Symphony Notes: Rites of spring

In the early days of this Symphony Notes series, I had the somewhat ambitious goal of providing program notes for virtual recreations of planned (but cancelled) St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) performances. The idea was to give you links to performances of the scheduled works using Spotify playlists provided by the SLSO and/or YouTube links uncovered by Detective Google.

This week, I have discovered the limitations of that approach.

Pierre Jalbert

The program originally scheduled for this weekend (May 8 and 9) would have consisted of the SLSO premieres of Pierre Jalbert's brief tone poem "Music of Air and Fire" and Guillaume Connesson's Cello Concerto, followed by a complete performance of Stravinsky's savage ballet "Le Sacre du Printemps" ("The Rite of Spring"). Finding links for the Stravinsky is easy enough; the SLSO's Spotify playlist has a performance by Vasily Petrenko and the Liverpool Philharmonic described by The Gramophone as " fierce, taut reading" with "a thumping good bass drum." What proved to be less easy was coming up with recordings of the other two pieces.

The Jalbert piece, which dates from 2007, runs around six minutes, so the four-minute excerpt from a 2016 performance by the Vermont Youth Orchestra under Jeff Domoto is as close to complete as you can get.

On his web site, Jalbert describes the work as consisting of two "contrasting ideas: one of quiet lyricism (air), and one of faster, more aggressive music (fire).":

The "air" music comes first and features the percussionists bowing their instruments in order to create a wafting, ethereal sound. This gradually turns into the "fire" music and features the percussionists playing various sets of drums in a more pulse-oriented, rhythmic manner.

The VYO recording consists of only the "fire" section, and there's no doubt that it fully delivers the driving, powerful rhythms Jalbert describes. As the curtain raiser for an evening that was to conclude with "Sacre," it feels completely appropriate.

Guillaume Connesson
Photo by Fanny Houillon

Connesson's Cello Concerto is an even bigger challenge. I couldn't find a complete recording at Amazon ("not even for ready money," to quote Lane in "The Importance of Being Earnest") or Spotify. YouTube yields only a performance of the fifth (final) movement (marked "Orgiaque," or "Orgiastic") by soloist Jérôme Pernoo (to whom the work is dedicated) and the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Tugan Sokhiev. It's from a broadcast of the 2016 Victoires de la Musique Classique awards, an annual French equivalent of the Classical BRIT Awards. It would be like a Grammy Award program devoted only to the classics, if we had one.

In his description of the work on his publisher's web site, Connesson describes this movement as "une danse finale, joyeuse et violemment rythmique" ("a final dance, joyous and violently rhythmic"), and you can certainly hear that in Pernoo's highly charged and stunningly virtuosic performance. If this doesn't make you want to move, then, to quote the title of a 1947 Louis Jordan single, "Jack, You're Dead." It's a pity we won't get to see noted French cellist Gautier Capuçon play the complete work with the SLSO and Maestro Denève, but this at least gives you a taste of it.

Stravinsky in 1903
By Unknown Photograf -
archives de FinitoR
Public Domain, Link

As for "Le Sacre du Printemps," there's not much I can add to the volumes that have already been written about this revolutionary and compelling work. The third in a series of series of successful collaborations between Stravinsky and impresario Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (the previous two being "The Firebird" from 1910 and "Petruska" from 1911), "Sacre" was, like its predecessors, inspired by Russian folk elements.

Unlike them, its first performance--at the newly opened Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on May 29, 1913, with Pierre Monteux conducting--became a notorious succès de scandale. "It is arguably," writes Paul-John Ramos at classic.net, "the most famous debacle in western artistic history":

Audience members found the quiet, yet active, introduction ridiculous. When the curtain rose and [choreographer Vaslav] Nijinsky's dances began, the auditorium went into a rage, their sophistication insulted. Ravel and Debussy were both present and captivated by the music, but it was soon drowned out in the fracas. Debris was thrown, as well as punches. The work was performed in full, but only with the help of Nijinsky calling steps from atop an offstage chair.

Standing next to him was the composer, who had abandoned his seat in the theatre in disgust at the uproar. "Naturally, the poor dancers could hear nothing," he recalled later, "by reason of the row in the auditorium and the sound of their own dance steps. I had to hold Nijinsky by his clothes--he was furious and ready to dash on the stage at any moment and create a scandal."

