Lighs! Camera! Swans!

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu with violinist Simone Lamsma
What: Music of Bartók, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky
Where: Powell Symphony Hall
When: October 18 and 20, 2013

Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu and Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma made triumphant returns to Powell Hall Friday night with an evening of dance-oriented music by Bartók, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky.  The highly charged Swan Lake suite was the highlight for me, but the fact is that the whole program was most impressive.

Let’s start with Ms. Lamsma’s performance of the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, op. 63.  Prokofiev wrote it in 1935, two years after he returned to his native Russia from 15 years of self-imposed exile in the West and one year before he was officially repatriated.  He was happy to return home, as the warmth of the main melody of the second movement seems to attest.  But the outer movements have a drama and drive that frankly sound a bit ominous at times. 

It's a piece that demands a high degree of virtuosity from the soloist—which it undeniably got from Ms. Lamsma.   I was very much taken with her Shostakovich 1st concerto back in March of 2011, and she brought the same combination of laser-like focus and easy virtuosity to the Prokofiev 2nd this time.  This is music that requires a performer who can make the instrument sing in the second movement and toss off tricky passages in the first and third.  Ms. Lamsma negotiated it all with ease.  She and Mr. Lintu were clearly in close communication with each other throughout the concerto, as was obvious in the quality of the performance.

When Mr. Lintu last led the orchestra back in February I found his style on the podium to be a nearly ideal mixture of romantic intensity and intellectual rigor—fire combined with ice.  Not surprisingly, then, his Swan Lake suite was marked by dramatic tempo and dynamic contrasts combined with a steely control.  Great, sweeping right hand gestures that required him to hold on to the front rail of the podium for support alternated with careful shaping of phrases with the left.  At one point—during the harp and violin duet in the Act II “Pas D'Action”—he stopped conducting altogether so that David Halen and harpist Allegra Lilly could simply play off each other.

It was all very dramatic and yet so much in control that Mr. Lintu was able to step off the podium to assist a first violinist who had an instrument malfunction and step back without missing a beat.

This was, in short, a 70mm, Technicolor Swan Lake that left Mr. Lintu looking like he'd just completed an aerobic workout.  Which, in fact, he had.  The audience awarded him and the orchestra with a much-deserved standing ovation.  There was excellent solo work by (among others) cellist Danny Lee and Barbara Orland on oboe (that famous Act II theme).

The concert opened with a pretty much flawless Dance Suite by Bartók, written for a 1923 celebration of the 50th anniversary of the unification of the Hungarian cities Óbuda, Buda, and Pest to form the national capital Budapest.  A pioneering ethnomusicologist as well as celebrated composer and pianist, Bartók spent much of 1908 tramping through the Hungarian countryside with fellow composer Zoltán Kodály collecting Magyr folk tunes. The melodies he heard then, along with the Arabic music he picked up during a 1913 visit to Algeria, would strongly shape his compositions from then on. 

Those influences are certainly evident in the suite.  Like the composer's Concerto for Orchestra, this is a piece that gives every section a workout, with complex, overlapping rhythms and spiky melodies that summon up the folk material that inspired it.  I think it could easily get a bit sloppy with a less disciplined orchestra and conductor.  Not here, though.  Everyone performed splendidly, with especially fine work by the double reeds (oboe, English horn, bassoon, and contrabassoon) in the opening.

That was, by the way, a kind of fitting memorial to symphony contrabassoonist Andrew Thompson who died suddenly this past Tuesday of a heart attack at the shockingly young age of 27.  Maestro David Robertson paid homage to him after intermission with a moving eulogy and a moment of silence.  And, by God, it was true and absolute silence.

This coming Wednesday (October 23) there’s a Pulitzer Concert with cellist Danny Lee and violinist Helen Kim performing Pierre Boulez’s Anthèmes for Solo Violin and Kodály‘s Sonata for Solo Cello at the Pulitzer Center just west of Powell Hall.  Friday and Saturday it’s back to Powell Hall for a concert featuring Rimski-Korsakov’s Scheherazade along with the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1 (the one with the prominent trumpet part in the final movement) and a suite of dances from Thomas Adès’s 1995 chamber opera Powder Her Face.  Peter Oundjian conducts with pianist Stewart Goodyear and the symphony’s Karin Bliznik on trumpet.  For ticket information: stlsymphony.org.

