Symphony Preview: Czech list

This weekend (November 17–19), guest conductor Christian Reif leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violinist Randall Goosby in a program of works by three very different composers who all hail from towns that are now part of the Czech Republic.

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

The concerts open with the first-ever SLSO performance of the 1938 “Suita rustica,” Op. 19, by Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915–1940). If you’ve never heard of her before that’s not surprising. Her untimely death from typhoid at the age of 25 was at least partly responsible for her lack of wider recognition, although given the maturity and number of her compositions, it’s not entirely clear why, in the late 20th century, her work apparently gained little traction outside of the Czech Republic.

Vítězslava Kaprálová
Public Domain

Maybe audiences weren’t entirely sure what to make of her combination of Czech folk elements with what were then seen as “modernist” sounds. Or maybe it was just symptomatic of the difficulty women composers have had, until very recently, getting serious attention.

It’s a pity in any case, because after listening to the recording of the “Suita rustica” by Jiří Pinkas and the Brno Philharmonic in the SLSOs playlist, I’m strongly motivated to seek out more of Kaprálová’s music. This lively and colorful three-movement work neatly merges the traditional with the contemporary in a way that’s hard to resist.

Up next is the 1945 Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, by Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957).  Like Kaprálová, Korngold was born in the city of Brünn, Austria-Hungary—now Brno, Czech Republic. Unlike her, he wrote in a far more traditional and clearly Austrian style. The second son of music critic Julius Korngold (1860–1945), Korngold was a skilled pianist at age 5 and was composing by age 7. He was much admired by, among others, Jean Sibelius, Giacomo Puccini, Richard Strauss, and Gustav Mahler (who recommended that he study with Alexander von Zemlinksy).

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Korngold composed his first ballet at age 11 and his most famous opera, “Die tote Stadt,” at 23. In 1934 director Max Reinhardt enticed him to Hollywood to write the music for his lavish film version of “A Midsummer Night's Dream” (well worth seeing, despite the many cuts in Shakespeare's text). He returned to Austria but was drawn back to California in 1938 to write the score for “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” While he was there, Hitler's Anschluss of Austria took place, and Korngold became an émigré ("We thought of ourselves as Viennese," he would recall later. "Hitler made us Jewish.")

Korngold is most remembered these days, though, as a film composer. The lush, late-19th century romanticism of his scores came to typify the big budget movies of the 1930s and 1940s, especially action/adventure films like “Captain Blood” (1945), “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938), and “The Sea Hawk” (1940). He scored his share of straightforward dramas, as well, including “Kings Row” (1942), “Of Human Bondage” (1946), and “Escape Me Never” (1947).

Korngold returned to the concert world for the final decade of his life, but like many other notable composers throughout history, was not shy about recycling his own musical material. For his Violin Concerto he repurposed melodies from the films “Juarez” (1939), “Anthony Adverse” (1936), “Another Dawn” (1937), and—in the lively finale—"The Prince and the Pauper” (1937). The concerto had its world premiere right here in St. Louis in 1947 with Jascha Heifetz as the soloist and the French-American conductor Vladimir Golschmann on the podium. Golschmann was music director of the SLSO from 1931 to 1958 (the longest-reigning SLSO music director to date) and made a number of recordings with the orchestra.

This weekend's soloist, Randall Goolsby, is no stranger to the Korngold concerto, having recently played it with both the Oslo Philharmonic and the Rhode Island Philharmonic. The 27-year-old American violinist also appears to be a rising star on the concert scene, having just recorded concertos by Max Bruch and Florence Price with Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Phildelphia Orchestra for Decca.

Wrapping everything up is the Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70, by the most thoroughly Czech composer of them all, Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904). Dvořák’s Seventh has always been a favorite of mine, for reasons that are difficult to articulate. I can’t hear it without thinking of a long journey down a dark mountain river. Flashes of light illuminate the trip, but we don’t see the sun until the work’s final moments, when the tonality changes from D minor to D major.

Composed between December 1884 and March 1885, the symphony was written for the Philharmonic Society of London, which had just made the composer an honorary member. Indeed, as a letter to his friend Antonin Rus indicates, he was a bit obsessed with the project. “Everywhere I go,” he wrote, “I think of nothing else than my work, which must be such as to shake the world, and with God’s help it will be so.”

His obsession paid off handsomely. The symphony’s premiere took place on April 22, 1885, with the composer conducting the Philharmonic Society Orchestra at St. James’s Hall and it was, as Alec Robertson writes in his 1962 biography of Dvořák, “a huge success. The work, which pleased conservatives and progressives alike, was favourably compared to Schubert’s C major symphony, and declared to be more immediately appealing than the Brahms F major [Symphony No. 3, Op. 90, published in 1884].”

Anton and Anna Dvořák in London, 1886
en.wikipedia.org

That placed him in some pretty august company. Schubert’s Symphony No. 9, D. 944, which was first published in 1828 (but not performed until eleven years later), was nicknamed “The Great” to distinguish it from an earlier symphony in the same key. By the 1880s, it had achieved the status of greatness among audiences and critics alike. As for the Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90, the critic Eduard Hanslick called it “artistically the most nearly perfect” of the composer’s symphonies. Dvořák himself was among the work’s greatest admirers, describing it to his publisher Simrock as “[surpassing] his first two symphonies; if not, perhaps, in grandeur and powerful conception—then certainly in—beauty.”

The Dvořák Seventh got similar responses from critics both past and present. In his chapter on Dvořák in the first volume of Robert Simpson’s “The Symphony” (Pelican Books, 1966), Julius Harrison doesn’t hesitate to call it “the finest of them all… Dvořák now scales the heights of Parnassus as he was never to do again.” Robertson calls it “undoubtedly a great work.” I agree, of course, and I think you will probably do so as well.

I’m not sure what approach Reif will take to the  Seventh, although Simon Thompson (writing for Bachtrak) called his performance of it last year with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra “smooth as silk” with the finale “feeling like a rich overflowing towards which the whole evening had been building.” If it’s anything like the legendary 1960 recording by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in the SLSOs playlist (one of my personal favorites), it should be memorable.

The Essentials: Christian Reif conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violinist Randall Goosby in the “Suita rustica” by Vítězslava Kaprálová, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto, and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am, Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm, November 17 through 19, at the Touhill Performing Arts Center. The concert will also be broadcast Saturday night at 7:30 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.

Review: The St. Louis Symphony shows its virtuosity in music by Hindemith, Prokofiev, and Mussorgsky/Ravel

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

For some years now, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) has been bringing younger guest conductors to town to make their local debuts on the Powell Hall stage. Every one of them has been very impressive, in my experience, leaving me with real hope about the future of classical music.

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

Marcelo Lehninger
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

This weekend was no exception, as Brazilian-born Marcelo Lehninger made his first St. Louis appearance last night (Friday, November 22) with an evening of music that showcased the virtuosity of both piano soloist Simon Trpceski and the members of the SLSO. Despite having to conduct from a chair because of a recently broken foot, Mr. Lehninger was a strong physical presence on the podium, leading the band in dynamic and insightful performances of this highly varied program.

He also had one of the most striking conductor entrances I have ever seen, gliding on stage on a small scooter that supported his temporarily disabled pedal extremity.

The concert opened with work that the SLSO presented for the first and (until this weekend) only time back in 1970: the "Concert Music for Strings and Brass," Op. 10, by Paul Hindemith. Composed in response to a commission by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930, "Concert Music" is a product of what is often called the composer's "neoclassical" phase, although the densely contrapuntal texture really harks back to the Baroque era. Combine that texture with the unusual orchestration of a dozen brass instruments (four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, and a tuba) plus strings, and you have the potential for serious balance issues that could make the individual melodic lines hard to hear.

Happily, that wasn't the case Friday night. The strings got overwhelmed a bit at the beginning, but overall Mr. Lehninger made it easy to discern the individual threads of Hindemith's musical tapestry and got some excellent playing from the orchestra in the process. The SLSO strings were especially adept in their handling of the rapid passages that open the second half of the piece, and some minor intonation issues in the horns aside, the brasses were strong all the way through, with fine solos from Associate Principal Trumpet Tom Drake and Principal Trombone Tim Myers.

At around 17 minutes, the "Concert Music" is a short piece--a trait it shared with the next work on the program, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 10, from 1912. Prokofiev played it as his entry for the prestigious Anton Rubinstein Prize for pianists at the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1914 (which he won), and there's a kind of cocky, "look what I can do" attitude about the piece. Combined with the composer's trademark mordant sense of humor, it makes for an entertaining experience for the listener and a significant technical challenge for the pianist.

Simon Trpceski
Photo courtesy of the SLSO

And Simon Trpceski was certainly the man for the job. An internationally known artist whose career has taken him to every continent except (as far as I know) Antarctica, Mr. Trpceski played the best Rachmaninoff Third I've ever heard when he was here in 2015. He did an equally fine job with the Prokofiev, delivering every bit of wit and virtuoso flash in the first and third movements with an impeccable sense of style and a mischievous delight while giving full voice to the wistful nostalgia of the second. The result was a performance that was (to quote a Robert Palmer lyric) simply irresistible.

The audience response was warm and enthusiastic, resulting in not one but two Prokofiev encores: the "March" from his "Music for Children" and the "Scherzo Humoristique."

The evening concluded with a work that was no doubt as familiar to the orchestra as it was to the audience: Maurice Ravel's 1922 orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky's 1874 piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition." Inspired by a visit the previous year to a posthumous exhibition of the works of Russian artist Victor Hartmann, Mussorgsky's original is as colorful and evocative as it is difficult to play. Ravel, who was justifiably regarded as an expert orchestrator, filled his transcription with ingenious touches, like the high woodwinds chirping away in the "Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells"; the alto sax playing the voice of a troubadour in "The Old Castle"; the hair-raising evocation of "The Hut on Fowl's Legs" (home of the witch Baba-Yaga from Russian folklore); and the triumphant final movement, based on a sketch for "The Great Gate at Kiev".

That means there are multiple opportunities for individual members and sections of the orchestra to show off, and they certainly did so Friday night. Highlights included (but were not limited to) Principal Tuba Derek Fenstermacher's solo in "Bydlo," which pushes the instrument towards the very top of its register; Tom Drake's flawless delivery of the rapid fire trumpet line in "Samuel Goldenbereg and Schmuyle"; the haunting alto sax of Jeffrey Collins in "The Old Castle"; and the entire woodwind section for playing so precisely in the "Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells" despite Mr. Lehninger's alarmingly fast tempo.

Speaking of Mr. Lehninger, he was once again a strong physical presence, clearly enjoying every moment of this work and putting his own personal stamp of this very familiar material without taking undue liberties. His take on the opening "Promenade" was magisterial. His "Gnomus" snarled and threatened. His decision to have the alto sax fade out slowly at the end of "The Old Castle" added a touch of sadness to the troubadour's voice. And his take on the closing "Great Gate of Kiev" had a degree of subtlety and marked dynamic contrast not always heard in this exultant finale. It was an altogether winning and captivating reading, garnering enthusiastic "bravos" from the crowd.

Next at Powell Hall: Andrew Grams conducts the orchestra and St. Louis Children's Choirs in a complete performance of Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker" ballet, with special lighting design by Luke Kritzeck, whose portfolio includes work with the San Francisco Symphony, New World Symphony, and Cirque du Soleil. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, November 29-December 1.

Review: Dynamic duo

Pianist Javier Perianes

Last weekend the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra brought us new music performed by a pair of familiar faces. This week (Friday and Saturday, October 12 and 13,2018) was the Yang to that Yin with a program of works that were all familiar to varying degrees performed by two new faces on the St. Louis scene: conductor Gustavo Gimeno and pianist Javier Perianes. It was an impressive pair of debuts.

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

Mr. Perianes, who appears to be heavily in demand as a soloist these days, performed Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 3, a work which he recorded earlier this year with the Munich Philharmonic. That recording was praised for its "great warmth" by The Gramophone, and you could certainly hear that quality in Mr. Perianes's playing, especially in the Adagio religioso second movement. But I also heard a crystalline grace and precision in the first movement and real virtuoso flash in the Allegro vivace finale, with its lively "call and response" between the soloist and the orchestra. Mr. Perianes appeared to be in close communication with Mr. Gimeno all the way through, resulting in a sense of seamless integration between pianist and orchestra.

Mr. Gimeno is also rather popular these days. His upcoming guest conducting gigs include appearances in Cleveland, Vienna, Los Angeles, and London, and he will take over the Music Director job in Toronto in 2020. After seeing his perfectly balanced and entirely compelling interpretation of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" Friday night, I can understand what all the fuss is about.

This colorful evocation of scenes from "The Thousand and One Nights" is, of course, a solid member of the Classical Greatest Hits Club. Like most classical music lovers, I've heard it more times than I can count. Even so, this was one of the most captivating performances I have ever experienced. The first movement, "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship," had a wonderful epic feel. The Allegro molto--Vivace scherzando central section of "The Story of the Kalendar Prince" had great dramatic tension. "The Young Prince and the Young Princess," was sweepingly romantic without ever becoming syrupy (as can sometimes happen). And the final movement with its vivid description of the "Festival at Baghdad" and Sinbad's ship being dashed against a cliff was the musical equivalent of a widescreen, high definition action film. It was gripping, dramatic, and perfectly paced.

Conductor Gustavo Gimeno
Photo by Anne Dokter

Rimsky-Korsakov literally wrote the book on orchestration (you can still purchase his "Principles of Orchestration" from Dover Books), and he filled "Scheherazade" with brilliant orchestral writing. The solo violin, representing the voice of Scheherazade, is probably the most notable example, and Concertmaster David Halen played it exceptionally well. But the fact is that the composer filled this music with choice bits for all the first chair players.

As a result, we had splendid solo performances from (among others) Principal Cello Daniel Lee, Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo, Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews, Principal Oboe Jelena Dirks, Principal Flute Mark Sparks, and Principal Harp Allegra Lilly. Roger Kaza and the horn section were all in fine form, as were the trumpets, led by Associate Principal Tom Drake, the low brasses, and the percussion section. The strings had a pleasing richness and depth, and the orchestra in general played at the high level of virtuosity this music demands.

There was plenty of excellent playing in the piece that opened the program, as well, the "Concert Românesc" by Hungarian composer Görgy Ligeti (1923-2006). Although Ligeti was widely known as an avant-garde composer of sonically dense, complex works, you wouldn't know it from this highly entertaining tribute to the Romanian music and folklore that were an important part of the composer's childhood. Its four short movements bristle with good cheer, including some of what the composer called "tonal jokes," like the use of natural (valveless) horns (expertly played by Associate Principal Thomas Jöstlein and Todd Bowermaster) to mimic the sound of folk instruments and a wild, technically hair-raising "gypsy" violin solo in the final movement (brilliantly rendered by Mr. Halen).

Next at Powell Hall: Jun Märkl conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Elizabeth Joy Roe, piano; Celeste Golden Boyer, violin; and Melissa Brooks, cello on Friday and Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm October 19-21. The program consists of Beethoven's Triple Concerto and orchestral selections from Wagner's "Ring" operas. The concerts take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: New faces of 2018

This Friday and Saturday (October 12 and 13) the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra brings us new faces, both on the page and on the stage, along with a special Family Concert on Sunday.

Gustavo Gimeno
Photo by Anne Dokter

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The new faces on stage belong to Spanish-born conductor Gustavo Gimeno and his fellow countryman pianist Javier Perianes, so let's spend some pixels on them first.

Just last month, Mr. Gimeno was appointed Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (he officially takes the job on in the 2020/2021 season), where he will replace interim MD Sir Andrew Davis, who in turn replaced Peter Oundjian. Those are big shoes to fill and big batons to hold, but as John Terauds points out in an article for the Toronto Star, he comes to the job with a solid background:

He is in his early 40s, and comes with a remarkable pedigree, having been mentored by three of the classical music world's finest maestros: the late Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink and Mariss Jansons. He began his career as a percussionist at the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, and has been a regular guest there since replacing Jansons at the last minute four years ago.

Görgy Ligeti in 1984
Photo by Marcel Antonisse / Anefo

Mr. Gimeno's first appearance with the TSO was this last February, where he conducted a program that includes the opening work on this weekend's concerts, the "Concert Românesc" by Hungarian composer Görgy Ligeti (1923-2006). Ligeti was widely known as an avant-garde composer who developed an aurally dense and, in my view, listener-hostile technique he called "micropolyphony," some of which can be heard in the soundtrack for "2001: A Space Odyssey," but you won't hear any of that in his engaging and very entertaining "Concert Românesc."

