony No. 2 of Sibelius evokes the darkness of the majestic, windswept Finnish landscape, at least for me.

Interestingly, Maestro Denève also hears echoes of the northern Italian coastal town of Rapallo, where the composer began work on the symphony in 1901. At the same time, conductor Robert Kajanus, who first recorded the symphony in 1930, saw the Symphony No. 2 as a musical depiction of Finland’s struggle for independence. Which just goes to show you that a great work of art can mean more than one thing.

However you hear the Sibelius Second, I’d say you heard a darn fine performance of it last weekend. The composer’s use of silence can sometimes make his symphonies feel episodic, but I never got that sense from Denève’s approach, which always kept a sense of momentum, assisted by subtle shadings of tempo and dynamics.

The orchestral playing was of its usual high order—a thing of great importance in a work that often highlights individual sections of the band for long stretches of time. The big, warm horn passages and dance-like themes of the flutes contributed greatly to the expressive first movement, while the nuanced string pizzicatos and the ominous tone of the bassoon melodies in the second movement gave it a sense of gravitas. The skittering string motifs of the third movement stood in sharp contrast to the more lyrical trio section, with its oboe solo accompanied by the clarinets and horns. And the triumphant conclusion of the fourth movement gave the expanded horn and brass sections a chance to really strut their stuff.

James Lee III and Stéphane Denève

Lee’s “Visions of Cahokia” also allowed individual sections and players to shine. Lee has, as I have noted in the past, serious skills as an orchestrator and an impressive ability to summon a strong sense of time and place in his music. The bird calls of the flutes and use of exotic percussion instruments like the rain stick contributed to a sense of mystery and wonder in the second movement (titled “Na Yimmi,” the Choctaw word for “faith”) and the explosions of brass and percussion in the third movement colorfully evoke the games and celebrations of the Mississippian culture that flourished here from roughly 800 to 1600 CE.

That said, I’m a bit ambivalent on his use of rhythmic cliches to suggest Native American music. The combination of shaken bells and an obsessive four-note drum figure with the accent on the first beat (ONE-two-three-four, ONE-two-three-four) has, perhaps, been a bit over-used in both the concert hall and movie theatre. I was reminded the works of so-called “Indianist” composers like Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881–1946) and Arthur Farwell (1872–1952) in the early 20th century.

Still, “Visions of Cahokia” has a dramatic impact that can’t be denied. And it certainly got a rousing performance from Denève and the orchestra. Lee’s music artfully combines a distinctly contemporary harmonic palette with an approachability that was sadly absent from a great deal of “new music” in the last century. It’s good to see this sort of thing being championed by Denève.

The first half of Saturday night’s concert closed with the Bernstein “Serenade,” in the exceptionally capable hands of violin soloist James Ehnes. Ehnes is, as I observed in his previous appearances here, a performer whose solid technique and artistic insight do not come wrapped in the kind of flashy package of some other violinists. He strikes a more conservative figure on stage but, as he demonstrated in the rambunctious Allegro molto vivace finale of the fifth movement of the “Serenade,” he’s fully capable of throwing himself into the music with physical abandon when it’s appropriate to do so.

Stéphane Denève and James Ehnes

With Denève and the orchestra as his sympathetic partners, Ehnes gave us all the wide emotional range of Bernstein’s music, from the warmth of the Allegretto second movement, to the short, spiky Presto of the third and the passionate slow burn of the Adagio fourth. The latter tapers off into a delicate duet between the violin and harp, nicely done by Ehnes and Principal Harp Allegra Lilly.

There was an equally compelling moment in the dramatic Molto tenuto first section of the fifth movement, in which the violin and cello have an intimate duet that possibly reflects the dialog between Socrates and the seer Diotima in Plato’s text. Ehnes and Principal Cello Danny Lee infused it with a passionate intensity Saturday night.

