Symphony Review: Revolutionary Beethoven and Greig with Víkingur Ólafsson and the SLSO

If I were called upon to summarize the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) concert last Saturday night (November 13) in one word, it would probably be something along the lines of exciting, electrifying, or stunning. But maybe the best choice would be “revolutionary.”

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

That is, after all, what the concluding work on the program—Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5—was when it first saw the light of day back in December 1808, even if it probably wasn’t apparent at its disastrous premiere at the end of a four-hour marathon in the unheated Theater an der Wein. The symphony’s structure, its obsessive energy, and even (as Joshua Wallerstein suggests in a recent episode of his “Sticky Notes” podcast) its musical content were all revolutionary.

As Music Director Stéphane Denève pointed out in his pre-concert remarks, Beethoven once contemplated actually relocating to France. He never did, but his fifth symphony was nevertheless inspired by the French Revolution’s values of “liberté, egalité, fraternité” (freedom, equality, brotherhood). That’s still the national motto in France, in fact. Here in the USA, sadly, we seem to have recently decided that only the first word matters, so it’s good to be reminded of the principles that were at the heart of both their revolution and ours.

Stéphane Denève and the SLSO take bows
after the Beethoven Fifth

The Beethoven Fifth has become such a familiar work that it might seem impossible to do anything truly revolutionary with it. But, as Denève proved with his stunning Beethoven Ninth last February, “it ain’t necessarily so”—especially when you pay attention to Beethoven’s directions about tempi.

As Denève points out,  Beethoven was an early adopter of what was, in the early 19th century, a cutting-edge piece of technology—the metronome. Patented in 1815 by the composer's sometime friend Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, the device for accurately indicating a musical tempo was happily adopted by Beethoven. So much so that in 1817 he went back to earlier works like the Symphony No. 5 and added metronome markings to the score. Over the centuries, alas, many conductors decided that those tempi were unreasonably fast, with the result that the Fifth has sometimes lost the visceral thrill it was supposed to have.

Not so Saturday night. From that famous four note phrase at the beginning right through to the devil-may-care triumph of the coda (taken at the hair-raising speed the composer had in mind), this was a Beethoven Fifth that made critical niceties like taking notes virtually impossible. It was too compelling, too dazzlingly executed, and just too much fun to take time out to scribble in a notebook.

Highlights of this glorious performance include the superhuman precision of the lower strings in the rapid fugal passages in the third movement, Jelena Dirks’s brief but beautiful oboe cadenza in the first movement, and the truly epic sound of the brasses and Thomas Jöstlein’s horn section. Denève’s interpretation was filled with delicious details, including an Andante con moto second movement that was imbued with the spirit of the dance—something I haven’t always heard in this work.

If this had been the only killer performance of the evening, that would have been enough. But we also got a Greig Piano Concerto that simply could not be beat. Soloist Víkingur Ólafsson made quite a stunning impression in his local debut with a performance that blended nuance and poetry with virtuoso flair. A veritable ball of physical energy, Ólafsson at some points bent so close to the keyboard that his face nearly touched the keys, yet at others seemed ready to leap from the bench in an explosion of passion.

His version of the famous first movement cadenza was a study in extremes, nearly coming to a complete halt before building steadily to the boiling power of the big restatement of the main theme. His concentration on both Denève and the orchestra was intense. And his playing overall was a model of clarity.

Víkingur Ólafsson and Stéphane Denève

Speaking of the orchestra, let’s not forget that the concerto includes a fair number of opportunities for individual players and sections to shine. Roger Kaza’s horn had a warm, lush sound in the second movement, for example, and Adam Sandberry’s flute solo in the third movement’s bucolic interlude was a gem. At the podium, Denève kept everything moving along smoothly, making it easy to forget how episodic Greig’s writing is (he was, let’s face it, not a master of the larger musical forms). Some readings of the concerto come across as disjointed. This one felt like a spontaneous outpouring of melody—which is presumably what the composer intended.

It was a fine piece of work and got an enthusiastic standing ovation from the packed house. That led to an encore that took us to an entirely different musical world: the Adagio from Bach’s Organ Sonata No. 4, BWV 528, in a transcription by the Bohemian virtuoso pianist/composer August Stradal (1860-1930). Here, again, I was impressed by the lucidity of Ólafsson’s playing and his ability to keep the various threads of Bach’s counterpoint clear.

The concert opened with “Fate Now Conquers,” written just last year by Carlos Simon, the new Composer-in-Residence with the National Symphony Orchestra. The composer says that this short (five minutes), animated work was inspired by “the beautifully fluid harmonic structure of the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony” but to my ears it felt more like a highly compressed version of the Fifth. Dominated by a short, driving motif first heard in the tympani and low strings, “Fate Now Conquers” pauses briefly in the middle for a lyrical cello solo (played with great feeling by Daniel Lee). The headlong rush returns, builds to a brassy finale, and then, in bit of Haydnesque wit, abruptly stops, leaving the final notes to the low strings.

It got a precise and exhilarating performance by the orchestra and was an ideal way to start the concert.

Next at Powell Hall: Conductor David Danzmayr makes his SLSO debut with Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 (“The Great”), the USA premiere of Anna Clyne’s “Pivot,” and Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy” with violin soloist Simone Porter. Performances are Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 8 pm, November 19 and 20.

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

St. Louis theatre calendar for the week of November 15, 2021

Now including both on-line and live events during the pandemic. Your event information should be in text format (i.e. not part of a graphic), but feel free to include publicity stills. To get your event listed here, send an email to calendar [at] stageleft.org.

Chuck Lavazzi and Carol Schmidt

The Cabaret Project and The Blue Strawberry present a Singers Open Mic Tuesday, November 16, from 7 to 9:30 pm. “Chuck Lavazzi is your host, with pianist and music director Carol Schmidt. If you plan to sing bring sheet music or a chart in your own key, and perform your favorite Broadway, pop, or jazz tunes. Medium/up-tempo songs are encouraged but not required. Or you can just relax, have a drink and dinner or a snack, and enjoy the music. No admission or cover, but there is always a tip jar! All proceeds go to The Cabaret Project, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to promoting, developing, and sustaining the art cabaret in St. Louis. "   The Blue Strawberry is operating under a "COVID careful" arrangement with mandatory vaccination and masking. The Blue Strawberry is at 364 N. Boyle. For more information: thecabaretproject,org.

Cats Cradle Theatre presents The Last Days of Judas Iscariot Thursdays through Saturdays at 7 pm, through November 20. "Set in a space between heaven and hell, THE LAT DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT tells the story of a court case over the ultimate fate of Judas Iscariot. In this courtroom drama of epic proportions, lawyers call for the testimonies of historic witnesses who share imagined memories, religious ramblings, and philosophical arguments. The results of this trial ask both the characters and the audience to reconsider what they thought they knew about forgiveness, faith, despair, and the humanity inside not only one of history’s most famous villains, but ourselves. While this play cross-examines the gospels, posing complex moral and spiritual questions about divine justice, and human failures of virtue – it’s not a play about religion. It’s an examination of the intersection of humanity, grace, and justice and what it means to be good to each other, and ourselves in this world." Performances take place at Jefferson Avenue Mission at 2241 S. Jefferson. For more information: www.catscradletheatre.com.

