Program Notes

David Robertson
Beofor Music Director and Conductor

American conductor David Robertson is a compelling and passionate communicator whose stimulating ideas and exhilarating music-making have captivated international audiences and musicians alike. Hailed by the press as a brilliant artist and master programmer, he is considered one of the most important conductors of today. His consummate musicianship, fresh stylistic instincts and extensive mastery of orchestral as well as operatic repertoire have secured strong relationships for him with major orchestras worldwide. In fall 2006, Mr. Robertson begins his second season as Music Director of the 127-year-old Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, while continuing as Principal Guest Conductor of London’s BBC Symphony Orchestra, a post he assumed in October 2005.

In addition to leading the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in subscription weeks, outreach programs, and tours, David Robertson continues to guest conduct nationally and internationally throughout the 2006-07 season. He comes twice to New York in the fall to lead the New York Philharmonic in programs featuring music by Mozart and Stravinsky (October), and the U.S. premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Songs (a New York Philharmonic and Auftakt Festival co-commission), alongside works by Debussy and Sibelius (December). Additional guest engagements in the United States include performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Boston Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Robertson’s international guest engagements include appearances with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the opening of the 70th anniversary season of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival featuring the world premiere of Ivan Fedele’s Antigone and Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, staged by director Luca Ronconi.

Born in Santa Monica, California, Mr. Robertson was educated at London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied French horn and composition before turning to orchestral conducting. David Robertson is the recipient of Columbia University’s 2006 Ditson Conductor’s Award, and he and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra received the ASCAP Morton Gould Award for Innovative Programming for the 2005-06 season from the American Symphony Orchestra League. Musical America named him Conductor of the Year for 2000. In 1997, Mr. Robertson received the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductors Award, the premier prize of its kind, given to exceptionally gifted American conductors. He has two teenage sons and is married to pianist Orli Shaham.

Leif Ove Andsnes
Robert R. Imse Guest Artist

Leif Ove Andsnes first drew international attention in the early 1990s, and has regularly performed in the world’s premier concert venues ever since. Though busy making recordings and performing solo and duo recitals, as well as concertos with leading orchestras, Mr. Andsnes is also an avid chamber musician, joining favorite colleagues annually for performances at the festival he co-founded in Risør, Norway in 1991.

Mr. Andsnes plays season-opening concerts with three U.S. organizations this autumn: the Saint Louis Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Carnegie Hall. Later he undertakes several tours, including one with the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, playing Mozart; another with the Artemis Quartet playing Brahms and Schoenberg; and a recital tour in Europe and Japan. He plays concertos with Munich’s Bavarian Radio Symphony led by Franz Welser-Möst, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert, and the Danish National Radio Symphony.

Last season Mr. Andsnes was in residence with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where he gave concerto, solo, and chamber performances as well as master classes. He gave concerts with the Tokyo Philharmonic conducted by Mikhail Pletnev, took a European tour with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and made his solo debut at Vienna’s legendary Musikverein during a recital tour in Europe and the U.S. He also toured the U.S. with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, performing and conducting Mozart piano concertos from the keyboard--extending the previous season’s tour with the orchestra in Germany and Asia.

Two seasons ago New York’s Carnegie Hall presented Mr. Andsnes in seven concerts as a Perspectives artist--the youngest performer to be so honored. A highlight of the season-long series was his collaboration with tenor Ian Bostridge in a performance of Schubert’s Winterreise, which they had performed at Risør.

Mr. Andsnes is co-artistic director of his own chamber music festival in Risør, Norway, which draws some of the most esteemed classical performers to Norway every year. Leif Ove Andsnes’s numerous honors include Norway’s most distinguished award, Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav, as well as the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award, the Gilmore Artist Award, and three Gramophone Awards.

Leif Ove Andsnes was born in Karmøy, Norway, in 1970, and studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under Czech professor Jiří Hlinka.

Mr. Andsnes’s concert attire is graciously provided by Issey Miyake. Further information can be found at the artist’s web site: www.andsnes.com.

Leif Ove Andsnes most recently performed with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in April 1999.

View Musician Roster for this concert.

