Review: A trio of symphonic losers make for a winning combination at the SLSO

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

Conductor Jakub Hrusa
Photo courtesy of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this weekend (March 29-31, 2019) featured three works that critics didn't like much when they were first performed. History has proved the critics wrong, and this critic was very happy with the performances Friday night of Bartók's "The Miraculous Mandarin" ballet suite, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, and Shostakovich's eccentric Symphony No. 9.

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

First performed in Cologne, Germany, in November 1926, "The Miraculous Mandarin" encountered a firestorm of controversy largely because of its sordid and violent scenario about a trio of thugs who force a young woman to lure men to their lair for robbery--until the titular Mandarin proves to be more than a match for them.

The fact that it's a harsh, discordant, and technically challenging score did not help matters. Bartók said his intent was to write "hellish music" that would "sound like pandemonium," and there's no doubt that he succeeded.

This is tricky stuff, with shifting meters, oddly placed accents, complex fugal sections, rapid passages for the strings that span wide intervals, and difficult bits for the woodwinds. The first-chair clarinet, in particular, has a series of increasingly elaborate, melismatic solos that depict the woman's seductive dances. This is, in short, music that requires a skilled orchestra and a conductor who knows his way around Bartók's musical maze.

In his debut with the SLSO, Jakub Hrusa certainly proved to be that kind of conductor Friday night. The frenetic opening passages were precise and incisive, the contrapuntal sections were wonderfully clear, and the entire performance was electrifying in its intensity. Associate Principal Clarinet Diana Haskell really nailed her solos, backed up with equal skill by Benjamin Adler on E-flat clarinet and Tzuying Huang on bass clarinet. Also due for a shout-out are Jelena Dirks on oboe, Cally Banham on English horn, and Peter Henderson on piano.

In fact, the only negative aspect to the performance came not from orchestra but from the audience, when the performance was disrupted by someone's cell phone loudly playing the "Bourée" from Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 4. Mr. Hrusa stopped the music while the offending instrument was silenced. Seriously, people: what part of "turn off your cell phone" is unclear to you?

Violinist Karen Gomyo
Photo courtesy of St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

The performance of Tchaikovsky's 1878 Violin Concerto that followed was interrupted as well, but for far more positive reasons. Soloist Karen Gomyo was so technically pristine and warmly expressive in the first movement that the house burst into a spontaneous standing ovation at the end of it. Her cadenza was especially stunning, with supernaturally clear high harmonics and passionate intensity. Yes, contemporary concert etiquette says you're not supposed to applaud between movements but, as my wife remarked during the ovation, sometimes you just can't restrain your enthusiasm.

Both Ms. Gomyo and Mr. Hrusa found a lot of variety in this well-loved warhorse, with interesting little turns of phrase and well-chosen moments in which the music was allowed to pause and breathe a bit. Ms. Gomyo's tone was big and forceful when needed, but also elegant and intimate in the elegiac second movement. Her bravura rendition of the Allegro vivacissimo finale led to another standing ovation, followed by a darkly dramatic encore: the third of Astor Piazzolla's six Tango-Etudes.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9, which concludes this weekend's concerts, actually got some decent notices when it was first performed in 1945, but that quickly changed when Stalin decreed it insufficiently triumphal. He was expecting a grand patriotic celebration of the victory over Hitler. Instead he got a bouncy, snarkily comic, and elegant work just under a half-hour long that sometimes sounded like Haydn on steroids. He was not amused.

But amusing the symphony often is. Yes, the second of its five movements is wistfully sad and the fourth is solemn and agonized, but on the whole this is entertaining music. The perky little march in the first movement would not be out of place in a music hall, and the fifth, with its lumbering march and frenzied finale, could almost accompany a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Shostakovich filled the symphony some wonderful passages for the winds. Ann Choomack executed the piccolo solo in the first movement perfectly, Andrea Kaplan's flute solo in the second movement was lovely, and Andrew Cuneo did full justice to the bassoon's long, agonized star turn in the fourth movement, which magically turns into a comic introduction to the fifth. It's as though, after weeping openly, the instrument turns around and says "never mind, folks, just kidding."

There were nice moments as well from Tom Drake on trumpet, Scott Andrews and Benjamin Adler on clarinets, and Concertmaster David Halen. Roger Kaza and the horns were also in fine form.

On the podium, Mr. Hrusa appeared to always be fully in command of this symphony's mercurial moods, which range from solemn to silly over relatively short time spans. It was an expertly structured and perfectly paced performance, bringing Friday night's concert to an entertaining conclusion.

Next at Powell Hall: Gemma New conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program of new music by students of the Missouri University composition program on Wednesday, April 3, at 8 pm. She will also conduct the orchestra along with soloists Mark Sparks, flute, and Allegra Lilly, harp, on Friday at 10:30 am, Saturday at 8 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, April 5-7. The program consists of music by Benedetto Colagiovanni, Libby Roberts, and Mikkel Christensen. The concert takes place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: Critical failure

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

This weekend (March 29-31) Jakub Hrusa leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in three works by well-established composers that were nevertheless greeted with a mixture of bafflement and hostility when they were first performed. Not surprisingly, history has since vindicated the composers.

The concerts open with a suite from Béla Bartók's ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin." First performed in Cologne, Germany, in November 1926, the ballet's sordid and violent story so outraged local audiences and religious leaders that the mayor, Konrad Adenauer (who would later be Germany's first post-WW II chancellor), had it banned. It wasn't seen again until after the composer's death in 1945.

Béla Bartók in 1927

What was all the fuss about? Thomas May has a synopsis in his program notes and there's an even more detailed one at Wikipedia, but essentially the story concerns a trio of thugs who force a young woman to lure unsuspecting rubes to an upstairs room where they're robbed, beaten, and tossed out into the street. The first two victims, an old man and a student, are easily dispatched, but the third--the wealthy Chinese man of the title--proves to be much tougher. The criminals try to kill him by suffocation, stabbing, and hanging, but he refuses to die until the woman finally embraces him, at which point he bleeds and expires.

Not exactly family friendly stuff. Also rather Freudian. Choreographer Attilla Bongar has posted a YouTube video of his version of the ballet and while the video quality is not great, it does give you a pretty good idea of what the action looks like.

The music Bartók wrote was appropriately aggressive and discordant. In an article for "The Listeners Club", Timothy Judd calls it "one of the scariest pieces ever written" and quotes the composer (in 1918) predicting that it would be "hellish music." Mr. Judd goes on to quote the musicologist and Bartók biographer József Ujfalussy on the way in which the ballet was a reflection of the post-WW I zeitgeist:

European art began to be populated by inhuman horrors and apocalyptic monsters. These were the creations of a world in which man's imagination had been affected by political crises, wars, and the threat to life in all its forms... This exposure of latent horror and hidden danger and crime, together with an attempt to portray these evils in all their magnitude, was an expression of protest by 20th-century artists against the...obsolete ideals and inhumanity of contemporary civilization. [Bartók] does not see the Mandarin as a grotesque monster but rather as the personification of a primitive, barbaric force, an example of the 'natural man' to whom he was so strongly attracted.

