March 2005 Archives

You have got to love a conductor who starts the orchestra with a count that goes “One, two, buckle my shoe…."

Early morning, William Eddins was rehearsing on the piano backstage again, a softer, more melodious mood than the rollicking jazz rhythms of the day before.

Yet when he took the podium to rehearse the orchestra through Saint-Saëns and Rachmaninoff, he was a conductor without a voice. Rather, he had a voice, but it could barely be heard – a lower-register rasp that made me think of old blues musicians telling their life history through whiskey-soaked vocal chords. For Eddins, however, it was the notorious pollen-infested St. Louis air afflicting him.

Eddins pressed on, as did the orchestra. After the lunch break Eddins was back at the keyboard long before rehearsal resumed, like a man at a fountain regaining his strength -- finding it at the place where his voice was clear.

William Eddins was playing up a storm backstage when I returned to the hall this morning. Jazz inflections via Ravel came rolling, heavy syncopation that made my step a little lighter, and when he got to an especially thrilling run, I overheard him going “hee hee hee” over the keys.

A nice way to come back to work.

I was looking up info on Steve Reich as I was completing next week’s eminder this afternoon. Reich will be in town for an event at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts on Thursday, April 7. Three Reich works will be performed by members of the SLSO, with David Robertson on hand to both conduct and talk – two things David does exceedingly well.

There is an excellent website www.stevereich.com, which I suspect would be helpful to both the uninitiated and the sophisticates. Reich still wears the label of “minimalist,” fixed to him some 40 years ago. Like most such labels it doesn’t fit an artist of such ingenuity as Reich very stylishly.

Reich has a very keen thing to say about that. This comes from an interview by Rebecca Y. Kim in 2000: “The point is, if you went to Paris and dug up Debussy and said, ‘Excusez-moi Monsieur…are you an impressionist?’ he’d probably say ‘Merde!’ and go back to sleep. That is a legitimate concern of musicologists, music historians, and journalists, and it’s a convenient way of referring to me, Riley, Glass, La Monte Young, maybe even John Adams, and now Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, and Louis Andriessen; it’s become the dominant style. But, anybody who’s interested in French Impressionism is interested in how different Debussy and Ravel and Satie are -- and ditto for what’s called minimalism. So it’s hard to get excited about that kind of thing. Basically, those kind of words are taken from painting and sculpture, and applied to musicians who composed at the same period as that painting and sculpture was made. There is some validity to the description; certainly if you listen to Piano Phase or Violin Phase and you look at Sol LeWitt, you’re going to note some similarities. That just means people who are alive at a certain period of time and have their antennas up and functioning are going to get similar input messages and they’re going to react to those messages. Beyond that, it’s all individual, and that’s what’s interesting.”

I will be away to find nourishment in New Orleans this Easter weekend. I will be back Tuesday, March 29. A pleasant holiday to all.

On Friday, March 11, there were 2700 recorders being played in Powell Symphony Hall. The sound they made during “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” was peculiarly eerie, like something from an M. Night Shyamalan soundtrack.

The event was the LinkUp! Concert, which brought together the resources of our Education and Community Partnership Program and the Carnegie Hall LinkUp! Program to offer music education and experience to the region’s schoolchildren. In attendance were students from schools throughout the area, as well as St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, who did pretty well on the recorder himself.

I ran into Megan Denell this morning, who helped coordinate the event, as she was going through letters from students who had attended the LinkUp! Concert. She allowed me to share some of their responses here.

A student from Clark-Vitt Elementary School writes: “It was a complete inspiration, a masterpiece. It was so good it was beautiful, just beautiful.”

Another Clark-Vitt student, who signs off her letter “with all do respect”: “I thought that Powell Hall was cool. Thanks a lot for the experience at the symphony and watching the orchestra play. I hope I can come back with my family.”

Those last words are especially endearing.

A student from St. Elizabeth St. Robert Regional School took special notice of conductor Scott Parkman: “I observed the conductor doing all those hard hand motions, which was pretty good.”

From St. Gabriel the Archangel School: “I personally enjoyed the performance and thought it was exciting to see what went on. Perhaps our school band could have a jam session some time.”

And to conclude: “I appreciate you having my school’s choir come to the LinkUp! concert. It was the bomb!”

I’m sure more than a few are wondering, “What do I say if I happen to meet Paul Newman?” as he will be narrator for Lincoln Portrait with the SLSO at Carnegie Hall April 16.

It is Easter Break so I haven’t had a chance to ask any of the musicians. Maybe I’ll do a survey when they return. However, when Tom Hanks first met the American film legend on the set of Road to Perdition, he apparently walked up to the star, shook his hand and told him, “I loved you in Hombre!”