Musical Stories
BY PAUL SCHIAVO

Music, as many philosophers and even some composers have declared, is essentially an abstract phenomenon, one whose elements--tones, rhythms, instrumental timbres--have no inherent meaning in and of themselves. In light of this, it is remarkable how frequently music is employed in the primal human activity of telling stories. For centuries, composers have applied their art to conveying narratives of greater or lesser complexity. Often, as in the case of operas or oratorios, the marriage of music to words has enhanced the impact of the story. In these cases, the two components, words and music, complement each other: words impart specific narrative details; music suggests shades of psychological or emotional meaning.

Clearly, composers face a greater challenge when telling a story through instrumental music alone. Yet over the centuries they have risen to this challenge with ingenuity and imagination. During the Baroque era, composers attempted musical portrayals of nature (Vivaldi’s Four Seasons violin concertos is the famous example) and other phenomena, forging a tradition that linked certain kinds of instrumental music to dramatic scenarios, or “programs.”

Program music became a cardinal tenet of many composers during the 19th century. Berlioz and Liszt, for example, consistently based their orchestral compositions on literary works, and Liszt, Strauss, and others cultivated the tone poem, a musical genre meant to convey narrative or other “extra-musical” content. The evolution of ballet music from a string of character dances--its format during the 17th and 18th centuries--to a more symphonically conceived genre with some narrative sweep, also brought a significant advance to musical storytelling.

One can, of course, argue that even the most apparently abstract piece of music, one without any obvious pictorial or narrative content, relates some sort of tale. Leif Ove Andsnes, the pianist who performs as soloist in the second work on our program, once said in a master class that even in so classically abstract a piece as a Schubert sonata his intent was to have his performance tell a story. This idea might appear fanciful, music seeming too vague to convey any narrative not revealed through a sung or spoken text, or through a program made known to listeners in advance. We might do well, however, to recall Mendelssohn’s admission that he found writing letters adequate only for relating general impressions. To convey the real details of his experience, he had to compose.

Opera, of course, is the most elaborate and most vivid form of musical storytelling. In the best works of this kind, music, words, and stagecraft all collaborate to render a compelling narrative. During the 19th century, opera found new life in countries on the periphery of Europe, most notably in Russia and in Bohemia, which is now the Czech Republic. In both places, opera served to express burgeoning nationalist sentiments. Patriotic pride among the Czechs arose despite--more probably, as a result of--centuries of Austrian domination. Unable to win political independence, which would come only with the end of World War I, the people of Bohemia turned instead to celebrations of their culture.

A landmark in the Czech cultural assertion came in 1866 with the appearance of The Bartered Bride, a joyously tuneful opera with music by Bedřich Smetana. Like several of his musical contemporaries (Liszt and Wagner particularly come to mind), Smetana led an eventful life. He had been a promising young pianist and composer when revolution shook Prague in 1848. The uprising against Austria’s Hapsburg rulers galvanized Smetana’s patriotic instincts, and the formerly apolitical musician now defended barricades and wrote inspirational Czech songs and marches.

When the revolt failed, Smetana sadly returned to the task of winning a reputation and earning a living. His frustration in this endeavor, coupled with his depression over the political situation in his native land, eventually drove him abroad. Beginning in 1856 he lived and worked in Sweden. But in 1861 the establishment in Prague of a National Theater dedicated to presenting Czech plays and operas called him home. Smetana correctly sensed that a fertile period for Czech culture was at hand, and he lost little time in writing music with nationalist appeal. In doing so, he became the first major composer with an unmistakably Czech musical style, created by combining sophisticated compositional technique with the rhythms and melodic inflections of Bohemian folk music.

Smetana’s musical nationalism found particularly happy expression in his most famous work, The Bartered Bride, which won enormous popularity not only in Prague but throughout Europe. Its plot centers on a young village couple, Mařenka and Jeník, whose love is threatened when the local marriage broker arranges a financially advantageous match for the girl. After various twists of plot, however, all ends well, as Jeník finds himself unexpectedly wealthy and true love triumphs.