Finally, let me not fail to praise Principal Tympani Shannon Wood and the SLSO’s percussion section. The members of the latter were kept extremely busy in both the “Visions of Cahokia” and the "Serenade." The Bernstein, in particular, requires five players dashing to and fro among a variety of instruments, including the xylophone, marimba, and tubular bells in addition to the usual battery of drums; quite a workout.

Next at Powell Hall: Norman Huynh conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens in Concert.” As with all these movie events, the orchestra plays the score live to accompany the film on the big screen. Showings are Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 pm, February 3–5. The regular season returns Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8 pm, February 10 and 11, as James MacMillan conducts the orchestra along with violinist Nicola Benedetti and SLSO Principal English Horn Cally Banham in Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture,” Tchaikovsky’s “Francesca da Rimini,” and MacMillan’s own Violin Concerto No. 2 and “The World’s Ransoming.”

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

Symphony Preview: Moonlight serenades

It has been quite an active spring for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) string section, with a series of both live and on-demand concerts showcasing what Music Director Stéphane Denève has called the “heart of the orchestra.” In the concerts Maestro Denève will conduct this weekend (April 30 through May 3), though, it’s the SLSO winds who will be in the spotlight with a pair of works by Mozart and Richard Strauss.

Richard Strauss, age 24

“This program of wind music,” observes Mr. Denève in the SLSO program notes “is all about opportunity. For Mozart, it was the opportunity to try out a new ensemble and a new sound. For Strauss, this piece was a big break, an opportunity that led to performances by a major court orchestra and a commission from Hans von Bülow, a leading conductor of the day.”

“A big break” is putting it mildly. The Strauss work that opens the concerts is the Serenade for Winds in E-flat major, op. 7. Completed in 1881 when the composer was a mere lad of 17, it’s generally regarded as a remarkably mature-sounding piece for someone who had yet to take his high school final exams. It sat around for a year while Strauss started (with minimal enthusiasm) his university education, but it finally got a premiere on November 27, 1882, by the Dresden Tonkünstlerverein (Dresden Musicians’ Society) under Franz Wüllner.

Given that Wüllner was an old friend of Strauss’s father, that might not have been all that impressive, but a repeat performance in 1883 got the attention of the influential conductor Hans von Bülow. Von Bülow added the Serenade to the regular repertoire of the highly regarded Meiningen Court Orchestra (which he had founded)—a gesture that led to what Stefan Schenk calls “an effusive letter of appreciation” from Strauss:

Esteemed Herr von Bülow!

To my immense joy I heard the news from Mr Spitzweg the day before yesterday that it is the intention of your Excellency to perform my Wind Serenade Opus 7 in one of your concerts. I am delighted that such great honour has thus been bestowed upon my little beginner’s piece. – And I would like to express my most heartfelt and sincere thanks to you, esteemed master.

Listening to this friendly seven-minute work, all that might seem like a lot of fuss, but that’s just because Strauss achieved such a warm, welcoming effect without straying significantly from traditional musical structures that date back to Mozart—whom Strauss very much admired. Indeed, Strauss’s instrumentation is very close to Mozart’s; he just cuts back on the clarinet family and adds a couple of flutes for a brighter sound. You can hear that clearly in the performance by members of the University of Michigan Symphony Band on YouTube.

Mozart, as drawn by Doris Stock, 1789

Which brings us to Mozart. His Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, K. 361 (370a) takes up the rest of the program. It picked up the nickname "Gran partita" because that title was added to the manuscript after the fact by a hand clearly not Mozart’s. Presumably it’s a comment on the work’s length (around 45 minutes, with seven movements) as well as the size of the ensemble (12 winds and a double bass).

That’s not large by contemporary standards, of course, but consider that back in Mozart’s day a harmonie (wind ensemble) usually consisted of around a dozen musicians playing pleasant background music for aristocratic garden parties. The harmonie of Emperor Joseph II, for example, “set the gold standard foraristocratic entertainment.” By doubling the size of the band and writing a work of symphonic proportions, Mozart was breaking new ground.