A quick glance at my news feed suggests that, if Mr. Ujfalussy is correct, this may be music whose hour (like that of Yeats's rough beast) has "come round at last."

Tchaikovsky, aged 52.
Photographed by Alfred Fedetsky
in Kharkov, 14/26 March 1893
wiki.tchaikovsky-research.net

Up next is Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. Although wildly popular these days, the concerto was originally dismissed as "unplayable" by St. Petersburg Conservatory violin professor Leopold Auer (to whom it was originally dedicated and who was supposed to play it at its premiere). Tchaikovsky's colleague Adolf Brodsky would replace Auer as both the first performer and the dedicatee.

I wrote at some length back in 2015 about the concerto and the oddly hostile reactions it got from clueless critics, so I won't repeat myself here. The bottom line is that it's now a beloved part of the repertoire and never fails to be a crowd pleaser.

The violin soloist this weekend will be Karen Gomyo, who has gotten her share of critical praise http://karengomyo.com/press/ over the years. "A first-rate artist of real musical command, vitality, brilliance and intensity," wrote John Van Rhein at the Chicago Tribune in 2009, while the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Zachary Lewis called her "captivating, honest, and soulful, fueled by abundant talent but not a vain display of technique" in 2011. Reviewing her performance of works by Chausson and Sarasate here in 2017, I praised her technical proficiency and intense artistic focus. I look forward to seeing what she does with Tchaikovsky's so-called "unplayable" masterpiece.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 9, which concludes this weekend's concerts, actually got some decent notices when it was first performed on November 3, 1945, by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky, who conducted the world premieres of several other Shostakovich symphonies. His fellow composer Gavriil Nikolayevich Popov, for example, reacted to it this way (cited in "Shostakovich: A Life" by Laurel E. Fay):

Transparent. Much light and air. Marvelous tutti, fine themes (the main theme of the first movement -- Mozart!). Almost literally Mozart. But, of course, everything very individual, Shostakovichian... A marvelous symphony. The finale is splendid in its joie de vivre, gaiety, brilliance, and pungency!!

That opinion didn't last. As conductor Mark Wigglesworth writes on his blog, "Stalin was incensed when he heard the piece." Coming immediately after the conclusion of the Great Patriotic War (World War II to the rest of us) he had expected a grand heroic apotheosis, not "literally Mozart." As Mr. Wigglesworth notes, the winds of opinion quickly changed:

Within a year of its première in 1945, Soviet critics censured the symphony for its 'ideological weakness' and its failure to 'reflect the true spirit of the people of the Soviet Union.' One described it as 'old man Haydn and a regular American sergeant unsuccessfully made up to look like Charlie Chaplin, with every possible grimace and whimsical gesture.' Others, in more private circles, understood 'its timely mockery of all sorts of hypocrisy, pseudo-monumentality, and bombastic grandiloquence.' It was banned for the remainder of Stalin's life and not recorded until 1956. Nor was the work particularly well received in the West. According to an American critic, 'the Russian composer should not have expressed his feelings about the defeat of Nazism in such a childish manner.'

Shostakovich in 1945

In all fairness, Shostakovich might have been partly responsible for raising false expectations. "Undoubtedly like every Soviet artist," he declared on the occasion of the 27th anniversary of the revolution in 1944, "I harbor the tremulous dream of a large-scale work in which the overpowering feelings ruling us today would find expression. I think the epigraph to all our work in the coming years will be the single word 'Victory'."

He even went so far as to compose the first several minutes of that planned celebratory work early in 1945. As scholar Olga Digonskaya writes, fellow composers who heard him perform it described the fragment as "powerful, energetic and triumphant." Dissatisfied, he set the fragment aside, and by the summer his thoughts had completely changed. Running under a half hour, the final version of the Symphony No. 9 is a brisk, and (at least in the first movement) openly comic work with (as Mr. May writes in his notes) "a shockingly (to those who wanted it) unheroic finale."

If you want to listen to the complete symphony in advance, let me recommend a recording by the WDR Symphony on YouTube that includes a synchronized display of the score. Note the many prominent solos for instruments that don't always get them like the piccolo, bassoon, and trombone.

This week's guest conductor, Jakub Hrusa, was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1981. He studied paino and trombone before taking up the baton at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. He's Chief Conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic. Recent debuts include guest appearances with the Berlin Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, and NHK Symphony.

The Essentials: Jakub Hrusa conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, along with violinist Karen Gomyo, Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, March 29-31. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center.

Review: Wintry mix

Hannu Lintu
Photo by Veikko Kähkönen

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

Attendance at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert this past Saturday (September 29th) was rather light. Which was a shame, since it brought us a pair of impressive performances by violinist Leila Josefowicz and guest conductor Hannu Lintu.

Maestro Lintu is no stranger to the Powell Hall stage, having made several appearances here over the years, most recently in an all-Russian program this past April. He is a commanding and visually compelling figure on the podium who has a nearly ideal mixture of romantic intensity and intellectual control.

That combination of passion and precision was most obvious in the work that concluded this weekend's concerts, Dmitri Shostakovich's massive Symphony No. 11 in G minor, Op. 103, (subtitled "The Year 1905"), but you could see it in the newer works comprised the first half of the concert as well.

The evening opened with the American premiere "Flounce" by Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970). A commission by the BBC for its 2017 Proms concert series, Flounce, which clocks in at a brief five minutes, is something of an audio funhouse in which short phrases leap up like flying fish from (to continue the metaphor) a churning musical sea. The work opens with an exuberant orchestral outburst which soon gives way to more delicate textures that call for a wide variety of unusual techniques from the players before building again to a big and comically abrupt finish.

Among those unusual techniques, as Tim Munro observes in his program notes we see:

Brass players blow tone-less air through their instruments, producing gusts of white noise. Trumpeters slap their mouthpieces with palms, giving a popping sound, while trombonists make clacking noises with their tongue. Clarinetists clutch hard and quickly release the reed with their tongues, producing a sharp noise called a "slap tongue."

The string players get to make their share of odd noises as well by bouncing their bows, pressing them hard against the strings, playing on the "wrong" side of their bridges. "A single bass player," Mr. Munro writes, "makes a breathing sound by playing the wood below their strings (the tailpiece)."

