Xiaoxiao Qiang and Tzuying Huang presented their No Borders contribution to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Live at the Sheldon series of chamber music the day after the Lunar New Year (on Thursday, January 30). “We usually go to our parents’ house for a feast after Lunar New Year,” Qiang said to introduce the concert. “So, I brought my family here with a whole house of music lovers.”
Qiang (China) and Huang (Taiwan) both hail from Asian countries that celebrate the Lunar New Year as a major holiday. So, one might have expected them to curate this concert around music and composers with strong Asian associations. Without a word of explanation from the curators, even after they welcomed the audience to the Lunar New Year, they looked instead toward … klezmer music, of all things, among other global influences.
They struck the No Borders theme loud and true by opening with Sergei Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes (1919), which was a Russian composer discovering Jewish folk music in the United States. Klezmer for the Chinese New Year – why not? I have it on good authority that many Jews eat Chinese food every Christmas.
Co-curator Huang opened the show with an improvised cadenza on clarinet before the ensemble (an unusual one of clarinet, string quartet, and piano) started performing what Prokofiev wrote. That is what Live at the Sheldon, now in its second season, is all about: two SLSO musicians curating a concert that one of them opens by improvising a solo like some klezmer cat.
Clarinet is an instrument that loves klezmer music. Huang made me think of Naftule Brandwein – the pioneering klezmer clarinetist born seven years before and only 1,000 kilometers away from Prokofiev. Huang was a storyteller playing microtones backed by sinuous ensemble playing.
Though co-curator Qiang (a violinist) played a more supporting role in the opening number, she took to the microphone immediately afterwards. “I don’t usually speak much as a musician. This is unusual – but I like this!” Qiang said, adorably.
She introduced the world premiere of Adieu to the Moon by Seda Balci, a graduate student composer at Mizzou. A native of Turkey, Balci of all people brought the Chinese influence into this concert. She drew her central theme from the Chinese folk song “Jasmine Flower.” Prokofiev defines a tough act to follow, and next up was a spine-tingling marvel of ensemble virtuosity, but Adieu to the Moon provided a simple, quiet moment in a night of complex, dynamic music.
Qiang introduced Paul Schoenfield’s Trio for Clarinet, Violin, and Piano (1990) by saying it “demands virtuosity on all three instruments.” The curators – having chosen the perfect piece for a program where clarinet and violin share the spotlight – were joined on piano by the tireless Peter Henderson, pitching in to play his second different SLSO chamber program in three nights. Henderson touched every key on the piano in this boisterous, 21-minute workout, but the co-curators really shone in their violin/clarinet modulations, with Huang playing clarinet in full throat and Qiang showing a next-level degree of physicality on violin.
Then, there were sparse episodes when the three musicians gradually completed a single melodic line, handing it off from instrument to instrument, from note to note, like a baton handed over and over in a relay.
Huang co-curated herself and her clarinet off the stage for Theme and Variations for Flute and String Quartet (1916) by Amy Beach, a piece I did not know but will never forget now. Yin Xiong played cello – like Henderson, a veteran of the SLSO at the Pulitzer gig from just the night before last. Xiong plucked a bass line on cello at one key moment then stopped hearts with her purity of tone on an elegiac cello feature.
Overall, the group performance was defined by deep ensemble interplay. Beach’s use of ascending and descending figures had an exhilarating effect of climbing mountains and getting around difficult obstacles. I thought: Music could go on sounding like this forever.
We went out as we came in – No Borders –
with Capriccio Espagnol for chamber ensemble (1887) by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, arranged by Easley Blackwood Jr., a mash-up of Russian and Spanish melodies and rhythms.
A bigger band – that now included, for the first time in the concert, horn, trumpet, and bassoon – attacked it with all-in anthemic abandon. This was a chamber ensemble with consummate feel, tact, energy, technique, and responsiveness.
Lunar New Year brought a bright visual element to the show. With red traditionally worn on the Lunar New Year, the musicians wore bright red shoes, ties, dresses and accent pieces. As they played, they glowed.
Live at the Sheldon continues March 6 and April 24. Visit slso.org.