October 2007 Archives

If you are looking for some musical tricks and treats, there are still tickets available for the concert at the Pulitzer tonight, which includes George Crumb’s Vox balaenae (Voice of the Whale). This is the same George Crumb who wrote Black Angels, which an SLSO quartet performed last season at the Pulitzer. People are still talking about it. I asked my colleague Eric Gaston in artistic how rehearsals were going – he takes on many of the producer responsibilities for the Pulitzer concerts – and he spoke of the sound of the cello in the Crumb piece, which, amazingly, at one point in the work, indeed sounds like the singing of a whale.

I know I’m not the only one around the hall wondering why the Missouri flags are not at half mast today for the fallen native son, Porter Wagoner.

I sat next to trumpet player Tom Drake at a musician/staff brown bag luncheon the other day.

It’s so ’80s around here this week. Leonard Slatkin is back (receiving a very warm welcome from the orchestra at the first rehearsal), as is Joseph Schwantner, who was the SLSO’s first composer-in-residence back then (Slatkin and the SLSO actually began championing his music in the ’70s, and the Maestro has maintained his relationship with the composer, conducting the world premiere of Morning’s Embrace with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2006, the St. Louis premiere this weekend). The concert is very Slatkin/SLSO repertoire: premiere American composer; Central European concerto, Bartók, which harkens back to Slatkin’s tutelage under Czech conductor Walter Susskind; and a romantic Russian, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4.

The other day I added to my list of disappointments that in the program notes to the upcoming concerts Child Light, which features Mahler’s Symphony No. 4, I had left out the second accent in guest conductor Jiří Bělohlávek’s name. I know, missing one accent out of four isn’t so bad, but after getting Bernard Labadie’s name wrong (Barnard) on the program page a couple weeks ago, and then being scolded by the grammar police a while back, I was ready to turn in my publications manager badge.

Some of you may be weary of my references to Alex Ross, New Yorker staff writer, blog artist of therestisnoise.com, and author of the just released The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century. A few of us here at the hall have just received the new book and are as giddy as Hannah Montana fans.

A big shout out Brava! goes to Liz Wienke, who by day serves admirably as a sales associate in the ticketing office way down in the lower depths of Powell Symphony Hall, but on last Friday and Saturday evenings her talents as an actress were put to use on stage in the role of the provocateur in the David Robertson/SLSO production of Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu. Short notice, line changes, costume adaptations, contradictory stage directions: and she handled them all with remarkable calm and inventiveness.

Not only does Bernd Alois Zimmermann call for an unusual array of instruments on stage for his Music for the Banquets of King Ubu (Musique pour les soupers de Roi Ubu) – the only strings are double bass, lots of brass and woodwind, timpani and percussion, harp, saxophone, electric guitar, piano and organ, acoustic guitar and mandolin (in this case played by the multi-talented SLSO violinist Becky Boyer Hall, “I’m not a double-fisted string player, I’m triple-fisted,” she told me), the German composer calls for an actor, with text that pertains to the political situation of the particular time and place in which the work is performed.

My morning began with entering the hall to hear Principal Flute Mark Sparks practicing on stage. Well, for him it was practicing, for me it was listening to music that was like the song of a beautiful golden bird of heaven. Or pretty close to that.

As a morning-rehearsal surprise, David Robertson was serenaded by the full orchestra with “Lullaby and Good-night.” And was gifted some goody bags for the twins.

Following the first rehearsal of Zimmermann’s Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu, which is an SLSO premiere, the litter of pencils, dulled by the musicians fervently making notes on their parts -- pencils on the stands, pencils that had fallen to the floor – told a story I haven’t the skill to tell.

So much stuff this week: horn auditions Monday afternoon; Off/On Stage at Powell Wednesday (which I just learned is now all On Stage because the Off Stage discussion portion of the evening has grown so popular that the foyer isn’t big enough for the audience – guess we got to figure out a new name); a Classical Detour to France Thursday evening with David Robertson – we’re still figuring out what the specialty drink of the evening will be: absinthe, champagne, a French kiss (vodka, Grand Marnier and raspberry liqueur)?; Susan Graham sings La Mort de Cleopatre as part of the Unhinged program Friday and Saturday night; and then the Saint Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra and the Youth Symphony of Kansas City join forces on the Powell stage for a big concert Sunday afternoon, which includes both ensembles together for Pines of Rome with David Robertson conducting. A busy, busy, busy place this week.

The other day the Henchmen asked me, “Could you just tell people in your blog to come to the concerts?”

The first thing special ops commando Maggie Bailey heard when she walked into the hall the other morning was that the portative organ that had been secured for this weekend’s concerts was not what guest conductor Bernard Labadie wanted. (Maggie works under the heading of “Orchestra Management” with the title “Operations Manager,” but, like the Henchmen, deserves a much more colorful title, so I’ll see how “special ops commando” flies.)

The SLSO orchestra manager, Robert McGrath, who is responsible for making sure all the right people are on stage playing the right instruments and many more matters both refined and unwieldy that comes under the heading “Orchestra Management,” in response to yesterday’s post about Frances Tietov practicing her harp before the Kinder Konzert, told me that his wife is a harpist, and that the harp may be the only instrument that neighbors never complain about hearing through the walls.

I bet you don’t have this at your office. This morning the stage mike was on so my office speaker picked up Frances Tietov practicing on her harp previous to the Kinder Konzert. I don’t know what she was working on, perhaps the Fauré Requiem for this weekend, but it sounded so soothing and liquid and sumptuous. I went downstairs and stood by the stage briefly and saw the effort Frances puts into making it all sound so effortless: pressing on the foot pedals; shifting back and forth from the low strings distant from her and the high strings nearest; sometimes plucking, sometime strumming, sometimes caressing the strings; and keeping it all in time and in tune, playing the notes on the page.

I went back to my office and the music was still there, sweet, ethereal, as gentle and at ease as water flowing over stones.

Some recent news:

Nic McGegan makes you think about alternative meanings of the word “conductor,” for indeed there are few who are such conductors of energy, electricity, enthusiasm, optimism, joy, all of the above, as Nic—and from whom those things pass from musician to musician to each member of the audience.

After the morning rehearsal, I crossed paths with one of the musicians. “How are you?” I asked. She paused, sighed, “Oh, I’m overwhelmed.” “State of the world,” I thought.

Then, in the afternoon, Jonathan Biss played the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 2, and the state of the world changed. The marvelous emerged out of the frenzy.

“Oh my gosh that was a lot of children!” exclaimed Marketing VP Kristi Kovalak after her Kinder Konzert bus duty was done.

It has been very, very quiet around the old hall today, which is a sure sign that the first Kinder Konzerts of the season will be upon us tomorrow, when it is going to be very, very loud.

My colleague Melissa Lange, who loves brass and loves a brass player -- SLSO trombonist Stephen Lange, her husband who played so beautifully in Martin’s Concerto for Seven Winds last week -- told me that she and Stephen found a recording of Elgar’s In the South and are very excited about the horn writing for the piece. The upcoming concert is only the second time the SLSO has performed In the South. The first time was with Max Zach conducting in 1918. The title, by the way, refers to a holiday Elgar and his family spent on the Italian Riviera, Alassio to be exact. Not the Redneck Riviera. Although I for one would be interested in hearing such a work.