That said, there’s a lot about the origins of this work that are, to say the least, unclear. “The Serenade No. 10 in Bb Major,” writes David Stanley “is both well-known and a mystery”:

We will likely never know the exact date of composition for this serenade.  Scholars have examined a wide variety of sources: Mozart’s manuscripts, the type of paper he used, his thematic catalog, works composed at the same time, correspondence between other musicians—nothing is conclusive.  We know Mozart was in his late twenties and that the piece, or part of it, may have been premiered in Vienna on March 23, 1784

What we can say, just from listening to it, is that it goes well beyond the bounds of simple background music for the idle chatter of the well-born. The opening Largo—Allegro molto fills the standard sonata form with nobility and good humor. The two Menuetto movements are eminently danceable despite being longer and more elaborate than would have been typical for a serenade back then. The Tema con Variazioni sixth movement assigns a different pair of woodwinds to each variation, giving everyone a chance to show off. And the exuberant Finale, in the words of Dr. Michael Fink, “adds a finale on top of a finale. The clipped repeated sections of this rapid Rondo tumble forward impetuously.”

The Adagio third movement has become especially well known, thanks in part to Peter Shaffer’s play “Amadeus.” Shortly after meeting Mozart for the first time and finding himself appalled by the composer’s loutish behavior, Antonio Salieri hears the opening of the Adagio and is thunderstruck by its profundity:

It started simply enough: just a pulse in the lowest registers—bassoons, basset horns—like a rusty squeezebox. It would have been comic if not for the slowness, which gave it a kind of serenity. And then, suddenly, high above it, sounded a single note on the oboe. It hung there unwavering, piercing me through, until breath could hold it no longer, and a clarinet withdrew it out of me, and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight it had me trembling…It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God…and it was the voice of an obscene child! [from “Amadeus,” 2003 revision]

If you know the play, you also know that this is not a happy revelation for Salieri.

Buffet Crampton basset horn

One more cool thing about the “Gran Partita” is that it offers a rare opportunity to hear an instrument popularized by Mozart’s friend and fellow Mason Anton Stadler: the basset horn. Essentially a larger version of the clarinet with a more powerful low end and a darker tone quality, it looks a bit like a cross between a clarinet and a sax, especially in the elegant format offered by Buffet Crampton of Paris. Playing the basset horns this weekend will be SLSO E-flat clarinetist Ryan Toher and guest musician Jane Carl.

You can experience that Adagio along with the rest of the Serenade No. 10 in any number of ways on YouTube. If you want just the music with a synchronized display of the score, there’s this 1994 recording conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. If you’d prefer a live performance, The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France has one for you recorded on March 7, 2016, at the Auditorium of Radio France. Personally, I prefer the latter (they appear to be playing those cool Buffet Crampton basset horns, for one thing), even though there is much to be said for being able to read the score along with the players.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts members of the SLSO winds in the Serenade for Winds in E-flat major, op. 7 by Richard Strauss and the Serenade No. 10 in B-flat Major by Mozart. Performances are Friday at 11 am, Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, April 30 through May 2, at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. Only 300 tickets will be sold for each performance and strict health protocols will be in place. 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.

Review: Passionate Mozart, Brahms, and Vaughan Williams with Denève and the SLSO

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

Stéphane Denève
www.stephanedeneve.com

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In an interview last week, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Designate Stéphane Denève observed that "nobody should ever conduct music that he or she doesn't believe in. Because music is about passion." You could hear that kind of deep emotional commitment in the program he conducted last weekend with the orchestra (February 8-10).

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

When I reviewed Mr. Denève back in 2011 I described him as a very charismatic conductor who takes an obvious joy in his work. You could see and hear that joy from the very beginning Sunday afternoon as Mr. Denève conducted a version of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" that positively sparkled with good cheer, beautifully shaped orchestral details, and displayed an ideal combination of lyricism and classical restraint. The symphony strings sounded wonderful--silky and luminescent.

