February 2007 Archives

I caught up with John Kasica backstage previous to the Haydn Symphony No. 63, “La Roxelane,” rehearsal with Nic McGegan. John is one of the members of the orchestra’s extraordinary and uniquely cohesive percussion section (John, Richard Holmes and Tom Stubbs all went to Juilliard together in the '60s and have wielded – benevolently -- majority percussionist influence over the SLSO since the early '70s). John is taking part in the Percussion Festival at the Touhill in March and is performing a piece he "wrote," Cadenza.

Students learned about the ways music portrays moods in the Young People’s Concert this morning. Scott Parkman led the orchestra through Dvorak, Elgar and the eminently moody Tchaikovsky.

With the musicians having a most-deserved Monday away from the Hall (I remember seeing Melissa Brooks-Rubright -- who played the J.C. Bach Symphony concertante with Peter Otto last weekend – giving me a big wave as she came up the stairs from the musicians’ lounge looking both exhausted and exhilarated prior to rehearsal last Thursday) the big doings to report are in the administrative offices. New phones. Silver and black. Cool, with a neo film-noir feel, metallic with soft black edges, kind of sexy.

Prior to the afternoon rehearsal of Frank Martin’s fascinating Petite symphonie concertante – one of those unfamiliar works that suddenly makes you sit up and say “What is that?” with a piano that comes in sounding like jazz, and then a harp and harpsichord joining in to form a neo-baroque cool daddyo combo – I asked violist Mo Jacob if he had recovered from last week’s still-being-talked-about performance of Black Angels at the Pulitzer.

“It took a couple days,” he told me. Not only was the work insanely difficult, Mo said, but he described it as one of the most emotional pieces he had ever performed.

Mayor Francis Slay’s office maintains a blog. My blog has appeared on the mayor’s blog. So today I return the favor.

The news came to the musicians, staff and board first, of Randy Adams’ decision to step down as president and executive director of the SLSO in June. You can read the official press release on our website and the Post-Dispatch has the news on its site today as well.

For those of you curious as to what Stephen Hough played for his encore Saturday night, it was Federico Mompou’s Young Girls in the Garden (Jeunes filles au jardin), from “Scenes d’enfants.”

The Friday morning Coffee Concerts attract a very special sort of audience, made up of those people who have time to spend Friday morning at a concert. These include a fair number of retirees, students on field trips, and what were formerly known as Bohemians but who in the current culture, in which workaholism is the norm, are sometimes called slackers. Believe me, I do not use that term as a pejorative. I believe people who steal a Friday morning to hear Stephen Hough play Rachmaninoff are way ahead of most of us.

The first question I had this morning was how the Pulitzer concert (Steve Reich, Different Trains; George Crumb, Black Angels, two SLSO musician quartets,) went last night.

At a recent soiree, my wife and SLSO bassist Chris Carson got into a conversation about programming. They agreed that there ought to be a series devoted to mad composers. A question that would immediately arise in concocting such a series would be: Who do you leave out? I realize a Sane Composer series might not be so appealing, but it certainly would be more exclusive.

For those of you reading beyond the Lou, the morning started with rain, which turned into freezing rain, which is now snow. I shuffled my way toward the stage door across the ice sheet rapidly forming in the parking lot, and turned and saw Principal Viola Shannon Farrell on her way in as well.

I opened the door for her and Shannon, in the cheeriest voice I could imagine with ice pellets raining upon us, said “Nice weather!” Shannon is a native of Wisconsin, and I don’t believe I heard a note of irony in her voice.

This afternoon I observed some of the stage set up for a rehearsal of Black Angels, to be performed at the Pulitzer February 14 and 15. For those attending the Valentine’s Day concert, be forewarned, this is the anti-Valentine’s Day program.

The following is from a list of reminders provided to members of the Saint Louis Symphony Chorus before taking the stage for Berlioz’s Eight Scenes from Faust:

I love to visit the stage after a Mahler symphony rehearsal, as today after Symphony No. 1, "Titan." Musicians display various sorts of disarray, including:

I saw this on the door of an artistic department office today, and I believe it should become the SLSO motto:

Function in disaster, finish in style.

It comes from the writer Joy Williams, and she should know.

Second violin Becky Boyer Hall arrived to Mahler 1 rehearsal wearing her Peyton Manning jersey this morning.

If you have been reading along, you probably have noticed that the postings have been a bit irregular over the last couple weeks. Part of this has been due to the flu that I’ve been surviving, barely, and part of this has been due to the stresses that occur upstairs at Powell during this time of year.

Recent foul ups: