Symphony Preview: The Curious Case of the Second Premiere

Antonio Vivaldi
en.wikipedia.org

This weekend (December 5-7, 2014) the major work on the St. Louis Symphony program is the set of violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi known as "The Four Seasons." It's a popular work with performers and audiences alike. As I discovered in my research for this post, it also has a long and significant history with the SLSO.

But before we get to that, here's a bit of background.

Composed around 1720 (as with many aspects of Vivaldi's life, dates are foggy), "The Four Seasons" was originally published as part of a set of twelve concertos titled "Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione" ("The Contest Between Harmony and Invention"). Each of the four three-movement concertos describes—often very vividly—aspects of a particular season. They were even accompanied by sonnets (anonymous, but possibly by Vivaldi himself) that provide narratives for each concerto.

Combine that almost cinematic tone painting with Vivaldi's gift of melody and you have music that was destined to be popular. And it was, at least during Vivaldi's time. After his death, though, that all changed. Interest in his work faded, and copies of his music were hard to come by. "For nearly 200 years," writes Peter Gutmann at classicalnotes.net, "Vivaldi was a historical footnote, although a somewhat influential one…His only lasting recognition came from the fervent admiration of Bach, who modeled his own concerto style after Vivaldi's and adapted for keyboard nine Vivaldi violin concerti (even though Bach devotees tended to disparage the source)."

That began to change in 1926 when a boarding school in Piedmont discovered a huge cache of old manuscripts, including hundreds of works by Vivaldi. It aroused the interest of scholars and conductors, including Bernardino Molinari (1880-1952), who was then the conductor of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia.

He was also, is it happens, about to become a guest conductor at the St. Louis Symphony.

In researching this blog post, one of the books I consulted was "Great Orchestral Music: A Treasury of Program Notes" edited by Julian Seaman (Collier Books, 1962). Its entry on "The Four Seasons" is brief, but includes this provocative paragraph, attributed to the late Lawrence Gilman (1878-1939), music critic of the New York Herald-Tribune: "They [the concertos] were published in a modern edition prepared by Bernardino Molinari in 1927. Mr. Molinari gave the first American performances of the complete work with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in January, 1928."

Molinari in Jerusalem, 1945
en.wikipedia.org

The program notes for this week's concerts state that the first SLSO performance of "The Four Seasons" was on February 20, 1953, with Vladimir Golschmann at the podium. But if Gilman is right, the first performance was 25 years earlier, and an American premiere to boot. Obviously some detective work was necessary to determine which account was correct.

After an hour or two pouring over 1928 copies of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at the St. Louis Public Library's downtown headquarters, it became clear that both the program notes and Gilman are right, in their own way.

Molinari did, in fact, conduct "The Four Seasons" in January of 1928, but he stretched the four concertos out over an entire month—"like the magazine serial stories," as the paper's music critic, Thomas B. Sherman, wryly observed in his review of the first set of concerts. "Spring" was performed in a pair of concerts on Friday and Saturday, January 6 and 7. "Summer" was the following week, and the final two concertos were performed in concerts on January 27 and 28.

Mr. Sherman doesn't state that these are American premieres, but I'm inclined to take Mr. Gilman's word for that. He loved the SLSO performance, in any case, calling it "ingratiating, warm and transparent" and describing the strings as "rich and unified."

So, yes, the first performance by the SLSO of "The Four Seasons" in a single night was in 1953. But the orchestra had played the music much earlier than that, and apparently introduced it to the USA. So when you hear "The Four Seasons" this weekend, remember that this music has a long and distinguished history with this band.

Interesting footnote: the Vivaldi was somewhat overshadowed in the January 27-29 concerts by the piano soloist. It was the "young Russian pianist" Vladimir Horowitz, who had arrived in the USA just two weeks ago and had already created a sensation with the New York Philharmonic under Sir Thomas Beecham. Mr. Sherman loved Horowitz ("a powerful tone and a sparkling and expertly controlled technique") but hated the piece he played, Rachmaninoff's "Piano Concerto No. 3," calling it "as dull a thing as the noted Muscovite expatriate has ever done". History has rather overruled him that one.

Songs for all the seasons of your mind

Osvaldo Golijov

Who: The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ward Stare with violinist Jennifer Koh
What: Music of Schubert, Vivaldi, and Osvaldo Golijov
Where: Powell Symphony Hall, St. Louis
When: December 2 through 4, 2011

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Friday night St. Louis Symphony Resident Conductor Ward Stare had neither score nor baton but lots of panache when he stepped up to the podium to conduct an utterly captivating Schubert “Symphony No 5”. And the best was yet to come: the local premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s fascinating Sidereus and a wonderfully dramatic approach to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, with irresistible solo work by Jennifer Koh. It was a night of big music for (mostly) small orchestra.

This was only my second opportunity to see Mr. Stare conduct an entire program on his own and he was, once again, impressive. With or without a baton, his communication with the orchestra was always clear and his concentration obviously intense. I have noted before that Mr. Stare is a conductor whose star is in the ascendant, and his work here did nothing to contradict that assessment.

Mr. Stare’s Schubert was a nice balance of classical discipline and romantic lyricism. Tempi were brisk but never felt rushed. The joy, drama, and sense of unfolding song were all there. The Fifth is a symphony that, while clearly in the Classical style, contains elements (particularly in the Andante con moto and Menuetto) that look forward to the more overtly Romantic sensibilities of later Schubert and his successors. Mr. Stare’s interpretation honored both worlds.

The orchestral playing was at its usual high level, with fine work from everyone — and a particular tip of the topper is due to principal flautist Mark Sparks. If you want to take the true measure of an orchestra, note the quality of the sound when they’re playing chamber music. The Schubert Fifth is essentially a chamber symphony and the musicians gave it the fine playing it demanded.

The second half of the program promised (and delivered) some first-rate Vivaldi, but first there was the local premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s 2010 mini tone poem, Sidereus. Inspired by the expanded view of the heavens that Galileo experienced with his telescope and described in his 1610 treatise Sidereus Nuncius, the work employs an interesting variety of compositional techniques and canny orchestration (including some wonderful solo and soli passages for the winds) to conjure up a sense of vast, celestial space. The language is clearly modern while still being entirely approachable.

Whenever I hear a new work, I always ask myself whether or not I’d like to hear it again. In this case, not only would I like to hear Sidereus again, I’d very much like to find out what Mr. Golijov’s other compositions sound like. If Sidereus is any indication, he has managed to synthesize academic, theatrical, and popular music elements, especially those of his native Argentina, into a unique personal style. It makes me intensely curious about his larger scale works.

Jennifer Koh

The program concluded with a very theatrical and highly entertaining Four Seasons with Jennifer Koh as the violin soloist. Ms. Koh is a veritable dynamo of a performer, shaking her head and tearing into the fast movements with ferocity and singing the slow ones. Her tone was appropriately dry overall and her ornamentation (those little melodic embellishments that are part of Baroque performance practice) sounded right to my non-expert ears.

She also worked well with the ensemble. Her exchange of birdcalls with Concertmaster David Halen in the first movement of the “Spring” concerto was particularly captivating, calling to mind the way traditional Appalachian fiddlers trade licks. There were also memorable moments with Principal Cellist Daniel Lee and harpsichordist Maryse Carlin.

Ms. Koh and Mr. Stare gave us a Four Seasons filled with dramatic contrasts. The winter ice was brittle (with fittingly chilling harmonics in the strings), the summer storms violent, and the autumnal folk dances jolly. It’s a reminder of how effective Vivaldi was in evoking strong visual images without any of the instrumental technology that contemporary composers can employ. It’s a reminder, as well, of how much room for invention there is in performing this music while staying true to the composer’s intent.

The remainder of December at Powell Hall will be taken up with special holiday events, including A Gospel Christmas with the IN UNISON chorus, a John Williams movie music program, and the annual New Year’s Eve gala. The regular subscription season resumes January 13 and 14, 2012, with Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7, George Crumb’s 1984 A Haunted Landscape, and Strauss’s Four Last Songs with St. Louis’s own Christine Brewer. David Robertson conducts. For more information you may call 314-534-1700, visit stlsymphony.org, like the Saint Louis Symphony Facebook page, or follow @slso on Twitter.