Circus Harmony in St. Louis and Circus Circuli in Stuttgart, St. Louis's German sister city, present Sister City Circus, on Circus Harmony’s YouTube page.  "Through a series of online meetings, workshops, and classes the two troupes created 6 different circus acts and then filmed them at iconic architectural locations in each of their cities." This and many other Circus Harmony videos are available at the Circus Harmony YouTube channel.

ERA Theatre presents the radio play SHE by Nancy Bell with music by Joe Taylor and Lyrics by Nancy Bell via on-demand streaming  "SHE controls the radio station of the fascist regime in power. SHE's also the star of the broadcast. Her recording studio abounds with music and oysters. But in the nearby government camps full of misfits and would-be revolutionaries, only torture and starvation is thick on the ground. Tonight, however, SHE's realm feels different. The bombs sound closer. Time moves faster. But SHE will finish her radio show, and it will be her finest. If executing every number in the broadcast means some people need to die, so be it; it is a small sacrifice. The citizens need her and she will not let them down." SHE is available for digital purchase via bandcamp at eratheatre.bandcamp.com. For more information: www.eratheatre.org

Pretty Woman

The Fabulous Fox presents the musical Pretty Woman, opening on Tuesday, November 16, at 7:30 pm and running through November 28.  “PRETTY WOMAN: THE MUSICAL, based on one of Hollywood’s most beloved romantic stories of all time, is now on tour! Starring Broadway superstar and Tony Award®-nominee Adam Pascal as Edward Lewis and rising star Olivia Valli as the charming and charismatic Vivian Ward, PRETTY WOMAN: THE MUSICAL springs to life with a powerhouse creative team led by two-time Tony Award®-winning director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell (Hairspray, Kinky Boots, Legally Blonde).” The Fabulous Fox is on North Grand in Grand Center. For more information: www.fabulousfox.com.

The Gateway Center for Performing Arts presents the musical Annie Thursday and Friday at 7 pm, Saturday at 2 and 7 pm, and Sunday at 2 pm, November 18-21. “With equal measures of pluck and positivity, little orphan Annie charms everyone's hearts despite a next-to-nothing start in 1930s New York City. She is determined to find the parents who abandoned her years ago on the doorstep of a New York City Orphanage that is run by the cruel, embittered Miss Hannigan. With the help of the other girls in the Orphanage, Annie escapes to the wondrous world of NYC. In adventure after fun-filled adventure, Annie foils Miss Hannigan's evil machinations... and even befriends President Franklin Delano Roosevelt! She finds a new home and family in billionaire, Oliver Warbucks, his personal secretary, Grace Farrell, and a lovable mutt named Sandy.”  Performances take place at the Robert G. Reim Theatre in the Kirkwood Community Center, 111 S. Geyer. For more information: www.gcpastl.org.

The Kirkwood Theatre Guild presents the Kaufman and Hart comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner through November 21. “While on a speaking tour in Ohio, opinionated and arrogant radio personality Sheridan Whiteside injures himself slipping on ice and becomes an unexpected houseguest for a prominent area family. Whiteside proceeds to make brash proclamations and offer his unsolicited advice to the family members. When a romance begins between Whiteside’s assistant and a local reporter, he interferes with that as well!”  Performances take place at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center in Kirkwood. For more information: www.ktg-onstage.org.

The Lemp Mansion Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre and Jest Mysteries present The Christmas Killer through January 8. "Join classic Christmas characters like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolf, Grandma and Santa’s Elves for the annual Misfit Toys Banquet event hosted by Chatty Cathy herself.  It’s going to be a great party so long as the wrong element doesn’t show up.  We’re talking about that slimy, no good, rotten, Ricky Stitch of course.  Why, I wouldn’t touch him with a 39 ½ foot pole!  Gee, sure hope he doesn’t try to ruin Christmas…again.  If he does, I’m sure someone will show him who makes the candy canes around here! But how will we figure out whodunnit…was it you?" The Lemp Mansion is at 3322 DeMenil Place in south city. For more information: www.lempmansion.com

Looking Glass Playhouse presents the comedy Lend Me a Tenor Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm, through November 21. “On a very important night for the Cleveland Grand Opera Company, Tito Mirelli, the world-famous Italian tenor, is set to perform the starring role in Otello. Henry Saunders — General Manager of the company — is beyond stressed about everything turning out right, and insists that his assistant, Max — a nervous, young fellow and secret tenor extraordinaire — watch over Tito’s every move to ensure smooth sailing. After a huge fight with his fiery, Italian wife Maria, Tito receives a double dose of tranquilizers through a series of mishaps. Throw in Diana, an ambitious, female co-star; Maggie, Max’s giddy girlfriend; Julia, a flirty head of the opera guild; and a meddling bellhop fighting for Tito’s attention. Together, you have a recipe for comedic disaster. Max navigates the company through one catastrophe after the next — an angry wife, a presumed death, crazy costumes, secret sex romps, and loads and loads of slamming doors and mistaken identities — and, ultimately, takes on the role of Otello to great effect. Together, Max and Saunders find a way to save the Opera Company’s big night in grand, farcical fashion.” Performances take place at 301 West St. Louis Street in Lebanon, IL. For more information: lookingglassplayhouse.com.

Monroe Actors Stage Company presents the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2:30 pm, through November 21. “Grandson of the infamous Victor Frankenstein, Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced “Fronk-en-steen”) inherits his family’s estate in Transylvania. With the help of a hunchbacked sidekick, Igor (pronounced “Eye-gore”), and a leggy lab assistant, Inga (pronounced normally), Frederick finds himself in the mad scientist shoes of his ancestors. “It’s alive!” he exclaims as he brings to life a creature to rival his grandfather’s. Eventually, of course, the monster escapes and hilarity continuously abounds.” Performances take place at the Capitol Theatre in Waterloo, IL. For more information: www.masctheatre.org.

Jake's Women
Photo by Philip Hamer

Moonstone Theatre Company presents Moonstone Connections, a series of in-depth interviews with arts leaders by company founder Sharon Hunter. The latest episode features John O’Brien, who currently serves as Director of Programming for The Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis, where he is responsible for programming the U.S. Bank Broadway Series.  New episodes air the third Tuesday of each month; see linktr.ee/moonstoneconnections for more information.

Moonstone Theatre Company presents Neil Simon’s Jake’s Women Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 PM through November 21.  “This warm and poignant comedy from America’s premier comic playwright makes another hilarious foray into the world of modern relationships. Jake, a novelist who is more successful with fiction than with life, faces a marital crisis by daydreaming about the women in his life. The wildly comic and sometimes moving flashbacks played in his mind are interrupted by visitations from actual females. Jake’s women include a revered first wife who was killed years earlier in an accident, his daughter who is recalled as a child but is now a young woman, his boisterous and bossy sister, an opinionated analyst, his current wife who is leaving Jake for another man, and a prospective third wife.” Performances take place at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center studio theatre in Kirkwood. For more information: moonstonetheatrecompany.com.