Later performances were less riotous. In fact, when Monteux conducted a concert performance in the Casino de Paris the following year, Stravinsky was carried from the hall in triumph on the shoulders of audience members. Today the music sounds less radical but still packs a tremendous dramatic punch, as was the case when David Robertson opened the 2011-2012 SLSO season with it.

There are so many great performances of "Sacre" (both with and without dancers) for free on line that you could grow old and die listening to and/or watching every one. The Petrenko/Liverpool performance the SLSO has selected is a winner, but listening to it with the Spotify app, with its mandatory "shuffle" playback mode (happily absent on the desktop version), can be a trial.

Other options for the concert version include Jaap van Zweden conducting a wonderfully precise performance of the composer's 1947 revision at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and a high-intensity reading by the Radio France Philharmonic under Mikko Franck. Both boast great sound and videography that gives you close-up views of soloists impossible to achieve in real life. For a deeper dive into the music, there's a version of Leonard Bernstein's 1958 New York Philharmonic recording synchronized with pages from the score.

Supports and membes of the Ballets Russes
By General Nicolas Besobrasov (died 1912)
printed in book, 'Nijinsky' by Richard Buckle,1971,
Weidenfeld and Nickolson, London.,
Public Domain, Link

As for videos of the ballet itself, you can see not one but two recreations of Nijinsky's original choreography performed by the Orchestra and dancers of the Ballet Mariinski Theater under Valery Gergiev at the Mariinski Theater in 2008 and at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2013. The sound and videography are great in both cases. It's as close as you'll ever get to seeing what so excited and outraged audiences over a century ago.

For a radically different take on the ballet, check out Pina Bausch's typically idiosyncratic choreography by the Wuppertaler Tanztheater from 1978. The quality of the recorded sound is mediocre and Bausch's approach will come across as either revelatory or ridiculous depending on your taste, but its originality is remarkable in any case. You can also view versions by noted French choreographer Maurice Béjart and a massive 250-dancer production employing multiple companies with choreography by Royston Maldoom accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle.

OK, so I had more to say about "Le Sacre du Printemps" than I thought. In any case, you have a plethora of resources here for your homebrew re-creation of this weekend's original concert. Listen, watch, and enjoy. It would have been the SLSO's regular season finale, but the orchestra is scheduled to resume their regular concert season in September. Season tickets are on sale now.

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

Symphony Notes, Part 2: Taking flight

In my previous edition of "Symphony Notes," I talked about the music that was to have been part of Didi Balle's "Maurice Ravel: A Musical Journey", originally slotted for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) program on Friday, May 1. This time around, I'm going to look at what was originally planned for the concerts on Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3.

Lera Auerbach
wisemusicclassical.com

Conducted by Music Director Stéphane Denève, the program would have consisted of "Icarus" by Lera Auerbach, a contemporary (b. 1973) Russian-born composer who now lives in the USA, followed by Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (discussed briefly in my last post), and Shostakovich's overwhelming Symphony No. 10. You can hear the last two pieces on the SLSO's Spotify playlist.

At first hearing, all three works seem very dissimilar. But are they, really?

"The desire to go beyond the boundaries into the ecstatic visionary realm of soaring flight is essentially human," writes Ms. Auerbach in program notes for the Boston Symphony. "In some ways this desire to transcend the everyday-ness is what it means to be human." It's not much of a stretch to see that as the common thread that brings together these three very different works.

"The title Icarus was given to this work after it was written," Auerbach continues. "All my music is abstract, but by giving evocative titles I invite the listener to feel free to imagine, to access his own memories, associations. Icarus is what came to my mind, listening to this work at that time." It came to mind, as well, as I watched the Mark Wigglesworth and National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain perform it on YouTube in a recording made during the Young Euro Festival last year. A tragic figure from Greek mythology whose desire to fly took him just a little too close to the sun, Icarus is not hard to discern in this vividly dramatic piece, which 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.

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 that live performance that makes it hard to beat.

