Review: Thanks for the memories

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

David Robertson and Orli Shaham

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When I reviewed the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra's world premiere of Steven Mackey's Stumble to Grace a few years ago, I was struck by the music's whimsy and humorous sensibility as well as by its flashy orchestral writing. All of those qualities were present once again last Sunday (October 22, 2017) at Powell Hall, as the SLSO opened their concert with Mackey's 2015 Mnemosyne's Pool.

Laid out in five movements and running around forty minutes, Mnemosyne's Pool is scored for a massive orchestra (nearly 100 musicians), including a percussion battery that includes everything from a triangle to a brake drum. The wildly inventive variety of sounds that Mackey produces with those forces provides much of the work's charm.

The title refers to the Greek goddess who presided over the pool of memory in Hades, and in his notes at the Boosey and Hawkes website, Mr. Mackey says that the work centers on "the role of memory in musical creation and reception." An abrupt change in the melodic line "asks the listener to remember an earlier point in the line instead of continue inexorably forward."

To me, the many shifts of mood and orchestral color in Mnemosyne's Pool did, in fact, evoke memories, but they were memories of other composers. The first section, for example, unfolded as a kind of passacaglia that reminded me of Bach. Later a bassoon figure brought Bartok to mind while other passages strongly suggested the work of Leonard Bernstein. There were no explicit quotes or even paraphrases (Mr. Mackey is too original for that), but the overall effect was a kind of kaleidoscopic total recall of a century or so of sound, all filtered through Mr. Mackey's unique sensibility.

In his spoken introduction, maestro David Robertson noted that Mnemosyne's Pool was a work that he had come to love, and his enthusiasm showed in everything he and the SLSO musicians did. The work is, as a Musical America critic noted, a kind of "concerto for orchestra" that bristles with remarkable solo passages for nearly every instrument, and the members of the band all had chances to strut their stuff. Will James and his percussion section, in particular, covered themselves with glory.

After intermission, the orchestra turned to more familiar territory, beginning with Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet.

First performed in 1870 and then revised in 1877 and 1880, Romeo and Juliet manages the neat trick of compressing the essential emotional themes of Shakespeare's five-act tragedy into around 20 minutes of music. Mr. Robertson's interpretation was appropriately theatrical, featuring strong dramatic contrasts, beginning with a hushed opening chorale and delicate string pizzicati that made the transition to the first statement of the battle music all the more potent. The famous "love theme" had a lush, swooning feel, enhanced by especially fine playing from Associate Principal Horn Thomas Jöstlein and the rest of the horn section.

The concert concluded with one of the great showpieces of the twentieth century, Rachmaninoff's brilliant Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini from 1934. The Russian expatriate was one of the previous century's great pianists, and the Rhapsody served him well as he toured Europe and America, including an appearance with the SLSO in December of 1934. The piece is a sort of mini-concerto, consisting of 24 variations on (appropriately) the twenty-fourth and last of Niccolò Paganini's Caprices for solo violin -- a tune that has proved irresistible for composers from Liszt to Andrew Lloyd Webber.

At the keyboard was Orli Shaham, who first met Mr. Robertson when two were appearing together at Powell Hall in 1999. They were married in 2003, the same year Mr. Robertson became the SLSO Music Director, but have rarely appeared together with the orchestra. With Mr. Robertson's tenure coming to an end this season, this past weekend's appearance could be the last one they ever do together with the SLSO, which lent a kind of poignancy to the event.

The performance itself displayed the mix of nuance and technical skill that I have come to expect from Ms. Shaham. You could hear the former in the subtle gradations of tone that mirrored changes in the mood of the music, accompanied by changes in facial expression and body language that indicated a deep involvement with the score.

As for Ms. Shaham's virtuosity, it was apparent in every precisely rendered note of this challenging work. This was particularly noticeable in her seemingly effortless way with the fiercely difficult final variation, which even the composer was said to have found a bit daunting.

The applause Sunday was prolonged enough to move Ms. Shaman to play an encore for us: Bach's Prelude in E minor, BWV 855a, in the B minor transcription by the Russian pianist Alexander Siloti. The luminous mix of Baroque and late Romantic elements was an ideal way to end the concert.