R-S Theatrics presents While the Ghostlight Burns, a virtual discussion series featuring R-S Artistic Director Sarah Lynne Holt in conversation with St. Louis theatre artists, Mondays at 7 pm.  Conversations will be archived at the R-S Theatrics YouTube channel. For more information: r-stheatrics.com/while-the-ghostlight-burns.html

St. Louis University Theatre presents Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Thursday through Sunday, November 18-21. “Mischief is in the air when the King and Queen of the Fairies quarrel and Puck is left in charge of the love potion. Four young people are lost in the woods on midsummer’s night. Will they find each other and true love, or will Puck’s meddling leave them broken-hearted and alone? A band of players prepares to entertain the Duke of Athens. But now that the fairies have made a donkey out of their leading man, will Quince and the others ever get to play their parts? Is there time to put everything right before this magical night is over?” Performances take place at the Xavier Hall Main Stage on the campus at 3733 West Pine Mall in Grand Center. For more information: www.slu.edu.

SATE, in collaboration with COCA and Prison Performing Arts, presents Project Verse: Creativity in the Time of Quarantine. Project Verse presents two new plays: Quatrains in Quarantine by e.k. doolin and Dream On, Black Girl:Reflections in Quarantine by Maxine du Maine. The performances are streamed free of charge on SATE’s website and Facebook page. For more information: slightlyoff.org.

The Washington University Performing Arts Department presents The Science of Leaving Omaha Thursday and Friday at 8 pm, Saturday at 2 and 8 pm, and Sunday at 2 pm, November 18-21. “Iris is working the night shift at the Belladonna Funeral Home when Baker breaks in to say farewell to his wife, who recently died in a bungled robbery.  As they sort through the comedic rubble of their young lives, they discover a mutual yearning to escape. Will they make a run for it before they lose their last chance to leave Omaha behind?” Performances take place at the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre on the Washington University Campus. For more information: pad.wustl.edu.

Looking for auditions and other artistic opportunities? Check out the St. Louis Auditions site.

For information on events beyond this week, check out the searchable database at the Regional Arts Commission's Events Calendar.

Would you like to be on the radio? KDHX, 88.1 FM needs theatre reviewers. If you're 18 years or older, knowledgeable in this area, have practical theatre experience (acting, directing, writing, technical design, etc.), have good oral and written communications skills and would like to become one of our volunteer reviewers, send an email describing your experience and interests to chuck at kdhx.org. Please include a sample review of something you've seen recently.

Symphony Preview: Revolution now

This weekend (November 12-14) Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) in a program that pairs two certified Greatest Hits with a new work inspired by the composer of one of those hits.

[Preview the music with my commercial-free Spotify playlist.]

The new work is “Fate Now Conquers,” written just last year by Carlos Simon, the new Composer-in-Residence with the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO). The man who inspired it is Beethoven, whose Symphony No. 5 is the closing work on the program. The concerts will open with Carlos’s music but chronologically Beethoven comes first by two centuries. So let’s start with him, shall we?

Beethoven in 1803
Painted by Christian Horneman

To say that the Beethoven Fifth is one of the most popular classical works of all time is merely to state the obvious. As conductor Joshua Weilerstein said in a recent episode of his “Sticky Notes” podcast, if you were to walk up to a random person on the street and ask them to name a piece of classical music, the odds are your answer would be “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has some data to back that up. They examined 2014-2015 seasons of 22 American orchestras and the top three most-programmed works were (in descending order) Handel’s “Messiah,” Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” and (yep) Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5.

The symphony’s opening movement, in particular, has been heard and parodied so often that it's easy to forget that the symphony's premiere on December 22, 1808, was not a great success. The Fifth was part of a mammoth four-hour program of Beethoven premieres that included the Symphony No. 6 ("Pastoral"), the Piano Concerto No. 4, a couple of movements from the Mass in C, a concert aria ("Ah, perfido"), the Op. 80 "Choral Fantasy," and piano improvisations by the composer himself. Beethoven also conducted and played the solo piano part in the concerto and the Fantasy.

Lengthy concerts weren’t necessarily that uncommon back then, but there were more serious issues. The heating had failed at the Theater an der Wein, so the place was freezing cold. And there was competition for musicians. The state-owned Burgtheater was presenting a benefit performance for the Tonkünstler-Societät, a benevolent society for the widows and orphans of musicians. Members of the Society—essentially every professional musician in Vienna—were expected to perform at the benefit or risk paying a fine. That left only the semi-pros and amateurs to perform in Beethoven’s Monster Concert.

And to add insult to injury, they only had one day of rehearsal. Things went so badly that at one point the "Choral Fantasy" had to be stopped completely after a performance error. Not auspicious.

In fact, it wasn't until E.T.A. Hoffmann published an enthusiastic review of the newly published score in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung a year and a half later that everyone began to sit up and take notice of the Fifth. "Radiant beams shoot through this region's deep night," wrote Hoffmann of the music's dramatic effect,

and we become aware of gigantic shadows which, rocking back and forth, close in on us and destroy everything within us except the pain of endless longing—a longing in which every pleasure that rose up in jubilant tones sinks and succumbs, and only through this pain, which, while consuming but not destroying love, hope, and joy, tries to burst our breasts with full-voiced harmonies of all the passions, we live on and are captivated beholders of the spirits.

More and better-rehearsed performances followed. By the time Hector Berlioz wrote his Critical Study of Beethoven's Nine Symphonies he could state that the Fifth was "without doubt the most famous of the symphonies" and "the first in which Beethoven gave wings to his vast imagination without being guided by or relying on any external source of inspiration." Today the Fifth is famous not just on earth but in outer space as well; a recording of the first movement by the Philadelphia Orchestra was part of the Voyager Golden Record, included on the first two Voyager space probes launched in 1977 and now speeding through deep space.

As a result, it’s easy to forget these days that in 1808 the Fifth was a new kind of symphony. It was revolutionary in both its content (Weilerstein suggests it might even include a reference to a French Revolution anthem) and its musical structure. Instead of placing the most weighty movement at the beginning, as earlier composers usually did, Beethoven built the Fifth to build inexorably towards the finale—a practice that would soon become the norm for symphonists. He also used instruments rarely heard in orchestras of the day, such as the contrabassoon; piccolo; and alto, tenor, and bass trombones.

Carlos Simon

The Fifth’s heroic and revolutionary spirit can also be heard in Simon’s work. As he relates in an interview accompanying the NSO’s performance of the piece on YouTube, his inspiration for “Fate Now Conquers” came from one of Beethoven’s journal entries from 1815: “But Fate now conquers; I am hers.” He never quotes Beethoven directly, but he has acknowledged that he references “the beautifully fluid harmonic structure of the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony” (which he describes as one of his favorite symphonies by the composer).

To my ears, though, “Fate Now Conquers” sounds more like a highly concentrated version of the Fifth crammed into less than five minutes. The work is dominated by an obsessive motif in the tympani and low strings that Simon himself describes as “fate knocking.” It drops into the background during a more lyrical middle section (where it’s briefly confined to a muted trumpet) but soon returns in the triumphant finale. It’s invigorating stuff.

Sandwiched in between Simon and Beethoven, we find Edvard Grieg, represented by his Greatest Hit, the Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 16, from 1868. It was his first and only piano concerto. In fact, it was his only completed concerto of any kind. He started (but never finished) a violin concerto and composed his first and only symphony in 1863 at the age of 20.

That’s because Grieg was fundamentally a miniaturist. He was at his best in short forms like his justly popular “Lyric Pieces” and other works for the piano. Longer works like his “Symphonic Dances,” the “Lyric Suite,” and his incidental music for Ibsen’s gargantuan drama “Peer Gynt” are, ultimately, little more than a collection of short pieces. It’s what he did, and he did it darned well.

