Symphony Review: Gemma New returns for a celebratory Beethoven Ninth

Gemma New. Photo by Chris Christodoulou

Guest conductor Gemma New, in comments preceding her appearance with St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) last Saturday (March 1), said that the concert would be about “celebrating our Earth and our life upon it.” Certainly the work that opened the evening, the local premiere of “Hymn to the Sun” by St. Louis’s own Kevin Puts (b. 1972), was quite a party.

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

Commissioned by the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in 2008, “Hymn to the Sun” is described by Puts as “a wild, sacred dance to call forth the sun and all its powers, and then the sudden and magnificent rising on the horizon.” It absolutely was that on Saturday night, with terrifically demanding writing for the percussion section (especially the marimbas, xylophone, and piano) and elaborate passages for the flutes. The mood abruptly shifted to a powerful chorale for the strings—the hymn of the title—before returning to the sense of wild revelry that opened the work.

Props to percussionists Will James, Alan Stewart, Kevin Ritenauer, and Charles Renneker; pianist Peter Henderson; and the members of the flute section: Jennifer Nitchman, Jennifer Gartely, and Ann Choomack (doubling on piccolo). New led her forces through this elaborate web with that perfect mix of what my fellow critic Gary Liam Scott described as “poise and control” a few years ago.

The mood turned reverential with the next work (also a St. Louis premiere) the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537, by J.S. Bach (1685–1750) in a 1921 orchestration by Sir Edward Elgar (1857–1934). Elgar employs the full resources of the post-Wagner orchestra (around 80 players) with spectacular results, especially in the final moments of the fugue.

Elgar doesn’t unleash the full power of that big band for the first time until nearly the end of the fantasia, which begins with the main theme played by the oboes and clarinets—done with great feeling Saturday by Phil Ross and Xiomara Mass (oboes) along with Abby Raymond and Thomas Frey (clarinets). Shannon Wood on tympani and (I think) Will James on bass drum provided the ominous processional tread that Elgar added to Bach’s original. The composer doesn’t pull out all the stops again, so to speak, until the final pages of the fugue, when the horns and bras sections really come to the forefront. They sounded terrific Saturday night, especially Thomas Jöstlein’s horns in those exposed trills.

New possesses a singular combination of artistic sensitivity and fine craftsmanship, especially when it comes to revealing sonic details. I could, for example, hear that in the way she kept the threads of the fugue clearly delineated while losing none of the raw power of the composer’s orchestration. This was a classic case of the iron fist in the velvet glove, a fine mix of finesse and force.

The same was true of her take on the evening’s Big Event, the Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (Choral) by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827). Ideally, the Ninth ought to open with a mix of otherworldly mystery and tension, like the components of a nebula spiraling together to form a star, moving from pianissimo violins over a horn pedal point to a fortissimo statement of the first theme by the full orchestra. With the right pacing and instrumental balance, that first movement (Allegro ma non troppo e un poco maestoso—“not too fast and somewhat majestically”) should grab one by the throat.

The SLSO did all that and more under New’s direction. She  is, as I have written previously, an engrossingly theatrical conductor who engages on a very physical level with the score. Her big, sweeping gestures are a kind of 3-D metaphor for the music, bringing an added visual dimension to an already persuasive performance.

The first movement was rich in orchestral detail and forward momentum. The Molto vivace—Presto second movement featured some delightfully precise playing by the horns and woodwinds. The Adagio third had a balletic flow and heightened the contrast with what went before. And then there was the famous choral finale.

In looking over my notes from Saturday night, I find that my handwriting (which is never all the clear, even to me) deteriorated to chicken scratches as I tried to keep up with all the great things happening on stage. The vocal quartet was quite impressive, particularly bass-baritone Nathan Berg, who sang from memory and was deeply connected to the lyrics. 

Tenor Jamez McCorkle was a bit more dependent on his score but nevertheless turned in a fine performance in the alla Marcia solo. The decision to put the marching band in its own space stage right worked very well here, allowing the audience to hear both it and soloist quite clearly.

Soprano Susanna Phillips and mezzo Sasha Cooke, both familiar faces locally, rounded out the quartet in fine style, their powerful voices blending perfectly.

Under Erin Freeman’s direction, the SLSO Chorus were in top form. Their enunciation was crisp and their vocal lines clear, even during the complex contrapuntal moments in the choral finale. Beethoven, as New remarked back at the top of the evening, was a great admirer of Bach—a fact that is abundantly clear in Ninth. Indeed, in the hands of some conductors (the late Wilhelm Furtwängler comes to mind) Beethoven’s writing can be a bit of a strain for the singers. Happily, New and Freeman appear to have a better grasp of what works best for choristers.

So, yes, another immensely satisfying Beethoven Ninth from the SLSO. The last time they did it (February 2020) with Stéphane Denève at the podium, I praised their performance as “the Ninth against which all others must now be measured.” This one, I’m pleased to report, measured up quite well.

Next from the SLSO: Jason Seber conducts the orchestra in David Arnold’s score for the 2006 film version of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale as the movie unspools on the big screen overhead at the Stifel Theatre. Performances are Saturday at 7:00 pm and Sunday at 2:00 pm, March 8 and 9.

Symphony Preview: 'Tis the season, Part 2

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s regular concert season traditionally goes on hiatus during December, but special holiday events continue right up through New Year’s Eve. This week is relatively light, with only two shows.

Take 6

Friday, December 13^th at 7:30 pm it’s a long-standing SLSO holiday event: the IN UNISON Chorus Christmas concert.  Chorus director Kevin McBeth leads the chorus and orchestra in a mix of gospel, jazz, and traditional favorites for the season.  Guest soloists are basses Reginald Davis and Charles Stancil, sopranos De-Rance Blaylock and Rochelle Calhoun, alto Mary Moorehead, and the Grammy Award®-winning a cappella vocal sextet Take 6.

Now celebrating its 30^th anniversary, the IN UNISON chorus is an auditioned ensemble of volunteer singers that performs a variety of musical styles, with a focus on the interpretation, performance, and preservation of music from the African diaspora. Kevin McBeth, who became director of the chorus in 2011, is Adjunct Professor in Choral Music at Webster University as well as Director of Music at Manchester United Methodist Church, where he serves as full-time administrator for the Music Ministry.

It's worth noting that the IN UNISON Christmas show has often sold out at Powell Hall, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see history repeat itself at the Stifel Theatre.

