Symphony Preview: Three faces of Sergei

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

This weekend (February 15-17) St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Designate Stéphane Denève concludes his first 2019 appearance with the orchestra with an all-Prokofiev concert series that highlights the many moods of the 20th century Russian master. There will be regular season concerts on Friday and Saturday and a special abbreviated Family Series Concert Sunday afternoon.

Prokofiev in New York, 1918
Photo by Bain News Service

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The regular series concerts will open with a suite assembled by Mr. Denève from the score for Prokofiev's 1945 ballet "Cinderella." It's music that finds the composer in a playful and romantic mood--remarkable, given that it was begun in the depths of World War II and that the composer's wife had just left him.

SLSO program annotator Tim Munro says that Prokofiev "escaped into a fairy tale" by writing the score for this faithful adaptation of Perrault's classic. But Mr. Denève, in his own remarks in the program, points out that Prokofiev was "like Mozart, a man who reveals the child he continued to be. He has a sense of enchantment, a way of building music as if it were made of simple cubes." So perhaps it didn't necessarily take external stress to move him in that direction.

The score for "Cinderella" is, in any case, about as much fun as you can legally have in public. The thirteen numbers Mr. Denève has selected don't include many of the more whimsical and comic moments--although he has included "The Shawl Dance" in which Cinderella's two awful stepsisters fight absurdly over a scarf. His suite also contains some of my favorite bits, such as the romantic "Grand Waltz" in which Cinderella and the Prince fall in love, and "Midnight," in which the clock ticks away in the percussion section and each toll of the fateful midnight bell is met with increasingly ominous growls in the low brass and piano.

The "Cinderella" suite is the only thing on the Family Series concert, but the Friday and Saturday night concerts follow it up with the Piano Concerto No. 2. Unlike the "Cinderella" suite, the concerto is dark, sardonic, and aggressive. Which seems only fair, as its genesis involved both death--literal as well as musical--and resurrection.

The literal death was that of the composer's close friend, the pianist Maximilian Schmidt, just a few months before the concerto's first performance. As Alexander Carpenter writes at allmusic.com, "Schmidt committed suicide in 1913, and left a note to Prokofiev that read, in part, 'I am reporting the latest news to you. I have shot myself. Don't grieve overmuch. The reasons were not important.'" The musical death was that of the original score for the concerto, which was lost in a fire in Prokofiev's St. Petersburg apartment shortly after the work's premiere.

The resurrection took place in 1923, when Prokofiev completely re-wrote the concerto from memory. By then, however, his approach to composition and orchestration had changed significantly and he had written another concerto (his Third, in C major). "I have so completely rewritten the Second Concerto," he wrote to a friend "that it might be considered the Fourth."

The concerto is, in any case, a testament to Prokofiev's skill at the keyboard. It's a wildly difficult piece, with four movements in which the tempo never falls below Allegro and a stunningly challenging first movement cadenza that, at around five minutes, takes up almost as much time as the rest of the movement. "A decade ago," wrote David Nice in a review of a new recording of the concerto for BBC Music Magazine, "I'd have bet you there were only a dozen pianists in the world who could play Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto properly. [Martha] Argerich wouldn't touch it, [Evgeny] Kissin delayed learning it, and even Prokofiev as virtuoso had got into a terrible mess trying to perform it with [Ernest] Ansermet and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the 1930s, when it had gone out of his fingers."

I'm reminded by Balakirev's infamous "Islamey," a work so formidable that, in the end, even the composer couldn't play it. We should expect no such problems this weekend, though, as the soloist will be the justifiably celebrated Russian-born Yefim Bronfman, whose prodigious technique should be more than up to the task. He gave us a first-rate Beethoven Concerto No. 3 in 2016, for example, and a Tchaikovsky Concerto No. 1 in 2011 that practically danced across the stage.

He also recorded a pretty impressive "Islamey" back in 1998.

Teutonic knights take over Pskov in
Alexander Nevsky

Closing the concerts will be the 1939 cantata "Alexander Nevsky." Based on the score Prokofiev wrote for Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film of the same name, the work placed the composer, who had just returned to Russia to live, at the top of the People's Composer list and therefore at the bottom of the Bourgeois Formalists Headed for a Gulag list. "When you arrive in the U.S.S.R. from abroad," Prokofiev wrote at the time, "you feel something completely different. Here, dramatic works are needed, and there is no doubt what subject they should address: the subject must be heroic and constructive (it must be creative, not destructive). This is what our era demands." (Cited in "Red Zone: Sergey Prokofiev and the Soviet Union," a Playbill article by Eddie Silva).

If you have ever seen the film, you will undoubtedly remember its vivid images of the ominous, armored Teutonic Knights, which have always struck me as evocative of Nazi Germany's massive Panzer tank divisions. Relations between Russia and Germany were, to put it mildly, strained at the time, so both the film's anti-German message and anti-clerical sentiment played well with Communist officialdom. The great thing about both the film and Prokofiev's music, though, is the way they reached beyond simple agitprop to create real art. It's a thrilling and captivating score.

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus have performed "Alexander Nevsky" numerous times, both alone and as part of a showing of the film. They even recorded it in 1979 under Leonard Slatkin (when the chorus was directed by Thomas Peck), with Claudine Carlson as the mezzo-soprano soloist. The recording is still available in SACD format and worth having in your collection.

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

"Music is about passion": a talk with St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Designate Stéphane Denève

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

Stéphane Denève
Photo by Drew Farrell

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The Music Director Designate of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Stéphane Denève, is in town through February 17 for to conduct a pair of concerts. Despite a busy rehearsal schedule, he has been doing media interviews to promote the 19/20 season (in which he will officially become the orchestra's Music Director), and I sat down to chat with him and SLSO Vice President-Artistic and Operations Erik Finley. Here's a transcript of our conversation, minus some edits for clarity.

Chuck Lavazzi (CL): We've been reading a lot about what will be new next season, but let's talk for a minute about what's not going to change. What will people find familiar next season?

Stéphane Denève (SD): That's a good question, actually. Obviously the orchestra is part of this community but every conductor shapes the sound of the orchestra instantly. That's why you have some good concerts and some less good concerts with the same orchestra.

In a way, I hope that all of my concerts will reflect on what I am and what I have achieved during my eight visits before. So I think what they can expect is to see a continuation of what I built with the orchestra--which is very good, because I'm not arriving totally new. Since 2003 I have really built a relationship with them of trust and mutual love.

The quality of the hall will be the same as well. I adore the acoustic of this hall. So that will be the same, but I hope everything else will be different.

Erik Finley (EF): I understand you're also continuing a long-standing commitment to American music, even to the point of inviting John Adams.

SD: Yes, the legacy of the orchestra is very much respected in my first season. I admire what the American conductors-Leonard Slatkin and the David Robertson-did for the orchestra. I happen to love this country and I am probably one of the most American of the French conductors because I have worked a lot in this country for many years. So we will perform a lot of American music and a lot of music of our time.

CL: Speaking of new music, what are the criteria you use in deciding what new works to present?

SD: It's a very simple and very genuine thing. I ask myself, do I love them? Because I feel that nobody should ever conduct music that he or she doesn't believe in. Because music is about passion. It's like you're a chef and you have a wonderful meal and you want people to eat it. You want them to enjoy it as much as you do yourself.

CL: Because a chef wouldn't cook something that he wouldn't eat himself.

SD: Yes, that would be very weird. And I really believe that's crucial, especially for new music. It's very important that the audience understand that the new music we will perform is music that I believe they can love. It is true that my preference is for music that is very emotional, that is often very tonal and that has a lot of melodies. I think that the Holy Grail of music is the tune, the melody.

I'm a lyrical conductor. I started my career as an opera conductor and I love lyricism and so the reason I conduct a piece of whatever repertoire, old or new, is because I believe in it.