It’s not surprising, then, that his piano concerto tends to sound a bit episodic. The episodes are all entrancing, though, and the concerto was an instant hit at its 1869 Copenhagen premiere by the Royal Danish Orchestra with Edmund Neupert as soloist. Neupert, to whom the concerto was dedicated, wrote to Grieg (who was unable to attend because of a scheduling conflict) describing the happy event:

The triumph I achieved was tremendous. Even as early as the cadenza in the first movement, the public broke into real storm. The three dangerous critics, [composer Niels] Gade, [pianist/composer Anton] Rubenstein, and [composer Emil] Hartmann, sat in the stalls and applauded with all their might. I am to send you greetings from Rubenstein and say that he is astounded to have heard a composition of such genius. (cited in program notes by Robert C. Bagar and Louis Biancolli for the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York)

The interior of Grieg's hut at Troldhaugen

I’ve always loved Grieg’s music, myself, and have a substantial collection of it on CD, LP, and digital downloads. My wife and I even made a pilgrimage to Troldhaugen, the home Grieg had built for his family and where they lived from 1885 until his death in 1907. Located just outside of Bergen, it’s now the Grieg Museum, with the composer’s home lovingly preserved. That includes the little hut Grieg had built just for composing. With a piano and a window overlooking Lake Nordås, it’s easy to see how this idyllic setting inspired the Norwegian master’s music. The place was uninhabitable in the depths of winter, of course, but Grieg and his wife spent many happy summers there.

Our soloist this weekend will be Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, who has earned praise for his recordings of everything from Bach to Philip Glass. Those include the Greig concerto, which you can see him perform in a 2011 concert recording on YouTube with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy. His approach to the work might have changed over the intervening decade, but it will at least give you an idea of what to expect when he makes his local debut this weekend.

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Víkingur Ólafsson in Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and Carlos Simon’s “Fate Now Conquers.” Performances take place Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, November 13 and 14, at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. There will also be a special Crafted Happy Hour performance of Beethoven’s Fifth on Friday, November 12, at 6:30 pm at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the UMSL campus.

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

Symphony Review: The SLSO explores the dark side of the moon in works by Lee, Sibelius, and Shostakovich

The concert by Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) last Saturday (November 6th) opened with a powerful work of personal lamentation and ended with a gripping and ultimately horrifying depiction of life under an autocratic regime run by a personality cult centered on a morally bankrupt and violent ideologue. In between we had a violin concerto that evoked images of pines, snow, and brisk northern winds.

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

It was dark, disturbing, and riveting. And I loved it.

The lamentation came from the opening work, “Emotive Transformations,” written in 2018 by Michigan-born James Lee III. Inspired by the death of the composer’s father the work, as Tim Munro writes in the program notes, “conveys the stages of grief after the death of a loved one.” Stéphane Denève went a step further in his pre-concert talk, specifically referring to the five stages of grief described by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying”: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

“Emotive Transformations” opens with an agitated theme that suggests the first two stages of denial and anger. A second, more soothing motif in the strings and winds hints at “comforting words” according to Denève, but to my ears it also could include the “bargaining” stage. Denève described a third ascending theme in the strings as a reference to resurrection, and I’m inclined to agree, although you could just as easily say it’s about acceptance.

James Lee III and Stèphane Denève

Either way, that last theme is almost overwhelmed by the opening sense of anger and agitation. Indeed, it eventually takes over the “comfort” theme entirely, turning it into a kind of wail of anguish (depression, possibly?) which slowly descends through the string section and is extinguished. The initial theme returns again, but now it has taken on the character of the acceptance music, rising triumphantly to a final major chord.

It all sounded a bit like Strauss’s “Death and Transfiguration,” but the resemblance is at best superficial. Lee’s musical world is more compact and less sentimental than that of Strauss. His musical vocabulary is unquestionably contemporary, but still listener-friendly—a hallmark of the new music that Denève has introduced to local audiences. And it was beautifully played by Denève and the band, with a shout-out due to Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews for the tranquil start of the resurrection/acceptance theme. Lee was also on hand Saturday night to share in the generous applause.

Sadly, the St. Louis Public Radio broadcasts of current SLSO concerts are not available online and there are no recordings of this work available at YouTube, Spotify, or Amazon Music. I have, however, added an album of Lee’s piano music to my Spotify playlist for this concert, and you can hear his “Towards a Greater Light” for string orchestra on YouTube, so you can get some idea of what his stuff sounds like.

Up next was the Violin Concerto in D minor, op. 47 by Jean Sibelius. Originally presented in 1904 and then, after a thorough drubbing by critics, premiered in a substantially revised form in 1905, the work is deeply informed by the composer’s love of his native Finland’s forests and striking but somewhat forbidding landscape. I have always found it to be a dramatic and often emotionally intense piece—qualities that were communicated very effectively in Saturday’s deeply committed and finely shaded performance by Denève and soloist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider.

Close friends outside of the concert hall, Szeps-Znaider and Denève have often performed the Sibelius concerto together, a fact which lent an air of intimacy to the performance and often produced the illusion that we were hearing the music of, in the words of novelist Jasper Fforde, “two minds with but a single thought.” Szeps-Znaider’s virtuosity was clearly on display in the challenging first movement cadenza and the galloping final movement, but his technique was always deployed in the service of Sibelius’s dark, passionate soundscape. It was, as well, always completely in synch with Denève’s nuanced approach to the work.

I’m not sure I’m completely persuaded by that approach, especially when it seemed to pull back a bit from some of the more dramatic episodes. Still, that restraint made some of the big moments—like the first brass chord in the opening movement—that much more powerful. And the final pages of the closing Allegro, ma non tanto packed a wallop. So on the whole, I can’t complain.

The audience certainly approved. Szeps-Znaider and Denève got a solid, prolonged ovation, after which Szeps-Znaider took up the microphone to let us all know how much he had enjoyed his two-week residency here and express his deep admiration and affection for the orchestra. “You’ve got a good thing going here,” he said, and he clearly meant it. He then gave us an encore: Fritz Kreisler’s “Liebeslied” with Denève at the piano, in an echt Viennese performance infused with sentiment and topped with schlag—the musical equivalent of what the Viennese call a Franziskaner. They were clearly enjoying the hell out of it, and that joy was (if you’ll excuse my use of the word) infectious.

Stéphane Denève and Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider

It would have taken some seriously contagious joy, though, to stand up to the harsh, cold winds that blow through the final work of the evening, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 in D minor. Written over the course of three months in 1937 it was, at the time, seen as an attempt by the composer to get himself off of Stalin’s blacklist, since being on it was likely to end not just his career but his life. He even went so far as to accompany the first performance with an article in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva titled "A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism"—lest there be any doubt that he had Learned His Lesson.

It worked. Official response was enthusiastic, and Shostakovich was officially rehabilitated. Even in the West the work was, well through the 1960s, seen as an example of unabashed pandering to mandatory patriotism. As Maestro Denève pointed out, however, great music is nothing if not ambiguous, and as more details began to emerge about what composer’s private thoughts might have been about the fifth symphony, critics and conductors began to realize that something much darker lurked beneath the brilliant orchestration, memorable tunes, and apparent bombast of the Allegro non troppo finale.

That something was a portrait of the grim reality of life in a one-party state run by a mass murderer and his ethically challenged enablers. "Many in the premiere audience were seen to weep openly," wrote Richard Freed in his liner notes for the SLSO’s 1986 recording of the work. "They wept, Shostakovich himself felt, because 'they understood; they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about.'"

These days, performances of the symphony are more likely to emphasize that dark side. Denève’s certainly did. The emotional impact of this engrossing and devastating reading left me unsure what the appropriate response was. Should I sit there in stunned silence at the brutality of the thundering finale, or should I give this reading the enthusiastic standing ovation it so richly deserved? I opted for the latter, partly because it had been so brilliantly done and partly to shake off uneasy feeling that (to paraphrase Jon Landau’s famous review of Bruce Springsteen in 1974) I had heard America’s future and its name was Dmitri Shostakovich.

Conducting without a score, Denève gave us a Fifth that began with a cry of pain in the strings, followed by snarling march from the brass and percussion sowing death and destruction. The first movement ends with nobody left to tell the tale except the harp and celesta (Allegra Lilly and Peter Henderson, respectively, in a beautifully tragic duet) quietly commenting on the smoking ruin of the battlefield.

And so it went for the next three movements. The Allegretto was a lumbering waltz of storm troopers, briefly interrupted by graceful ballerina (Concertmaster David Halen, in a touching solo assisted by Lilly and flutist Jennifer Nitchman). She tries to return in a pleading English horn solo by Cally Banham but is ultimately banished from the scene. The Largo that made Russians weep is pure desolation, ending in tranquil string chords that fade to a silence which is violently broken, after only a brief pause, by the aggressive final movement.

Here, in a fusillade of blazing brass and pounding percussion, the Soviet bureaucrats heard triumph, affirmation, and apotheosis. And perhaps, in that first performance, conductor Evgeny Mravisnky made sure it came across that way. But, as Mr. Denève demonstrated Saturday night, it only takes a few adjustments to reveal the coercion behind that triumph. The slow, relentless hammer blows of the percussion in the coda sounded less like affirmation and more like a case of “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” The effect was both thrilling and horrifying.

I don’t know how well that all came across in the live broadcast, but in Powell Hall it was shattering. Kudos to everyone involved and especially to Maestro Denève for what must have been a physically and emotionally draining experience.

Next at Powell Hall: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and pianist Víkingur Ólafsson in Grieg’s Piano Concerto, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, and Carlos Simon’s “Fate Now Conquers.” Performances take place Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, November 13 and 14, at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center. There will also be a special Crafted Happy Hour performance of Beethoven’s Fifth on Friday, November 12, at 6:30 pm at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on the UMSL campus.

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

St. Louis theatre calendar for the week of November 8, 2021

Now including both on-line and live events during the pandemic. Your event information should be in text format (i.e. not part of a graphic), but feel free to include publicity stills. To get your event listed here, send an email to calendar [at] stageleft.org.

Act Two Theatre presents Noël Coward’s comedy Blithe Spirit through November 14. “The fussy, cantankerous novelist Charles Condomine, re-married but haunted (literally) by the ghost of his late first wife, the clever and insistent Elvira who is called up by a visiting “happy medium,” one Madame Arcati. As the worldly and un-personalities clash, Charles’ current wife, Ruth, is accidentally killed, “passes over,” joins Elvira, and the two “blithe spirits” haunt the hapless Charles into perpetuity.” Performances take place at the St. Peters Community and Arts Center in St. Peters, MO. For more information: www.acttwotheatre.com.

Jessica Vosk

The Blue Strawberry presents Jessica Vosk Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm, November 11-13. " One of the most popular Elphaba’s of all time on Broadway, and the star of Wicked's national tour, Jessica Vosk made her Broadway debut in the 2014 production of The Bridges of Madison County before going on to appear in the original Broadway cast of Finding Neverland, and as Fruma Sarah in the 2015 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. At Blue Strawberry, one of Broadway’s biggest voices pays homage to Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Sarah Vaughan and other legends, as well as to composers Stephen Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz and Burt Bacharach—artists whom she credits with writing musical scores ‘like maps for my life.’ Mary-Mitchell Campbell, Music Director and Piano"  The Blue Strawberry is operating under a "COVID careful" arrangement with mandatory vaccination and masking. The Blue Strawberry is at 364 N. Boyle. For more information: bluestrawberrystl.com.

Marilyn Maye

The Cabaret Project and Jazz St. Louis present Marilyn Maye in Here’s to Life Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, November 10 and 11. “An established St. Louis favorite, there almost isn’t a need to bring up Maye's historic recordings on the RCA label, her 76 appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (he called her “super singer"), or the fact that she was one of Ella Fitzgerald’s favorite singers. Currently, she counts Harry Connick, Jr, Jon Batiste, and Wynton Marsalis among her fans. Don’t miss her first St. Louis show in a year and a half as she sings her classic arrangements of timeless songs – including her signature song Here’s To Life - played by a quintet of her favorite musicians.” Performances take place at Jazz St. Louis, 3536 Washington Avenue in Grand Center. For more information: thecabaretprojecdt.org.

Cats Cradle Theatre presents The Last Days of Judas Iscariot Thursdays through Saturdays at 7 pm, November 11-31 and 18-20, and Sunday, November 14, at 2;30 pm. "Set in a space between heaven and hell, THE LAT DAYS OF JUDAS ISCARIOT tells the story of a court case over the ultimate fate of Judas Iscariot. In this courtroom drama of epic proportions, lawyers call for the testimonies of historic witnesses who share imagined memories, religious ramblings, and philosophical arguments. The results of this trial ask both the characters and the audience to reconsider what they thought they knew about forgiveness, faith, despair, and the humanity inside not only one of history’s most famous villains, but ourselves. While this play cross-examines the gospels, posing complex moral and spiritual questions about divine justice, and human failures of virtue – it’s not a play about religion. It’s an examination of the intersection of humanity, grace, and justice and what it means to be good to each other, and ourselves in this world." Performances take place at Jefferson Avenue Mission at 2241 S. Jefferson. For more information: www.catscradletheatre.com.

Circus Harmony in St. Louis and Circus Circuli in Stuttgart, St. Louis's German sister city, present Sister City Circus, on Circus Harmony’s YouTube page.  "Through a series of online meetings, workshops, and classes the two troupes created 6 different circus acts and then filmed them at iconic architectural locations in each of their cities." This and many other Circus Harmony videos are available at the Circus Harmony YouTube channel.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Photo by John Lamb

Clayton Community Theatre presents August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm through November 14. “This Tony-nominated 1982 classic drama deals with issues of race, art, religion and the historic exploitation of black recording artists by white producers.” Performances take place at the Washington University South Campus Theatre, 6501 Clayton Rd. For more information: www.placeseveryone.org.

COCA presents a COCAWrites Workshop production of Kaleidoscope Crown, by Ashleigh Akilah Rucker on Saturday, November 13th, at 7:30 pm. It’s “the story of a young girl who awakes with a shocking new ability: with every new feeling her hair is catapulted into multicolor tresses. Her new development throws the uniformity and peace of her small traditional village into disarray. Rucker draws inspiration from the art and traditions of the African Diaspora bringing the culture to the forefront of this new work.” COCA is at 6880 Washington in University City, MO. For more information: www.cocastl.org.