Conductor Ron Spigelman

Saturday at 7:00 pm and Sunday at 2 pm, December 14^th and 15^th, it’s “The Muppet Christmas Carol in Concert.” Ron Spigelman conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and members of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus as they perform Miles Goodman’s original score for this 2023 version of the Dickens classic while the film plays on the big screen overhead. Songwriter Paul Williams, who penned the Muppet classic “Rainbow Connection,” contributed original songs.

The SLSO movie nights are generally family-friendly affairs, so expect a fair number of wee folk, especially at the Sunday matinee.  And it is, after all, The Muppets.

Next week: the big Mercy Holiday Celebration. Stay tuned!

Symphony Review: An optimistic universe in Mozart's "Requiem"

“The universe is optimistic.” Thus spake Music Director Stéphane Denève at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra this past Saturday (November 9). The inspiration for that declaration, he said, was the fact that the final chord in the score of Mozart’s “Requiem” (the major work on the program) is ambiguous. It could be either major or minor, but the overtones suggest the former.

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

I see the Universe as being indifferent myself, but I can hear what he means in the music, especially in a performance as good as the one I witnessed Saturday night.

Erin Freeman
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Under the direction of its new director Erin Freemen the SLSO Chorus sang with a mix of power and clarity that was a joy to hear. The latter was especially apparent in, for example, the contrapuntal sections of the “Kyrie” and “Sanctus,” in which the individual lines were lucidly delineated. Newly installed baffles behind the singers might have helped project their sound a bit more effectively than in the past, but that was just icing on the proverbial cake. This was and is a splendid group of singers of whom Freeman is clearly proud.

Mozart’s “Requiem,” like Verdi’s (which the SLSO performed back in April), is unabashedly theatrical but not in the same way. Verdi was all about heaven-storming drama while Mozart was more interested in consolation here on earth. That’s not to say that he neglected the drama entirely—the “Dies Irae” and “Rex Tremendae” can be pretty intimidating. But Mozart—and his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766–1803), who completed the “Requiem” after Mozart’s death—tempered the cataclysmic with the comforting.

That means that a good “Requiem” must bring us the tenderness along with the terror, and Denève’s performance certainly did that. His uncanny knack for highlighting interesting details and finding nuances that aren’t always apparent in the work stood him in good stead here. When Mozart and Süssmayr called for drama, it was there, but so was the compassion. This was a finely tuned reading that got equally fine playing from the orchestra.

Dashon Burton
Photo by Hunter Hart

Kudos are also due to the soloists, both individually and as members of the quartet.  Bass-baritone Dashon Burton and tenor Josh Lovell made a strong impression in the “Tuba mirum” duet with trombonist Jonathan Reycraft, although Burton seemed to falter a bit on the cadenza. Soprano Joélle Harvey and mezzo Kelly O’Connor displayed the deepest connection with both the audience and the text. All four were extremely moving in the heartfelt “Benedictus.”

The evening opened with Mozart’s 1788 Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K. 546, for strings. This is a stark and emotionally charged work consisting of a newly composed Adagio followed by an arrangement of the Fugue in C minor, K. 426, for two pianos from 1783. It was a genuine showpiece for the rich, full-bodied sound of the SLSO strings. Articulation was clean and the lines of the fugue were clearly laid out.

Somber as the mood was at that point, it became a bit darker with the next work, the "Vier Präludien und ernste Gesänge" ("Four Preludes and Serious Songs") by Detlev Glanert (b. 1960). Published in 2005, the work is an arrangement/expansion for baritone and orchestra of the last thing Brahms wrote, the Op. 121 "Four Serious Songs."  The songs are pure Brahms, but the preludes that separate them are a mix of the two composers. It’s not difficult to hear the transitions, but even so they are handled tastefully and complement rather than detract from the original songs.

The texts, adapted from the Lutheran Bible but stripped of any explicitly religious content, are meditations on death as sometimes bitter, sometimes comforting, and always inevitable. It’s not until the final song, “Wenn ich mit Meschen und mit Engleszugen redete” (“If I could speak with the tongues of men and of angels”), that the tone becomes consoling. Based on I Corinthians 13, it delivers a message that some alleged Christians these days are ignoring: “And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.”

This was all beautifully sung by Burton. He captured the mood of each song, from authoritative to soothing, with emotional honesty and vocal power. The orchestra did justice to Glanert’s demanding preludes, and Denève brought it all together in a poignant interpretation that included a long moment of silence at the end—a perfect choice.

The SLSO’s Mozart celebration concludes this weekend (Friday and Saturday, November 15 and 16, at 7:30 pm) with Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major, Symphony No. 31 (“Paris”), and Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466. Behzod Abduraimov will be the soloist. Performances take place at the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. Saturday’s concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

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

Symphony Review: A robustly operatic Verdi Requiem concludes the SLSO season

The performance of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem (a.k.a. the “Manzoni Requiem”) this past Sunday (April 28) by Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) and Chorus reminded me of why I have always loved this remarkable work. While superficially a setting of the Latin mass for the dead, it is fundamentally a grand operatic tragedy, stuffed full of the combination of irresistible melodies and high drama that Verdi did so well. This was a Requiem of power, passion, and sensitivity—a fitting finale to a fine season.

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

Soprano Hulkar Sabirova
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Denève, as many of you probably know, got his start conducting opera and continues to make it a part of his career. No surprise, then, that his Requiem honored the work’s operatic roots and punched up its theatricality without ever compromising its musical integrity. The sonic balance among the chorus, soloists, and orchestra could not have been better and the symphony musicians were at the top of their game. It has been over a decade since the SLSO took on this challenging work, but the wait was worth it.

A major indicator of the Requiem’s operatic character is the prominence given to the vocal quartet. Most musical settings of the Latin text relay heavily on the chorus with soloists taking on secondary roles. Verdi flipped that, making the soloists the focus of the work and structuring the entire piece as an opera with the trappings of a mass.

When the critic Hans von Bülow described the Requiem as Verdi's "latest opera, though in ecclesiastical vestments," he meant it as a criticism. In fact, he unintentionally put his finger on what made the work an immediate and long-lasting hit. Verdi, the religious skeptic, had turned a ceremony of belief into an opera about facing the inevitability of death and (as Shakespeare’s Hamlet muses in his famous soliloquy) the uncertainty of what comes after.

Mezzo Judit Kutasi
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Denève cast the roles of the quartet well. Soprano Hulkar Sabirova, mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi, tenor Russell Tomas, and bass Adam Palka were all strong singers with solid operatic backgrounds that enabled them to communicate the emotional truth of the lyrics. Kutasi and soprano Sabirova were the most consistent in maintaining that link with the audience, but all four were quite solid. And Verdi, to be fair, gave the women some of the best material.

