Elim Chan is the kind of visiting conductor whom a symphony will build themes around with references to the Chinese calendar and the Asian Chamber of Commerce, as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra did on Saturday night. So it was an interesting choice to pair her on the program’s opening piece with another featured artist, a guest soloist, who is not Asian and stole the show.
The Hong Kong of [Elim Chan’s] childhood may be far in culture and association from the Ukraine where Tchaikovsky lifted snatches of folksong sung by the household butler for his second symphony…
Multi-percussionist Martin Grubinger, from the distinctly non-Asian city of Salzburg, did steal the show on a piece by an Asian composer, “The Tears of Nature” by Tan Dun (born in 1957 in Changsha, China). And it was inevitable that Grubinger would snare the spotlight from the featured conductor and orchestra because this is a show piece composed for him.Â
“While composing I thought about nature,” Tan Dun writes in the program notes,” and focused on the passion of Martin Grubinger.” The passion and the athleticism, that is – Grubinger prowled the Powell Hall stage during the performance like the tiger that also came to Tan Dun’s mind in composing the notes.
A percussion concerto that meditates on nature might be expected to depart from the calmer aspect of nature that can be evoked by strings and woodwinds. The nature Tan Dun evokes here is the cataclysmic nature of earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes. “The Tears of Nature” sounded more like the raving, furious outburst of nature. It was the single loudest piece of music I have ever heard performed at Powell – the symphony as Stomp.
For much of “The Tears of Nature,” which the orchestra was performing for the first time, Grubinger may as well have been performing alone. He was a one-man earthquake, tsunami and hurricane, drowning out all of the other instruments. This clearly is by design rather than a product of overplaying, for when Grubinger shifted from drum to vibraphone, he blended in beautifully with the woodwinds, brass and strings.
In the second half of the program, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra sounded like the balanced yet dynamic ensemble we know and love. Elim Chan conducted Tchaikovsky’s relatively underplayed “Symphony No. 2 in C Minor.” It was last performed by the orchestra in 2012, when the young guest conductor was still a graduate student in music at the University of Michigan.
In this symphony, Tchaikovsky was not inspired by the brute force of natural disaster but rather the human voice – and the voice singing, not shrieking. This is a symphony built around Ukrainian folksong with the woodwinds and brass pitched in the range and tonalities of plaintive human song. The first folksong the composer quotes is “Down the Mother Volga,” a song about a mighty river with a thunderstorm in the lyrics (which are not sung in the symphony), but after the Martin Grubinger show even the suggestion of thunderstorm with rumbling timpani sounded like a light snowfall.
Left alone at the head of the orchestra without the prowling Martin Grubinger, Elim Chan was not the sort of flashy conductor who imposes her personality on a piece of music. She was passionate but precise, and the orchestra sounded fluent and confident in her hands. The Hong Kong of her childhood may be far in culture and association from the Ukraine where Tchaikovsky lifted snatches of folksong sung by the household butler for his second symphony, but together the conductor, composer and orchestra made Powell Hall glow like a warm home on a cold February night.
The program is reprised today, Sunday, February 6, at 3 p.m.