Add a percussion section that includes a slide whistle, a Super Ball (by Wham-O, as seen on TV!), a "U-shaped vibraslap, the descendant of an instrument made from jawbones, emitting a rattle," and "a long tube filled with beans to produce the calming sound of rain" and you have a collection of noisemakers that even Spike Jones might have envied.

All this should be fairly entertaining, and it mostly is, although many of the more outré sounds were, at least in this performance, lost in the overall orchestral din. This is, I suspect, one of those works that will come across better on recordings than it does live. It's certainly easier to hear orchestral details in the BBC recording of the world premiere than it was in Powel Hall.

That said, the musicians of the SLSO did a bang-up job of it all, playing with enthusiasm and precision. Given the difficulty of the score and the quality of the performance, the response from the relatively small audience was disappointingly tepid. I can understand the lack of enthusiasm for the work itself--it's the sort of thing that doesn't much invite repeated hearing--but Mr. Lintu and the orchestra deserved longer and more enthusiastic applause for their hard work.

Leila Josefowick

Up next was the St. Louis debut of the 2009 Violin Concerto by another of Mr. Salonen's fellow countrymen, Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958). Best known as the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2009, Mr. Salonen, like Mr. Lintu, studied conducting with Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Conservatory. This weekend's soloist, Ms. Josefowicz, worked closely with Mr. Salonen during the composition process and gave the work its world premiere.

In notes for the Violin Concerto on his publisher's web site, Mr. Salonen points out that his goal was "to cover as wide a range of expression as I could imagine over the four movements of the Concerto: from the virtuosic and flashy to the aggressive and brutal, from the meditative and static to the nostalgic and autumnal." I'd say he succeeded, although to my ears the work had an undercurrent of neurasthenic anxiety that lent an edge to even the more tranquil moments.

You can hear that nervous energy most clearly in the opening movement, titled "Mirage." Starting almost in midphrase, "as if the music had been going on for some time already" (to quote Mr. Salonen), the solo line dashes up and down in a brilliant "perpetual motion" display and while the emphasis shifts periodically to other parts of the orchestra the violin remains the focus of the movement and, indeed, the work as a whole.

Not for Mr. Salonen the alteration of solo and tutti passages of the classic concerto. Here the soloist plays more or less nonstop for the work's entire half-hour run time and employs just about every technique in the book. It's the sort of work that only a true virtuoso would attempt.

Needless to say, Leila Josefowicz is exactly that kind of virtuoso. Her technique was flawless, even in the most demanding passages (of which there are many). More importantly, though, she faithfully conveyed the wide range of moods Mr. Salonen was striving for. That included the somewhat nervous dreaminess of the second movement (titled "Pulse I"), the wild, jazzy excess of the "Pulse II" third movement ("Something very Californian in all this," writes Mr. Salonen. "Hooray for freedom of expression.") and the nostalgic sense of farewell in "Adieu," the final movement.

This time around the audience's applause was sustained and enthusiastic. Ms. Josefowicz's performance had great physical energy, virtuoso flair, and good, close communication with Mr. Lintu. She deserved every bit of the standing ovation she received. Also singled out in curtain call bows for their solo work during the concerto were Associate Principal oboe Phil Ross, Assistant Principal viola Jonathan Chu, and Principal cello Daniel Lee.

The Shostakovich symphony took up the second half of the program. Indeed, at nearly 70 minutes, it was almost twice as long as the entire first half. Written in 1957, this sprawling, cinematic work was, publicly, a memorial to the "Bloody Sunday" massacre of a group of unarmed protestors by the Imperial Guard of Tsar Nicholas II on January 9th, 1905. It was a key event in the 1905 Russian Revolution which led, in turn, to the overthrow of the Tsarist regime in 1917. Privately, though, Shostakovich apparently had a different act of political violence in mind: the bloody repression by Soviet forces of the Hungarian uprising in October of 1957. "Don't forget," he said to choreographer Igor Belsky, "that I wrote that symphony in the aftermath of the Hungarian Uprising." (cited in "Shostakovich: A Life Remembered" by Elizabeth Wilson).

When I saw Mr. Lintu conduct Shostakovich's harrowing Symphony No. 8 back in 2015, I was very taken with the way his perfectly calibrated interpretation honored the composer's every note. I heard that same degree of keen musical insight in his approach this time as well.

There is usually a mix of horror, beauty, tragedy, and triumph in Shostakovich's more mature symphonies, and the Eleventh is no exception. Despite the work's epic length, it grabs the listener's attention from the ominous, wintry string chorale and distant trumpet and horn calls of the opening and doesn't let up until the defiant finale. Yes, the graphic musical description of the massacre in the second movement is the sort of thing that apparently moved British musicologist Robert Layton to describe Shostakovich (in the 1967 Penguin Books edition of "The Symphony") somewhat dismissively as a "documentary composer," but I think Shostakovich transmuted those external experiences into something that transcended external influences.

Mr. Lintu and the musicians delivered that sound with tremendous power. There was a number of striking solos throughout the work, including Cally Banham's mournful English horn and Tzuying Huang's bass clarinet in the final movement.

That final movement, by the way, concludes with a massive G minor chord on the tubular bells, openly contradicting the orchestra's more optimistic G major chord. The combined sound of the bells and gong has a long decay time, and Mr. Lintu clearly intended that chord to slowly die away before lowering his arms and turning to accept the audience's applause. Some of the audience didn't wait for that to happen Saturday night. Mr. Lintu looked bemused. I don't blame him. The enthusiastic ovation was deserved, but giving the work a few seconds to truly end would have been more respectful.

From St. Louis, Mr. Lintu moves on to guest spots in Baltimore, Boston, Tokyo, Singapore, and Cincinnati before returning to Finland and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He currently has no return engagement scheduled with the SLSO, but given his apparent popularity with both audiences and orchestral management, I expect that we will be seeing him again before too long.

Next at Powell Hall: Bramwell Tovey conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and viola soloist Beth Guterman Chu Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 8 pm, October 5 and 6. The program consists of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 ("Pastorale") and Berlioz's "Harold in Italy." Then Ben Whiteley conducts the orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists in "A Celebration of Muny at 100" on Sunday, October 7, at 3 pm. The concerts take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: Happy road warrior Hannu Lintu returns to Powell Hall

Conductor Hannu Lintu
Photo by Veikko Kähkönen

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In an interview with flautist and music writer Tim Munro in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's program book, SLSO Artistic and Operations VP Erik Finley notes that the 2018/2019 season is "an in-between time" for the orchestra. That's because, while former Music Director David Robertson's tenure ended at the end of the previous season, the orchestra's new Music Director, Stéphane Denève, won't officially take over until the fall of 2019.