Smetana was unhappy with the original libretto of The Bartered Bride and sent it back to its author, a playwright named Karel Sabina, for revision. While he was waiting for Sabina to rework the text, the composer busied himself with writing an overture for the opera. It is unusual for a composer to create an operatic prelude without a finished libretto in hand, let alone having set any of the text to music. But Smetana evidently knew already that the opera would have “a popular character because the plot… is taken from village life and demands a national treatment.” Although several of the themes in the overture reappear during the opera itself in connection with certain characters--the busy subject in the opening moments, for example, is associated with the marriage broker--the piece hardly relates the story of The Bartered Bride in any detail. It does, however, convey the opera’s exuberant comic spirit, and this is enough.

The Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, does not tell a story, at least not in any conventional sense. But there are stories to tell about this composition, both relating to its genesis and to the music of its third movement. In the spring of 1781 Mozart settled in Vienna, where he would reside for the last decade of his life. He quickly set about establishing himself as a composer, teacher, and pianist. Of the various friends and pupils he gathered around him, one of the most engaging must have been Barbara Ployer. She was the daughter of a well‑to‑do businessman who, like Mozart, had moved from Salzburg to the more cosmopolitan environment of the Austrian capital. An intelligent, cultivated young woman and an accomplished pianist, Fräulein Ployer was welcomed in Vienna’s best musical circles and respected by the city’s greatest musical practitioners. Mozart instructed her in both piano and composition. Haydn wrote his fine Piano Variations in F minor for her.

In June 1784, Mozart reported to his father that the spacious Ployer residence would host “a concert, where Fräulein Babette is playing her new concerto in G….” The Piano Concerto in G major, K. 453, which Mozart dedicated “per la Signora Barbara Ployer,” was not the first such work he had written for his talented pupil. Earlier in the same year he had created for her the Piano Concerto No. 14 in E‑flat, K. 449. Neither the earlier E‑flat nor the subsequent G-major concerto is in any way inferior to those works that Mozart wrote for his own performances. Indeed, the latter is among the composer’s finest works for piano and orchestra. Its themes are highly expressive yet seem as natural as breathing, and Mozart explores and develops them with taste and imagination. Especially striking is his use of the wind instruments, which impart iridescent aural colors to the music.

The opening movement is expansive by Mozart’s standards, but its genial character stands in contrast to the heroic bearing so familiar from 19th‑century concertos. The Andante that follows seems by turns serene and melancholy. Alfred Einstein, the eminent Mozart scholar, wrote of its “passionate tenderness.”

Mozart casts the finale as a theme with variations, a form that always elicited from him a high degree of invention. And here’s the story about this movement. In May 1784, the composer bought a pet starling from a shop in Vienna and noted in his journal that the bird had learned to sing--with but one altered note--the first four bars of the tune upon which this movement is based. “Das war schön!” (“That was lovely!”), Mozart added in his notebook. We might well say the same of this exquisite music.

The work that comprises the second half of our concert constitutes a stronger and more elaborate connection between music and storytelling. Indeed, the music of The Wooden Prince, by the great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, cleaves so closely to the ballet scenario on which it is based that it is all but impossible to discuss one apart from the other.

The plot of The Wooden Prince concerns a princess who becomes so infatuated with an artificial likeness of a prince that she ignores the flesh-and-blood man on whom the doll is modeled. Bartók found himself immediately attracted to this story and set to work composing music to it in the spring of 1914. Worries about orchestration--Bartók had chosen to use the kind of very large orchestra favored at this time by such contemporaries as Strauss and Stravinsky--slowed the score’s progress, however, and the music was not completed until January 1917.

The ballet begins with a prelude that vividly suggests the awakening of nature at dawn. It is an extraordinary number that builds over the course of some four minutes in a continuous crescendo from the most elemental beginning--a drone that expands into a C-major chord--to a great climax involving the entire orchestra. The world seems suddenly filled with light and life. Here, in the ballet’s production, the curtain rises to reveal a valley with a stand of trees and a stream running through it.

A capricious melody for the clarinet introduces the Princess, one of the story’s three characters, and in the ensuing number she dances in a carefree manner through the forest, the clarinet tracing her leaps and twirls. Her movement wakens a slumbering Fairy, who motions mysteriously to the field and trees (energetic orchestral outburst). In the distance, a Prince approaches (robust music for low strings and timpani), a crown set upon his golden locks. Spying the Princess, he feels his heart stir. But his path toward her is blocked by the trees of the forest, who act under the Fairy’s magic power to obstruct the Prince. Bartók’s music for this “Dance of the Trees” is imbued with a sense of the supernatural.

Recovering his composure and resolve, the Prince fights his way past the moving forest (violent climax). But when he reaches the stream, he encounters another obstacle, for the Fairy has cast a spell upon its water, which now rages and foams to impede him (“Dance of the Waves,” with rippling, glistening figures in the woodwinds and harps over a broad melody).

Unable to cross the stream, the Prince endeavors to attract the Princess’s attention by attaching his cloak, crown, and tufts of his hair to his staff and waving this high over his head. At last the Princess takes notice and comes running toward him. But when she sees the Prince, now without his crown or cape and shorn of his golden hair, she flees in horror.

The Fairy uses her magic to bring the effigy to life, and the long “Dance of the Princess with the Wooden Prince” begins with the Princess dancing with the Wooden Prince. They go off together, throwing the real Prince into despair (broad melody for strings and brass). But the Fairy appears to comfort him (English horn melody). She decks him with flowers (radiant nature music) and, leading him to a clearing, proclaims him king of the valley and its creatures (sonorous climax).

Suddenly, the Princess and Wooden Prince appear (woodwinds and trumpet). The effigy now appears haggard and has lost its energy. The Princess tries to make it dance but fails and casts it aside. Spying the real Prince, she now is entranced and tries to flirt with him (violin solo). He turns away, and when she attempts to pursue him, the forest rises up to stop her. Thwarted, she collapses in despair, tears her clothes and even her hair. At this moment, the Prince returns (English horn solo) and takes her in his arms. As their love music swells, the Fairy is seen withdrawing. Bartók’s Postlude returns us to the world of nature, which we now can imagine restored to its normal state.

The Wooden Prince has been proposed as an allegory for the fate of artists, whose creations often seem more attractive than themselves; as a story like The Magic Flute, in which a young couple must pass through various trials in which they are both challenged and aided by supernatural forces; and as a warning, such as Wagner seems to issue in his Ring tetralogy, of the dangers of abandoning what is natural in the pursuit of glittering things. Certainly multiple interpretations can be supported by this adult fairy tale. Bartók’s music, which seems as much a symphony or extended tone poem as a ballet score, stands as one of the outstanding achievements of his early maturity.

SAINT LOUIS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Opening Weekend, with extra players

Cynthia J. Brinkley
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Randy Adams
President and Executive Director
David Robertson
Music Director

Scott Parkman
Assistant Conductor and Music
Director of the Saint Louis Symphony
Youth Orchestra
Amy Kaiser
Director of Saint Louis Symphony Chorus,
AT&T Foundation Chair
Robert Ray
IN UNISON® Chorus Director

First Violins
David Halen
Concertmaster
Eloise and Oscar Johnson, Jr. Chair
Heidi Harris
Associate Concertmaster
Louis D. Beaumont Chair
Silvian Iticovici
Second Associate Concertmaster
Peter Otto
Assistant Concertmaster
Dana Edson Myers
Justice Joseph H. and Maxine Goldenhersh Chair
Manuel Ramos
Darwyn Apple
Charlene Clark
Emily Ho
Jenny Lind Jones
Joo Kim
Amy Oshiro
Margaret B. Grigg Chair
Angie Smart
Mary and Oliver Langenberg Chair
Takaoki Sugitani
Haruka Watanabe
Jane and Whitney Harris Chair
Hiroko Yoshida
Jonathan Macfarlaneº

Second Violins
Alison Harney
Principal
Dr. Frederick Eno Woodruff Chair
Kristin Ahlstrom
Associate Principal
Virginia V. Weldon, M.D. Chair
Eva Kozma
Assistant Principal
Deborah Bloom
Rebecca Boyer Hall
Nicolae Bica
Lisa Chong
Jonathan Chu
Elizabeth Dziekonski
Lorraine Glass-Harris
Ling Ling Guan
Jooyeon Kong
Asako Kuboki
Wendy Plank Rosen
Shawn Weil
Lenora Anopº
Ann Magliariº

Violas
Shannon Farrell
Principal
Ben H. and Katherine G. Wells Chair
Kathleen Mattis
Associate Principal
Christian Woehr
Assistant Principal
Mike Chen
Joy Fellows**
Gerald Fleminger
Bryan Florence
Susan Gordon***
Leonid Gotman
Lynn Hague
Morris Jacob
Chris Tantillo**
Ethan Pernelaº

Violoncellos
Daniel Lee
Principal
Frank Y. and Katherine G. Gladney Chair
Melissa Brooks-Rubright
Associate Principal
Ruth and Bernard Fischlowitz Chair
Catherine Lehr
Assistant Principal
Anne Fagerburg
Richard Brewer
James Czyzewski
David Kim
Alvin McCall
Bjorn Ranheim
Robert Silverman
Marian Drakeº

Double Basses
Erik Harris
Principal
Henry Loew Chair
Carolyn White
Associate Principal
Christopher Carson
Assistant Principal
David DeRiso
Warren Goldberg
Sarah Hogan
Donald Martin
Ronald Moberly

Harp
Frances Tietov
Principal
Elizabeth Eliot Mallinckrodt Chair
Ayako Watanabeº

Flutes
Mark Sparks
Principal
Herbert C. and Estelle Claus Chair
Assistant Principal*
Jennifer Nitchman
Jan Gippo
Alice Dadeº

Piccolo
Jan Gippo

Oboes
Peter Bowman
Principal
Morton D. May Chair
Barbara Orland
Assistant Principal
Philip Ross
Carolyn Banham
Lisa McCulloughº

English Horn
Carolyn Banham

Clarinets
Scott Andrews
Principal
Walter Susskind Chair
Diana Haskell
Assistant Principal
Wilfred and Ann Lee Konneker Chair
Tina Ward
James Meyer

E-flat Clarinet
Diana Haskell

Bass Clarinet
James Meyer

Saxophones
Jeffrey Collinsº
Nathan Nabbº

Bassoons
George Berry
Principal
Molly Sverdrup Chair
Andrew Gott
Assistant Principal
Felicia Foland
Bradford Buckley

Contrabassoon
Bradford Buckley

Horns
Jennifer Montone
Principal
W.L. Hadley and Phoebe P. Griffin Chair
Lawrence Strieby
Assistant Principal
James Wehrman
Tod Bowermaster
Gregory Roosa
Carolyn Landis
Amy Jo Rhineº

Trumpets
Susan Slaughter
Principal
Symphony Women’s Association Chair
Thomas Drake
Assistant Principal
Joshua MacCluer
Gary Smith
David J. Hyslop Chair
Christopher van Bergenº

Cornets
Thomas Drake
Mary Weberº

Trombones
Timothy Myers
Principal
Mr. and Mrs. William R. Orthwein, Jr. Chair
Stephen Lange
Assistant Principal
Jonathan Reycraft
Gerard Pagano

Bass Trombone
Gerard Pagano

Tuba
Michael Sanders
Principal
Lesley A. Waldheim Chair

Timpani
Richard Holmes
Principal
Symphony Women’s Association Chair
Thomas Stubbs
Assistant Principal
Paul A. and Ann S. Lux Chair

Percussion
Principal *
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Foundation Chair
John Kasica
Acting Principal
Distinguished Percussion Chair
Thomas Stubbs
Alan Schillingº
Jason Niehoffº

Keyboard Instruments
Principal*
Florence G. and Morton J. May Chair
Peter Hendersonº
Vera Parkinº

Music Library
John Tafoya
Librarian
Elsbeth Brugger
Associate Librarian
Roberta Gardner
Library Assistant

Stage Staff
Michael Lynch
Stage Manager
Joseph Clapper
Assistant Stage Manager
Joshua Riggs
Stage Technician

*Chair vacant
**Replacement
***Leave of Absence
º Extra for this week’s program