Swan song

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This weekend the St. Louis Symphony is presenting two separate programs: the regular concert series on Friday and Sunday with Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu on the podium and Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma as the soloist; and the annual "Red Velvet Ball" fundraiser concert on Saturday night with David Robertson conducting and celebrity cellist Yo-Yo Ma in the solo spot.  In this article I'll just deal with the regular series.

The unifying theme for this weekend, as Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, is "song and dance"—with the emphasis on the latter.  The concerts open with Bela Bartók’s 1923 Dance Suite, written in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the unification of the Hungarian cities Óbuda, Buda, and Pest to form the national capitol Budapest.  A pioneering ethnomusicologist as well as celebrated composer and pianist, Bartók spent much of 1908 tramping through the Hungarian countryside with fellow composer Zoltán Kodály collecting Magyr folk tunes.  The spiky melodies and complex ployrhythms of that music would strongly influence what both composers produced from then on.

The Dance Suite is an excellent example.  Its six short movements (the entire thing runs around 15-17 minutes) are inspired by (but not direct quotes of) Wallachian, Hungarian, and even Arabic songs and dances—the latter stemming mostly from a 1913 trip the composer took to Algeria.  Even if you're not aware of the complex logic behind the organization of the suite (which you can read about at the Kennedy Center's web site), you'll still be able to appreciate the endless melodic and rhythmic invention involved.

Fun Fact: if you want to know what the kind of music Bartók collected sounds like, check out John Unlemann's Music from the Hills show over at 88.1 KDHX.  The two most recent episodes are available for on-demand listening.

Simone Lamsma
Photo: Otto van den Toorn

Taking us into intermission is the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, op. 63.  Prokofiev wrote it in 1935, two years after he returned to his native Russia from 15 years of self-imposed exile in the West and one year before he was officially repatriated.  Prokofiev was happy to return home, as the warmth of the main melody of the second movement seems to attest.  But the outer movements have a drama and drive that frankly sounds a bit ominous at times.  It's a piece that demands a high degree of virtuosity from the soloist but given Simone Lamsma's impressive Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 with the symphony back in March of 2011 (I called it a "remarkably seamless and powerful reading") I don't expect that to be an issue.

Fun Fact: The 2nd concerto represents a turn to a simple and more popular style that marks Prokofiev's music in the 1930s.  It's written for a smallish orchestra with a percussion battery that includes castanets—possibly a nod to the fact that the piece was premiered in Madrid.

The concerts conclude with a suite from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet.  Written for the Bolshoi Ballet, the work was not especially well received at its March 3, 1877 premiere—partly because the original choreographer, Julius Reisinger, was (frankly) a hack who failed to do the music justice.  It might have languished in obscurity if it hadn't made such an impression on Marius Petipa who, together with Tchaikovsky's brother Modest, staged the ballet's second act as part of a posthumous tribute to the composer in November of 1893.  It was so successful that a fully revised version was eventually staged for the Mariinsky Theatre in 1895 with considerable success.  Today, Swan Lake is probably the most famous ballet in the world and one of the most frequently performed.

Hannu Lintu
Photo: Kaapo Kamu

The suite for this weekend's concerts skips back and forth among the ballet's four acts.  We get many of the most memorable scenes, including the iconic "Dance of the cygnets"—possibly the best-known en pointe number of all time—and the triumphant finale, in which the famous oboe theme that sets the nocturnal scene for the beginning of Act II undergoes a triumphant transformation in the brasses.  This is sure-fire material and looks like a good match for conductor Lintu's dramatic and commanding presence on the podium (as demonstrated by his appearance here back in February).

Fun Fact: The scenario summary Paul Schiavo cites in his program notes is the one that ends tragically with Odette, the enchanted swan princess, throwing herself into the titular lake and drowning after the unintentional betrayal by Prince Siegfried, who has been seduced into marrying the black swan Odile by the evil magician Rothbart.  Seigfried follows her and drowns himself as well.  Their sacrifice kills Rothbart and breaks the spell that turned the princesses into swans.  As the music turns triumphant and the sun rises, and we see the lovers rising from the lake, united in death.  That scenario was not the one used in 1877, though, and many productions (including the current Mariinsky version) have gone back to the original happy ending in which Siegfried kills Rothbart to the triumphal trumpets, destroying his magic and uniting Odette and Siegfried in life rather than death.  The music works either way, which strikes me as rather cool.

This program will be presented twice: Friday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM, October 18 and 20 (no Saturday this time since that's the night of the Red Velvet Ball).  For more information: stlsymphony.org.