There is plenty of joy as well in the work that concluded the concerts, the Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 72, by Brahms. Written during an escape from the hurly-burly of Vienna to the little town of Pörtschach am Wörthersee during the summer of 1877, the symphony is undoubtedly one of the most cheerfully bucolic things the composer ever wrote. "It is all rippling streams, blue sky, sunshine, and cool green shadows," observed Brahms's friend Theodore Billroth upon playing through the score for the first time. "How beautiful it must be at Portschach."

It was certainly beautiful enough on the stage at Powell Hall Sunday, as Mr. Denève's interpretation captured all of the happiness Brahms must have felt in his beloved countryside. The hushed, lyrical introduction of the Allegro non troppo first movement contrasted nicely with the high drama later in that movement. The Adagio non troppo second movement radiated warmth, and the Allegretto grazioso was filled with good humor. The Allegro bon spirito finale--surely one of the sunniest ever composed--came to a properly blazing conclusion with spectacular work by the horn section under Principal Roger Kaza, who also turned in some fine solo work during the piece.

This weekend's performances of the Brahms were recorded for future CD release, so Mr. Denève was obliged to wait for complete silence before starting each movement. At least on Sunday, he got it fairly consistently, demonstrating that we all can, when necessary, keep our coughing and shuffling to a minimum.

SLSO Chorus Director Amy Kaiser

The best part of the program for me, though, was the double dose of Vaughan Williams that closed the first half of the concert: "The Lark Ascending" and the "Serenade to Music" played attacca--one right after the other, without pause. They're both lovely works, but joined together this way they combined to produce one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard at Powell Hall.

Begun in 1914 but not completed until after World War I, "The Lark Ascending" is a brief romance for violin and orchestra in which the violin takes on the role of the bird in the George Meredith poem that inspired the composition. The violin in featured prominently as well in the "Serenade to Music," a work for sixteen solo singers and orchestra that sets to music some lines from Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" about the joy of music.

Many have seen both Meredith's poem and the work it inspired it as a metaphor for the soul's climb to heaven, expressed musically in the way the work's lovely melody floats and, in the end, slowly fades into silence as it makes its final ascent. Mr. Denève is one of them. In remarks from the stage, he said he sees the "Serenade to Music" as a logical companion to "Lark" because "I like to think souls return to us on waves of music." So the real logic for joining the two works is as much philosophical as it is musical.

The important thing is that it worked both intellectually and emotionally. The transition from the final ascent of Concertmaster David Halen's solo at the end of "Lark" to the first notes of the warm and engaging solo that opens the "Serenade" felt completely right. The ethereal beauty of the first work nicely set off the more contemplative serenity of the second. It was all incredibly moving, especially when the entire vocal ensemble sang of how the "[s]oft stillness of the night / Become the touches of sweet harmony."

Here, once again, Mr. Denève showed a real love for the music, perfectly shaping the performances and drawing flawless singing and playing from all concerned. The members of Amy Kaiser's chorus all delivered their solo lines beautifully and with great clarity. And a special shout-out is due Associate Principal Horn Thomas Jöstlein for his work here, particularly during the many duet passages with Mr. Halen, who played with his usual consummate skill.

The SLSO has been referring to this as the "engagement" season between the orchestra and Mr. Denève, who assumes the role of Music Director officially this fall. If so, it has clearly been successful, as both the audience and the musicians appear to love him. In this week before Valentine's Day, that only seems right.

Next at Powell Hall: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with pianist Yefim Bronfman and mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, February 15 and 16. The all-Prokofiev program consists of a suite from the ballet "Cinderella," the Piano Concerto No. 2, and the cantata "Alexander Nevsky." Mr. Denève also conducts the orchestra in the "Cinderella" suite in a Family Concert on Sunday at 3 pm, February 17. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: Stéphane's serenade and Brahms's lullaby

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

Stéphane Denève
Photo by Jessica Griffin

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When I first saw St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Designate Stéphane Denève conduct the orchestra back in the spring of 2003 I found him an impressive figure: tall and commanding without appearing overbearing, and with a bit of the late Leopold Stokowski's flair. Watching him conduct a program of Britten, Haydn, and Tchaikovsky, I noted his close communication with the musicians and how much they appeared to enjoy working with him.