In lieu of a more detailed description of the piece, you can read Alex Burns's thorough analysis on his Classicalexburns blog or just give it a listen for yourself. One thing you'll likely note is "Icarus" sounds like two pieces--one around three minutes long and one around nine--that have been stitched together. That's because it is, as Mr. Burns points out, the final two movements of Auerbach's 2007 Symphony No. 1 ("Chimera") played back to back. In that respect, Ms. Auerbach is only one of many noted composers (including Bach and Rossini) who have repurposed their own work over the centuries. Think of it as aural recycling.

Maurice Ravel birthday party, New York City, March 8, 1928
L-R: Oscar Fried, conductor; Eva Gauthier, singer;
Ravel at piano; Manoah Leide-Tedesco, composer-conductor;
and composer George Gershwin

Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand is also about transcendence--not for the composer but for the pianist for whom it was written in 1929-1930. That pianist was Paul Wittgenstein (the older brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein), who was just at the beginning of what looked like a successful career when World War I broke out. Called up for military service, Wittgenstein was shot in the right elbow during the Battle of Galicia, a major confrontation between Austria-Hungary and Russia. He was captured by the Russians and sent to a POW camp in Siberia where the injury to his arm proved to be so severe that amputation was necessary.

For the vast majority of pianists, that would be a career-ending event, but Wittgenstein was determined to not only resume a normal life but to continue his career as a pianist. The camp had no piano, so, as Dakota White relates at the World War I Centennial web site, Wittgenstein drew the outline of a keyboard on a wooden crate and used it to practice during his confinement. After the war, he was able to use his family's wealth and social connections to commission works for the left hand from leading composers of the day, including Richard Strauss, Erich Korngold, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten--and Maurice Ravel.

Wittgenstein gave the work its premiere on January 5th, 1932, with Robert Heger conducting the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and recorded it in 1937 with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bruno Walter. You can hear that performance on YouTube as well as on Amazon Prime. The recording on the SLSO play list has Krystian Zimmerman as the soloist with Pierre Boulez conducting the London Symphony, but the Wittgenstein performance is still worth hearing, despite the dated mono sound.

There's a nocturnal feel to the concerto. It's a remarkable piece, with a dark bitonal introduction featuring the contrabassoon (how often does that get a solo?), flashy cadenzas for the soloist, and a central march/scherzo with strong jazz and American pop music echoes. It's as though the composer is inviting us to a dance in the graveyard--a celebration of renewed life in the shadow of the massive death of the "war to end all wars." Ravel served as an ambulance driver in the cataclysm, and I think the horrors he saw influenced many of his post-war works, including this one.

Shostakovich in 1945

A different set of horrors serves as the background for the Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93 by Shostakovich. It was first performed by the Leningrad Symphony under Yevgeny Mravinsky in December, 1953, but its genesis began years earlier under the tyrannical reign of Stalin and his cultural spokesman Andrei Zhdanov. In 1948, Shostakovich was denounced for the sin of "formalism"--an amorphous charge that apparently translated as "Stalin didn't understand it"--and so forced to keep his most intimate musical thoughts to himself. Instead he produced film scores and safely banal works like the oratorio "Song of the Forests". It wasn't until after Stalin's death in March 1953 that Shostakovich felt it safe to commit pen to paper.

Reflecting as it does the grim reality of life under Stalin, the Symphony No. 10 isn't easy to love. An often somber and deeply felt reflection on the grim oppression of those years, the 10th is, even by Shostakovich standards, a work of extremes. Moments of crystalline delicacy alternate with vast outpourings of orchestral sound. Deceptively simple-sounding melodic material is spun out in increasingly complex ways throughout the work--a technique known as "metamorphosis" or "thematic transformation," defined by Grove Music Online as "the process of modifying a theme so that in a new context it is different but yet manifestly made of the same elements."

You can hear that most prominently in the long Moderato first movement in which the seminal theme is played softly in the low strings. Over the ensuing 25 minutes or so it rises to a series of progressively more intense climaxes "succeeding one another," as Richard Freed writes in his notes for the SLSO's 1987 recording, "with a Sophoclean sense of inevitability." At times the volume level achieve rock concert intensity--something to bear in mind if you live in an apartment or listen with headphone.

The short Allegro second movement, with its relentless manic energy, was described by the composer as "a musical portrait of Stalin," according to Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov's 1979 "Testimony" (the book's credibility has been questioned, but that quote sounds plausible). The Allegretto third movement is a dance of death, ending with a plaintive statement of the main theme on solo violin.

The Andante; Allegro final movement begins softly, much as the first movement did, but about a third of the way through the mood changes abruptly with a perky theme in the woodwinds. The clouds begin to lift, the sun slowly appears, and the work ends in a glow of hopeful triumph.

The symphony is, in short, a portrait of life in the dark shadow of a frenzied autocrat, ending with a hope for better times after the shadow has passed.

It's a shame we won't get to hear Maestro Denève's take on this piece. The last time the SLSO played it, under David Robertson, the results were stunning. Still, the SLSO has picked a fine performance by Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for you on Spotify, and there's a YouTube video with a synchronized display of the score performed by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Kirill Kondrashin if you want to dig deeper into the music. You can't go wrong either way.

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

Symphony Preview: The folk school

This weekend (October 14 - 16, 2016) guest conductor Hannu Lintu leads the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a program of works by composers with their roots firmly in the traditions of their native lands: Poland's Witold Lutoslawski (1913 - 1994), Czechoslovakia's Antonín Dvorák (1841 - 1904), and Russia's Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971).

Witold Lutoslawski
Photo: W. Pniewski and
L. Kowalski

Lutoslawski, whose music opens the program, embraced his Polish heritage in many of his early works, especially those written in the aftermath of World War II. But the time he wrote this weekend's opener, Chain 3, in 1986, the composer had, as Paul Schiavo writes in his program notes, "evolved into a modernist whose music is international in style". The piece is the last of a trio of Chain pieces that Lutoslawski wrote in the 1980s, each of which was written for very different musical forces. Chain 3 is scored for a large orchestra-just under 100 players this weekend. Like its two companion works, it consists of small musical ideas which overlap and combine, like the links of a chain, to create a larger aural whole.

As it builds towards its conclusion, Chain 3 creates an impressive "wall of sound" that would have done Phil Spector proud and incorporates elements of aleatoric or "chance" music in that (quoting Mr. Schiavo again) "certain passages to be played ad libitum, with only loose coordination among the players." That sounds like it might be a recipe for sonic chaos and to some extent it is, but it's controlled chaos and pretty compelling.

Up next is a masterpiece that leaves nothing to chance and offers great opportunities for a soloist willing to take on its technical and emotional challenges: Dvorák's Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104.

The cello doesn't appear in the symphonic spotlight that often. It's not that there aren't concerti out there (although far fewer than for violin or piano); it's just that most of them are relatively obscure. The Dvorák A minor concerto is probably the most popular-right up there with the Elgar-and justifiably so. Written during the composer's final year in America, it's nevertheless a work that is suffused with the dark romanticism of the Bohemian countryside that the composer loved so dearly.

The Dvorák family in New York, 1893

This is mature and deeply felt music of genuinely symphonic proportions. It's also technically challenging without being superficially flashy. There are no cadenzas, for example, and the demands on the soloist's technique arise naturally out of the concerto's dramatic narrative.

To play this concerto well, then, you need not only nimble hands but also a warm heart. This is music of deep sorrow and overflowing joy. The soloist had better be open to all of it.

The cellist this weekend is Germany's Alban Gerhardt, a man praised as "one of the finest cellists around" by The Guardian and dubbed "Ein Kantabilitätszauberer und Meister virtuoser Rasanz" ("a magician of cantabile playing and a master of virtuosic panache" by Der Tagesspiel. "His gift for shedding fresh light on familiar scores," says his SLSO program bio, "along with his appetite for investigating new repertoire from centuries past and present, truly set him apart from his peers." All of which suggests that he has the right combination of skills to not only make the most of the concerto, but to offer some fresh insights into it as well.

The concerts this weekend close with a work in which folk influences are visual as well as auditory: the 1947 version of Stravinsky's Petrushka ballet, originally presented by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris in 1911 with the legendary Pierre Monteux in the orchestra pit. Stravinsky was struck by the idea for the ballet while he was in the midst of working on the score for what would prove to be his most (in)famous Diaghilev collaboration, Le Sacre du Printemps.

Here's the composer describing his inspiration (as quoted in program notes for the Minnesota Orchestra): "I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi. The orchestra in turn retaliates with menacing trumpet-blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet." Even without the dancers and scenery, this is tremendously descriptive music. If you're unfamiliar with it, I think you'll find it easy to play the story out in your mind's eye. Depending on your imagination, it might even be more vivid than the real thing.

Nijinsky as Petrushka

When Diaghilev discovered that Stravinsky had stopped work on Sacre for Petrushka he was indignant, but as soon as the composer began to play the score on his piano, the impresario was smitten. With the great Vaslav Nijinsky in the title role, the ballet was well received and went on to be one of the most popular items in the company's repertory and in Stravinsky's catalog.

Originally conceived as a work for piano and orchestra, Petrushka retains a prominent role for that instrument-a role emphasized even more in the 1947 revision you'll hear this weekend. At the keyboard will be Peter Henderson who, while not officially a member of the orchestra, nevertheless frequently appears as an ensemble keyboard player with them and has occasionally even been in the solo spot-something I wish would happen more often. I recall with fondness his remarkable performance of Frederic Rzewski's daunting The People United Will Never Be Defeated! at the Pulitzer Foundation back in 2012.

I also recall conductor Hannu Lintu's previous appearances with the SLSO fondly. He's a commanding and visually compelling figure on the podium. His big gestures are striking, but he can also coax delicate sounds with a minimum of physical display. He has, in short, a nearly ideal mixture of romantic intensity and intellectual control-which should work well for a program this varied.

The Essentials: Hannu Lintu conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with cello soloist Alban Gerhardt, on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. October 14 - 16. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. The Saturday concert will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio.

Symphony Preivew: All roads lead to Mozart

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Nicholas McGegan, who is conducting the St. Louis Symphony in a program of (mostly) Mozart this weekend, is clearly a man who enjoys his work. When I've seen him conduct the orchestra, he practically bounds out to the podium, his face alight with a cherubic smile. His body language shouts: "this is going to be FUN!" And so it always is.

Mozart, party animal

That couldn't be more appropriate for Mozart, a fellow who certainly knew how to enjoy himself. The portrait of Mozart as a potty-mouthed party animal in Peter Shaffer's popular play "Amadeus" may be distorted, but it's a distortion based on reality. Even as a child, some of Mozart's letters home were, as Brockway and Weinstock write in "Men of Music," "so coarse (to our taste but not to that of the eighteenth century) that their editors have scarcely left on unbowdlerized. Mozart is often in high, and very often in ribald, spirits."

Those high spirits are clearly in evidence from the very beginning of the "Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major," K. 271, that closes the first half of this weekend's concerts. "This is an astonishing and delightful opening," writes Charles Rosen of the Allegro first movement in "The Classical Style, "surprising not only for its use of the soloist at the very outset, but also for the wit with which he enters, as he replies to the orchestral fanfare." The second movement is dramatic and even tragic, but the Rondeau: Presto finale, with an unexpectedly graceful minuet in the middle, once again shows Mozart in jolly form.

The soloist for the concerto is Music Director David Robertson's wife, Orli Shaham. A frequent guest at Powell, Ms. Shaham is a versatile pianist, as comfortable with contemporary music as she is with the established classics. She also has a theatrical keyboard style that's fun to watch, which should mesh nicely with Mr. McGegan's exuberance.

The other Mozart music on the program is a bit more solemn: three entr'actes written in 1774 for the five-act drama "Thamos, King of Egypt" by Tobias Philipp, baron von Gebler. The play is filled with skullduggery and backstabbing in ancient Egypt, so Mozart's incidental music is appropriately dramatic. "Gebler’s play," writes John Henken in program notes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "is a Masonic allegory, and though not yet a Mason himself, Mozart gave it much of the expressive symbolism he later lavished on The Magic Flute. This is particularly apparent in the first Interlude, with its richly rhetorical chords, slippery chromaticism, muscular tension, and its contrast of light and dark." Whether or not Mozart ever saw a production of the play with his music is unknown.

Haydn in 1792
Artist: Joseph Hardy

Also on the bill this weekend is the "Symphony No. 98 in B-flat major," written in 1792 by Mozart's older contemporary (and admirer) Joseph Haydn. It was part of a dozen symphonies (the last ones he wrote, in fact) composed for a pair of trips to London in the last decade of the eighteenth century that were highly successful, both in terms of critical reception and income. It's notable for, among other things, a second movement that might contain a passing reference to the British national anthem. "The slow movement," writes Philip Huscher in program notes for the Chicago Symphony, "opens with a veiled reference to the first two phrases of 'God save the King,' which Haydn had heard played by a wind band 'in the street during a wild snowstorm' while he was putting the finishing touches on the symphony. Donald Tovey, the British critic and writer, thought that the slow movement, which toys with quoting from Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, was Haydn’s way of paying homage to his friend. Whatever Haydn’s intent, this music is like a great hymn."

The symphony is also notable for its final movement. "At the very end," writes Mr. Huscher, "Haydn uncharacteristically takes the spotlight. Since it was still Haydn’s habit in 1792 to conduct his symphonies from the keyboard, where he would normally provide the unobtrusive harmonies of the continuo part, he wrote a few measures of rippling arpeggios for himself to play. Like all of Haydn’s inside jokes, it’s over in a flash. Apparently the London audience loved it, for, as Haydn’s journal boasted, in a newly learned English that would have impressed Mozart, 'the new Symphony in B-flat was given, and the first and last Allegros encort.'" Playing the role of Haydn this weekend will be Ms. Shaham. Somehow, I don't think she quite looks the part of a 60-year-old Austrian, but I expect her performance will make you forget that.

Gluck in 1775
Artist: Joseph Duplessis

The concerts open with thirteen dances from Christoph Willibald Gluck's 1761 ballet "Don Juan," as arranged by Mr. McGegan. As Paul Schiavo points out in his program notes, Gluck's ballet is based on Molière's play "Le Festin de pierre" ("The Stone Guest"), many elements of which would find their way into Lorenzo DaPonte's libretto for Mozart's "Don Giovanni" over two decades later. "The most arresting music," notes Mr. Schiavo, "comes at the end of the ballet, when the preternatural statue confronts Don Juan and effects his doom. Here furious scale figures, piercing harmonies and menacing tones of the wind instruments make for strong musical drama."

Compared to what Gluck's contemporaries were writing back then, those final movements are highly arresting and melodramatic. Audiences seem to have found it to be rather strong stuff, though. "Gluck’s audience," wrote David Hurwitz in a 2009 article for "Listen" magazine, "was fascinated by the work, as much for the dancing and decor as for the music itself. It exercised a certain horrid fascination — some listeners actually found the piece ugly, but still couldn’t resist it." He goes on to observe that "Gluck’s music inspired a whole new generation of composers. Mozart’s own 'hell scene' in Don Giovanni reveals the clear influence of Gluck’s earlier effort, and not just because it’s in the same key. It is the music’s expressive intensity that links the two composers."

This weekend, it seems, all roads lead to Mozart.

The Essentials: Nicholas McGegan conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with piano soloist Orli Shaham, on Friday at 10:30 a.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., November 6 and 7. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Symphony Notes: Berlioz takes a trip with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra October 17 and 19

stlsymphony.org / Steve J. Sherman

It's a double-header this weekend at the St. Louis Symphony, with the regular season program on Friday and Sunday conducted by Leonard Slatkin and a special superstar "Red Velvet Ball" concert with David Robertson on the podium on Saturday. Let's start with the former.

Former Music Director Leonard Slatkin, who led the St. Louis Symphony during what was possibly its period of highest international visibility, has made a number of return visits to Powell Hall since his tenure here ended—most recently this past April. That was certainly a triumph, so I think we can expect good things when he conducts the orchestra and soloist David Halen Friday and Sunday.

The concerts will open with "Einstein's Dream," a 2004 work by Mr. Slatkin's wife Cindy McTee and apparently a late substitution for the originally-scheduled opener, Slatkin's own "Endgames" (which will have its world premiere with the Detroit Symphony in November). "Albert Einstein," writes the composer in her program notes, "gave much thought to issues of space and time, and he dreamt of finding a theory of everything, or a broad, mathematical structure that would fully explain and link together all known phenomena. My piece celebrates this dream." Running around 14 minutes, the seven sections of "Einstein's Dream" have titles like "Warps and Curves in the Fabric of Space and Time" and "Pondering the Behavior of Light."

Cindy McTee
billholabmusic.com

The last McTee piece the symphony presented was "Double Play, " which I found to be great fun when I encountered it last January. If a similar playful spirit is at work in this one, it should be well worth hearing. Violin soloist for the work will be Second Associate Concertmaster Celeste Golden Boyer, who was so impressive three years ago in the Saint-Saëns "Introduction and Rondo capriccioso"

The first half of the concert closes with another work for violin and orchestra, Max Bruch's 1866 "Violin Concerto No. 1." It was his most popular work—which was a pity, as he didn't make a dime from it. As Renee Spencer Saller writes in the program notes, Bruch "sold the publishing rights to his first violin concerto for a pittance in a one-off deal that didn’t allow him a share of future royalties. Even worse, his subsequent compositions were nowhere near as popular." Bruch wrote many other worthy pieces (I've always been fond of his 1880 "Scottish Fantasy" myself), but none of them matched the phenomenal popularity of this first concerto.

Max Bruch
en.wikipedia.org

You'll understand why when you hear it. Bruch was a bit of a musical conservative, affiliated with Brahms and the German Romantic tradition rather than with Liszt, Wagner, and the whole "New Music" crowd, who held Brahms and company in such contempt. That means he wasn't afraid to write beautiful melodies or to play the virtuoso card in this concerto. As an anonymous annotator writes at the web site for the British classical music station, Classic FM, "[t]he dazzling, virtuosic passages, particularly in the glorious finale, really do make the violin sing as it soars again and again, almost from within the orchestra, to ever loftier heights. The second movement, meanwhile, is pure romance: beautiful, heart-breaking themes, woven delicately within soulful orchestral accompaniment." Symphony Concertmaster David Halen will be doing the solo honors.

In case you think drugs began to influence music in the 1960s, let me draw your attention to the piece that closes this weekend's concerts: Hector Berlioz's 1830 "Symphonie fantastique," Op. 14. Leonard Bernstein once famously described it as "the first psychedelic symphony in history, the first musical description ever made of a trip, written one hundred thirty odd years before the Beatles," and he wasn't really exaggerating that much.

Subtitled "An Episode in the Life of an Artist," the work tells, in dramatic and musically explicit terms, the story of a "young vibrant musician" who becomes sexually obsessed with an "ideal" woman. He dreams of her in the first movement; unsuccessfully pursues her at a ball in the second; and flees to the country to escape his longing in the third. In the fourth movement "March of the Scaffold" (often performed by itself) he overdoses on opium (the LSD of the early 19th century) and dreams he is being beheaded for her murder. The work ends with the hallucinatory "Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath," in which the protagonist envisions himself at an infernal dance, presided over by the object of his affection, now transformed into a demon.

Berlioz in 1832
Painting by Émile Signol

The idea for the "Symphonie" came from Berlioz’s own obsession with the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, whom he wooed for years and finally won after convincing her to attend a performance of the piece. The composer never tried to kill her, but he did threaten to kill himself with an opium overdose if she didn’t marry him—which she did. The marriage did not end well, but that’s another story.

Unlike the marriage, the music lasted, although it was fiercely controversial. Parisians had just gotten used to the idea of Beethoven when along came this wildly dramatic bit of excess scored for a massive orchestra and accompanied by a narrative that was, to say the least, lurid. Younger composers like Liszt and Saint-Saëns loved it but traditionalists like Mendelssohn were appalled. Even today, a good performance is still a pretty wild ride.

The essentials: Conductor laureate Leonard Slatkin conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and soloist David Halen, violin, in Bruch's "Violin Concerto No. 1," Berlioz's "Symphonie Fastastique," and "Einstein's Dream" by Cindy McTee Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m., October 17 and 19. The concerts take place at Powell Symphony Hall, 718 North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Great Britten

Anthony Dean Griffey as Peter Grimes in Toronto

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Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by David Robertson
What: Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes
When: Saturday, November 16, at 8 PM
Where: Powell Symphony Hall

Writing in the Larousse Encyclopedia of Music, Donald Paine notes that Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," written for the consecration of Coventry Cathedral in 1962, "may stand as representative of his genius and of the theme that recurs throughout his work: the indictment of human folly as it shows itself both in the tragedy and wastage of war and in the corruption of human innocence."

Those themes are present both in the "War Requiem" and in Britten's 1945 tragic opera "Peter Grimes."  Coincidentally, both works are being performed this weekend in the Midwest: the "War Requiem" in a series of concerts in Chicago Thursday through Sunday and "Peter Grimes" in a special concert performance on Saturday night here in St. Louis by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

The Chicago performances are part of the Chicago Symphony's regular subscription series.  The Saturday special here is a preview of the "Peter Grimes" the symphony will be presenting in Carnegie Hall in New York on Friday, November 22nd—the 100th anniversary of Britten's birth.  It's one of over 1000 special concert events being presented this year to celebrate the great English composer's centenary; you can see a complete list at the Britten 100 web site.

Benjamin Britten
London Records 1968
publicity photo

Born in East Anglia in 1913, Britten studied composition with Frank Bridge and John Ireland.  He lived in the USA from 1939 to 1942 and then returned to settle in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where he would remain the rest of his life.  Although he got international attention with his "Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge" for strings in 1937, it wasn't until the 1940s that his music began to achieve widespread acceptance, with performances of his "Ceremony of Carols" (a worldwide favorite around this time of year), the "Sinfonia da Requiem," and, of course, "Peter Grimes"—a huge hit with audiences and critics alike in 1945.  By the time Britten died in 1976 he was firmly established as one of the most important figures in 20th century music.

Most classical fans are familiar with the "Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes."  These little gems are powerfully evocative of the geographical and psychological landscape of the opera.  They're also a nice distillation of what you can expect from the complete performance of the opera on Saturday.

Inspired by a section of the poem "The Borough" by clergyman and poet George Crabbe (1754-1832), the story revolves around the persecution of the title character – a sullen and socially awkward fisherman – by the denizens of a small coastal fishing village.  In the poem he's a clear villain but in Montagu Slater's libretto it's ambiguous how much of Grimes's tragic end is his fault and how much the result of persecution by villagers.  What's not ambiguous is that, even at the relatively young age of 31, Britten was already a master of orchestral color and mood.

"Britten," writes Paul Schiavo in his program notes, "declared that the struggle between the exceptional individual and society was ‘a subject very close to my heart.' That Peter Grimes portrays that struggle through a decidedly flawed character, less hero than anti-hero, makes it a challenging work but not a less compelling one."  It's also possible that Britten intended the work to serve, to some extent, as a condemnation of the homophobia which Britten, as a gay man, saw quite clearly in British society.

The soloists for Saturday's performance include tenor Anthony Dean Griffey as Peter Grimes (a role he has sung often, including at the Metropolitan Opera in New York), soprano Susanna Phillips as schoolmistress Ellen Orford (who suspects—but can't prove—that Grimes might be abusing his young apprentice, John), bass-baritone Alan Held as Captain Balstrode (in whom Ellen confides), and contralto Meredith Arwady as Auntie (who helps stir the mob up against Grimes).  David Robertson conducts the orchestra and chorus.

The chorus plays an important narrative role in "Peter Grimes," so precision in singing and diction will be important.  Fortunately chorus director Amy Kaiser has an awfully good track record in that regard.

"Peter Grimes" is a big undertaking for the symphony, which does a relatively small number of chorus and orchestra pieces every season and rarely anything on quite this scale.  Those chorus and orchestra concerts have, however, generally been season highlights, so I think you'll find it interesting to see and hear the results—and to see what the New York critics have to say on the 22nd.

"Peter Grimes" will be performed on Saturday, November 16, at 8 PM at Powell Hall and will be broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio at 90.7 FM, HD 1, and via streaming at the station's web site.  For more information: stlsymphony.org.

Swan song

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

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

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

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

Simone Lamsma
Photo: Otto van den Toorn

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

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

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

Hannu Lintu
Photo: Kaapo Kamu

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

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

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