ERA Theatre presents the radio play SHE by Nancy Bell with music by Joe Taylor and Lyrics by Nancy Bell via on-demand streaming  "SHE controls the radio station of the fascist regime in power. SHE's also the star of the broadcast. Her recording studio abounds with music and oysters. But in the nearby government camps full of misfits and would-be revolutionaries, only torture and starvation is thick on the ground. Tonight, however, SHE's realm feels different. The bombs sound closer. Time moves faster. But SHE will finish her radio show, and it will be her finest. If executing every number in the broadcast means some people need to die, so be it; it is a small sacrifice. The citizens need her and she will not let them down." SHE is available for digital purchase via bandcamp at eratheatre.bandcamp.com. For more information: www.eratheatre.org

Fly North Theatricals presents A Year With Frog and Toad Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm, through November 14. “Waking from hibernation in the Spring, Frog and Toad plant gardens, swim, rake leaves, go sledding and learn life lessons along the way. The two best friends celebrate and rejoice in the differences that make them unique and special. Part vaudeville, part make believe... all charm, A Year with Frog and Toad tells the story of a friendship that endures throughout the seasons.” Performances take place at The Marcelle Theatre, 3310 Samuel Shepard Dr. in Grand Center. For more information: www.flynorthmusic.com.

The Hawthorne Players present the musical The Marvelous Wonderettes Friday at 7:30 pm, Saturday at 2 and 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 2 pm, November 12-14. ”This smash off-Broadway hit takes you to the 1958 Springfield High School prom where we meet Betty Jean, Cindy Lou, Missy and Suzy, four girls with hopes and dreams as big as their crinoline skirts!  In Act Two, the Wonderettes reunite to take the stage and perform at their ten-year reunion.  This delightful show features over 30 classic '50s and '60s hits that are bound to leave you smiling!” Performances take place in the Florissant Civic Center Theatre in Florissant, MO. For more information: http://www.hawthorneplayers.info.

The Kirkwood Theatre Guild presents the Kaufman and Hart comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner November 12-21. “While on a speaking tour in Ohio, opinionated and arrogant radio personality Sheridan Whiteside injures himself slipping on ice and becomes an unexpected houseguest for a prominent area family. Whiteside proceeds to make brash proclamations and offer his unsolicited advice to the family members. When a romance begins between Whiteside’s assistant and a local reporter, he interferes with that as well!”  Performances take place at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center in Kirkwood. For more information: www.ktg-onstage.org.

The Lemp Mansion Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre and Jest Mysteries present The Christmas Killer through January 8. "Join classic Christmas characters like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolf, Grandma and Santa’s Elves for the annual Misfit Toys Banquet event hosted by Chatty Cathy herself.  It’s going to be a great party so long as the wrong element doesn’t show up.  We’re talking about that slimy, no good, rotten, Ricky Stitch of course.  Why, I wouldn’t touch him with a 39 ½ foot pole!  Gee, sure hope he doesn’t try to ruin Christmas…again.  If he does, I’m sure someone will show him who makes the candy canes around here! But how will we figure out whodunnit…was it you?" The Lemp Mansion is at 3322 DeMenil Place in south city. For more information: www.lempmansion.com

Looking Glass Playhouse presents the comedy Lend Me a Tenor Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm, November 11-21. “On a very important night for the Cleveland Grand Opera Company, Tito Mirelli, the world-famous Italian tenor, is set to perform the starring role in Otello. Henry Saunders — General Manager of the company — is beyond stressed about everything turning out right, and insists that his assistant, Max — a nervous, young fellow and secret tenor extraordinaire — watch over Tito’s every move to ensure smooth sailing. After a huge fight with his fiery, Italian wife Maria, Tito receives a double dose of tranquilizers through a series of mishaps. Throw in Diana, an ambitious, female co-star; Maggie, Max’s giddy girlfriend; Julia, a flirty head of the opera guild; and a meddling bellhop fighting for Tito’s attention. Together, you have a recipe for comedic disaster. Max navigates the company through one catastrophe after the next — an angry wife, a presumed death, crazy costumes, secret sex romps, and loads and loads of slamming doors and mistaken identities — and, ultimately, takes on the role of Otello to great effect. Together, Max and Saunders find a way to save the Opera Company’s big night in grand, farcical fashion.” Performances take place at 301 West St. Louis Street in Lebanon, IL. For more information: lookingglassplayhouse.com.

Monroe Actors Stage Company presents the Mel Brooks musical Young Frankenstein Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2:30 pm, November 12-21. “Grandson of the infamous Victor Frankenstein, Frederick Frankenstein (pronounced “Fronk-en-steen”) inherits his family’s estate in Transylvania. With the help of a hunchbacked sidekick, Igor (pronounced “Eye-gore”), and a leggy lab assistant, Inga (pronounced normally), Frederick finds himself in the mad scientist shoes of his ancestors. “It’s alive!” he exclaims as he brings to life a creature to rival his grandfather’s. Eventually, of course, the monster escapes and hilarity continuously abounds.” Performances take place at the Capitol Theatre in Waterloo, IL. For more information: www.masctheatre.org.

Moonstone Theatre Company presents Moonstone Connections, a series of in-depth interviews with arts leaders by company founder Sharon Hunter. The latest episode features John O’Brien, who currently serves as Director of Programming for The Fabulous Fox Theatre in St. Louis, where he is responsible for programming the U.S. Bank Broadway Series.  New episodes air the third Tuesday of each month; see linktr.ee/moonstoneconnections for more information.

Jake's Women
Photo by John Gitchoff

Moonstone Theatre Company presents Neil Simon’s Jake’s Women Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 PM through November 21.  “This warm and poignant comedy from America’s premier comic playwright makes another hilarious foray into the world of modern relationships. Jake, a novelist who is more successful with fiction than with life, faces a marital crisis by daydreaming about the women in his life. The wildly comic and sometimes moving flashbacks played in his mind are interrupted by visitations from actual females. Jake’s women include a revered first wife who was killed years earlier in an accident, his daughter who is recalled as a child but is now a young woman, his boisterous and bossy sister, an opinionated analyst, his current wife who is leaving Jake for another man, and a prospective third wife.” Performances take place at the Kirkwood Performing Arts Center studio theatre in Kirkwood. For more information: moonstonetheatrecompany.com.

R-S Theatrics presents While the Ghostlight Burns, a virtual discussion series featuring R-S Artistic Director Sarah Lynne Holt in conversation with St. Louis theatre artists, Mondays at 7 pm.  Conversations will be archived at the R-S Theatrics YouTube channel. For more information: r-stheatrics.com/while-the-ghostlight-burns.html

The St. Louis Writers' Group presents a reading of the play Kreischer by Dennis Fisher Tuesday, Novmber 9, at 6:30 pm. “Fred Kreischer and his girlfriend have a memorable romantic evening at Jone's Cemetery.”  The event takes place upstairs at Big Daddy's, 1000 Sidney in Soulard. For more information, visit the St. Louis Writers' Group Facebook page.

SATE, in collaboration with COCA and Prison Performing Arts, presents Project Verse: Creativity in the Time of Quarantine. Project Verse presents two new plays: Quatrains in Quarantine by e.k. doolin and Dream On, Black Girl:Reflections in Quarantine by Maxine du Maine. The performances are streamed free of charge on SATE’s website and Facebook page. For more information: slightlyoff.org.