"I don't know whether or not Stéphane Denève is being considered for the Music Director post at the SLSO," I wrote at the end of my critique. "If so and if this was an audition, I'd say he passed it with flying colors."

That looks a bit prescient now, albeit around 16 years late.

Mozart, as drawn by Doris Stock, 1789

This weekend (February 8-10), Mr. Denève is making his second appearance with the orchestra this season, with an evening of music by Mozart, Vaughan Williams, and Brahms. The concerts open with a performance of Mozart's 1787 Serenade No. 13 for strings, a.k.a. "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," a work so well-known that most of the audience could probably hum it all the way through--and yet, as Mr. Denève notes in comments for the program, he has never conducted it before.

"I try to always serve the composer," he reflects. "With Mozart this goal is difficult, as the music is perfect in itself, so one always notices if the ego of the performer is in the way." Based on what I have seen of Mr. Denève's work to date, I think that is unlikely to be an issue. It will, in any case, be interesting to hear what amounts to his first public thoughts on this popular classic.

Up next will be a pair of purely lovely short works by Ralph Vaughan Williams: "The Lark Ascending" and the "Serenade to Music."

A romance for violin and orchestra, "The Lark Ascending" has its origins in 1914 while the composer was strolling along the seaside cliffs in Kent. It was not completed, however, until the composer returned from his service in the war disillusioned and with what would prove to be progressive hearing loss. By the time "The Lark Ascending" had its first performance in 1921, it had turned into a wistfully nostalgic look back at a bucolic way of life shattered forever by the winds of war.

Vaughan Williams in the army, 1915
rvwsociety.com

The piece takes its title from an 1881 poem of the same name by George Meredith that describes the characteristic way skylarks spiral up into the sky while singing. Meredith heard a kind of pantheist divinity in the lark's song that seems to have resonated with the composer, even though he was a devout Christian. Many have since heard a metaphor for the soul's climb to heaven in the way the work's lovely melody floats and, in the end, slowly fades into silence as it makes its final ascent.

The full poem is 122 lines long, but here are the lines Vaughan Williams chose to accompany the score:

He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings.

The part of the lark this weekend will be played by SLSO Concertmaster David Halen.

Mr. Halen's violin is also the first thing heard in the next work, the "Serenade to Music" from 1938. Composed as a tribute to the noted British conductor Sir Henry Wood on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his first concert, the "Serenade" is scored for a small orchestra and a group of sixteen solo singers.

Why sixteen? Because the singers who performed the work at its premiere were noted British vocalists selected specifically by Vaughan Williams and Wood. In fact, the published score has the initials of each singer next to his or her lines. Recognizing the difficulty of coming up with sixteen soloists, the composer would later create arrangements for four soloists and/or choir, but this weekend we'll hear the original version with sixteen stellar vocalists from the SLSLO chorus.

The text of the work comes from Act V, Scene 1, of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice." In the play, the lines belong to the eloping lovers Lorenzo and Jessica, as they sit on a grassy bank and reflect on the importance of music. "How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!" cries Lorenzo. "Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears: soft stillness and night / Become the touches of sweet harmony." The sheer beauty of the work is supposed to have moved the composer Rachmaninoff to tears when he heard it at its 1938 premiere.

I first encountered the "Serenade to Music" as "filler" on a Columbia recording of Vaughan Williams's angry and despairing Symphony No. 4 by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. The performance had been recorded live at the opening of the orchestra's new home at Avery Fisher Hall in September, 1962. Coming after the final anguished chords of the symphony, the "Serenade" was like a breath of fresh air--a sudden flood of peace and beauty after a musical depiction of the horrors of war. This weekend, the "Serenade" will be played attacca, i.e., immediately following "The Lark Ascending," as though the lark had returned to earth to help pay tribute to "the touches of sweet harmony."