In the interim, Mr. Finley put together the orchestra's program with substantial input from the musicians themselves, resulting in a season that has been dubbed "From Our Family to Yours." That includes what Finley refers to as the orchestra's "extended family" of guest conductors who have appeared on the podium frequently and whose names will be familiar to St. Louis music lovers.

Such as, for example, the man who will conduct the SLSO this weekend (Friday and Saturday, September 28 and 29): Finland's Hannu Lintu.

Maestro Lintu is no stranger to the Powell Hall stage, having made several appearances here over the years, most recently in an all-Russian program this past April. He is, as I have noted in reviews of some of his previous appearances here, a commanding and visually compelling figure on the podium. His big gestures are striking, but he can also coax delicate sounds with a minimum of physical display. He has, in short, a nearly ideal mixture of romantic intensity and intellectual control.

The degree of control would appear to be a result of his studies at the Sibelius Academy (where Mr. Lintu now has a part-time teaching assignment) with the noted conductor and teacher Jorma Panula (b. 1930) whose notable students also include Osmo Vänska and Jukka-Pekka Saraste. In a 2017 interview with Paul E. Robinson for Musical Toronto, Mr. Lintu said that Mr. Panula's secrets for producing such successful students are fairly simple. "First of all," he noted, "Panula has an instinct for recognizing conducting talent. He seems to know who is gifted even before teaching begins. Secondly, he doesn't teach technique. He lets his students do what they want as long as they show what they want and express their own ideas...Panula does not do so much teaching. He is more like Yoda. What he does is a kind of Zen. Just being around him and having discussions is really inspirational. Another point he emphasizes: a conductor must have the will, a strong need to express how he feels about the music he conducts or he will not succeed." That will shows up clearly in Mr. Lintu's forceful presence on the podium.

Composer Lotta Wennäkoski

Born in Rauma, Finland, in 1967, Mr. Lintu studied piano and cello at the Turku Conservatory and conducting at the Sibelius Academy, graduating with honors in 1996. He quickly found work as chief conductor of the Turku Philharmonic (1998-2001). He was chief conductor of the Helsingborg (Sweden) Symphony from 2002-2005, the Tampere (Finland) Philharmonic from 2009-2013, and Ireland's RTÉ National Symphony starting in 2010. In recent years he has been in demand world wide--so much so that he now spends a great deal of his time on the road. And unlike some performers who view travel as something of a necessary evil, Mr. Lintu finds it liberating.

"[W]hen I am in Helsinki, with my own orchestra," he observed in a 2017 interview with Ottawa-based arts journalist Peter Robb, "it means I don't have much time to study anything because I have lots of meetings, rehearsals, and interviews. When I am travelling I am sort of resting..I know this doesn't make much sense but why slow down? I still like travelling. I like hotels and airports and airplanes." Given that recent conducting assignments have taken him as far afield as Boston, Budapest, Tokyo, Detroit, and Paris, it's fortunate that he's a happy road warrior.

Since 2013, Mr. Lintu has also been Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. During his tenure, he has been great advocate of the work of 20th and 21st century Finnish composers. That includes older and more traditional composers like Joonas Kokkonen (1921-1996), Einar Englund (1916-1999) and Erik Bergman (1911-2006) as well as younger voices like that of fellow Sibelius Academy graduate Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970), whose 2017 work "Flounce" receives it's USA premiere by the SLSO this weekend.

Conductor/composer Essa-Pekka Salonen
Photo by Minna Hatinen

In addition, Mr. Lintu has been a champion of the work of composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958). Best known as the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2009, Mr. Salonen, like Mr. Lintu, studied conducting with Jorma Panula. His 2009 Violin Concerto will receive its St. Louis debut this weekend. The soloist will be Leila Josefowicz [http://www.leilajosefowicz.com/], who worked closely with Mr. Salonen during the composition process and gave the work its world premiere.

Part of what makes that advocacy of new and under-represented music possible is funding, as Mr. Lintu pointed out in the Robb interview. "Sometimes I think in Europe financing is automatic. It's a machine. They just feed us with money." As a result he feels that "we should take an even bigger responsibility to play things that haven't been played much and introducing new composers or those who have been forgotten. That is part of my job with the Finnish Broadcasting Company."

Not everything on this weekend's program is Finnish, though. Indeed, the longest work on the concert will be the Symphony No. 11, Op. 103, by Shostakovich. First performed in 1957 and subtitled "The Year 1905," it's a work that, on the surface, appears to be a patriotic tribute to the bloody events of Sunday, January 9th, 1905, when Tsarist troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators--an event which would eventually lead of the 1917 Communist revolution.

Dmitri Shostakovich, 1950
Photo by Deutsche Fotothek

But, as is so often the case with Shostakovich, publicly stated intent and private intent were not necessarily in sync. Coming shortly after the brutal murder of Hungarian protestors by Soviet machine guns on October 25, 1956, many saw the Symphony No. 11 as a tacit tribute to that uprising rather than the one in 1905. As Rebecca Lentjes points out in her program notes for this weekend, the Eleventh Symphony "is by no means immune from the trend of reading Shostakovich's music for double meanings; according to musicologist David Fanning: 'appearing as it did in October 1957, its message concerning the abuse of dictatorial power invited Aesopian reading as a comment on the Soviet repression of the Hungarian uprising.' Shostakovich himself allegedly encouraged this interpretation, reportedly commenting to a friend: 'Don't forget that I wrote that symphony in the aftermath of the Hungarian Uprising.'"

Mr. Lintu has proven in previous appearances here to be a persuasive interpreter of the Russian repertoire in general and of Shostakovich in particular. His 2013 performance of the Symphony No. 8, for example, was especially striking. So it will be interesting to see how he approaches the somewhat more approachable Symphony No. 11.

But then, Mr. Lintu is a great admirer of the symphonic form in general. "I must say I always prick up my ears when I hear a new symphony is being played somewhere," he said in a 2015 interview with Lotta Emanuelsson, "because the symphonic tradition means a lot to me. The 'symphony' is a format affording endless different options while at the same time providing a strong sense of form. And it still has infinite potential to explore."

We'll all have the opportunity to join him in that exploration Friday and Saturday at 8 pm as he conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violinist Leila Josefowicz in Lotta Wennäkoski's "Flounce", Esa-Pekka Salonen 's Violin Concerto by the composer/conductor, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11. The concerts take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday performance will also be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio.

Review: Young at heart

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

Augustin Hadelich

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

The audience might have been grayer than usual at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's 10:30 am Coffee Concert Friday (January 12, 2018), but the music was all the work of composers in the prime of their youth.

The concert opened with a suite from the chamber opera (four singers and a small pit band in its original form) Powder Her Face, which premiered in 1995 when composer Thomas Adès was only 24. Based on the life of Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll (1912-1993), whose elegant and fashionable life took a bizarre turn after a near-fatal fall down an elevator shaft in 1943 turned her into something of a sex addict, the opera has generally gotten good reviews despite (or maybe because of) the R-rated nature of its story.

You can hear a fair amount of the eccentricity in the suite--a 2017 co-commission by the SLSO along with four other notable orchestras and Carnegie Hall--which uses a full-size orchestra and a huge percussion battery. The tango-style Overture sounds like a dance band in hell complete with discordant, wailing saxophones (played with bluesy precision Friday morning), but the music soon gives way to an almost saccharine Scene with Song featuring impeccable solos by Concertmaster David Halen and Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews that wouldn't have sounded out of place in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. There's also an intoxicated Waltz with icy string pizzicatos and a Hotel Manager's Aria with the horns, at the bottom of their register, acting as the voices of death.

There's humor, ingenuity, and aural variety in this music--more than I recall hearing in my only other exposure to Mr. Adès's work, his In Seven Days (Concerto for Piano With Moving Image), which the SLSO performed in 2012. It was, in fact, great fun to hear--something I find myself saying all too rarely about a lot of newer music--and performed with genuine élan (in the French sense of mouvement d'amour) by conductor David Robertson and his forces.

Up next was the Violin Concerto by Benjamin Britten, written in 1938 and 1939 when the composer was in his mid-twenties. Composed in response to the horror of the Spanish Civil War, the concerto was described by Britten as "without question my best piece," but he went on to say that it was "rather serious I'm afraid."

That it is. As an indictment of modern warfare with its ensuing trauma, I'd put it right up there with Nielsen's fifth symphony and Vaughan Williams's fourth. The concerto opens with a five-note figure on the tympani that's soon joined by an anguished, ascending theme on the violin. The two ideas dominate the rest of the movement, sometimes in opposition to each other, sometimes joined so closely that it's hard to tell them apart. The second movement is a wildly virtuosic scherzo that feels like one of Hieronymus Bosch's creepier paintings set to music. It's almost monothematic, based largely on a triplet figure that's first stated by the violin and then gurgles away in the bassoons before moving on to the rest of the orchestra. A cadenza leads to the final movement. Marked "Andante lento," it's a passacaglia (a series of variations on a repeating theme in the bass line) that moves contrapuntally around the orchestra and drips with anguish until the work concludes on a hushed and uncertain note, vacillating between major and minor but never really settling on either.

The soloist has his work cut out for him here. In a 2010 interview for violinist.com, violinist Janine Jansen describes the concerto as "quite demanding," and she's not exaggerating. The Vivace second movement is especially hair raising, with lots of "double stops and even double-stop harmonics" (to quote Ms. Jensen again), but the cadenza that leads into the Passacaglia is no less fearsome.

Nor are all the challenges technical. The emotional profundity of both the opening Moderato con moto and the closing Passacaglia demands a musician who has heart as well as nimble fingers. I'm happy to say that the young Italian-born violinist Augustin Hadelich is just such a performer.

His commitment to the music was obvious from the first notes, as both his facial expressions and body language displayed a deep, intense connection to both Mr. Britten and Mr. Robertson. Yes, his skill in negotiating the flashy stuff on his 1723 Stradivarius was unassailable, but what really made this performance work was his ability to put across the intense feeling behind those notes.

Mr. Robertson did a superb job shaping the music, bringing out all the drama and passion. He began slowly, on the low end of moderato, which made the build to the fervent central section of the first movement that much more powerful. He and Mr. Hadelich produced a second movement that hummed with energy, leading into a monumental final movement.

Music blogger Ben Hogwood once wrote that hearing this was like being in a "massive church." After Friday's performance, I see what he meant. I especially liked the fact that Mr. Robertson allowed the silence after the uncertain ending to linger before finally lowering his baton and accepting the applause. It was an incredibly dramatic moment.

The concert concluded with the Symphony No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich, written when the composer was still a student at the Leningrad Conservatory and first performed when he was 19 years old. It's a remarkable study in contrasts, with chamber music-style solo passages cheek by jowl with the full-tilt swagger of the composer's more popular works. Perky melodies reminiscent of the stuff Shostakovich probably heard during his work as a cinema pianist pop up in the first and second movements, standing in stark juxtaposition to the brooding and sporadically anguished gloom of the third. And the final Allegro molto wraps everything up in a classic flourish of brass and percussion, reflecting the young composer's brash confidence while still retaining the sense of sarcasm that is always just below the surface.

It's rather like a noisy and diverse party in which the guests have nothing much in common other than their relationships to the host.

There are a lot of great solo moments in this piece, such as Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks's plangent solo in the third movement, Mr. Halen's Korngold-esque moment in the finale, and Shannon Woods's tympani break in that same movement. There was excellent playing as well by Principal Flute Mark Sparks, Associate Principal Trumpet Thomas Drake, Principal Cello Daniel Lee, Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo, and Associate Principal Clarinet Diana Haskell. I'm told the reed players were a bit concerned about the effects of this weather on those little bits of cane that are the heart and soul of their instruments, but they sounded just fine to me.

The Shostakovich First is, to say the least, episodic, often coming to a complete halt while the composer shifts gears. Mr. Robertson's interpretation gave it a real sense of momentum nevertheless, building up considerable excitement in the more bombastic sections and bringing out all the details in the more transparently scored moments. Great work, and well deserving of the standing ovation it got.

The SLSO will be taking this program on the road January 16-19, with performances at multiple venues in California at Palm Desert, Santa Barbara, UC-Davis, and Stanford. The season locally resumes the weekend of January 26-28.

Symphony Preview: The beginning of the end

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"Ich bin das A und das O, der Anfang und das Ende, der Erste und der Letzte" intones the bass Voice of God in Franz Schmidt's oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln: "I am the A and the O, the beginning and the end, the first and the last."

The reference is to Creation, but it could just as easily describe the theme of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concerts this weekend (January 20 and 21). Because, as Eddie Silva points out in his notes, this time around it's "a program of beginnings and endings in which we find the weave of time."

Rossini in 1865
By Étienne Carjat - harvardartmuseums.org

The concerts begin with a beginning that is also an ending: the overture to Rossini's 1829 opera Guillaume Tell (William Tell). It was the 39th opera written by the 38-year-old composer, and also his last. Shortly after the opera's premiere, Rossini retired almost completely from composing, living (for the most part) a life of ease and indulging in his dual passions for cooking and eating ("tournedos Rossini" is but one of the many gourmet items that still bear his name). He eventually returned to composing in the final decade of his life with fourteen volumes of chamber music that he called Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age), but he never returned to the theatrical form in which he created his best-known works.

