Review: Ringing in the New

Pianist Behzod Abduraimov
Photo by Nissor Abdourazakov

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A gratifyingly large crowd turned out for an equally gratifying opening night of the 2018/2019 St. Louis Symphony Orchestra season (Saturday, September 22), as Resident Conductor Gemma New led the orchestra in a concert of favorites by Elgar, Grieg, and Sibelius, along with the local premiere of Aaron Jay Kernis's glorious "Musica celestis" for string orchestra (which the composer was here to witness; he got a nice curtain call afterwards).

The concert opened with a patriotic punch: an arrangement of "The Star-Spangled Banner" by John Philip Sousa and Walter Damrosch (long-time conductor of the New York City Symphony Orchestra), during which many of us sang along, and a powerful performance of Sibelius's "Finlandia." Indeed, the nuance and variety of Ms. New's approach to the latter, a work which could have been simply dashed off with what George M. Cohan called "plenty of biff and bang," set the tone for the entire evening. Both the Grieg Piano Concerto and the Elgar "Enigma Variations" that followed benefited from an approach that found a wide range of colors and emotions in these concert standards.

The talented young (born in 1990) pianist Behzod Abduraimov was the soloist for the Grieg Concerto. He delivered a striking and personal performance with an ideal mix of technical flash and sensitivity. His take on the famous first movement cadenza was especially gripping, perfectly mixing passion and poetry. On the podium, Ms. New made it possible to hear this chestnut with fresh ears, with a brisk and authoritative treatment of the famous opening theme that contrasted sharply with a luxuriant and lyrical second theme.

Gemma New

There was a romantic richness to the Adagio second movement, as well, with a robust string sound and excellent work by Thomas Jöstlein's horn section. The energetic outer sections of the finale stood in pleasing contrast to the lyrical central section, with expressive playing from flautists Mark Sparks and Ann Choomack.

The thunderous applause didn't let up until Mr. Abduraimov gave us an encore, and an impressive one it was: the third of Franz Liszt's six "Grandes études de Paganini" nicknamed "La Campanella" for the rapid bell-like figure that runs through it. It's fiercely difficult, with wide leaps for the right hand (sometimes over two octaves), but Mr. Abduraimov not only negotiated it with ease but performed the piece with feeling as well.

The second half of the concert opened with Mr. Kernis's "Musica celestis," a work of transcendent beauty. Originally the slow movement of the composer's 1990 String Quartet No. 1, the movement soon gained an independent life of its own. The title translates as "heavenly music" and to my ears it fully lives up to that title, building from a quiet opening to an ecstatic peak before fading out in the highest reaches of the strings, as though ascending to heaven.

Aaron Jay Kernis

Mr. Kernis achieves this with a striking economy of means. The work is, as the composer himself has noted, essentially a passacaglia, in which a simple descending figure first heard in the opening bars becomes the basis for a series of variations, finally leading to the ethereal coda. Mr. Kernis acknowledges the work of 12th century composer, author and mystic Hildegard von Bingen as an influence here, and I have to agree that it did put me in mind both of her vocal music and also of another more recent adaptation of it, Christopher Theofanidis's "Rainbow Body," which was performed by the SLSO to great effect a decade ago. And that, as they say, is a good thing.

"Musica celestis," as befits its origins, is scored for string orchestra, and the SLSO strings acquitted themselves brilliantly here. The quiet final moments for the work were especially powerful and the overall sound of the section was full-bodied and rich. You could also hear the string quartet origins in the solo passages played so beautifully by Concertmaster David Halen, Associate Concertmaster Heidi Harris, Principal Viola Beth Guterman Chu, and Principal Cello Daniel Lee.

The concert concluded with Elgar's musical family album, the "Enigma Variations." It's a series of fourteen variations on the "enigma" theme first stated at the very beginning. The composer said it was an "enigma" because it actually refers to "another and larger theme" which is "not played." Elgar never revealed what that theme might be and speculation has been lively but I'm inclined to go along with the school of thought that the "theme" wasn't musical at all but rather the common thread of friendship and good humor that pervades the music.