Written in 1951 (but not heard until two decades later), this short (around 15 minutes) suite is a tribute to the Romanian music and folklore that were an important part of the composer's childhood and in particular to the folk tunes he collected in 1949 and 1950. Here's the composer himself discussing the music at his publisher's web site:

After spending some time in Romania in 1949/50, studying at the Folklore Institute in Bucharest, I participated in several trips to record partly Romanian, partly Hungarian folk music (in Covasint near Arad and in Inaktelke near Cluj in the region of Kalotaszeg). The present four-movement concerto for orchestra (with string and wind solos) is based on a large number of Romanian folk tunes recorded by me, most of which exist on wax cylinders and records of the Bucharest Folklore Institute. In Covasint, on the other hand, I got to know the common harmonic idioms of Romanian peasant music which I have used in the Concerto in a stylised form. This orchestral composition was one of the 'camouflage pieces', used to evade (1951) the imposed dictatorship in the field of arts. Though quite conforming to the rules, the piece nevertheless turned out to be 'politically incorrect' because of some forbidden dissonances (e.g. F sharp in B major). For today's listener, it is hardly understandable that such minor tonal jokes were declared subversive. The 'Romanian Concerto' reflects my deep love of Romanian folk-music (and of Romanian-language culture absolute). The piece was banned at once and not performed until many decades later.

In fact, I think you'll find his little "tonal jokes" to be thoroughly delightful. I draw your attention, in particular, to the high-speed final movement in which, as violist and music commentator Dale Armbrust writes in his program notes, "the concertmaster will earn his paycheck on some positively Van Halen-level solos." That would be our own David (no relation to Van) Halen, who will also be the soloist in the concluding work this weekend, Rimsky-Korsakov's popular "Scheherazade," Op. 35.

Written in the summer of 1888, "Scheherazade" is one of those works that needs little in the way of introduction or explanation. The four colorful movements vividly evoke the scenes from the "One Thousand and One Nights" that served as the work's inspiration. The composer himself sets the scene in a brief introduction, written for the first performance in St. Petersburg, with Rimsky-Korsakov conducting:

The Sultan Schariar, convinced that all women are false and faithless, vowed to put to death each of his wives after the first nuptial night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by entertaining her lord with fascinating tales, told seriatim, for a thousand and one nights. The Sultan, consumed with curiosity, postponed from day to day the execution of his wife, and finally repudiated his bloody vow entirely.

Aside from the virtuoso violin part, which represents the voice of Scheherazade herself, the piece is filled with brilliant orchestral writing, including some nice solo bits for the first-chair players. That's no surprise since Rimsky-Korsakov quite literally wrote the book on orchestration. His "Principles of Orchestration" was begun in 1873, completed posthumously by Maximilian Steinberg in 1912, and finally published 1922. It's still available today, in both print and digital editions, from Dover Books.

Javier Perianes
Photo by Daniel García Bruno

In between Ligeti and Rimsky-Korsakov this weekend, you will find Béla Bartók, represented by the "Piano Concerto No. 3", which he wrote in New York during 1945, the final year of his life. Unlike his first two concertos, which he wrote for himself (he was a formidable pianist), the third was composed for his second wife, Ditta. The hope, according to Geoffrey Norris in a 2016 article for The Gramophone, was "that it would give her some sort of legacy after his death, both in terms of her own profile as a pianist (though she seems never to have played it in public) and in the income she might accrue from royalties when it was taken up by others."

That was probably a good bet. Although Bartók's three concertos have never been as popular as those of Big Guns like Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff, they have always had their ardent supporters, including the noted Hungarian pianists András Schiff and György Sándor. And the third concerto is probably the most accessible of the three. It is, in Mr. Norris's words "altogether of a gentler, more reflective if scarcely (in the outer movements) less dynamic mien" than the first two. "András Schiff," he notes, "describes it as 'a wise man's farewell'." And so it was; when the composer died on September 26, 1945, it fell to his friend, the violinist and composer Tibor Serly, to complete the final 17 measures. The concerto was his last musical will and testament.

That's not to say it's funereal. Lively dance-like elements dominate both the opening and closing movements and the "Adagio religioso" that separates them is classic Bartók "night music", with emotionally intense chorales flanking a middle section that evokes the nocturnal sounds of nature. And all the way through, you can hear the influences of the folk music he collected during his life.

At the keyboard for the Bartók will be that other new face, Javier Perianes. Born in Nerva, Spain, in 1978, Mr. Perianes has, it seems, been nearly everywhere: Barcelona, Chicago, Amsterdam, Shanghai, Istanbul, and London. You name a country with a major orchestra and his passport will have been stamped there. The list of the conductors with whom he has played is equally impressive: Daniel Barenboim, Charles Dutoit, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Gustavo Dudamel, and Rafael Frübeck de Burgos, just to name a few.