Guillaume Tell isn't often performed these days, but the overture is surely one of the most famous pieces of classical music in the Western world, and not just because its galloping finale (in the opera it's "The March of the Swiss Soldiers") became the closing theme for The Lone Ranger on radio and TV. Bits of the overture show up in cartoons, in A Clockwork Orange, in a famous Spike Jones parody, and (not coincidentally) in the final work on this weekend's program.

But before that, we have another notable beginning: the Piano Concerto in B-flat major, Op. 19, by Beethoven. It's officially his Piano Concerto No. 2 because it was the second of his five concerti to be published, but it was actually his first essay in the form, preceding the Concerto No. 1 by two years. As such, it marks the beginning of his dual careers as pianist and composer of concerti for his instrument of choice.

The Man Himself

"Both the first and second piano concerti bear Mozart's influence," writes Prof. Iulian Munteanu, "and are considered to be some of Beethoven's more 'classical' compositions." And, in fact, the influence of both composers is easy to detect, with Haydn most prominent, to my ears, in the jolly last movement. Beethoven reportedly didn't think much of this concerto, but it has proved popular with audiences nevertheless.

The soloist will be the young German pianist Till Fellner who, according to his bio in the symphony program, "plays with scrupulous musi-cianship, purity of style, and sparkling key¬board command—qualities that have earned him acclaim throughout Europe, the United States, and Japan." He has also recorded the Beethoven Second for Apex with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Sir Neville Marriner.

 After intermission comes one of the most enigmatic endings in recent musical history, the Symphony No. 15 by Shostakovich. Written while the composer was hospitalized in 1971 (he would die of lung cancer four years later), it's a mordant and cryptic work by a composer noted for his elusiveness. As Tom Service writes at The Guardian:

Every bar of the piece demands a variation on the same simple but utterly profound question: what does it all mean? What is that chirruping little tune at the start of the symphony about? Why does Shostakovich quote from Rossini's William Tell in the first movement, from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Ring cycle in its last movement? Why does the whole thing end with a coda that on the surface could be a memory of childish things, but is far more likely a musical transliteration of the hum and clatter of hospital machines, the faceless whirring and bleeping that are the grim accompaniments of disease, decline, and death in medical institutions - sounds that Shostakovich was already familiar with at this stage in his life? And why, as Shostakovich surely knew this would be his last symphony when he was writing it, does the piece scrupulously avoid any trace of the bombast and boisterousness of his earlier symphonies?

Dmitri Shostakovich

In the end, as the symphony fades out with that clicking hospital percussion and a sad little chord on glockenspiel and celesta over a string pedal point, no questions are answered and it's not clear whether the music is grinning or grimacing.

Mr. Service's article is worth reading ahead of time, as are Mr. Silva's notes, but if you really want to prepare yourself for the remarkable and often unsettling experience of this music, your best bet is to watch the video of Valery Gergiev's remarkable 2013 Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra performance at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. Because if words were really adequate to describe this piece, we wouldn't need the music.

The Essentials: Andrey Boreyko conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and piano soloist Till Fellner on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., January 20 and 21 in the overture to Rossini's William Tell, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. Visit the SLSO web site for details.

Concert Review: A dramatic Russian program with Gilbert Varga and the St. Louis Symphony, March 5 and 6, 2016

Gilbert Varga
Photo: Felix Broede

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Those of you Of a Certain Age may recall an ad campaign by Esso Oil (now Exxon Mobil) that promised to "put a tiger in your tank." St. Louis Symphony guest conductor Gilbert Varga had a tiger in his baton Saturday night, and the roaring was most impressive.

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

The concert got off to an electrifying start with a thrilling performance of Tchaikovsky's "Hamlet, Fantasy Overture after Shakespeare," Op. 67. Written only a few years before the composer's death, the work shows the obsession with fate that permeates both his "Symphony No. 4" from 1878 and his "Symphony No. 5," which first saw the light of day in the same year as "Hamlet". It's powerful music with a strong sense of impending doom.

Working without a score, Mr. Varga used slashing, dramatic gestures in the service of a compelling interpretation that brought out every bit of the composer's high drama without sacrificing clarity or descending into exaggeration. The opening "fate" motif was arresting, the appearance of the ghost alarming, and the sad little oboe melody that represents Ophelia (beautifully played by Phil Ross) was truly poignant. It was a vivid and breathtaking performance, skillfully played.

The same can be said of the Shostakovich "Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major," Op. 102, that followed. Written for the composer's son Maxim and first performed by Maxim on his 19th birthday, the concerto is an unambiguously (and uncharacteristically) happy work. Soloist Denis Kozhukhin handled the exuberant and fiercely difficult passages in the outer movements with ease and style while playing the charming and unabashedly sentimental second movement with sensitivity.

Denis Kozhukhin

Mr. Kozhukhin is one of those "heads down" pianists who maintain a laser-like focus on the keyboard while playing, but that clearly did not prevent him from being attentive to what was happening in the orchestra. Critics have praised this young (born in 1986) Russian pianist for his balance of technique and interpretive depth, and based on what I saw and heard Saturday night I'd have to agree.

The concert concluded with selections from Prokofiev's 1936 "Romeo and Juliet" ballet. Culled from the two orchestral suites the composer put together around the same time as the ballet's premiere, the seven selections capture the dramatic arc of Shakespeare's play in a little over a half hour of colorful and varied music that demonstrates Prokofiev's skill as an orchestrator.

As he did with the Tchaikovsky, Mr. Varga delivered, from memory, a high-octane interpretation filled with grand gestures, strong contrasts, and a fine feel for the many wonderful orchestral details, which were performed flawlessly by members of the orchestra. Scott Andrews's clarinet, Danny Lee's cello, and Nathan Nabb's tenor sax, for example, all contributed to the delicate beauty of "Juliet—The Young Girl."

The emotionally potent "Romeo and Juliet before Parting" gave us more striking individual performances from Mark Sparks and Jennifer Nichtman on flutes, Jonathan Chu on viola, and, towards the end, Michael Sanders on tuba and Erik Harris's bass section with their premonition of the tragedy to come. Roger Kaza's horn section sounded terrific in the big, sweeping passages in the middle of that same movement.

If you think that sounds like a true virtuoso performance, you're right. There were many other arresting moments, including Concertmaster David Halen's delicate solo in the "Dance of the Maids from the Antilles," but the bottom line is that this was another demonstration of the depth the orchestra's talent pool.

Mr. Varga has made several appearances with the orchestra since I've started covering it regularly, and he seems to have real rapport with the musicians. It's not unusual for a conductor to wade into the orchestra and ask individual players to stand during curtain calls, but Mr. Varga did so with real enthusiasm, even stopping to kiss the occasional cheek and otherwise display affection for the players. Witnessing that, it's impossible not to smile.