Certainly Ms. New's interpretation was brimming with warmth and, when appropriate, good humor, as well as passion and sensitivity. The opening "enigma" theme was unusually lush, the "Dorabella" variation (number 10) was the epitome of grace, and the comic eleventh variation, which depicts a bulldog tumbling into the river Wye, paddling upstream, and then emerging with a triumphant bark, was just as much fun as it should have been. The contemplative and lyrical "Nimrod" variation (number 9), which is often heard alone, had a great, reverential sweep and the finale--the composer's self-portrait--bristled with the confidence that one hears so clearly in Elgar's more popular works. It was a well balanced and sometimes surprising performance that brought the evening to a most satisfying close.

Next at Powell Hall: Hannu Lintu conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violinist Leila Josefowicz Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, September 28 and 29. The program consists of "Flounce" by contemporary Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski, the Violin Concerto by composer/conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 11. The concerts take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Review: Nathalie Stutzmann brings a unique, joyous approach to familiar classics in her St. Louis Symphony debut

Nathalie Stutzmann conducing the
Monte Carlo Philharmonic
Photo: nathaliestutzmann.com

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The St. Louis Symphony concerts this weekend (April 22-24, 2016) offered a remarkable study in contrasts, with familiar classics by Mendelssohn, Sibelius, and Dvořák getting novel, idiosyncratic, and very compelling interpretations by French singer and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann in her SLSO debut.

Ms. Stutzmann's dual career path as both a singer and conductor is unusual, if not unique.  And while I don't want to read too much into that, it's hard not to hear in her performances the kind of direct emotional connection that I get from an accomplished singer. 

In the cabaret world we talk a lot about the importance of having a strong emotional connection to the music and lyrics of our songs.  That's the kind of strong connection I heard in Ms. Stutzmann's approach to the oft-heard works on the program this weekend.  It made me hear them in different ways that shed new light on the music.  In this respect she reminded me of the late Leopold Stokowski, whose work I admired tremendously even when it wasn't entirely to my taste—which was sometimes the case with Ms. Stutzmann.

The exceptionally delicate and slow opening of Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) Overture, for example, suggested an overblown and even lethargic approach to this depiction of the Scottish seacoast.  But while Ms. Stutzmann's extreme contrasts of tempo and dynamics sometimes felt more appropriate to Bruckner than Mendelssohn, the overall result was fascinating and even revelatory at times. To pick just one example: the full-orchestra climaxes, with Shannon Wood's tympani projecting forcefully over the rest of the band from his position on an elevated platform upstage center, vividly evoked the stormy landscape that had so impressed Mendelssohn.  I wouldn't call this a definitive interpretation by any means, but I'm glad I heard it.

Karen Gomyo
Photo: karengomyo.com

There was a similar interpretive freedom in the Sibelius Violin Concerto which, like the Mendelssohn, opened so quietly that the first few notes were almost inaudible, with soloist Karen Gomyo's entrance seemingly floating in from another plane of existence.  This was another ear-opening performance, with orchestral details revealed in high contrast.  It made the long-winded first movement feel even more discursive than it usually does, but the overall result was stunning in its impact.

It helped that Ms. Gomyo is such a technically proficient and artistically committed performer. The violin was Jean Sibelius’s first musical love and his concerto is both thoroughly idiomatic and incredibly demanding.  The long solo passages in the first movement and virtuoso fireworks in the finale will test the mettle of the best performers.  Ms. Gomyo handled it all with aplomb, delivering the intense passion of the second movement and fireworks of the third with equal credibility.  She was also completely in synch with Ms. Stutzmann, often moving and (seemingly) even breathing together.

The concluding work on the program, Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70,  as always been a favorite of mine, for reasons that are difficult to articulate.  I can’t hear it without thinking of a long journey down a dark mountain river.  Flashes of light illuminate the trip, but we don’t see the sun until the work’s final moments, when the tonality changes from D minor to D major.

Maintaining a strong rhythmic pulse and a sense of momentum, then, have always been the hallmarks of a great Dvo?ák Seventh for me.  Ms. Stutzmann's interpretation had both, despite an opening tempo which felt a bit slow but turned out, in the end, to be exactly right for the musical structure she was creating.  By the time she got to the end of the energetic third movement Scherzo, she had built up such a head of steam that the decision to go straight to the final movement attacca (without pause) felt not just right but actually inevitable.   I wouldn't want this to be anyone's only exposure to Dvo?ák's masterpiece, given the number of fine recordings available out there, but it was entirely original and, taken on its own terms, entirely successful.

Ms. Stutzmann's style on the podium, by the way, is as uniquely personal as her conceptualization of the music.  She sways and dances with the music, virtually sculpting phrases out of the air with gestures that could be encompass everything from her fingers to her entire upper body.  And she does it all with a delighted smile that suggests a real pleasure in the business of making music.  That sense of joy on the part of a performer is always infectious and goes a long way towards winning over an audience.

Next at Powell Hall: David Robertson conducts the orchestra in two different programs April 29 – May 1.  With violin soloist Celeste Golden Boyer, he presents a Whitaker Foundation Music You Know concert on Friday, April 29, at 8 p.m. that features works by Ponchielli and Dukas as well as a new work by Stefan Freund.  On Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., he conducts the local premier of William Kraft's Tympani Concerto No. 2 with soloist Shannon Wood, as well as Schubert's monumental Symphony No. 9 ("The Great").  For more information, visit the symphony web site.

Symphony Preview: Something old, someone new

Nathalie Stutzmann

The St. Louis Symphony program this weekend (April 22-24, 2016) consists entirely of well-known classics: Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) overture, Sibelius's Violin Concerto, and one of my favorites, Dvořák's Symphony No. 7.

These pieces are popular for good reasons, not the least of which is the way each one conjures up a particular time and place. Mendelssohn's overture powerfully summons up the wild and brooding Scottish islands that the composer visited in 1829, the year before he wrote the overture. Sibelius does the same for the dark, brooding landscapes of his Finnish homeland in his concerto from over seven decades later. And for the nature-loving Dvořák, whose 1884 symphony brought him international acclaim, the Bohemian countryside is an ever-present character in his music.

This is, in short, a big weekend for musical travelogues.

While the music will be familiar, though, the figure on the podium will likely be considerably less so for local audiences. That's because this weekend's guest conductor, Nathalie Stutzmann, is not only new to St. Louis but relatively new to conducting as well. Born in 1965 in the Paris suburb of Suresnes, she showed talent as a singer at an early age, studying first with her mother, soprano Christiane Stutzmann, and then at the Nancy Conservatoire and later in Paris. Remarkably for a singer, she also studied piano, bassoon, and -- most remarkable of all -- conducting.

And she didn't study with just anyone. Her primary teachers have been the noted Finnish conductor and composer Jorma Panula (whose students include Esa-Pekka Salonen and Simon Rattle) and the legendary Seiji Ozawa. She even founded her own chamber orchestra, Orfeo 55, in 2009. The group plays both Baroque and modern instruments, and Stutzmann herself has said that, as a conductor, she feels a real affinity for "le grand repertoire" of the Romantics like Beethoven Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss.

Although Ms. Stutzmann has only been conducting professionally since 2008, she has already made quite an impression on the critics. For example, Em Skow, reviewing her US conducting debut -- Handel's Messiah with the National Symphony Orchestra -- waxed positively rhapsodic at DC Metro Theater Arts:

The evening's program notes summarized her as rigor and fantasy embodied in a conduct and I have to agree. It would do her a disservice to say she just connected to the layers of the work, or even to say that she moved others to do the same. The piece shown through her, radiating from her fingertips, dancing through her toes, bouncing through her arms, shoulders, and legs to the floor where even she had to hold on to the rail to steady herself at times. For her, three dimensions weren't enough to conduct with and her level of passion was truly an honor to witness.

"Her experience as a Romantic musician and her knowledge of older genres allow her to tackle Vivaldi and Mozart as well as Beethoven, Wagner or Brahms," writes Brian Fowler in a profile for medici.tv. "Her approach, both loose and rigourous, her science of phrasing and the emotional intensity of her interpretations, her exceptional mastery in the service of the passion she conveys: these are some of the elements that make her so popular in the eyes of her audience and the musicians she conducts."

If you'd like to experience her work before this weekend's concerts, Ms. Stutzmann has a YouTube channel with videos of her singing and conducting both Orfeo 55 and other notable orchestras.

Karen Gomyo

Karen Gomyo, the soloist for the Sibelius Violin Concerto, has come in for her share of critical praise as well. "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.