The range of composers whose work he has recorded is equally impressive: Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Grieg, Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Blasco de Nebra (18th-century Spanish organist and composer), Federico Mompou (the 20th-century Spanish composer best known for his solo piano works), Falla, Granados and Turina. That discography includes the Bartók Concerto No. 3, recorded earlier this year with Pablo Heras-Casado and the Munich Philharmonic for Harmonia Mundi. "An excellent performance," wrote Lee Passarella for Audiophie Audition, while Edward Seckerson praised the "great warmth" of his playing in a review for The Gramophone.

Omega D. Jones

Sunday brings a complete change of tone as Lee Mills conducts orchestra and narrator Omega D. Jones in "The Composer is Dead" by Nathaniel Stookey (another new face, although he won't be physically present, as far as I know) along with music by Haydn and Falla. I'll confess to a complete lack of familiarity with that first work, which is based on the book of the same name by the popular children's author Lemony Snicket (a.k.a. Daniel Handler), but the piece has been very popular with some high-profile orchestras since its 2006 premiere with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, so it looks like some good G-rated fun.

I am fairly well acquainted with the narrator, though. Mr. Jones is a talented local actor and singer who makes his cabaret debut this Friday at The Monocle. He played Coalhouse Walker, Jr., in Stray Dog Theatre's production of "Ragtime" (in which I also performed) and knocked out critics and audiences alike.

The essentials: Gustavo Gimeno conducts The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and piano soloist Javier Perianes Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, October 12 and 13, in Ligeti's "Concert Românesc," Bartok's Piano Concerto No. 3, and Rimski-Korsakov's "Scheherazade". Lee Mills conducts orchestra and narrator Omega D. Jones in "The Composer is Dead "by Nathaniel Stookey on Sunday, Sunday, October 14, at 3 pm. The concerts take place at Powell Hall in Grand Center.

Symphony Preview: E Pluribus Unum

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For Election Day weekend, former music director Leonard Slatkin will conduct the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program of works by American composers. Ironically, given the outcome of that election, the evening is a celebration of our nation's diversity, with music informed by African-American and Jewish-American culture, as well as two major works by gay composers.

You can't say Fate doesn't have a dark sense of humor.

Leonard Slatkin

The concerts open with Kinah (Hebrew for "elegy") written by Mr. Slatkin and first performed by him last December with the Detroit Symphony, where he is currently Music Director. It's a memorial to his late father Felix Slatkin, conductor of (among others) the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra.

Mr. Slatkin's mother, Eleanor Aller, was a distinguished cellist who often played with the Warner Brothers Orchestra. In 1963, she and her husband were scheduled to present a public performance of a work they had often practiced at home but had never performed in public, the Brahms Double Concerto. That performance never happened. Between the Wednesday night rehearsal and the planned Saturday night performance, Felix Slatkin suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 47.

In prefatory remarks for the 2015 premiere, Mr. Slatkin described Kinah as "a tribute to my parents and in particular of my dad's passing because it's based on four notes that form the opening theme of the Brahms Concerto. It's heard in chords, and it's heard in fragments of melodies that occur throughout the work. It is only heard in more or less its complete form at the very end."

The scoring includes an offstage violin and cello (representing the composer's parents) that only play at the very end. They play fragments of the Brahms melody but never complete any of the phrases-a reminder that they never played the complete work. This weekend, the cello part will be played by the performer who performed at the world premiere, Mr. Slatkin's brother Frederick Zlotkin. The instrument he will be playing belonged to Mr. Slatkin's mother.

Listening to the work on line, I was struck immediately by a sense of delicate beauty, longing, and loss. If you can sit through all twelve minutes of this with a dry eye, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Samuel Barber, photographed by
Carl Van Vechten, 1944

Up next is a work premiered the year before the elder Slatkin's death, the first and only piano concerto by Samuel Barber (gay composer no. 1). Barber began writing the work while he was a student at Curtis Institute, gave up, and didn't try again for over three decades, when the piano firm of G. Schirmer commissioned him to write a new concerto for pianist John Browning. "Inspired by the muscular virtuosity of his chosen soloist," writes René Spencer Saller in her program notes, "Barber began working on the concerto the following spring. To reacquaint himself with the form, he pored over contemporary scores by Boulez, Copland, Webern, Berg, and Schoenberg. He finished the first two movements in 1960, but the finale remained in flux until only two weeks before the premiere, in September of 1962. Barber incorporated technical advice from both Browning and Vladimir Horowitz, who persuaded him that the third movement was unplayable at the original tempo."