Brahms in 1853
en.wikipedia.org

Concluding this weekend's concerts will be a symphony with one of the sunniest final movements you will ever hear: the Brahms Symphony No. 2, written and first performed in 1877. Indeed, as James Keays writes in program notes for the Redland Symphony, the Second "is one of the most cheerful of Brahms' mature works, so much so that it is often called his 'Pastoral,' an obvious reference to Beethoven's symphony of the same name."

The comparison is an apt one since Brahms, like Beethoven, loved nature and often drew inspiration from it. "Throughout his life," writes Tim Munro in this weekend's program notes, "nature helped him return to equilibrium, an equilibrium lost in the bustle of the city. Raised in a hard-scrabble part of Hamburg, he took long walking trips with his family. Later, escaping Vienna meant he could breathe and be alone with his thoughts."

The escape that led to the Second Symphony was to the Austrian town of Pörtschach am Wörthersee. Brahms loved the place and rhapsodized that "the melodies flow so freely that one must be careful not to trample on them." He rented two small rooms for himself at the village that summer, and if his correspondence is an indication, he couldn't have been happier, as Philip Huscher writes in notes for the Chicago Symphony:

The rooms apparently were ideal for composition, even though the hallway was so narrow that Brahms's piano couldn't be moved up the stairs. "It is delightful here," Brahms wrote to Fritz Simrock, his publisher, soon after arriving, and the new symphony bears witness to his apparent delight. Later that summer, when Brahms's friend Theodore Billroth, an amateur musician, played through the score for the first time, he wrote to the composer at once: "It is all rippling streams, blue sky, sunshine, and cool green shadows. How beautiful it must be at Portschach."

Listening to the symphony again recently, I was struck by the sense of serenity, openness, and good humor in the piece. I was also struck, once again, by the similarity between the second theme of the first movement and Brahms's famous "Lullaby" ("Wiegenlied" in German) from 1868. Whether that was intentional or not is hard to say but, as Dick Strawser of the Harrisburg Symphony points out in a 2010 blog post, Brahms does report that the rooms where he was staying in Pörtschach am Wörthersee were near the summer home of Bertha and Arthur Faber, the couple for whom he wrote the "Wiegenlied" in the first place. Personally, I like to think that it was a genial nod to his friends and to the joy he felt in composing this cheerful work.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, along with SLSO Concertmaster David Halen, Friday at 10:30 am, Saturday at 8 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, February 8-10. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: Nicholas McGegan and the joy of Mozart

Nicholas McGegan
Photo: Randy Beach

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Nicholas McGegan, who is conducting the St. Louis Symphony in an all-Mozart program this weekend (October 7 and 8, 2016), is clearly a man who enjoys his work. When I've seen him conduct the orchestra, he practically bounds out to the podium, his face alight with a cherubic smile. His body language shouts: "this is going to be FUN!" And so it always is.

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

That said, the work that opens this weekend's concerts comes from a time when Mozart's spirits were not so high. The Symphony No. 31 in D Major, K.297 (300a) ("Paris") was written in (yes) Paris in June, 1778. Mozart and his mother had arrived there after a concert tour of Munich, Augsburg, and Mannheim with a view towards finding some job prospects, but the pickings were slim and the composer found himself forced to pawn some of his property to survive. The commission for a new symphony from Jean LeGros, the director of the Concert Spirituel (described by James M. Keller as "the pre-eminent Parisian purveyor of instrumental music until the nation's cultural life was interrupted by the Revolution of 1789") was therefore a welcome development.

Mozart, party animal

"Three and a half years had passed since Mozart had composed his last symphony," Mr. Keller continues, "and he clearly approached this new effort with excitement. At least fifty-five musicians appear to have participated in the premiere. This marks the first time that a pair of clarinets appears in one of the composer's symphonies; in ensuing years, their sound would become central to the orchestral timbre we recognize as Mozartian. What's more, Mozart was a quick enough study to grasp the essence of Parisian musical taste and reflect it in his new score, beginning with the three-movement format (eliminating the minuet movement that was traditional in German-speaking lands)."

