This afternoon, following a rehearsal of Ravel and Lutoslawksi, violinist Debbie Bloom and cellist Bjorn Ranheim had enough left for a performance of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star Variations” for 33 second graders from St. Katharine Drexel in the Wightman Grand Foyer of Powell Hall.
I was hoping they’d throw in just a little of Lutoslawski’s Fourth Symphony, but no such luck.
Saturday night near the close of intermission, a young girl in a pretty yellow skirt boldly approached the stage, program in hand, and asked David Halen for his autograph. He smiled and graciously signed. Then she moved to Daniel Lee. He laughed and signed as well.
An SLSO fan writes:
I have some very good friends, most of whom share some of my interest in music. In an effort to grow my "community of desire," I tried to coerce each of them to claim the second seat I had purchased for the Reich show. Alas, I ended up traveling roughly 2.5 hours through the rain and heavy traffic by myself (I live in Salem, MO). It was more than worth it, of course, and I know the others would've enjoyed the show as well. I suppose it's their loss, however, I feel I lose a little as well when no one tags along to share the experience.
I had just opened the stage door, returning to the hall after lunch, and “dah-dah-dah-DAH” erupted from the stage. It sent chills. “Fate knocks,” indeed.
Way back when I was living at my ease as an undergrad in Missoula, Montana, I had a core group of friends who would share their enthusiasms with each other. I particularly remember the summer we discovered Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. It truly was infectious. I don’t know who read it first, but that paperback was literally handed to another member of our tribe, who then read it feverishly, and passed it on to the next (we were all really broke and thus discovered the values of communal sharing). We’d say to each other, “Did you read where they discover ice?” or “Did you get to the part where Remedios the Beauty ascends?” and so on. I don’t know what happened to that battered copy – my own, eventually purchased (actually, I probably stole it), is yellowing on the bookshelf.
A lot of early birds here this morning in preparation for the first rehearsal of Sinfonia. First, Mike Lynch and His Henchmen were here setting up long before anybody else arrived. And there are lots of Henchmen for this weekend to get all the stuff on and off stage in a reasonable amount of time. Mike told me it’s the biggest stage change since the Kurtag Stele last season, which was an impressive array of musicians and instruments on the Powell stage.
I ran into a friend recently who said, “I can’t believe Steve Reich is 70.” My friend can recall being part of the SoHo art scene in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when the first Steve Reich concerts were being held in New York lofts and art spaces. That’s how Reich has stayed in his mind, and the idea of the composer getting longevity cred is quite a shocker (concerts are happening around the world commemorating Reich's three-score-and-10, including the Wednesday night Fusion concert at the Touhill). And this particular milestone also reminds my friend how long ago that time was and alerts him to where he stands on the longevity meter.
The voice from the Green Room this morning was, at first, ethereal, angelic – even as David Daniels was just warming up.
There are people in St. Louis who didn’t watch the Cards lose last night, and they had a lot better time than the rest of us. I received a couple of raves from SLSO fans who were at the Off/On Stage events last night. Here’s what one of them wrote:
A bit jittery from post-Cardinal-victory hangovers and giddy with the anticipation of (maybe, just maybe) a return to the World Series after triumph in Shea tonight – we forge on. Two Peter and the Wolf kinderkonzerts this morning (some of us are starting to pull for the wolf), a rehearsal of Stravinsky, Locatelli and Gabrieli (what, no mostaciolli?) with the ever-ebullient Nic McGegan this afternoon, then the first Off Stage/On Stage events tonight (Meet the Strings with David Halen, Heidi Harris, Shannon Farrell, Daniel Lee, Erik Harris and Peter Henderson in the foyer at 6pm; music on stage with all of the above and selections from Piazzolla, Grieg, Paganini, Brahms and Mozart at 7pm – it’s free), and the chorus has been rehearsing in the evenings for upcoming Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky and the IN UNISON Chorus has been rehearsing for Gospel Christmas, and musicians have been giving in-school presentations – I’ll tell you about a presentation at Long School I observed soon – and the first Family Concert this Sunday. And I’m leaving a lot of stuff out.
This press release came from our friends at Schwalbe and Partners in NYC, who, among other things, manage Nic McGegan. I found it so full of historical detail that I’m posting the whole thing. There will be quiz:
Already on this gray, drizzly, day-after a bad, bad Cardinal loss, the sounds of trumpets playing Pictures at an Exhibition have been heard numerous times through the hall. Trumpet auditions today. All day.
Beauty almost became passé in the art world a decade or so back. In the postmodern chill, talking about creating beautiful objects, or for that matter making art that might touch the soul, was the kind of talk that got you – at best – the ironist’s sneer: what a rube.
I listened keenly to the Britten rehearsal. Artistic VP Jeremy Geffen had said to me earlier, “Richard Croft is a tenor with such sensitivity” and it showed even through the little office speaker. The Serenade is a work much about death and dying, and yet -- in this duet between tenor and horn, with a gorgeous interplay of strings -- it lifts you up, like the air beneath a great bird’s wings. Yeats said that sex and death were the only things really worth writing about. And Wallace Stevens put it best: “Death is the mother of beauty.”
I asked Principal Horn Jen Montone to write a few things about Britten’s Serenade, which she performs Thursday and Friday night with tenor Richard Croft and guest conductor Nic McGegan. Here’s what she sent in:
This morning the first Kinder Konzerts of the season featured Blake Travis narrating Peter and the Wolf , and some choice bits from Prokofiev’s First Symphony presented to back-to-back packed audiences.
In case you haven’t already looked, if you go to the homepage you can see the two-minute spot that the Disney folks made out of the Little Einsteins’ visit last spring. It actually began airing on the Disney Channel late in the summer. I was probably fretting too much about the Cardinals to notice. But now look at those Cards!
String players from the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra and their parents get to sit in on the afternoon rehearsal of Schubert 3 and Tchaikovsky 5 with Itzhak Perlman today. Some people…
Itzhak Perlman opens the program this weekend playing violin and conducting Mozart’s Adagio in E major, K. 261 and Rondo in C major, K. 373. Then he puts down the fiddle and the bow and conducts Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.
John Tafoya, the head librarian, was honored this afternoon for 30 years with the orchestra. That means when John started here the country was celebrating the bicentennial, Jimmy Carter was elected president, sideburns were in, and Jerzy Semkow was music director.
On eBay you can bid on a 1948 Lord Calvert whiskey advertisement from an unidentified magazine featuring Vladimir Golschmann, SLSO Music Director 1931-58. The illustration shows the maestro looking exceedingly debonair, as he often did. The slogan is “For Men of Distinction” and labels the drink the “Aristocrat of Highballs.”
A new vibraphone arrived last week, which is good news indeed. The former vibraphone -- David Robertson explained to me as two henchmen and percussionist John Kasica pretzeled themselves beneath the instrument trying to put it together – wasn’t vibrating much anymore. “It doesn’t look like it,” David said, “but this is a very sensitive instrument.” All those metal clangers, crossbars and such, if tended properly, provide ringing tones that spread out toward the infinite.