Next at Powell Hall: David Robertson conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in music by Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, and Beethoven Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., October 27-29. Soprano Christine Brewer will perform Berg's Seven Early Songs and SLSO Principal Horn Roger Kaza will play Strauss's Horn Concerto No. 2. The concerts will conclude with Beethoven's popular Symphony No. 5. The performances take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Child's play

 

Steven Mackey on "Stumble to Grace"

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Orli Shaham conducted by David Robertson
What: Music of Mackey and Mahler
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: September 23 and 24, 2011

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In the program notes for the world premiere of his Stumble to Grace for piano and orchestra, composer Steven Mackey credits the inspiration for the work to watching his toddler son learn to walk, moving from “experimenting with perambulation” to, a year later, showing “a confident lilt in his step”. “I wanted to open my compositional process”, he writes, "to incorporate some of the whimsy and exuberance that he brings to his exploration of the world.”

Judging from what I saw and heard Friday night, Mr. Mackey has achieved that goal and then some. Whimsy and exuberance are, it seems to me, in rather short supply these days both on the concert stage and in the wider world beyond it. Stumble to Grace has both in abundance, along with a loopy, humorous sensibility, flashy orchestral writing, a spectacular piano part, and undeniable charm. The result is pretty much irresistible.

Written in five movements (which Mr. Mackey, in a possible nod to Piaget, calls “stages”), Stumble to Grace moves from a comical opening in which the deceptively simple-sounding piano line plays something like musical “pat a cake” with the celesta and some of the more specialized noisemakers of the percussion battery, proceeds through increasingly sophisticated episodes, and culminates in a cheerful and hair-raisingly tricky fugal finale. It does so in an unmistakably “modern” but still lively and completely approachable way. Mr. Mackey has, happily, no use for the academic aridity that characterized so much “serious” music as recently as a few decades ago. I heard what sounded like nods to Gershwin, Copland, and Debussy (among others), but overall the sound is entirely Mr. Mackey’s own.

Ms. Shaham and her husband, Mr. Robertson, are friends of Mr. Mackey and his wife. Their young children often share play dates and Mr. Mackey has written music for Ms. Shaham’s Baby Got Bach children’s concert series. These performances of Stumble to Grace have, as a result, the kind of authenticity that you would expect from such a close personal relationship between composer and performer. Ms. Shaham, in particular, seemed very much in the spirit of the thing at every moment, acting the role as well as playing it with great assurance. Mr. Robertson led the orchestra through Mr. Mackey’s sometimes-thorny musical maze with his usual aplomb, and the musicians played with the virtuosity that has come to be their hallmark. Mr. Mackey could not, I think, have asked for a better premiere.

Virtuosity was apparent, as well, in the killer reading of the Mahler Symphony No. 1 that concluded the evening. Clocking in at just under an hour, the First is probably the most economical of Mahler’s symphonies. It is, to paraphrase Anna Russell, a kind of Mahler vitamin pill, combining all the composer’s characteristic gestures in one compact work. It’s all here: the vivid invocation of the natural world, the heaven-storming despair, the macabre humor, the jocular impressions of village bands and sounds that would later be labeled “klezmer”, and, of course, a wildly triumphant finale with a full complement of brass—including an expanded horn section—standing and gloriously blazing away. The subtitle “Titan” that’s often applied to this work may have originally referred to a novel of the same title by Jean-Paul Richter, but I think it’s simply an apt description of this music. Its impact is Titanic in every sense of the word.

A good Mahler First, then, should send you away with tears of joy in your eyes—which is exactly what this performance did. Everything worked for me, including things that sometimes don’t, such as a tendency to linger lovingly over orchestral details or to take slow sections very slowly. This was a Mahler First to remember, with all the humor, drama, and exultation in exactly the right measure and (some minor flubs in the brass section not withstanding) sounding exactly right. It makes me look forward with considerable anticipation to his Bruckner Seventh in November. Yes, a great Mahler conductor is not necessarily a great Bruckner conductor, but bodes well.

Next at Powell Hall: a mostly-American program of Ives, Copland, and Gershwin along with Schoenberg’s ground-breaking Five Pieces for Orchestra. The last is a late substitution for what would have been another world premiere—the Double Bass Concerto No. 3 by Edgar Meyer with the composer as soloist. The one and only performance is Friday, September 30. For more information you may call 314-534-1700, visit stlsymphony.org, like the Saint Louis Symphony Facebook page, or follow @slso on Twitter.