Even at the designated tempo of Allegro molto, that last movement is a pretty wild ride-a fiercely energetic perpetual motion machine that requires a pianist of real skill and stamina. Olga Kern, the originally scheduled soloist, would have been a natural for this. Fortunately her substitute, Elizabeth Joy Roe, apparently knows the work well, having recorded it for Decca with the London Symphony Orchestra under Emil Tabakov.

The second half of this weekend's concerts starts with a suite drawn from the 1938 ballet Billy the Kid by our second gay composer, Aaron Copland. Composed to a scenario by Lincoln Kirsten for Ballet Caravan, Billy the Kid was the first of Copland's two "cowboy" ballets (the other one is the popular Rodeo) and the first major work to display the popular, "open" sound that would come to characterize his most often-played pieces. It was also the first time he incorporated American folk songs into his music (although he had already used Mexican tunes in El Salon Mexico two years earlier).

Aaron Copland, 1962
By CBS Television - eBay
itemphoto frontphoto back,
Public Domain

Copland's Billy the Kid is not the brutal killer of reality but rather a symbolic figure who is part outlaw and part tragic hero. In addition, as Richard Freed writes in his lines notes for the 1985 recording of the complete ballet Mr. Slatkin and the SLSO, "[o]thers have recognized in the music a symbolic representation of the various elements in the American 'frontier spirit' that made possible the westward expansion."

Certainly the music vividly evokes the vast plains of the mythic west with wide, open harmonies as well as a bustling frontier town with lively polyrhythms and a climactic gun battle with percussion outbursts. This is cinematic stuff that makes it easy to conjure up the action of the ballet in the mind's eye.

The concerts close with Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture for Orchestra by the noted composer and arranger Robert Russell Bennett. It's a work featuring African-American musical ideas translated for the stage by a Jewish-American composer and then arranged by a native Missourian who would go on to work with some of the biggest names in Broadway and Hollywood. In many ways it encapsulates our nation's rich, multi-cultural heritage.

Although Gershwin's Porgy and Bess is now widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of 20th century opera, it took (to quote one of the opera's lyrics) “a long pull to get there”.
With a book by DuBose Heyward (based on his own original novel and play) and music and lyrics by the Brothers Gershwin, the original 1935 Theatre Guild production was a financial failure, and critical reaction was mixed and, from a contemporary standpoint, clueless. New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson dismissed it out of hand, and the paper's music critic, Olin Downes, found the mix of vernacular musical elements and sophisticated symphonic form completely baffling (a position which he would later recant).

Despite revivals of interest in the 1940s and 1950s, Porgy and Bess remained an essentially marginal work until a 1976 production of the complete score by the Houston Grand Opera—one that restored nearly an hour of music that had been cut from earlier productions—demonstrated conclusively that Gershwin's crowning achievement was also a great work of musical art.

George Gerwhsin, 1937

Some expansions and alternations not withstanding, the 1942 Bennett arrangement sticks pretty closely to Gershwin's own orchestration and covers some of the same territory as the composer's 1936 Catfish Row suite (which the SLSO recorded with Mr. Slatkin in 1990) including the banjo solo for "I Got Plenty o' Nothing". If you're a fan of the opera, you'll find a lot to like here, including nearly all of the opera's "greatest hits." Although I have to say I miss the Act I fugue that accompanies the murder of Robbins from Gershwin's own suite.

The Essentials: Leonard Slatkin conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with piano soloist Olga Kern in Barber's Piano Concerto, Copland's Billy the Kid Suite, Gershwin's Porgy and Bess: Symphonic Picture for Orchestra, and Slatkin's own composition Kinah. Performances are Friday at 10:30 a.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m., November 11 - 13, at Powell Hall in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org. The Saturday concert will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio.

Mr. Slatkin will also conduct Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Overture as part of a concert by the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra on Friday at 8 p.m. Gemma New conducts the rest of the program, which includes music by Copland, Grieg, and Beethoven.