Guest conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra concluded this morning’s rehearsal with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, played by Ivan Moravec. A bit of program reversal for how this weekend’s concerts are to be played, but as I was about to bite into my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it made the brown-bag lunch into something more exquisite. I was reminded of an old New Yorker cartoon, which depicts a field of urban squalor, the caption: "A World without Mozart." Moravec creates a world of Mozart, enchanting melodies made of liquid tones.

I ran into Scott Parkman (our assistant conductor and Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra director) on my after-lunch walk. He, returning from Vito’s pizza, was considering his preconcert perspectives talk this evening. “A wealth of melody” was one phrase he shared.

Assistant Stage Manager Joe Clapper greeted the musicians this morning with a “top a the mornin’” call to the stage. The color green was in evidence, even with a French conductor and a Czech pianist rehearsing the music of Franck and Mozart. And then there have been the quick website excursions to see what’s happening on the first day of the Big Dance. Alabama goes down as the first upset, and my alma mater, Montana, is within 20 of Washington at the half.

I run into David Halen in the elevator. He tells me how good it is to be back and “It’s all about the music.”

Most of the time.

This morning, at the SLSO’s stirring finale to Brahms Second Symphony, a noise of appreciation rose up from the Young Adult Concert audience at such a decibel level – a squeal, wail, and cry – that you would have thought the Fab Four had just struck the last chord of “She Loves You” on the Powell Hall stage.

The second weekend in April the SLSO performs Christopher Rouse’s Flute Concerto, with David Robertson conducting and our principal flute Mark Sparks as soloist.

The first and last movements of Rouse’s concerto are named after the Celtic word for “song.” If you google that word, you will find the spelling “Àmhran,” which is also how it is spelled in the score. However, in program listings of the concerto, and on a CD recording of the work, it is spelled “Ànhran.”

I didn’t know of the discrepancy, and it had passed by three staff proofreaders before our associate librarian, Elsbeth Brugger, raised the alarm. She’s the one who did the googling, because, as is true of proofreaders and copyeditors everywhere, she told me “These sorts of things bother me.” I happen to be married to a freelance copyeditor, so I am well aware of the feeling.

I emailed the composer about the curious inconsistency. Rouse responded within minutes. “Thanks so much for your conscientiousness,” he began. Elsbeth had indeed discovered an error that has been too long in the world. “You'll be doing a modest but important service by printing the word correctly as ‘amhran,’” Rouse concluded, with another note of thanks.

Last Friday was one of those days. After much of Friday evening had passed I said to my wife, mortified, “I forgot to blog today.”

There are days here when no matter how much you have invested into the illusion that you’re on top of things, the reality comes crashing down on your head. Friday was such a day.

I will barely raise my head above the rubble today to tell you about a brief encounter with last weekend’s inspiring soloist, pianist Alon Goldstein. On Thursday night I was at the concert, thinking, perhaps like others, this would be a nice little Tchaikovsky concerto, something with some romantic melodies to sweeten the night.

By the end of that sweet little concerto, most people in the hall were astonished. I ran into a friend at intermission who is a frequent concertgoer, and he, who is not prone to cliché, looked at me wide-eyed and said “I was totally blown away.”

The next day, Alon Goldstein was practicing on a piano backstage, displaying the combination of power, grace, delicacy and precision that had proved to be so alluring the night before. He took a break and was happy to chat. Tall, good-looking, with a thick Israeli accent, Goldstein glows with exuberance for his work. He takes a special pleasure in finding those works that have been neglected, such as the Tchaikovsky Second Concerto. He talked about another work he’d added to his repertoire, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 11, which he had recently performed with his former teacher, Leon Fleisher, as conductor. “Do you know if it has ever been done here?”

He came upstairs with me to look through our archaic card catalogue and then the more up-to-date computer spread sheet. No record of it. “I’m going to go tell Jeremy, right now,” he said excitedly. And off he went, a big smile on his face, to lobby our new artistic VP, Jeremy Geffen, to find a place for Goldstein and a neglected Mozart on some program sometime in the future.

All week the orchestra rehearsed the Thursday-Friday evenings' program in topsy-turvy order. Vaughan Williams' Fourth Symphony first, followed by Haydn’s “Miracle.” All that conflict and those turbulent emotions followed by bright clear grace and precision.

That’s probably the way we like to think life is: crazy youth followed by the calm of maturity. We like to think that even when we know better.

This morning the program was played in concert order. The gorgeous noise of the Vaughan Williams will be a proper way to head out into the evening. Music for night thoughts.

Lots of talented, smart people work in Powell Hall. A vast knowledge of stuff, musical and otherwise, is in abundance around here. Ask a question, you get plenty of answers.