Of course, the danger when you do a premiere is that you may love the style of the composer but every composer--it's a fact--can write a bad piece. So there is a risk taken when you do a world premiere. But when I conduct something, it's because I believe in it.

SLSO Chorus Director Amy Kaiser

CL: So it has to speak to the heart as well as the head.

SD: Yes, it's not one or the other. All the masterworks of music, for me, have this power to speak to everybody. For instance Mozart's "Magic Flute" can be enjoyed so much by kids. Every Papageno of this world, every Tamino of this world, or every Zarastro of whatever age or knowledge or spirituality you have, there is something to be inspired by in "Magic Flute." For me a masterwork is something that has that power.

So I really don't see a dichotomy of between something that will speak to your brain or your heart, it has to speak to both.

And it is something of a cliché that modern music is not accessible because it's complex. I find this to be very weird and wrong because complexity for me to be able to find two notes that give a full presence. Like the music of Shostakovich or Arvo Pärt that has no accompaniment and just a simple melody can still be, for me, extremely complex because of that. Because it's magic how much something can have a soul presence in a pure, simple form.

What is important is that I am a musician. I love music, it is my life, and so I pretend pretentiously that I can judge if your music has substance, and as long as I believe in that substance, then there's nothing simple or complex, it's just good.

CL: Yes, I think it was Duke Ellington who said there are only two kinds of music, good music and bad music. SD: There's a joke in France that there's only good music, bad music, and music by Ambroise Thomas-which is neither.

CL: One of the interesting things you're doing this season is the "symphonic play" by Didi Balle, "Maurice Ravel: A Musical Journey." Can you tell me a bit about that? You did the world premiere of that last year.

SD: Yes, we created that together. I love that writer. She's very good at this kind of "edutainment" thing-both very informative and very pedagogical in a way, but which is so much fun and has such a great sense of drama. So it's really a very good balance. And I'm really very proud of this project because it's a multimedia project with projections, actors, and soloists. So you have a journey into themes connected with Ravel's music andit's very unique as an art form. It's not a concert and it's not a play, it's something in-between. I think it will be fun to bring that here.

The audience will hear a lot of Ravel's music. There will be an actor on stage who actually looks quite a lot like Ravel. They can expect to learn a lot about the context and really enjoy it because it's full of emotion. It's all about the great mystery of the relationship between the work of a man and the man himself. It's always interesting to see the reality of the human being behind so many masterworks. Sometimes, since we play so many pieces from the past, we forget this link, which I think is fascinating.

CL: I see that you have programmed a number of ballet scores. In the past the symphony has sometimes used visuals with those. Will you be doing anything like that?

SD: No. It's very interesting, because as much as I love combining art forms I'm very doubtful about the visual and the music together. There have been some experiments in which that has been successful. But somebody I love, John Williams, told me that music can never win because the visual is so distracting and so prominent. So every time you have a visual which is very powerful the music tends to become an accompaniment. And therefore it's very hard to find the right balance to make that successful.

In the case of "Rite of Spring" I think the music is so extremely powerful I doubt that there is anything that cannot detract from the music except, of course, a live performance of the ballet. Not so long ago in Paris I saw a ballet based on (Ravel's) Concerto in G that Jerome Robbins did and I thought it was complicated because it becomes something else, it becomes ballet music and you listen less. It can give you some other type of emotions.

A lot of people say today "oh, well, you live in a visual world" and so we have to give the audience something to enhance the experience. And I don't want to appear to be a Puritan or austere, but I think the opposite. I think this is our chance to offer something different. I think that music has the power to bring us together through the sheer power of the vibration.

And it does something strange. Have you noticed, for instance, when somebody makes music well, this person becomes beautiful? I mean, you can be objectively not beautiful, nevertheless the music has the power to make you look at an artist for an hour or two and never question the look.

This is one of the many powers of great music. You know that word is an adjective, belonging to the Muses, and I think it's the super art, more inspiring than anything else just because of vibration in the air itself.

CL: Music is itself and doesn't necessarily need anything else.

SD: Unless it is designed that way, I think. But I have seen (Smetana's) "Ma Vlast" ("My Homeland") with photos, or a video DJ mixing abstract images live with music. I did an experiment in Scotland some time ago where we had projections with the music and every time I felt doubtful that this was successful musically. It was entertaining but did we serve the music more? I don't think so.

CL: I notice you have really interesting things coming up for the chorus as well: Mozart's C Minor Mass, Vaughan Williams's "Dona Nobis Pacem," and Berlioz's "Damnation of Faust." That last one is a pretty big undertaking, isn't it?

SD: Yes, it is really a genre all by itself, because it's not really an opera but at the same time it really wants you to imagine, so I would say it's almost psychedelic. It's extremely evocative and it's so powerful and it's very difficult. I feel very confident because before I was even considered by this orchestra I conducted a big masterwork for chorus here-"Daphnis and Chloe," the full ballet-and I was so impressed by the quality of the chorus and by the work of Amy Kaiser.

For me the full family of the (St. Louis Symphony) Orchestra is extremely rich. There is the orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, and the IN UNISON, and so many activities for the kids. It's huge. And I love vocal music. As I said before, I come from the opera world and I love to do opera in concert. That's why I feel very confident to program big works. I will do the Mahler Second.

CL: Another favorite of mine.

SD: Yes, it's fantastic. And also the Beethoven Ninth in my first season, so I'll have the opportunity to really develop a relationship with the chorus, and I love that.

EF: The cast for the Berlioz is also amazing. To do "Damnation" with you, we would only have done it if we could have found an excellent cast, and we have done that.

SD: The cast could not be better, it's amazing. The Marguerite of Isobel Leonard is fantastic. We are in for a special night. I hope people will take the opportunity to see it because it will be an event.

Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus today (Sunday, February 10) and again on February 15-17. All concerts take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

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

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

Stéphane Denève
Photo by Jessica Griffin

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

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

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

Mozart, as drawn by Doris Stock, 1789

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

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

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

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

Vaughan Williams in the army, 1915
rvwsociety.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brahms in 1853
en.wikipedia.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conducting for bucks, or, how much is that music director in the window?

David Robertson conducting the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

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We've all seen the news stories about how inflated salaries have become at the highest levels of the American corporatocracy. Whether the performances of the companies they manage is good, bad, or indifferent, compensation for those at the top continues to rise. Honeywell made headlines earlier this year when it was revealed that its CEO made 333 times what the average worker did, for example, and other companies commonly pay the big shots 100 times what their employees make.

As revealed in a recent article by New York Times classical music editor Zachary Woolfe there's a similar (if much less outrageous) trend in salaries of the music directors of America's major orchestras. At a time when many orchestras are experiencing financial difficulties, he notes, "the amount orchestras pay their conductors is increasing. Another marker has been passed as the average compensation for the music directors of 64 American ensembles analyzed in an annual report by the arts consultant Drew McManus topped $600,000 for the first time."

A glance at Mr. McManus's report, which is based on 2015/16 data, indicates that the list of orchestras with the highest-paid music directors includes our own St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, which paid David Robertson $1.04 million. That made him one of only nine conductors who made over $1 million.

Mr. Woofle notes that "national debates about chief executive compensation have included sobering discussions about how much that pay has skyrocketed compared with an average worker's salary. Perhaps orchestras should consider anchoring their music directors' packages to a sane multiple of their players' base pay: "Ten times what the musicians make," [former Seattle Symphony Orchestra music director Gerard] Schwarz said. "That to me sounds reasonable."'

Stéphane Denève

So how does Mr. Robertson's salary measure up by that standard? Fairly well, as it turns out. A recent article at Slippedisc.com points out that SLSO musicians are making just under $100k annually right now and will make over that in 2021/22. Unless Mr. Robertson's compensation increased significantly after 2016, that would make it more or less in line with Mr. Schwarz's suggestion. I don't know whether Stéphane Denève's paycheck will be significantly different when he takes over officially in 2019, of course.

Fortunately, the SLSO can afford to pay well. Unlike many American orchestras, it's on a fairly sound financial footing these days . It ended the 2017 Fiscal Year with a small surplus and signed a new five-year contract with the American Federation of Musicians. Ticket revenues continue to grow and the orchestra's Live at Powell Hall events, featuring movies and guest appearances by performers from the world of popular music, continue to be very popular.

Symphony Review: A spring awakening with Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony, February 7 and 8, 2015

Stéphane Denève in the auditorium
of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris
Photo: Tom Finnie

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stéphane Denève
What: Music of Debussy, James MacMillan, and Dvořák
When: February 7 and 8, 2015
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis

A bit of spring blew through St. Louis a couple of months early this weekend, and I’m not just talking about the temperatures outside.  Inside Powell Hall it was unseasonably vernal, as well, as Principal Flute Mark Sparks and the St. Louis Symphony under guest  conductor Stéphane Denève gave voice to Debussy’s sultry “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune” (“Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun”).

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

Inspired by an 1876 poem by the symbolist Stéphane Mallarmé (whom Debussy greatly admired), the “Prélude” exudes what Boston Symphony music librarian Marshall Burlingame describes as a “languorous sensuality” as “the faun’s conscious observation of two nymphs in the sunlight drifts into erotic fantasy.”  Even in Mallarmé’s elliptical poetry, it’s steamy stuff.

Mark Sparks
stlsymphony.org

Mr. Denève’s loving and subtly shaded interpretation, combined with Mr. Sparks’ graceful playing of the solo part (the flute takes on the role of the faun’s panpipes), produced exactly the lubricious atmosphere the composer had in mind.  Working without a baton, Mr. Denève artfully shaped  phrases with his hands in the manner of the late Leopold Stokowski while still making individual cues pointed and unambiguous.  He is, as I have noted in the past, a commanding figure on the podium and an interesting visual study.

Immediately following the first dose of Debussy, we got a second: the brief “Syrinx” for solo flute from 1913.  It wasn’t on the printed program, having been added during rehearsals as a result of discussions between Mr. Sparks and Mr. Denève, but there was nothing rushed or under-rehearsed about Mr. Sparks’ seemingly effortless performance.

Next up was the local premiere of Scottish composer James MacMillan’s Piano Concerto No. 3, “The Mysteries of Light.”  Based on the five “Luminous Mysteries” added to the existing fifteen rosary mysteries by Pope John Paul II in 2002, the work is not so much a classic concerto as it is a symphony with a prominent piano part.  Yes, the pianist has some impressively flashy passages, especially in the finale (“The Institution of the Eucharist”) with its “perpetual motion” coda, but overall the piano is more of an orchestral partner.

As I wrote in my preview article, Mr. MacMillan disdains composers who are (in his words) “deeply suspicious of any significant move towards tonality, any hint of pulse that is actually discernible, and any music which communicates successfully with a non-specialist audience.”  If, in other words, you are weary of music that sounds more like an orchestra tuning up than a deliberate composition, or that seems to have been written more for a grant-funding committee than for a paying audience, Mr. MacMillan is undoubtedly your man.

The 3rd concerto is not what I’d call a subtle work. The first movement (“The Baptism of Jesus  Christ”), for example, features rapid “watery” passages at the upper end of the keyboard while the second movement’s “Wedding at Cana” includes a raucous  tune in the style of a reel.  Jesus’ ascension in the fourth movement is depicted by a massive orchestral crescendo that begins at the very bottom of every instrument’s register and quickly  climbs to the top, and the radiance of Jesus’ face is illustrated by an elaborately beautiful chorale for the strings.