Even more to the point, though, Ms. Gomyo has gotten some raves for recent performances of the Sibelius concerto. Reviewing her appearance with the San Diego Symphony last December, for example, the San Diego Reader noted that the audience "was locked on Ms. Gomyo from start to finish because her performance brought us into those dark woods into which Sibelius, and all of us, have wandered from time to time." A 2013 performance with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra under Christopher Seaman made such an impact on the audience that the end of the first movement, as Anthony Bannon wrote for the Chautauqua Daily, "pulled several in the Amp to their feet for impulsive applause, eager to affirm the miracle of what was just heard."

All of which bodes well for the weekend. These are concerts filled with vital, compelling, and wonderfully dramatic works. It will be interesting to see what Ms. Stutzmann and Ms. Gomyo make of them. Performances at Powell Hall are Friday at 10:30 a.m. (a Krispy Kreme Coffee Concert with free coffee and doughnuts), Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m., April 22-24. Check the St. Louis Symphony website for details.

Symphony Preview: Old friends and new

David Robertson

It’s a mix of the first run and the familiar this weekend at Powell Hall, with music of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

The most familiar thing on the program is Sibelius’s 1895 tone poem “The Swan of Tuonela.” A tone poem, for those of you who have never gone through a “music depreciation” class, is an orchestral work that describes and/or is inspired by something non-musical. In this case, the inspiration comes from the Finnish national epic “The Kalevala”—specifically, its description of the island of Tuonela, where the spirits dead reside. The island is surrounded by a black river, on which a lone swan floats and sings a mournful song. The music is vividly descriptive, which is why it’s a favorite of those same music depreciation classes.

Sibelius assigns the swan’s song to the English horn, a relative of the oboe with with a darker and richer sound (it’s pitched a fifth lower) that is a perfect match for the music’s imagery. Cally Banham, who holds the Solo English Horn chair with the orchestra, will be the soloist. She has done fine work with the orchestra over the last several years, so expect good things from her this weekend.

The English horn is, amusingly, neither English nor a horn (it’s a member of the woodwind family). When I was a kid, the story (since discredited) was that the the name came from a mistranslation of the Middle French phrase, cor anglé (“angled horn,” referring to the fact that the mouthpiece is at a slight angle to the body of the instrument). Current thinking is that it actually goes back to the old German word for the instrument’s ancestor (the oboe da caccia) which was know as an “engellisches” (“angelic”) horn because of its resemblance to horns played by angels in Medieval paintings. Its sound, in any case, is unmistakable.

The first run this week is “My Father Knew Charles Ives,” composed in 2003 by John Adams, whose work is often performed by the SLSO. The title is not literally true. While the elder Adams was a musician—he taught his son to play the clarinet and the two played together in local bands—he never actually met the famously craggy composer/businessman.

He did, however, share Ives’s eclectic musical sensibility. As Paul Schiavo relates in his program notes, Adams “credits his father with introducing him to both classical and popular music without prejudicial favoring of one over the other.” He goes on to note that, according to Adams, “the two men had experiences and interests in common, and the composer imagines that they would have liked each other.”

“My Father Knew Charles Ives” is, in short, a tribute both to the elder Adams and to Ives. Laid out in three movements and running just under a half hour, the work (as described in Mr. Schiavo’s notes) seems very much like the kind of thing Ives himself might have written. The first movement, “Concord,” is a musical picture of the New Hampshire town where Adams grew up and which inspired some of Ives’s most notable music. The second, “The Lake,” “conveys the lulling movement of water and a poetic spirit in the form of a melody for oboe. From across the lake comes the sound of dance music, the indistinct bits of melody blending with the watery sonorities” (Ives does something similar in his “Three Places in New England,” especially in the “Putnam’s Camp” and “Housatonic at Stockbridge” movements).

The last section, “The Mountain,” “was inspired by boyhood memories of Mount Kearsarge, in New Hampshire, but also by more recent experiences hiking in California’s high country.” It ends with what Adams calls “a moment of sudden, unexpected astonishment” as the climber sees the view for the top.

The concerts conclude with Prokofiev's 1944 Symphony No. 5, last seen on the Powell Hall stage in November of 2010 in what I called a “highly charged” and “triumphant” performance by conductor emeritus Leonard Slatkin (his 1985 recording with the SLSO is still available on line at archivmusic.com). Composed at the artists' colony of Ivanovo east of Moscow just as the war with Germany was turning in Russia's favor, the symphony was described by Prokofiev as "a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit" and while there is certainly an air of triumph, especially in the majestic opening theme, it has always seemed to me that the war was never far from the composer's mind. You can hear it in (among other places) the militant percussion of the first movement and the anguished climax of the third.