SATE also offers streaming performances of the shows originally scheduled for live 2020 productions: The Mary Shelley Monster Show, As You Like It (produced for SHAKE20, Project Verse, and Classic Mystery Game. The shows are available on their YouTube channel.

Theatre Guild of Webster Groves presents The Desperate Hours through November 14. Performances take place at 517 Theatre Lane at the corner of Newport and Summit in Webster Groves. For more information, visit The Theatre Guild's Facebook page.

Union Avenue Opera presents Home is Calling on Friday, November 12, at 7:30 pm. "Join us for an intimate evening of grand opera on the Union Avenue Opera stage as we welcome back Brooklyn Snow (The Heroines in Les contes d'Hoffmann and Cunegonde in Candide) and Melody Wilson (Fenena in Nabucco and Mrs. Miller in Doubt) to help us announce our 28th Festival Season. We'll also hear from local UAO alumni artists Anthony Heinemann, Jacob Lassetter, Debby Lennon, Leann Schuering, and Nancy Mayo on piano, as we present preview selections from next summer's operas and celebrate our return home to Union Avenue Christian Church." The event takes place at the Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 Union at Enright in the Central West End. For more information: unionavenueopera.secure.force.com.

Looking for auditions and other artistic opportunities? Check out the St. Louis Auditions site.

For information on events beyond this week, check out the searchable database at the Regional Arts Commission's Events Calendar.

Would you like to be on the radio? KDHX, 88.1 FM needs theatre reviewers. If you're 18 years or older, knowledgeable in this area, have practical theatre experience (acting, directing, writing, technical design, etc.), have good oral and written communications skills and would like to become one of our volunteer reviewers, send an email describing your experience and interests to chuck at kdhx.org. Please include a sample review of something you've seen recently.

Symphony Preview: Daily Double, Part 2

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) offers you a chance to double your listening pleasure this weekend with two very different performances: a chamber music evening on Friday, November 5th, and a program of orchestral works by Sibelius, Shostakovich, and James Lee III on Saturday and Sunday, November 6th and 7th.  The two programs are linked only by the presence of violinist and conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, who sets aside the role of conductor for the role of violinist.

[Preview the music with my commercial-free Spotify playlist.]

For background on the Friday concert, check out Part 1 of this weekend’s symphony preview. To find out more about what’s in store for Saturday and Sunday, read on.

As the weather finally turns autumnal and the end of the dreaded Daylight Saving Time looms, it seems appropriate that the two big works on the SLSO program this weekend—Jean Sibelius’s Violin Concerto and Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5—are craggy, wintery, and dramatically dark.

Sibelius in 1913
By fi:Daniel Nyblin (1856–1923) -
What We Hear in Music, Anne S. Faulkner,
Victor Talking Machine Co., 1913.,
Public Domain, 

Jean Sibelius loved his native Finland, including its folklore and especially its landscape. Like Grieg, he was strongly inspired by nature. From 1892 until his death in 1957, Sibelius lived and worked in a home made entirely of wood (he didn't want to hear the sound of rain in metal gutters) on Lake Tuusula in the Finnish forest, where he often went for long walks. Indeed, this affinity for Finland’s sometimes forbidding natural beauty informs much of his work. It's impossible to hear his music and not conjure up images of pines, snow, and brisk northern winds.

This is plainly audible in his Violin Concerto in D minor, op. 47. The violin was Jean Sibelius's first musical love. He began playing as a child and showed great promise as a performer, despite an elbow fracture that impeded his bowing technique. Even after it became clear that his real talent was for composition, he continued to play in chamber ensembles and even teach the instrument. It's no surprise, then, that the concerto—originally presented in 1904 and then, after a thorough drubbing by critics, in a substantially revised form in 1905—is both thoroughly idiomatic and incredibly demanding. The long solo passages in the first movement and virtuoso fireworks in the finale will test the mettle of the best performers.

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider is, happily, no stranger to the Sibelius concerto, having performed it with (among others) the Cleveland Orchestra, the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, and the Berlin Philharmonic. More to the point for this weekend, he has also performed it with SLSO Music Director Stéphane Denève on the podium. “It is a piece we’ve done many times together,” Denève notes. “He brings such richness of sound.” Szeps-Znaider and Denève are close friends outside of the concert hall which, in my experience, often leads to an easy collaboration in performance.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in D minor had a more successful premiere than Sibelius’s concerto. It also has a longer and more complex backstory, which is why I’m going to devote so much space to it. Indeed, it's possible that the Fifth saved not only the composer's career but his life as well.

When Shostakovich began work on the Fifth, he was in hot water with Stalin's regime. Stalin's rise to power marked a chilling of the intellectual atmosphere in the Soviet Union. All art was expected to serve the political interests of the state and to be as accessible as possible. The exuberant experimentation that followed the overthrow of the Czarist regime was now strictly forbidden. Composers were expected to write upbeat, patriotic stuff—or else.

Unfortunately for Shostakovich, his most popular work at the time was his surreal and lurid 1934 opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". It had been playing to packed houses in Leningrad, but when Stalin decided to attend a performance in Moscow in January of 1936 he was not amused. He left at intermission and the next day an anonymous article on the front page of Pravda (approved and possibly even written by Stalin) condemned the music and libretto in the harshest terms. "Muddle Instead of Music," ran the headline. Not good.

Shostakovich, repentant

"The opera disappeared overnight," notes Michael Tilson Thomas in an episode of the PBS series "Keeping Score" on the Fifth, "and every publication and political organization in the country heaped personal attacks on its composer." The 29-year-old composer started sleeping in the stairwell of his apartment building, hoping that doing so might spare his family when the secret police came to drag him off to a Gulag or worse. They never did, but he lost many friends and even family members to that outbreak of official violence now known as the Great Terror.

Life under an autocratic regime run by a personality cult centered on a morally bankrupt and mentally unstable sociopath is never easy, it seems.

After writing and then withdrawing a Fourth Symphony, Shostakovich finally began work on the Fifth in April of 1937. He completed it in less than three months. He set out to produce a work that would appear, at least on the surface, to meet the demands of heroic socialist realism. He even went so far as to accompany the first performance with an article in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva titled "A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Just Criticism"—lest there be any doubt that he had Learned His Lesson.

And it worked. Official response to the November 21, 1937, premiere by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Evgeny Mravisnky (who would become a great champion of the work) was enthusiastic. Alexei Tolstoy set the official tone in a review in which he praised the "enormous optimistic lift" of the final movement. Shostakovich was officially rehabilitated.

But is the Fifth really the model of Soviet patriotism the commissars thought it was? In his liner notes for the St. Louis Symphony's 1986 recording of the Fifth (with Leonard Slatkin conducting), Richard Freed writes that the work "was born of [Shostakovich's] determination to be a survivor, and to keep his protests private—except insofar as the perceptive listener could hear them in his music." And, indeed, it appears that the audience at the symphony's premiere heard a deeper and less superficial message. "Many in the premiere audience were seen to weep openly," writes Mr. Freed. "[T]hey wept, Shostakovich himself felt, because 'they understood; they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about.'"

Listening to it now, it's impossible not to hear despair and defiance instead of patriotic uplift, especially in the ominous mock fanfare of the opening and the succession of aggressive march tunes in the finale. The second movement Allegretto is a Mahlerian parody of a waltz, complete with squawking clarinet and, unexpectedly, a graceful little violin. And the third movement Largo clearly feels like lament for all the friends and family the composer lost to the Terror, memorialized with chorale-like string writing that calls to mind the liturgy of the banned Russian Orthodox Church.

This disconnect between what Soviet officials heard and what the composer intended is most evident, I think, in the final movement. The Soviet bureaucrats heard triumph, affirmation, and apotheosis. As well they might have, since Shostakovich, at the time of the symphony's premiere, described that finale as "the optimistic resolution of the tragically tense moments of the first movement." Even in the West, symphony program notes and liner notes for recordings often employed phrases like "the utmost in orchestral power and brilliance" (David Hall for the 1958 Stokowski recording) and "lusty and boisterous" (an unnamed annotator for the 1962 Karel Ancerl LP).

That all changed with the publication, in 1979, of "Testimony" by the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov. Allegedly based on memoirs of Shostakovich, the book states unequivocally that the final movement of the Fifth was intended as a parody of militaristic triumphalism: "The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,' and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, 'Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.'" Richard Freed writes, as well, that "Shostakovich is on record as having stated that he intended no apotheosis in this finale."

Although the notion that the Symphony No. 5 was pure pro-Soviet optimism still persists in some quarters, many recent performances and recordings tend to emphasize the caustic and satirical spects of the Fifth (Slatkin's is a good example). When the work was last performed here in 2014, the reading of guest conductor Jaap van Zweden sounded, as I wrote at the time, very much informed by the tragic and defiant subtext of this piece. What approach will Denève take? We won't know until Saturday night.

James Lee III takes a bow with the 
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
www.jameslee3music.com

The concerts open with a much more recent work: “Emotive Transformations,” written in 2018 by Michigan-born James Lee, III. A 2005 Doctorate of Musical Arts graduate of the prestigious University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance, Lee is a prolific composer who has seen his works performed by number of major orchestras including in Philadelphia; Indianapolis; Memphis; Cincinnati; and Atlanta; and in Akron, under the batons of, among others, Marin Alsop, Michael Tilson Thomas, Juanjo Mena, and our own Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin.

This is normally the point where I’d give you my take on the piece, based on listening to a performance on Spotify, YouTube, or some other streaming service. Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate one, so this time I’ll be discovering it along with the rest of you.  In this week’s program notes, Tim Munro writes that the work “conveys the stages of grief after the death of a loved one”—in this case, Lee’s father, who “helped light Lee’s artistic fire.”  

That would seem to make it a fitting way to open these concerts, with their sense of, in the words of Dylan Thomas, “the dying of the light.”

The Essentials: Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and violin soloist Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, and “Emotive Transformations” by James Lee III. Performances are Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, November 6 and 7 at Powell Symphony Hall in Grand Center.

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

Symphony Preview: Daily double, Part 1

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) offers you a chance to double your listening pleasure this weekend with two very different performances: a chamber music evening on Friday, November 5th, and a program of orchestral works by Sibelius, Shostakovich, and James Lee III on Saturday and Sunday, November 6th and 7th.  The two programs are linked only by the presence of violinist and conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, who sets aside the conductor hat he wore last weekend (it’s invisible but very fashionable, I’m told) and dons the mantle of violinist as both a collaborator and a soloist.

[Preview the music with my commercial-free Spotify playlist.]

For this article, we’ll concentrate on Friday’s chamber music concert, which shows him in his collaborator role with SLSO musicians Erin Schreiber (violin); Jonathan Chu and Chris Tantillon (viola); Melissa Brooks and Jennifer Humphreys (cello); and Scott Andrews (clarinet). The program consists of only two works: Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581 (1789) and the String Sextet No. 1 in B-Flat Major (1860) of Brahms.

The pairing offers an excellent opportunity to contemplate the degree to which a particular piece of music does or doesn’t reflect the emotional landscape of the composer at the time of its creation.

Mozart, as drawn by Doris Stock, 1789

Mozart’s quintet (scored for a standard string quartet plus the clarinet) sounds like the work of a happy man. There’s a longing in the Larghetto second movement and even a bit of melancholy in a viola passage in the Allegretto con variazione finale, but overall this is music that radiates good cheer.  

And yet, Mozart’s life at the time was anything but cheerful. He was living in Vienna by then and while he initially enjoyed great success there, by the late 1780s audiences, critics, and students were losing interest in him. His fortunes were at such a low ebb that he was reduced to writing letters begging for money from his fellow Mason, the prosperous textile merchant Michael Puchberg. “To Puchberg’s honor,” writes Donald J. Grout (in his “History of Western Music”) “he always responded to Mozart’s appeals.”

A 1790 letter to his wife Constanze from Frankfurt (where Mozart was seeking employment to shore up his family’s declining fortunes) reveals his mood at the time:

I get all excited like a child when I think about being with you again — If people could see into my heart I should almost feel ashamed. Everything is cold to me — ice-cold. — If you were here with me, maybe I would find the courtesies people are showing me more enjoyable, — but as it is, it’s all so empty (from volume 1 of John C. Kirkland’s “Love Letters of Great Men”)

So, no, not exactly a joyful period. Indeed, only a year later Mozart would die in poverty, leaving his great “Requiem” to be completed by his student Franz Süssmayr.

Mozart subtitled the work "Stadler's Quintet,” by the way, referring to his friend and fellow Mason Anton Stadler, for whom he wrote several works, including the K. 581 quintet. Many of them (including this one) were scored for the basset horn or basset clarinet, members of the clarinet family with extended low notes. Although championed by Stadler, these instruments are rarely heard today, and contemporary performers usually opt for the A clarinet. It’s pitched a half-step lower than the more common B-flat clarinet and most professional musicians have one of each handy. I assume that’s what Scott Andrews will be using this weekend.

Brahms in 1853
en.wikipedia.org

For Johannes Brahms, by way of contrast, things were going fairly well when he wrote his sextet in 1860. True, his Piano Concerto No. 1 had received a lukewarm reception the previous year and he had just broken off a brief engagement with one Agathe von Siebold (whose name he encoded in sextet with a theme using the notes A-G-A-D-E, according to the 1967 edition of Brockway and Weinstock’s “Men of Music”). But he apparently enjoyed his new job as director of a women’s choir he had founded in Hamburg. The income from the position, combined with earnings from the sales of his music, was enough to afford him a comfortable life and even allow him to travel. His relationship with Robert Schumann’s widow Clara, while thoroughly Platonic, was nevertheless close and harmonious. And (as Tim Munro writes in the program notes he felt he was growing as an artist.

The String Sextet No. 1 is an example of his increased confidence. At the time, the format was relatively new and therefore somewhat risky, but the darker, richer sound that came with adding a second viola and cello to the conventional string quartet perfectly suited his writing style. This and the second string sextet four years later were, as Kai Christiansen writes at Earsense, “early but masterful works highlighting the bright, warm and noble side of Brahms in the manner of a serenade.”

There are hints of darkness here and there in the sextet’s four movements, especially in the minor key viola melody that is the basis for the theme and variations format of the Andante, ma moderato, but overall the feeling is one of contentment and hope for the future. Unlike Mozart’s quintet, this is music that would seem to accurately reflect the composer’s state of mind. It’s as warm and cozy as a fluffy blanket—perfect for these brisk November nights.

The Essentials: Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider and members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra present an evening of chamber music by Mozart and Brahms on Friday, November 5th, at 7:30 pm at Powell Symphony Hall.

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