Kutasi’s “Liber scriptus” conveyed the sense of dread of divine judgement powerfully, communicating directly with the audience with only brief glances at the score. Palka relied more on the text for his “Mors stupebit” but was equally persuasive in describing the desolation of judgement day. Verdi combined these two solos into a single dramatic scene, using the same music for both, and ending each one with the quiet repetition of a single word: “mors” (“death”) for the bass and “nil” (“nothing”) for the mezzo. Kutasi and Plaka played it well.

Thomas brought out the pleading of “Ingemisco” beautifully, putting his expressive tenor to excellent use both here and in the “Offertorio,” where his voice floats in on the work “hostias” (“we offer you”) as though descending from heaven.

Sabirova sounded heaven sent, as well, on “sed signifier” just a few lines earlier. Her star turn, however, came in the concluding “Libera me,” a long dramatic aria that pleads for divine deliverance while expressing doubt that it will come. The genuine sense of dread in “Tremens factus sum ego” (“I am in fear and trembling”) was chilling. In most requiem masses, the last words sung are comforting. In Verdi’s requiem, the last words are “libera me”, followed by solemn chords in the brasses.

Tenor Russell Thomas
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

All this talk of the soloists should not take anything away from the heroic work of the SLSO Chorus. Verdi gave them their fair share of the spotlight—some of it extremely challenging.

The massive eight-part fugue of double chorus in the “Sanctus” comes immediately to mind in this regard. This was sung with impressive lucidity and in perfect dynamic balance with the orchestra, where little details like the passages for flutes and piccolo were clearly delineated. Overall, the chorus was as fine as I have ever heard it. Congratulations to the singers and to guest chorus director Benjamin Rivera.

And what a tremendous job by the orchestra! The score runs the gamut from the intimate to the overwhelming and demands a high level of playing throughout. The famous "Dies Irae" was a prime example of the latter Sunday, with the orchestra and chorus raising fortissimo musical hell (a friend in the chorus later remarked that it was the loudest he had ever sung). Add in the great whacks on dual bass drums, and the expanded brass section, complete with extra trumpets on the mezzanine level, and the result was music that really did sound like the end of the world. The brass and percussion section delivered the goods here, with precise performances that had a visceral impact.

Bass Adam Palka
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

At the other end of the spectrum were (to pick just two examples) Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo’s plaintive rising sixteenth notes accompanying the soprano, mezzo-soprano, and tenor in “Quid sum miser” and the shimmering violins under the mezzo-soprano in “Lux aeterna.” Wonderful stuff all around, with Denève keeping everything perfectly balanced.

Denève’s interpretation also showed his customary understanding of the value of silence as a musical element. At the very beginning of the performance he patiently held the downbeat until he got absolute quiet, giving the pianissimo opening, with the chorus singing sotto voce and the violins playing con sordino (muted), an impact it might not have otherwise. I think he also would have held for a longer silence at the end if the audience had let him, but after a performance like that I imagine one can only hold the applause for just so long.

The SLSO traditionally closes the season with something special and usually something big for the chorus and orchestra. Verdi’s Requiem, with its mix of hope and doubt, is an ideal choice for that slot, especially in times when the former seems in short supply and the latter much too abundant. A work in which the final words are a wistful “libera me” (“deliver me”) could hardly be more appropriate.

While last weekend’s concerts closed the official season, the music continues this weekend as Stéphane Denève conducts the SLSO and famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in Elgar’s Cello Concerto along with Debussy’s “La Mer” on Friday, May 3, at 7:30 pm at Stifel Theatre. Tickets are available for the concert by itself or as part of a gala fund raiser that includes cocktails, dinner, and post-show dancing. Sunday, May 5, at 7 pm Kevin McBeth conducts the IN UNISON Chorus in a concert at Shalom City of Peace Church in Spanish Lake. Admission is free but RSVPs are requested. The orchestra wraps up May with "Bugs Bunny at the Symphony" on Saturday, May 11, at 7 pm at Stifel Theatre.

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

Symphony Review: Denève leads The STL Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and soloists in a brilliantly conceived program at the Cathedral Basilica

Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus continued their peripatetic wanderjahr last night (February 28) with a brilliantly conceived all-French program at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis.

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

Soprano Brenda Rae

The featured work was the Requiem, Op. 48, for chorus, soloists, and orchestra by Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924). As musical settings of the Roman Catholic requiem mass go, it’s an outlier.  Unlike the requiems of, say, Mozart or Verdi, this is music of peace and consolation rather than drama and terror. The composer himself said he had written it “for the pleasure of it” and that he saw death as “a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience.” And the final movement, “In Paradisum” is one of the most calming and comforting works I know of.

From a programming perspective, though, Fauré’s Requiem presents a problem. With a running time of around 40 minutes, it’s too short to carry and entire program. So what do you program with it? Denève’s elegant solution to that problem was to open with four short works consistent with the theme of comfort and consolation. All four were by French composers: one by Fauré himself and three by his students at the Paris Conservatoire. Fauré taught composition from there from 1896 until 1905, when he became the director—a position he held until his retirement in 1920.

Historically and emotionally it was the perfect choice. Running a little over 90 minutes with only one brief pause for a stage change, the evening was an oasis of beauty and tranquility in an increasingly ugly and angry world. And that’s despite the fact that, from where we wound up sitting, much of the Requiem was the sonic equivalent of the way the world looks to the very nearsighted without glasses: a massive blur.

That has nothing to do with the quality of the performance and everything to do with the extremely live acoustics of the Cathedral Basilica. It’s a visually stunning place but its massive size and hard surfaces give it a reverberation that can, from the wrong location, turn everything into sonic mush.

That said, I am at least able to say that Denève’s tempo choices were just slow enough to avoid making the sonic issues worse without depriving the music of its vitality. The chorus sang with remarkable clarity under the circumstances.

Baritone Davóne Tines
Photo: Noah Morrison

Soprano soloist Brenda Rae, whom we could easily see and hear from our spot far house left, sang her “Pie Jesu” solo with a bell-like clarity and emotional commitment. And, as my wife pointed out, she sang Latin as though it were her native tongue. Unfortunately, our location made it difficult to hear and impossible to see baritone soloist Davóne Tines, so all I can say is that his powerful voice seemed to have a great impact on audience members in the more sonically viable central area of the cathedral.

The concert opened with Fauré’s arrangement of his Pavane, Op. 50, for small orchestra and optional chorus. Denève split the chorus in half, with sopranos and altos house left and tenors and basses house right. From where we were, the men were almost inaudible, but the women sounded wonderful.

Happily, we were able to hear the following three works fairly clearly.

Next was the string orchestra arrangement of the “Choral sur le nom de Fauré” by Charles Koechlin (1867–1950). The music is simplicity itself, being a short fantasia on a five-note motif that spells Fauré’s name, and which sounds rather like “The Lamb” by 20th century composer John Taverner (1944–2013). The performance was perfection in any case.

I was equally taken with the ”Pie Jesu” for soprano, string quartet, harp, and organ by Lili Boulanger (1893–1918), the tragically short-lived younger sister of very long-lived conductor/composer/teacher Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979). It’s the last thing Lili wrote, and Brenda Rae’s performance was exceptionally heartfelt and moving.

Wrapping up the first half of the evening was the popular “Pavane pour une infante défunte” by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937). There was some truly fine playing here from the flute and horn soloists, and Denève conducted with his usual elegance.

Next from the SLSO: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra along with soloists Erin Schreiber (violin) and Melissa Brooks (cello) in a program of orchestral opera selections. The performance takes place at 3 pm on Sunday, March 3 at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the University of Missouri–St. Louis campus. Check out my preview for more details.

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

Symphony Review: Love and death with Denève and the SLSO

Last Saturday night (February 17) Stéphane Denève took a few minutes before giving the downbeat to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) to ask the audience to applaud less.

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

Sounds odd, yes? But this was not going to be your ordinary concert. Both the first and second halves of the evening consisted of pieces that were played attacca—that is, without breaks for applause. In the second half—which consisted of the wildly popular “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff (1895–1982)—that was because the score demanded it. The first half, though, was an experiment in creating what Denève called a “virtual symphony” out of three very different works by three very different composers.

The St. Louis Symphony Chorus
Photo: Brendan Batchelor

“Life,” observes Denève in the concert’s program notes, “starts and ends with nothingness. Music is the same: from silence to silence.” True to his word, he began the concert with a long pause for silence before giving Principal Percussionist Will James the cue for the three soft strikes of the chime that begin the 1977 "Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten" for strings by Arvo Pärt (b. 1935).

The violins then enter softly while the chime continues to sound, slowly increasing in volume as more strings are added. The music reaches an ecstatic climax on an A minor chord that abruptly stops, leaving only the fading overtones of the chime.

I have heard this many times on recordings, but this was my first live performance and therefore my first opportunity to appreciate what a challenge this is for the percussionist. James had to increase the intensity of each strike of the chime ever so slightly as the music gradually built to its apex over seven minutes. That required a good ear, fine muscular control, precise cueing from the conductor, and sensitive playing by the strings.

Needless to say, all of that was present on Saturday night. Denève constructed a neat bit of sonic architecture and allowed those final chime overtones to linger just long enough before plunging headlong into the sturm und drang opening of “Icarus” by contemporary Russian composer Lera Auerbach (b. 1973).

Darryl Kubian at the theremin
Photo: Virginia Harold, courtesy of the SLSO

Like its mythological Greek namesake, "Icarus" rises to great dramatic heights. It then plummets to earth in a great descending swoop of strings, accompanied by the eerie sound of the theremin and a crash of percussion. The work concludes with a quietly elegiac section that features unearthly harmonics in the strings, the gentle sounds of the celesta and harps, and a last dying note from the theremin.

Auerbach is quoted as declaring that “all my music is abstract,” but “Icarus” nevertheless is strongly evocative of its source material, and her orchestration is as inventive as it is demanding. Every section of the orchestra got a solid workout Saturday night, with the winds and percussion being kept especially busy. There were great solo moments here as well by Concertmaster David Halen, harpists Allegra Lilly and Megan Stout, and guest artist Darryl Kubian on the theremin.

The theremin, by the way, is one of those oddball instruments whose almost-human voice you’ve probably heard before in a sci-fi or suspense movie or TV show. Miklos Rozsa featured it prominently in his score for Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller “Spellbound,” for example.  Kubian gave us a brief, entertaining introduction to his instrument at the top of the evening, complete with performances of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and, inevitably, Alexander Courage’s “Star Trek” theme. Everything I wrote earlier about the importance of fine muscle control and a good ear goes double for the theremin, which is played by moving one’s hands and fingers in the air. So kudos to Kubian and also to Denève for a compelling reading of the score.

Like Pärt’s “Cantus,” Auerbach’s “Icarus” also returned us to silence. This time it was broken by the opening notes (bass clarinet and low brass) in the concert version of the “Liebestod” (literally “love death”) from the opera “Tristan und Isolde” by Richard Wagner (1813–1883). Here, again, we have a work that is essentially one long climax (in both the sonic and erotic sense) followed by a gentle fade to silence.

Tenor Sonnyboy Dlada

Denève’s operatic background served him well in a performance that delivered the emotional punch of that big harmonic resolution, although with just a bit less impact than I had hoped for. I’m beginning to suspect that the wider and more shallow stage space at Stifel, in combination with the hall’s somewhat dry acoustics, might make it harder to deliver the kind of visceral impact one could get at Powell. This was, in any event, another fine performance by the orchestra, with lovely solo bits from (among others) Cally Banham on English horn, Tzuying Huang on bass clarinet, and Phil Ross on oboe.

Considering how common standing ovations are at SLSO concerts, I’m a bit disappointed that more of us didn’t rise from our seats at the conclusion of Denève’s brilliantly conceived “virtual symphony.” I’m reminded of Salieri’s remark to Mozart in the film version of “Amadeus”: “Do you know you didn't even give them a good bang at the end of songs to let them know when to clap?"

There’s certainly “a good bang” at the end of “Carmina Burana,” as well as at many other points in this justifiably popular work. Based on an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries, Orff’s “scenic cantata” celebrates not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: food, drink, gambling, and (especially) sex.

Those poems also convey an important message for us today: the immense influence of blind chance on our lives. The opening and closing of the work, "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi," sets the tone for this realization by reminding us that the wheel of fortune is continuously turning, and it is unwise for any of us to become overconfident.

Soprano Ying Fang

“Carmina Burana” is mostly about the soloists and the massive, percussion-heavy orchestra. This was my first opportunity to hear the SLSO Chorus and Children’s Choirs at Stifel, and I came away mightily impressed by the clarity of the sound. Both of these ensembles were in top form as usual, and Stifel’s acoustics made it easier to hear the precisely articulated multi-lingual lyrics (Latin, Middle High German, and Old Provençal) more clearly.

As for the orchestra, the big moments had plenty of impact, and the many solos sprinkled throughout the score were done quite nicely. Andrew Cuneo’s bassoon solo in "Olim lacus colueram"—a macabre little piece about a roasted swan seen from the bird's point of view—pushed both him and tenor Sonnyboy Dlada up to the top of their ranges, and they both sounded chilling. Principal Flute Matthew Roitstein had a fine duet with Principal Tympani Shannon Wood in the trio of the boisterous “Tanz.” Matthew Mazzoni and Principal Keyboard Peter Henderson were very effective, especially with their two pianos placed downstage center in front of the podium.

The vocal soloists only have a few numbers each, but those few always have a substantial impact when performed well—as they certainly were Saturday night. Baritone Thomas Lehman sang with a perfect mix of vocal power and theatrical acumen in his several solos, from the comic intoxication of the Abbot of Cockaigne in "Ego sum abbas" to the powerful mix of passion and despair in “Estuans interius.”

Soprano Ying Fang has one of those voices that seems to float effortlessly in the air, as it did with the Children’s Choir “Amor volat undique.” Her singing in the “Cour d’amours” (“Court of Love”) numbers had a subtle sensuality, both in the solos and in the duet with Lehman towards the end of the section. I think she fudged the infamous upward glissando in “Dulcissime” a bit but sang the rest of it in wonderfully coloratura style.

Baritone Thomas Lehman

I have already noted Dlada’s impressive performance of his only solo. That bit can be played for laughs (as it was by Bramwell Tovey’s “Carmina” in 2018), but it’s so much more effective when delivered with the genuine, tragic anguish that Dlada gave it.

So, yes, this was a killer “Carmina,” conducted with that ideal mix of musical sophistication and theatrical insight I have come to associate with Denève’s performances of opera-adjacent works like this and last season’s  “La damnation de Faust.” Congratulations to all concerned, including guest choral director Andrew Whitfield and Children’s Choir artistic director Alyson Moore.

Next from the SLSO: On Friday, February 23, at 7:30 pm Kevin McBeth conducts the IN UNISON Chorus along with vocalist BeBe Winans in “Lift Every Voice,” the SLSO’s annual celebration of Black History Month. On Saturday, February 24, at 7:30 pm Steve Hackman conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and vocalists Rich Saunders, Khalil Overton, Erin Bentlage in “Brahms X Radiohead.” It’s a symphonic synthesis of Radiohead’s album “OK Computer” and Johannes Brahms’ First Symphony. Both performances take place at the Stifel Theatre downtown.

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

Symphony Preview: The sounds of silence

I have often written that the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) Music Director Stéphane Denève knows how to use silence as a musical element. So it’s not surprising to see him saying the following in the program notes for the concerts he will conduct this weekend (February 17 and 18): “Life starts and ends with nothingness. Music is the same: from silence to silence.”

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

We’ll hear that in the first half of the evening, in which Denève will perform three strongly contrasting works attacca (without pause)—creating in the process a single half hour of music that should range from a nearly inaudible whisper to a shriek that will blow your hair back. Assuming that, unlike me, you have hair.

Arvo Pärt
By Woesinger - Arvo Part,
CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

It all begins with the 1977 "Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten" for string orchestra and chime (a.k.a. tubular bell) by Arvo Pärt (b. 1935). Composed to honor the death the previous year of the British composer, whom Pärt greatly admired for "the unusual purity of his music," the work is, like much of the contemporary Estonian composer's music, a massively complex sonic structure that still sounds very simple.

Using only the pitches of the A minor scale, the "Cantus" opens with three soft strikes of the chime, after which the strings enter softly while the chime continues to sound. The music moves slowly to an ecstatic climax on an A minor chord that abruptly stops, leaving only the fading overtones of the chime. It's simultaneously despairing and hopeful—both a dirge and a celebration.

“From silence to silence,” as Maestro Denève said. But not for long. Because the next sound you hear will be the agitated opening of “Icarus” by contemporary Russian composer Lera Auerbach (b. 1973). Based on “Humum mandere” and “Requiem for Icarus” (the last two movements of her seven-movement Symphony No. 1, “Chimera,” from 2006), this 2011 tone poem strongly evokes the tragic figure from Greek mythology whose desire to fly took him just a little too close to the sun. Like its namesake, “Icarus” rises to great dramatic heights, only to finally succumb and fall to earth in a great crash of percussion. The quietly elegiac section that concludes the work ends with the soft, eerie sound of a percussionist rubbing her moistened finger along the rim of a partially filled wine glass—a primitive version of Benjamin Franklin's glass harmonica.

Lera Auerbach
wisemusicclassical.com

Because it’s not available on Spotify, “Icarus” isn’t part of the SLSO’s playlist, but you can see it performed by Mark Wigglesworth and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain on YouTube at the 2019 Young Euro Festival. The recording by John Fiore and the Düsseldorf Symphony (also on YouTube) is more polished and includes the optional theremin for that extra touch of otherworldliness, but there's an urgency to the live performance that makes it hard to beat.

The theremin is presumably optional because it’s hard to find people who can master an instrument that’s played simply by moving one’s hands in the air. Fortunately, the SLSO has found composer/thereminist/violinist and AV engineer Darryl Kubian to tame that particular beast.

Like Pärt’s “Cantus,” Auerbach’s “Icarus” also returns us to silence. This time it’s broken by the bass clarinet as we begin the concert version of the “Liebestod” from the opera “Tristan und Isolde” by Richard Wagner (1813–1883). The “Liebestod” is usually performed in combination with the opera’s Act I “Prelude,” with its famous "Tristan chord."  The “Prelude” sets up a harmonic tension that isn’t resolved until nearly four hours later when Isolde, in the "Liebestod," wills herself to join her lover Tristan in death.

We have, once again, music that fades away in the end. “The rest,” as the dying Hamlet says, “is silence.”

There’s considerably less silence in the work that makes up the second half of the concert, “Carmina Burana” by Carl Orff (1895–1982). Once described by British critic Richard Osborne as “the best known new composition to emerge from Nazi Germany, ” "Carmina Burana" was something of a cult item in this country until John Boorman's 1981 epic "Excalibur" appropriated bits of it for the soundtrack. The resulting upswing in popularity was not unlike that experienced by Richard Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (or the first two minutes of it, anyway) after the release of "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Carl Orff in 1940
By Hanns Holdt (1887-1944)
abebooks, Public Domain

Orff envisioned this material as the basis for a choral cantata with some mimed action and “magic tableaux.” And, in fact, the first performance in Frankfurt in 1937 was fully staged, with dancers, sets, and costumes. It's usually presented strictly as a concert piece these days (although the Nashville Ballet gave us an impressive staging of it in 2013), but the composer's theatrical intentions are evident in every note.

“Carmina Burana” derives its title from an 1847 collection of secular poetry by anonymous authors from the 12th and 13th centuries that turned up in 1803 in the Benedictine monastery in Beuren, Germany. As befits their “vulgar” status, the poems celebrate not the theoretical joys of heaven but rather the practical ones of earth: spring, sex, food, sex, drink, gambling, and sex. They also recognize something that we moderns have lost track of, to our detriment: the heavy influence of blind chance on our lives. The setting of “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi” (“Fortune, Empress of the World”), which opens and closes the work, reminds us that the wheel of fortune is always turning and that none of us should get too cocky, as the universe tends to dope-slap the excessively smug.

Although "Carmina Burana" is mostly about the chorus, there are some great moments for the soloists. Highlights include "Olim lacus colueram"—a macabre little piece about a roasted swan seen from the bird's point of view—which pushes the tenor soloist up to the very top of his tessitura; “Dulcissime,” which opens with an absurdly difficult upward glissando for the soprano; and “Estuans interius,” a dramatic baritone aria that boils over with the rage and frustration of the disappointed sensualist.

The singers this week—all of whom have substantial experience with “Carmina Burana”—are soprano Ying Fang, baritone Thomas Lehman, and tenor Sunnyboy Dlada. Die Deutsche Bühne has described Dlada’s voice as “crisp, clearly focused, brightly timbred…agile and coloratura oriented,” which sounds ideal for the role of the swan.

If you're curious as to what the "Carmina Burana" poems might have sounded like back in their original form, check out the René Clemencic Consort’s 1975 and 2009 recordings on Spotify. Also on Spotify: the 1992 recording of “Carmina Burana” by Leonard Slatkin and the SLSO. The recording in the SLSO’s playlist is the 2005 recording by the London Symphony Orchestra.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus along with soloists Ying Fang (soprano), Sunnyboy Dlada (tenor), and Thomas Lehman (baritone) in Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana.” The concerts open with Arvo Pärt’s "Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten," Lera Auerbach’s “Icarus,” and Wagner’s “Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde.” Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, February 17 and 18, at the Stifel Theatre.

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

Symphony Preview: The real thing

It has been a few years since the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus gave us an “Opera in Concert” evening—that is, a program consisting of a classic opera performed without the usual theatrical accoutrements—so the performances at the Stifel Theatre this weekend (November 11 and 12) of the 1890 Melodramma “Cavalleria rusticana” by Pietro Mascagni (1863–1945) is most welcome.

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

Santuzza pleads with Turiddu
By Anonymous restored by Adam Cuerden -
Gallica, PD-US

“Cavalleria rusticana” is usually translated as “Rustic Chivalry” which, to anyone unfamiliar with it, probably conjures up images that are considerably at odds with the subject matter of Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti’s libretto. Based on the novella and play of the same name by Sicilian author Giovanni Verga (1840–1922), the opera takes place during one fateful Easter morning in a 19th century Sicilian village. The “chivalry” is actually the traditional vendetta resulting from a mix of love, betrayal, and jealousy.

For the record, here’s a plot summary from Opera Online:

It is Easter morning in a Sicilian village.  A sad, anxious girl, Santuzza, is looking for her lover Turridu, who betrayed her and went back to his former fiancée, Lola, who had meanwhile married the wealthy Alfio when he returned from the army. Santuzza tries in vain to win back her lover. Mad with jealousy, she tells Alfio, the cuckolded husband, about Lola and Turridu. At that point, Turridu’s fate is sealed. Alfio provokes him to a duel. After saying goodbye to his mother [Lucia], Turridu leaves for his fatal meeting.

Needless to say, nobody lives happily ever after.

Written for a one-act opera competition sponsored by the publisher Edoardo Sonzogno, “Cavalleria Rusticana” was Mascagni’s first and most enduring hit, and it was a whopper. It won the competition (besting 72 rival operas), enjoyed a triumphant premiere at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, and was immediately taken up by opera houses in Europe and the USA. “For over a century,” writes Venetian musicologist Michele Girardi, “it has found a place in the repertory of leading singers and conductors from Mahler, who conducted it in Budapest and included it in the programmes of the Vienna Staatsoper, through Levi and Weingartner and on to Karajan, among more recent performers.” These days it’s usually paired with “I Pagliacci” (1892), the only real hit by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919).

Scene from the world premiere of the opera
By Uncredited, Public Domain

“Cavalleria Rusticana” is generally regarded as the first (and certainly most successful) example of the operatic genre known as verismo in which (to quote Stanley Sadie in his 1990 “History of Opera”) “opera moved into line with the other arts of the late 19th century in its readiness to accept the daily life of common people, even (indeed especially) at its most squalid, as apt material for treatment.” The parallel Italian literary movement of the same name, championed by Verga and Luigi Capuana, was in turn part of a broader European movement called “naturalism,” the principal exponent of which was Émile Zola.

All of this was itself a reflection of the social, cultural, and technological upheaval that characterized the late 19th and early 20th century. The old Imperial world order was crumbling, and populism (for both good and ill) was on the rise. Stories of great heroes and villains of the past no longer seemed all that relevant. Even today, opera and other forms of theatre are largely grounded in reality. Mascagni and those who followed in his wake were on the cusp of a major change in the performing arts, whether they realized it at the time or not.

Gemma Bellincioni as Santuzza, 
and Roberto Stagno as Turiddu,
in the 1890 premiere
Unknown author, Public Domain

But, of course, historical significance isn’t what has kept “Cavalleria rusticana” an active part of the repertory for nearly a century and a half. For that, credit the composer’s melodic inventiveness, the fast-moving story, the tight dramatic structure, and the compelling passion of the characters. In a promotional video at the SLSO Facebook page tenor Jimmy Stevens (Younger Brother in Union Avenue Opera’s “Ragtime” back in August) describes it “some of the most action-packed music you’re going to hear in an 80-minute period.” I’d say that about covers it.

The orchestra will be conducted by James Gaffigan, who gave us an impassioned evening of Brahms and Mendelssohn with SLSO back in 2014. A graduate of Rice University (my alma mater), Gaffigan has extensive credits on both the concert and opera stages, a fact reflected in his 2023/2024 performance schedule. Less than a month after this weekend’s concert, he’ll be back at the Komische Oper [sp?] Berlin (where he was just appointed General Music Director) conducting, among others, Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Golden Cockrel,” and Wagner’s “Flying Dutchman,” along with a New Year’s Eve concert and an innovative program that combines Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 with music from David Bowie’s 1977 album “Heroes.” And this after a season that will have included conducting gigs with major orchestras around the world.

The SLSO Chorus will be led by guest director Andrew Whitfield, who did such a fine job directing the Opera Theatre Chorus this past summer.

The Essentials: James Gaffigan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a concert version of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria rusticana” Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2 pm, November 11 and 12, at the Stifel Theatre. The cast consists of soprano Heidi Melton as Santuzza, mezzo-soprano Katherine Beck as Lola, contralto Meredith Arwady as Lucia, tenor Antonio Poli as Turiddu, and baritone Anthony Clark Evans as Alfio. 

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

Symphony Review: A spectacular "Damnation of Faust" caps the SLSO season

This past Friday and Saturday (May 5 and 6), Music Director Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) closed out the season with the 1846 opera/oratorio hybrid “La damnation de Faust” (“The Damnation of Faust”) by Hector Berlioz (1803–1869).

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

Curtain calls for "Damnation of Faust"

Originally planned for March 2020, this Romantic blockbuster was cancelled due to SARS-Cov-2. It was worth the wait. Friday night’s performance sent Faust to hell while sending the audience to paradise with a combination of power, precision, and sheer sonic overload. The massive orchestra (around 85 by my count), adult chorus, children’s chorus, and four soloists filled the Powell Hall stage as well as the aisle between the stage and first row of seats. There were offstage instrumentalists and even a quintet from the St. Children’s Choirs in the dress circle singing the roles of heavenly spirits.

Berlioz, lover of grand gestures that he was, would surely have adored this performance. Everyone in our party certainly did, along with the rest of the large crowd.

Michael Spyres
Photo courtesy SLSO

After the encomiums I bestowed on the SLSO for “Le sacre du Printemps” last week, my well of superlatives might be running dry. Even so, I need to draw from it once again if I am to adequately describe the sheer magnificence of what we saw last Friday.

Let’s start with the orchestra, which once again, displayed their mastery of a score that the SLSO has not performed in over 24 years—not surprising, given the massive personnel demands. Bold, rich strings, powerful brass and percussion, heavenly woodwinds—the SLSO musicians delivered it all throughout the work’s more than two-and-a-half hour length (nearly three hours if you include intermission)..

The Brobdingnagian scope of the thing didn’t mean there weren’t exquisite solo and small ensemble moments, however. The ones that stood out in my mind included Principal Viola Beth Guterman Chu’s duet with soprano Isabel Leonard’s Marguerite in the “King of Thule” song, Cally Banham’s romantic English horn solo in Scene XV as Marguerite longs for the return of the fickle Faust, the flutes and piccolos chirping merrily along the Elbe in the bucolic Scene VII, and the trio of piccolos “gaily tripping, lightly skipping” in the “Minuet of the Wills-o’-the-Wisp” in Scene XII.

Isabel Leonard
Photo courtesy SLSO

Speaking of soloists, the four singers were equally impressive in their own right. Three of the four singers were the same ones originally engaged for the 2020 performance and all four were completely on point musically, with clear and powerful voices. I didn’t find the acting of all four equally convincing but that feels like a minor quibble overall.

Michael Spyres was the very image of a tormented and narcissistic Faust, lamenting his lost youth and seemingly afflicted by a serious case of anhedonia. The character’s relentless self-indulgence—possibly a mirror of the composer’s own—could be tiresome in the hands of a singer less fully engaged with the text, but Spyres made him sympathetic. Faust’s heedless self-destruction works dramatically only if there is some sense of a tragic fall. Spyres gave us that fall and did so in a voice of truly impressive range. The program lists Spyres as a tenor and Faust is, in fact, a tenor role. But Spyres himself identifies as a “baritenor”—a tenor with powerful lower octave. That gave his character an impressive sense of vocal weight.

Bass John Relyea’s Méphistophélès was a perfect personification of evil. Cynical, callous, filled with sadistic glee at the damage he’s causing, this Méphistophélès was as fascinating as he was repugnant. A veteran of the operatic stage, Relyea’s resume includes classic villains like Sparafucile in “Rigoletto” and the Grand Inquisitor in “Don Carlos” as well as Méphistophélès, so it’s no surprise that his performance was a fine mix of stentorian singing and sneering malevolence.

John Relyea
Photo courtesy SLSO

Soprano Isabel Leonard was Marguerite, the painfully naïve target of Faust’s lust. Leonard sang with passion and conviction, but seemed to connect with the audience and her character only intermittently, spending most of her time looking at the score. When she shifted her focus from the score to the audience and the role—as she did in the “Romance” in Scene XV and the “King of Thule” song in Scene XI—her Marguerite became positively radiant.

Bass Patrick Guetti’s cameo as the drunken student Brander was the evening’s surprise scene stealer. A replacement for 2020’s Anthony Clark Evans, Guetti was the epitome of swaggering irreverence, gleefully singing of a rat whose high life in the kitchen comes to an abrupt end. His was the most fully theatrical performance of the evening and a clear audience favorite.

Let us now praise the SLSO Chorus (under guest director Patrick Dupré Quigley) and the SLSO Children’s Choirs (led by artistic director Barbara Berner). “The Damnation of Faust” relies heavily on the adult chorus. The adults appear in the majority of the scenes, playing everything from dancing peasants to raucous demons singing in an invented “satanic” language that reads like a mix of French, German, and Medieval English. The children are added in the final scene portraying esprits célestes welcoming Marguerite to le ciel. The singing of both groups was consistently clear, potent, and dramatically varied. Whoever finally succeeds Amy Kaiser (who retired at the end of the last season) will find themselves leading as fine a collection of choristers as you will find anywhere.

Patrick Guetti
Photo courtesy SLSO

At the helm of this musical and dramatic spectacle, Maestro Denève displayed his characteristic ability to clarify the most intimate of musical moments while delivering a massive emotional wallop when the Berlioz calls for it. The final two scenes, with their contrast between the wild excesses of hell and the otherworldly serenity of heaven, were in many ways a distillation of everything that was so outstanding about this performance.

To paraphrase a line from “Porgy and Bess,” it took a long pull to get there but we finally anchored in the Promised Land.

Next at Powell Hall: Damon Gupton conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the Ludwig Göransson soundtrack for “Marvel Studio’s Black Panther” to accompany a showing of the film on the big screen. Performances are Friday at 7 pm and Saturday at 2 and 7 pm, May 12 and 13. On Sunday, May 14 at 3 pm Stephanie Childress conducts the SLSO Youth Orchestra in their season finale with music of Wagner, Debussy, and Dvořák. After that, Powell closes down for two years for extensive renovation and expansion. Post-season events continue at the Stifel Theatre downtown, which is also where many of next season’s concerts will take place.

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

Symphony Preview: The devil made me do it

The one and only work on the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) program this weekend (May 5 and 6) was described by Maestro Stéphane Denève in a 2019 interview as "almost psychedelic. It's extremely evocative and it's so powerful and it's very difficult." That remarkable work is the unusual (if not unique) 1846 opera/oratorio hybrid "The Damnation of Faust" ("La damnation de Faust"), by Hector Berlioz.

[Preview the music with the SLSO's Spotify playlist.]

Originally planned for March, 2020, the performance of this Romantic blockbuster was cancelled around 48 hours in advance, along with the rest of the SLSO season, because of the dramatic rise in COVID-19 infections. Now, finally, we'll get to see it—and with the same singers we would have heard three years ago.

Berlioz in 1832
Painting by Émile Signol

If you're the sort of person who reads these previews and attends the symphony on even an occasional basis, you probably don't need me to tell you who Faust was. The legend of the elderly scholar who sells his soul to Mephistopheles in return for youth, vitality, and greater knowledge goes back at least as far as the late 16th century. It might have even been inspired by an actual early 16th-century alchemist named Johann Georg Faust. I say "might" because at this chronological distance, legend and history start to merge, like far-away objects on the highway.

What intrigued Berlioz, in any case, was neither history nor legend but rather Goethe's 1808 two-part "Faust: A Tragedy" in an 1827 French translation by Gerard de Nerval. In his "Memoirs," Berlioz wrote that "this marvellous book [sic] fascinated me from the first. I could not put it down. I read it incessantly, at meals, in the theatre, in the street" (although not, one hopes, at busy intersections).

Berlioz was not alone in his fascination with the Faust legend in general and Goethe's version in particular. Romantic-era composers could not get enough of it, and the list of concert and operatic works based on it reads like a veritable "murderers' row" of the greats and near-greats of the 19th and early 20th centuries: Gounod, Liszt, Schumann, Verdi, Wagner, Sarasate, Mahler—you name it, they did it.

The depth of Berlioz's obsession can be seen in the fact that his Op. 1 (that is, his first published work) was "Huit scènes de Faust" ("Eight Scenes from Faust")—a work Berlioz later found so unsatisfactory that he collected as many copies as he could find and burned them. It was, however, a futile gesture, since it had already been published. If you're curious as to what it sounds like, there's a recording by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal under Charles Dutoit on Spotify. The composer would later incorporate this material into "Damnation."

One aspect of the Faust story seems to have had a particular fascination for Berlioz: Faust's pursuit/stalking of Marguerite, his seduction and abandonment of her, and his eventual damnation as a result. To some extent, that might have been simply part of the hothouse atmosphere of Romanticism, but it's also a bit reminiscent of the composer's real-life stalking of British Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson nearly two decades earlier. That resulted in the creation of the "Symphonie Fantastique," followed by a disastrous marriage that left Smithson's life and finances in ruins. The fact that the marriage ended just a few years before the premiere of "The Damnation of Faust" can't really be seen as coincidence, in my view.

The arguably sordid sources of its inspiration not withstanding, "The Damnation of Faust" is a gripping mashup of symphony, oratorio, and opera. It calls for a huge orchestra—around 100 players will be on the Powell Hall stage—and makes sometimes extreme demands on the musicians. Add in the adult chorus, the children's chorus, and the soloists, and you have forces that are massive even by Berlioz standards.

Berlioz originally called it an "opéra de concert" but finally settled on the designation "légende dramatique," and while it has occasionally been staged, it's mostly heard in a concert setting, as it will be this weekend. It is, in any case, a reminder that for Berlioz, as Hugh MacDonald writes in Grove Online, "there existed rigid categories of neither form nor medium. Opera, cantata, song, and symphony all merge imperceptibly one into another and overlap constantly. The important criterion is the matching of means to expressive ends."

Ultimately, "The Damnation of Faust" is a masterful piece of musical storytelling that requires little introduction. That said, if you want to familiarize yourself with the work in advance, there are plenty of resources on line. Mr. Munro's notes have a detailed summary of the story and there's a complete live, semi-staged performance on YouTube conducted by Jonas Kaufmann with José van Dam as Faust. Thanks to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, there's even a downloadable version of the original French text with a line-by-line English translation. And, of course, there's the 2019 recording by Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra on the SLSOs Spotify playlist.

You won't need a printed translation at Powell Hall this weekend, of course, because the translation will be projected on a screen above the stage.

The SLSO Chorus
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

Maestro Denève assembled an all-star cast for "The Damnation of Faust". The title role will be sung by American-born tenor Michael Spyres, who has recorded the part with the Strasbourg Philharmonic under John Nelson. Marguerite, the object of his lust, will be mezzo Isabel Leonard, who sang Ravel's "Shéhérazade" with the New York Philharmonic just before the pandemic shutdown. She has performed at the Metropolitan Opera and also on "Sesame Street."

Bass John Relya will be the cynically sinister Méphistophélès. A veteran of the opera stage and recital hall, the list of conductors he has worked with reads like a current "who's who" of international luminaries. The head shot on his web page even looks a bit wicked.

Completing the cast is baritone Anthony Clark Evans in the cameo role Brander, a student who sings a somewhat crass song in Scene 6 about a rat whose high life in the kitchen comes to an abrupt end:

Certain rat, dans une cuisine
Etabli, comme un vrai frater,
S'y traitait si bien que sa mine
Eût fait envie au gros Luther.
Mais un beau jour le pauvre diable,
Empoisonné sauta dehors
Aussi triste, aussi misérable
Que s'il eût eu l'amour au corps.

Which roughly translates as:

A rat once in a kitchen
Set itself up like a real monk,
And did itself so well that the sight of it
Would have moved the fat Luther to envy.
But one fine day the poor devil,
Ate poison, and leaped out
Just as wretched and frantic
As if it had been [in] heat.

This motivates Méphistophélès to reply with one of the more famous numbers from "Damnation," " Une puce gentille" ("A charming flea"), about a flea who rises above his station with rather more success than the poor rat.

But I digress.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus Children's Choirs, and vocal soloists on Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8 pm, May 5 and 6, in "The Damnation of Faust." It should run around two hours and fifteen minutes, plus intermission. Performances take place at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. The Saturday performance will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3.

This will be the last live performance in Powell Hall until after extensive expansion and renovation is completed in 2025. Meanwhile the SLSO's 2023/2024 season will take place at multiple venues in St. Louis.

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