The aura of triumph is also leavened by Prokofiev's characteristic irony. The composer of the Sarcasms for piano always seems to have a raised eyebrow or cynical smile behind his most demonstrative music. In the 5th symphony sarcasm takes various forms, including caustic comments from the brass and percussion and the deliberate interruption of the boisterous Allegro giocoso finale by a short, dissonant passage for string quartet and trumpet.

The essentials: David Robertson conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and oboe soloist Cally Banham in Sibelius's "Swan of Tuonela," John Adams's "My Father Knew Charles Ives," and Prokofiev's "Symphony No. 5" Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., September 27 and 28. The Saturday concert will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio, 90.7 FM, HD 1, and on the station web site. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Personal bests

[Above: Arnaldo Cohen plays Rachmaninoff]

Who: Pianist Arnaldo Cohen and The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Warren-Green
What: Music of Sibelius, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: January 27–29, 2012

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The word “substitute” often has pejorative undertones, but this weekend at Powell Hall defies them. Pianist Arnaldo Cohen and conductor Christopher Warren-Green may have been substitutes for Louis Lortie and Vassily Sinaisky, respectively, but their work Friday morning was beyond reproach, providing a highly caffeinated mix of Sibelius, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky to go with the free donuts at the 10:30 AM Coffee Concert.

In his program notes, Paul Schiavo reminds us that the notion of “self-expression, and especially the expression of personal feelings, as one of music’s primary purposes” is largely a product of the Romantic era. Certainly that’s true of Sibelius’s turbulent En Saga, which opened the program.

Sibelius wrote that the piece was “the expression of a state of mind” related to “a number of painful experiences”, a statement clearly borne out by the restless string and dramatic wind passages. Mr. Warren-Green’s conducting was disciplined without sacrificing one iota of passion. The orchestra played up to its usual standard, with great solo work from Acting Principal violist Kathleen Mattis and Associate Principal clarinetist Diana Haskell (who has a CD on sale at the boutique, FYI).

Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is not openly autobiographical, but it did occupy the composer’s thoughts for nearly half of his life. Consider: he started sketching it in 1830, revised it at least four times, first performed it in 1855 (with Hector Berlioz, no less, on the podium), revised it in 1856, and then saw it virtually banned in Vienna until 1869 because of a snarky review by the overly influential critic Eduard Hanslick. Besides, the flash of the piano part (rendered with fluid grace by Mr. Cohen) and the (then) innovative use of recurring thematic material are pure Liszt. Mr. Warren-Green conducted with great assurance here as well.

It was Hanslick who dubbed this the “Triangle Concerto” because of the liberal use of that humble member of the percussion battery in a duet with the piano in the second half of the piece. He meant it as an insult, but in fact it’s a charming sonic accent. Liszt knew what he was about. “In the face of the most wise proscription of the learned critics,” he wrote, “I shall, however, continue to employ instruments of percussion, and think I shall yet win for them some effects little known.”

Tchaikovsky was taking his share of knocks from critics when he began work on his Symphony No. 4, a situation exacerbated by his anxiety over the possible discovery of his homosexuality and a brief and disastrous marriage to a former student. He poured all of his hope and despair into the work — so much so that some critics originally dismissed it as too programmatic and not enough like a real symphony. His friend and fellow composer Sergei Taneyev even complained that “in every movement there are phrases which sound like ballet music” — as if this were, somehow, unsymphonic.

Personally, I’ve always regarded the Fourth as one of Tchaikovsky’s most compact and dramatically impressive symphonies. A good performance never fails to deliver the passion, and Friday’s was first class all the way. Tempi were very well chosen and the cumulative power of the work was stunning; Mr. Warren-Green should have been conducting with a lighting rod, given the amount of electricity he generated. The musicians played with their customary polish, with the pizzicato strings in the third movement being particularly impressive.

Next at Powell Hall: Friday and Saturday at 8, February 3 and 4, Concertmaster David Halen is the soloist for Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski on the podium. Also on the program will be the overture to Weber’s Oberon and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 (“The Great”). For more information you may call 314-534-1700, visit stlsymphony.org, like the Saint Louis Symphony Facebook page, or follow @slso on Twitter.