And so it goes.  There’s an almost cinematic vividness to this music—and I mean that in the most flattering way possible.  Unlike some of the newer works the SLSO has unveiled, this is a piece that can be grasped at first hearing while still inviting repeated listening.  We can only hope  that a recording will be forthcoming at some point.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet
jeanyvesthibaudet.com

The soloist for the concerto was Jean-Yves Thibaudet.  He premiered the concerto with the Minnesota Orchestra in 2011, so I think I can safely describe his performance as definitive.  It was certainly assured and intense, backed up by virtuoso playing by the orchestra.  He and Mr. Denève clearly love this music, and their very informative and entertaining spoken introduction, including a brief bit of four-handed piano from the pair, was a nice supplement to the printed program notes.

The concert concluded with the the "Symphony No. 8" in G major, Op. 88, written in 1890 by Antonin Dvořák.  The symphony comes from an especially happy time in the composer’s life.  Thanks, in part, to the enthusiastic support of Brahms, Dvořák was much in demand as both a composer and conductor and was prosperous enough to purchase a home in the Czech countryside that inspired so much of his work.

Composed at his newly acquired home, this cheerful symphony overflows with celebrations of rustic life.  There are twittering birds, cheerful village bands, wandering violinists, and even, at one point, a section that has always made me think of a sudden thunderstorm.  This is the joy of living, wrapped up in the Czech master’s characteristically infectious melodies and dance-inspired rhythms.

Dvořák  is one of my favorite composers and I thought I had heard every possible approach to this consistently good-humored symphony. Mr. Denève still managed to surprise me, though, with an idiosyncratic approach that lingered over orchestral details, sometimes sacrificing the composer’s rhythmic vitality to do so.  And yet, it never felt overdone or excessively episodic.  This was a performance that drew me in, almost in spite of myself.

The orchestra responded with some truly superb playing.  The cellos, under Principal Daniel Lee, brilliantly fulfilled their important melodic role, especially in the first and last movements, and the winds and horns made the most of the loving attention Dvořák lavishes on them all the way through.  Concertmaster David Halen also had a nice moment as that strolling violinist in the second movement.

Finally, a note about silence.  Most of us know that silence is an element of music. John Cage even went to far as to write and entire piece (“4’ 33””) consisting of nothing by four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, along with whatever ambient sound happens to be present at the time.  Dvořák uses silence effectively in the eighth symphony, and Mr. Denève used it effectively throughout the concert.  Before he began the Debussy, for example, he held himself completely still until the last audience wheeze had died out and the opening flute solo could emerge from almost complete quiet.  His understanding of the importance of silence and stillness is, I think, one of the things that makes Mr. Denève’s interpretations stand out from the crowd.

Next at Powell Hall: Kevin McBeth conducts the St. Louis Symphony IN UNISON chorus in “Lift Every Voice: A Black History Month Celebration” on Friday, February 13, at 7:30 PM.  The orchestra is supplemented by a rock band for “Faithfully: A Tribute to the Music of Journey” on Saturday, February 14, at 7:30 p.m.  The regular season resumes when Slovakian conductor Juraj Valcuha leads the orchestra and piano soloist André Watts in Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 2” and Tchcaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 6” (“Pathétique”) on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m. February 20 and 21.  For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Et in Arcadia Ego

Stèphane Denève

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Stèphane Denève with pianist Eric Le Sage
What: Music of Schumann and Ravel
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: November 4 and 5, 2011

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If I had a plethora of laurel wreathes (is that the right collective noun?) to throw around I’d crown the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, guest conductor Stèphane Denève, and every member of Amy Kaiser's chorus with them for their joyous performance of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé Friday night. The composer called it a "symphonie choréographique"; the choreographer Michael Folkine of the Ballets Russes, for whom it was written 100 years ago, called it a ballet; and nearly everyone since has called it Ravel’s greatest work. As performed by Mr. Denève and the orchestra, I call it a great success, with flawless solos, precise ensembles, and gorgeous sound overall.