The audience at the symphony's June 18 public premiere was enthusiastic, if Mozart's account is accurate. The work was interrupted by applause more several times (the notion that concert audiences should sit quietly is a relatively recent development in musical history) 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.”

The only fly in the ointment was Mr. LeGros's attitude towards the Andante second movement: he didn't care for it. "The Andante," relates Tom Service at The Guardian, "exists in two versions, after Legros complained that the first one had too many ideas in it, so Mozart wrote another for when the symphony was repeated on 15 August. No-one's sure which is the first and which the second, but it seems likely the more elaborate movement in 6/8 is the original, and it's this that's usually played." As I'm writing this, I don't know which one Mr. McGegan will be using this weekend; you'll just have to attend to find out.

Up next is the Violin Concerto No. 1, K. 207, written in 1773 when the composer was still a teenager. This and his many other works for violin are reminders that, while we mostly think of Mozart now as a pianist, he was also a pretty respectable fiddler whose first official job is Salzburg was that of concertmaster.

It's not a particularly adventurous piece but, as John Henken writes in program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it certainly has its appeal: "The first movement is a blithe affair, with a touch of courtly, spirited grace. A sublime, operatically poignant Adagio is the centerpiece, the longest movement of the three. Musical athleticism comes to the foreground in the fleet finale, but never overwhelming structural logic or expressive nuance."

The soloist for the concerto will be the remarkable Jennifer Koh, who impressed me so much in the solo part of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in 2011. Back then I called her a veritable dynamo of a performer, shaking her head and tearing into the fast movements with ferocity and singing the slow ones. It will be interesting to see what she does with the Mozart.

Jennifer Koh

The last work on the program dates from 1779, when Mozart found himself back once again in the Salzburg, the city of his birth. He didn't much care for the place, finding the opportunities limited and the population unfriendly. Here he is complaining to his father in a September 1778 letter (cited in Peter Gay's Mozart: A Life): "The only thing-I tell you this straight from the heart-that disgusts me in Salzburg is that one can't have any proper social intercourse with those people-and that music does not have a better reputation-and-that the archbishop does not believe clever people who have traveled" (i.e. people named W.A. Mozart). An 1783 letter was even more blunt: " I care very little for Salzburg and not at all for the archbishop: I shit on both of them."

And yet, as he had in Paris, he put negative thoughts aside to compose yet another masterpiece, this time for graduation ceremonies at the University of Salzburg. The Serenade No. 9, K. 320 is nicknamed the "Posthorn" because of a little fanfare for that humble instrument in the sixth of its seven movements. The posthorn is a small valveless cylindrical brass instrument that was used to announce to arrival of a mail coach or a post rider in Mozart's day and it's uncertain why he used it here. "Whether the graduating students interpreted this as 'Later, chumps!' or 'Stay in touch, will you?' is unclear," writes René Spencer Saller in her program notes, "but they certainly understood its relevance to their much-anticipated summer break."

The serenade, back in the 18th century, was essentially glorified background music-trivial stuff meant to be played during outdoor parties. However, as Aaron Grad writes in program notes for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, "Mozart defied that trend, elevating the serenade to the sophistication of the concert hall while retaining the form's airy, celebratory spirit. It is no surprise that Mozart successfully retooled some of his most ambitious serenades into symphonies, most notably the 'Haffner' Symphony, recycled after its initial use at the wedding of a family friend."

Written for a fairly large ensemble by 18th century standards (fifty musicians will be performing it this weekend), the work gets off to a grand start with winds and tympani and continues to entertain and delight for another forty minutes. It's joyful music, and it will be conducted by one of most exuberant conductors in the business.

The Essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with violin soloist Jennifer Koh, in an all-Mozart program on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., October 7 and 8. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. Saturday's concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio.