The guest conductor tradition is a lifeblood of the symphony orchestra. Guest conductors cross‑pollinate orchestras, composers and repertoire. They bring local premieres of fresh work by their composer buddies. They provide new insights and passionate connections to canonical repertoire. They cleanse musicians’ palates for musical direction and vibe.
This weekend at Powell Hall, guest conductor Kristiina Poska fulfilled every facet of this essential tradition.
The local premiere of fresh work by one of the guest conductor’s composer buddies? That was Proteus Pulse by Ülo Krigul, Poska’s countryman from Estonia. This weekend’s performances by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra were not only a St. Louis premiere but also a U.S. premiere. (Poska conducted the Flanders Symphony Orchestra for the world premiere in Tallinn, Estonia, on March 17, 2022.)
True to its title, Proteus Pulse is a shape‑shifter. It opened with a brash, brassy blast and was dominated by horns through a controlled‑chaotic episode that reminded me of Charles Mingus at his most brassy and messy. Mostly through the agency of a busy percussion section, the orchestra evolved into a gamelan ensemble. The violins erupted from a supporting role into a frenetic lead with a Chinese touch to their melodic shapes. Then low brass and lower strings surged from the depths and swamped the orchestra to a screeching halt.
The guest conductor’s new insights and passionate connections to canonical repertoire? That came with the closing number, Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3. But first, Poska had to cleanse the musicians’ palates for musical direction and vibe. Guest soloist Marie‑Ange Nguci helped her lead the orchestra on W.A. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 and provided the cleanser.
This performance opened with a clinic on the core of an orchestra — a majestic modulation of violins, violas, cellos and double basses, with brief, vivid tastes for all nine wind players. It was a quintessential ensemble performance, until it wasn’t.
When Nguci took command of Mozart’s piano part, it was possible to forget about the existence of other musicians and instruments. She mostly performed leaning into the piano, her face often just inches from the keys, as if letting the music steam her pores as it arose from the instrument. Poska kept looking back at her soloist to keep her included in the ensemble, but how can you cue the only person onstage performing the concerto without a copy of the score?
At times, Nguci shook her head back and forth as she spun out the piano lines, in apparent conversation with herself, the piano and the composer — the ebullient and irrepressible Mozart. In those rare moments when Mozart left his soloist idle, Nguci sat on the piano bench and peered around the orchestra, absorbing the music in what looked like a daze.
It was the conductor who came out empty‑handed to lead the orchestra through Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 without reference to a score. Sometimes you sense when rehearsals have been going well and an orchestra is bursting to perform a particular piece of music. The musicians lurched into the Schumann with physical force. Principal cello Daniel Lee appeared to run in place while playing at one exuberant moment.
The horn‑heaviness of Proteus Pulse found its precursor in Schumann’s Third. A five‑horn line made SLSO sound like a symphony orchestra as marching band. New Orleans is nearly 5,000 miles away from Düsseldorf, Germany, where the composer conducted the premiere of this symphony on February 6, 1851, but if SLSO performed this piece on the streets of the Big Easy, they would draw a line of festive dancers.
While Schumann beat Phil Spector to the creation of a Wall of Sound by a cool century, Poska also teased something very different out of this score she has shelved in her head. Throughout the dense ensemble orchestration there were recurrent clearings in the sound where the oddest subsets of instruments sounded together alone in the silence. Poska revealed Schumann as a risk‑taking chef willing to pair the most unlikely ingredients to savor new flavors.
Guest conductors do all these valuable things for orchestras and audiences in appearances that also serve as auditions for both guest conductor and orchestra. Would I want this place to be my new musical home? Would we want this person to wave a baton at us day after day?
It might be worth noting that SLSO Music Director Stéphane Denève has led the orchestra for eight years — longer than half of his 12 predecessors. If this show could be considered an audition for whether Poska is fit to lead the orchestra whenever Denève eventually pivots away, on my scorecard she advances to the next round — as did our most recent guest conductor, Dalia Stasevska. SLSO has never had a woman music director.
There was one other magical moment in this more or less perfect night of music. Poska played no role in this moment, though she did pull up a chair in the percussion section and admire the performance along with the rest of us.
It was Nguci’s encore on piano. Guest soloists typically come back out from the wings to play some little bauble after bringing down the house. Nguci single‑handedly added another major work to the program. She performed Les Jeux d’Eau à la Villa d’Este (The Fountains of the Villa d’Este), the fourth piece from Franz Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) — seven and a half minutes of the most exquisite piano playing we had not even expected.
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