Like Ravel, Mr. Denève has studied at the Paris Conservatoire. Unlike the composer (who was expelled), Mr. Denève graduated with honors and has gone on to make a name for himself as an exponent of French music. He certainly seemed to be right at home with Daphnis et Chloé, conducting with passion and, perhaps more importantly, impressive precision.

Precision matters because, for all its lush harmonies and brilliant orchestration (when was the last time you heard an alto flute solo?), the ballet is nevertheless very logically organized. The composer himself noted that it was "constructed symphonically according to a strict tonal play by the method of a few motifs, the development of which achieves a symphonic homogeneity of style." It’s a reminder the Ravel was, as Eric Salzman has noted, a classicist at heart.

With a running time of nearly an hour, Daphnis et Chloé is Ravel’s longest work and follows a very detailed scenario describing the courtship of the shepherdess Chloé by the goatherd Daphnis. A band of pirates kidnaps Chloé, but she’s rescued by Pan and all ends happily with an exuberant "Danse generale". The music is vividly descriptive of the stage action, so the decision to project a translation of the scenario on a screen in synch with the music added considerably to the experience. With very little effort, I could reconstruct the entire ballet “in my mind’s eye” (as Hamlet says). Pictures of what I assume to be sketches of Leon Bakst’s original Ballet Russes costumes were shown before the music started, which also helped to set the mood. The Symphony is making very creative use of their projection capabilities these days and doing so in ways that always enhance the music.

The concert opened with another Ravel ballet score, a far more modest orchestration of four movements from Schumann’s magnum opus Carnaval. The arrangement was made for a 1914 London performance by Ballets Russes star Vaslav Najinsky, who was attempting to form his own ballet company. Najinsky came down with the flu, the performance never happened, and the Carnaval arrangements had to wait until 1975 for a public performance. This weekend marked the first appearance in St. Louis.

I’d like to say the Schumann/Ravel Carnaval is an undiscovered gem, but in fact it felt more like “Ravel Lite”. The orchestration is modest and, aside from some witty moments in which the melody is tossed back and forth between sections in the final march, not terribly interesting. It got a first-class performance, though, and it did help set the musical stage for the big work of the first half, Schumann’s popular Piano Concerto in A Minor.

Eric Le Sage was the soloist for the Schumann. Making his local debut, the young French pianist has been hailed as something of Schumann expert, having recorded all of the composer’s piano output in a prize-winning series for the French Alpha label. His program bio notes that critics have praised “his very subtle sound and his real sense of structure and poetic phrasing”. If his performance of the concerto Friday night is any indication, the critics couldn’t be more accurate.

If your piano preferences run toward the flashy, this would not be the interpretation for you, but it might be one that Schumann would have admired. His intent was always to create a kind of symphony for piano and orchestra rather than the sort of virtuoso showpiece that he and his fellow contributors to the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik disdained, so I think he would have appreciated the way in which Mr. Le Sage’s pianism seamlessly integrated with the orchestra under Mr. Denève. This was an A Minor Concerto of chamber music–style intimacy and the kind of close, cooperative give and take that goes with it. I’m not completely persuaded by it, but there’s no denying that Mr. Le Sage and Mr. Denève made an awfully strong case for it.

All this fine work was done for a disappointingly small house on Friday. I realize that everyone (justifiably) loves it when Mr. Robertson in on the podium, but Mr. Denève is a very charismatic conductor who takes an obvious joy in his work. He’s part of long list of distinguished guest conductors that have appeared at Powell Hall over the years. They all deserve our support, as does the orchestra as a whole.

Next at Powell Hall: Jun Märkl is on the podium for more Ravel (La Valse), Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration, and Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) with Horacio Gutiérrez at the keyboard. For more information you may call 314-534-1700, visit stlsymphony.org, like the Saint Louis Symphony Facebook page, or follow @slso on Twitter. 

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