Next at Powell Hall, Leonard Slatkin conducts the orchestra and chorus in Berlioz's "dramatic symphony" "Roméo et Juliette" Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., March 11 and 12. The program concludes the Symphony's four-week Shakespeare Festival. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information, visit the symphony web site.

Symphony Preview, March 5 and 6, 2016: More clouds of gray than any Russian play could guarantee

This weekend Gilbert Varga conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the third of their four Shakespeare Festival programs with a concert that's around 70% Shakespeare and 100% Russian. Which isn't as unusual as you might think.

Portrait of Tchaikovsky by Nikolai Kuznetsov
en.wikipedia.org

As I noted a couple weeks ago, the Bard of Avon has inspired quite a lot of music over the centuries, much of it by composers who knew his works only in translation and in some cases (Ambroise Thomas's operatic treatment of "Hamlet" comes immediately to mind) only in fairly free adaptations by other writers. But no matter how far removed they were from the original plays, many of history's greatest composers have found themselves fascinated by Shakespeare's characters and themes.

The great Russian composers were no exception. Tchaikovsky found inspiration in the Bard for one of his Greatest Hits, the "Romeo and Juliet Fantas-Overture," as well as for his less well known overtures "The Tempest" and this weekend's opener, "Hamlet."

For Tchaikovsky, the dominant theme of "Hamlet" was the implacable hand of fate. "There's a divinity that shapes our ends," observes Hamlet in Act V, "Rough-hew them how we will." First performed in 1888, Tchaikovsy's "Hamlet" overture is a late work (the composer died in 1893) and shows the obsession with fate that permeates both his "Symphony No. 4" from 1878 and his "Symphony No. 5," which first saw the light of day in the same year as "Hamlet".

The "fate" theme shows up in the opening lento lugubre in the violas and cellos, announced by a portentous roll of the tympani. Hamlet broods in the strings until muted horns strike midnight and the ghost appears amid brass and percussion. Ophelia shows up briefly as a sad little melody for the oboe about of third of the way in, but overall the mood is one of high drama and tragedy until (to quote critic Herbert Glass), "the piece ends in the F-minor gloom of its misty beginnings."

"Hamlet" was originally intended to be part of a complete set of incidental music for a French-language production of the play that the actor/impresario Lucien Guitry was preparing for a tour. That project fell through, and by the time Guitry asked Tchaikovsky to revive it in 1891 (this time for a farewell performance at the Mikhaylovsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg) the composer was suffering from exhaustion and other health problems. He recycled a shortened version of the concert overture as the curtain raiser for the play and cobbled together a mix of old and new material for the other 16 numbers. However, he reportedly didn't think much of the results, and the complete score is rarely heard, although you can find it on CD.

Maxim Shostakovich
By Koch, Eric / Anefo - Dutch National Archives,
The Hague, Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands
Persbureau, 1945-1989
en.wikipedia.org

This weekend's non-Shakespeare piece, Shostakovich's "Piano Concerto No. 2" is considerably brighter in its outlook. The product of a short-lived thaw in artistic repression the USSR in 1957, the concerto is an unambiguously (and uncharacteristically) happy work. Written for the composer's son Maxim and first performed by Maxim on his 19th birthday, the piece zips through three short movements in around 20 minutes, concluding with a slightly satirical nod to the Hanon finger exercises that Maxim undoubtedly knew well from his years at the Moscow Conservatory. It is, in short, an irresistible work.

The soloist for the concerto will be the young (born in 1986) Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin, whose star began rising when he claimed First Prize in the 2010 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels at the age of 23. A month later, the New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini praised his "accomplished performance" of Schumann's challenging "Symphonic Études" in a solo recital, and other critics have been similarly impressed. "Kozhukhin possesses an impeccable technique," wrote Lawrence Bumden for the Miami Herald in 2010. "He can play with total accuracy at extreme speeds and tricky passages seem to bring out extra dynamism in his performances. Kozhukhin matches his remarkable technical arsenal with acute musicianship and interpretive depth." This will be his debut appearance with the SLSO, so I look forward to seeing what he and Mr. Varga do with the piece.

The main event this weekend is a suite from Prokofiev's score for the ballet "Romeo and Juliet," first performed in 1938. It's among his most popular compositions, but Prokofiev paid a price for it that's almost as tragic as the story it tells.

Lured back from Paris to Leningrad in 1934 with promises of lucrative commissions and a relatively free hand in composing the ballet for the Bolshoi Theatre, he soon discovered that the hand of ideologically motivated censorship was as heavy as that of fate in "Hamlet." As Princeton University scholar Simon Morrison (author of The People's Artist: Prokofiev's Soviet Years) noted in a paper at a Columbia University symposium:

Prokofiev suffered more than his share of disappointments in his career, and upon relocating from Paris to Moscow in 1936, had more than his share of unpleasant encounters with cultural officials. He adapted to the constraints imposed on him by the Stalinist regime as best he could. His talent overcame—even benefited from—outside control, a phenomenon that undermines the Western musicological assumption that Soviet artists were passive victims of brutal, crude, and rigid politics. Yet from the start, Romeo and Juliet had a particularly hard time of it, enduring second-guessing, reworking, and censorship. In his final years, Prokofiev was able to take pride in its success, but he spent many years resenting the changes that had been imposed on it to the ending, the dramatic structure of the first and second acts, the relationship between solo and ensemble numbers, and the orchestration.

Prokofiev in 1918
en.wikipedia.org

And it wasn't just the music that suffered. As Linda B. Glaser writes in the March 21, 2011, Cornell Chronicle, "the bureaucrat who commissioned 'Romeo and Juliet' was executed, as was the Central Committee flunky who approved the ballet's original happy ending. Even the scenarist who inspired Prokofiev to write the ballet ended up dead. Authorities exiled Prokofiev's first wife to the Gulag, and in 1938 confiscated Prokofiev's passport, determining that he needed 'ideological correctin' for too much Western influence."

None of this takes away from the greatness of the music you'll hear this weekend, but it does illustrate how difficult it can be to hold on to artistic integrity (or even basic human dignity) in the face of implacable autocracy. It's something we should perhaps bear in mind during the current round of national elections.

Gilbert Varga conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and piano soloist Denis Kozhukhin in music by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. March 5 and 6. The program also includes Tchaikovsky's tone poem Hamlet. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Review: Sunshine and shadow with Mozart and Shostakovich

Hannu Lintu

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu
What: Music of Mozart and Shostakovich
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: April 10 and 11, 2015

[Find out more about the music with the SLSO program notes and my symphony preview.]

There was something vaguely disconcerting about leaving Powell Hall Friday morning after hearing the SLSO and guest conductor Hannu Lintu perform Shostakovich's harrowing 1943 "Symphony No. 8" in C minor. Walking out into that bright spring morning was a bit like suddenly waking up from a nightmare. For just a moment, the light seemed a little dimmer.