Many of the folk who toil behind the scenes have instruments at home. They’ve studied at some of the best schools and know their way around a score. Somewhere on the life path they took careers that detoured from the concert stage. Yet here they remain, close to the music.

This Friday morning 2700 recorders will be played before a full house in Powell Hall. A long-planned and long-awaited concert involving our own Education and Community Partnership Program and Carnegie Hall’s LinkUp! Program will include the SLSO playing the music of Haydn, Beethoven and Ives to an audience of participating teachers and students. An arrangement of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" is also part of the program. That’s where the 2700 recorders come in for a bit of audience participation.

A rehearsal yesterday featured CPP member Megan Denell. Megan is an alumnus of Indiana University – a school known for its basketball team and its music school. As she stood on stage with the SLSO musicians, she thought of all those years and those thousands of dollars of schooling (she studied bassoon) – and here was her moment on the concert stage, playing a child’s tune on an instrument worth $4.25. I can’t wait to see her wardrobe on Friday.

Behind Powell Symphony Hall, along Delmar, there’s a big billboard. Right now on that billboard there’s an advertisement for the next Black Repertory Theatre production.

I know that the Black Rep had no way of knowing that the tumult of the last couple of months was to befall as it did.

I love the Black Rep. I love Shakespeare.

But I wish they were producing A Midsummer Night’s Dream or All’s Well That Ends Well at the Grandel this spring. There is just something very unnerving, right now, about looking from the eighth-floor window at a giant, full-color promotion for Macbeth.

The first Monday after the first concerts in over two months.

Pianos are being tuned in preparation for Alon Goldstein this weekend. The new VP of Artistic Administration, Jeremy Geffen, is here for his first day on the job in Powell. Playbills for the March concerts have arrived. We’re back to the general business, the welcome routines.

Most importantly, Girl Scout Cookies have arrived.

I have written previously about how the experience of a live symphony orchestra is one of the few we can have in which the here and now can be realized as sublime.

To follow Alex Ross’ idea (“the future of music is local, not global"): that the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra is St. Louis’ orchestra -- and is known as such -- is essential. We work in local time to our local audience. The paradox is that in so-doing we cannot be provincial, nor can we be a “regional” orchestra. We play the world to St. Louis, for St. Louis. And when we play outside the city, whether in Rolla or New York, we represent St. Louis. The music comes from all around, as do the musicians. The economics of it comes from here.

In contrast, the music on the radio dial reflects little but market forces. It is curious that a symphony orchestra, whether its home is Minneapolis or St. Louis or Cincinnati, playing music that is heard hardly anywhere else but the concert hall, so reflects that community.

Mozart this weekend, I contend, is more of the here and now than the play list you will find on your radio dial driving down 170. You will hear the same songs, maybe even in the same order, whether you are in St. Louis or Topeka. What you will hear this weekend, and see, and experience in Powell Symphony Hall, will be the music of Mozart made new, made vital -- in the here and now.

Alex Ross is one of those New Yorker writers I read and first feel a thrill by the astuteness, clarity, and boldness of his prose; and then I hate the guy because he’s so bloody good. He has his own blog, www.therestisnoise.com, where you can find his not-so-idle thoughts documented, his columns from The New Yorker, and an excerpt from his work-in-progress – a cultural history of 20th-century music. He is not only good, he is ambitious. And not yet 40.

You can imagine that I am emitting a large sigh here.

His essay that begins “I hate ‘classical music’” is a must read. I say so and David Robertson says so.

I also suggest his recent column in which he visits the Minnesota Orchestra. Although Minneapolis is cold, their music director, Osmo Vänskä, is quite hot. Ross finds much to praise in the ensemble up north. He also adds this provocative comment about the industry as a whole: “The future of music is local, not global. Every ensemble must justify itself to its community, because the global economy has no use for a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven or Aho or anything else.”

That one's been spinning in my head for a while.

In the marvelous David Mamet comedy State and Main, a Hollywood film crew invades a small town in the state of Maine (very clever with his titles is Mr. Mamet). Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the screenwriter, who one evening finds himself in the town center late at night contemplating his misfortunes. Suddenly, a vehicle careers through the square, overturns and crashes in front of him. Alec Baldwin – the irresponsible star of the film within a film – emerges, miraculously unscathed. Baldwin looks around, clearly well over every blood-alcohol limit imaginable, and smiles giddily. “Well,” Baldwin says to himself, “that happened.”

It gives me great pleasure to return to filing the SLSO blog. I thank all of you who contacted me over the last two months to tell me how much you missed this daily journal of life at the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. It’s nice to be missed. But the real pleasure comes from the fact that if the blog is back, it means the music is back.

For those of you looking for a comment from me about the recent strife, I couldn’t put it better than this: “Well, that happened.”