The eighth symphony is the kind of thing that prompted British critic Robert Layton to somewhat dismissively label Shostakovich a "documentary composer, far more bound up with this time" than some of his contemporaries. He wasn't entirely wrong. Certainly understanding the twin horrors of Hitler and Stalin that lie behind the scarred face of this work can enhance one's appreciation of it. In Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov's 1979 "Testimony," allegedly based on Shostakovich's memoirs, the composer is quoted as saying: "I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders... That is what my symphonies are about, including Number Eight." But I think the Shostakovich Eighth is no more inextricably bound up with World War II than the Beethoven "Eroica" is with the Napoleonic wars.

Jonathan Chu
stlsymphony.org

In any case, Mr. Lintu and the orchestra gave us an awfully good account of the music Friday morning. This was a beautifully and precisely calibrated performance that honored the composer's every intention. Mr. Lintu is, as I have noted before, a commanding and visually compelling figure on the podium. His big gestures are striking, but he can also coax delicate sounds with a minimum of physical display. He displays, in short, a nearly ideal mixture of romantic intensity and intellectual control—a winning combination for a work as complex as this one.

The gradually building tension of the long first movement was handled just right, so that the shattering climax and violent, mechanistic parody of a march that come about halfway through had maximum impact. The Allegretto second movement, which combines a march with a slightly demented dance, had a nice sarcastic edge.

The Allegro Non Troppo third movement is essentially "perpetual motion" music from Hell driven by what Mark Wigglesworth calls a "machine-like ostinato." It came across as appropriately driven without sounding frantic. The trumpets and trombones executed the weird little "oom-pah" dance interlude towards the end with impressive precision.

Strong dynamic contrasts underscored the despair of the fourth movement passacaglia, and the fifth movement's slow journey towards the light was beautifully paced. The final, luminous measures on flutes and strings were breathtakingly lovely. Mr. Lintu gave it a good ten count before lowering his baton at the end, so we could all appreciate the silence.

Beth Guterman Chu
stlsymphony.org

Although scored for a massive orchestra (around ninety players), the Shostakovich Eighth is filled with solo and small ensemble passages that put all of the principal players in the spotlight at some point. Mr. Lintu gave them all a chance to stand at the end and they all deserved it. I was especially impressed by the horns this time around—Shostakovich often drives them up to the top of their register—but the truth is everyone played flawlessly.

The concert opened with the "Sinfonia concertante" in E-flat major for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra, K. 364, by Mozart—music so different it might as well be from another planet. Conducting without a baton and gracefully sculpting phrases from the air, Mr. Lintu gave us another finely tuned and classically balanced reading.

The soloists—both members of the SLSO string section—were the wife and husband team of Beth Guterman Chu on viola and Jonathan Chu on violin. As you might expect, their playing had the special kind of warmth and camaraderie that come from musicians who know each other well and anticipate each other's moves. They seemed to be having a wonderful time, which meant that we in the audience did as well.

Next at Powell Hall: Vasily Petrenko conducts Scriabin's "Symphony No. 3" and Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3" and with soloist Simon Trpceski on Friday and Saturday, April 17 and 18, at 8 p.m. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

St. Louis classical calendar for the week of January 27, 2014

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David Halen

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra presents the fourth in a series of Beethoven Festival concerts, as Jaap van Zweden conducts the orchestra in Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 along with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5.  Performances take place on Friday and Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, January 31 – February 2, at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand.  "In the final week of the Beethoven festival Jaap Van Zweden leads the orchestra in Beethoven’s beloved Symphony No. 5. The first four opening notes are classical music’s most popular ever played and are heard throughout pop culture today in disco, rock n’ roll and film soundtracks. Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, with an equally captivating opening sequence, rounds out this powerhouse program." For more information: stlsymphony.org.

The Sheldon Concert Hall presents David Halen and members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in Greatest Hits of 1764 on Wednesday, January 29, at 8 PM.  The program features Mozart's Symphony No. 1, written when the composer was eight years old.  "Our small chamber orchestra of Symphony musicians also performs a new first symphony by a young composer, as well as the music of Jean-Philippe Rameau, Johann Christian Bach and Franz Josef Haydn."  The Sheldon is at 3648 Washington in Grand Center.  For more information: thesheldon.org.

Graham Woodland

The Tavern of Fine Arts presents violinist Graham Woodland, accompanied by pianist Vera Parkin, in a concert of music by Locatelli, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven on Thursday, January 30 at 5:30 PM.  "Graham Woodland is currently a junior at the University of Missouri, where he is pursuing a degree in Violin Performance studying under Eva Szekely. At MU, he has served as concertmaster of the MU Philharmonic Orchestra and is heavily involved in chamber music activities. He is a regular member of the Columbia Civic Orchestra, and also frequently performs with the Quincy Symphony Orchestra, in Illinois."  The Tavern of Fine Arts is at 313 Belt in the Debaliviere Place neighborhood.  For more information: tavern-of-fine-arts.blogspot.com.

The Tavern of Fine Arts presents the Perseid Quartet in a concert of music by Beethoven and Grieg on Friday, January 31 at 8:00 PM.  "The evening begins with Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 18 No. 4, an early example of Beethoven's mastery of form and Classical style, with an energetic last movement inspired by Hungarian dances. For the second half, we journey north for Edward Grieg's epic String Quartet in G minor. This less familiar work is influenced by the folk music Grieg encountered in his native Norway, and the unorthodox harmonies and resonant chordal writing take their cue from Norwegian fiddle, peasant dances, and folk song. Insistent rhythmic figures reach their apex in a thrilling presto conclusion."  The Tavern of Fine Arts is at 313 Belt in the Debaliviere Place neighborhood.  For more information: tavern-of-fine-arts.blogspot.com.

Denise Elif Gill

The Tavern of Fine Arts presents Denise Elif Gill in a concert of Turkish classical music for kanun (Middle Eastern trapezoidal zither) on Saturday, February 1 at 8:00 PM.  "Denise Elif Gill is a kanun player who has lived a portion of her life in Istanbul, studying music with acclaimed musicians Necati Çelik, Halil Karaduman, and Celaleddin Aksoy. She is a specialist in the improvisation practices and repertoire of Turkish classical music, a genre of music developed in courts of the Ottoman Empire (1453-1923) and Mevlevi Sufi institutions. Dr. Gill has performed kanun on radio and television programs and concert halls in Turkey, the United States, and for the European Union in Brussels."  The Tavern of Fine Arts is at 313 Belt in the Debaliviere Place neighborhood.  For more information: tavern-of-fine-arts.blogspot.com.