In his first appearance on the Powell Hall stage leading the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since Russia invaded Ukraine, music director Stéphane Denève opened the program Saturday night by bearing witness to the new war in Europe. After brief remarks, he conducted the orchestra in a rousing instrumental version of the Ukrainian state anthem (its music was composed by Mykhailo Verbytsky in 1863). Other than a few woodwinds players, the entire orchestra stood as they played. It was an unforgettable statement of solidarity.
The long program concluded with the work of a Russian composer, which Denève offered in the spirit of unity. This made sense. Decisions made about a concert in St. Louis may not stop a war in Europe, but what we think about Vladimir Putin should not distort how we feel about Igor Stravinsky.
Adapted from music composed for a ballet that premiered in Paris in 1910, Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite” is a timeless love song to the resources of an orchestra, and Denève held a powerful orchestra lightly in his hands as he danced them through it. Though this music has been separated from its ballet, as he cued sections and guided individual players, the conductor at times seemed in a fit of interpretative dance.
Then, in the closing movement, the raw fury of certain violins showed that Stravinsky anticipated punk rock by a good 65 years.
This performance made plain Stravinsky’s genius for orchestration. With a very large band on stage, each distinct section always was audible in its own voice, and often individual players were: the two bassoons, most famously, but also the three frequently clownish trombones. When the harp brought its lush voice into play, each individual string could be heard in the concert hall.
There were truly magic moments. In a sustained episode of hypnotic drone created by the strings, I had a hard time figuring out which strings. I could have swore no hands were moving on any stringed instrument, yet the drone was sustained, as if by magic. Then, in the closing movement, the raw fury of certain violins showed that Stravinsky anticipated punk rock by a good 65 years.
“The Firebird Suite” was preceded in the program by a contemporary piece also written for the dance but now orphaned from it, “La Péri” (1912) by Paul Dukas and the brass fanfare he wrote for it. If “The Firebird Suite” can be heard as a blueprint for meticulous orchestration, “La Péri” offers a clinic in dynamic range. Big, fat, vaguely dissonant brass chords give way to a handful of whispering strings which give way to bursts of action where there is not one idle hand on stage. The orchestra owned every modulation.
The first half of the program concluded with a genuine tour de force: Jean-Yves Thibaudet playing the piano lines in Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Piano Concerto No. 5 in F Major (Egyptian)” in front of an orchestra led by a conductor who was, if not born, carefully trained to manage this interplay.
To say Thibaudet “played” the piano is a gross oversimplification. Through the course of this performance, he touched the piano in every way a piano can be touched. He tickled, stroked, plinked, attacked, massaged, pounded and even tapped out a kind of Morse code on the piano. For every kind of touch there was a distinct sound, each in perfect keeping with the needs of the piece, and his mastery of tonalities evoked richer, fresher tones from the other musicians.
Thibaudet manipulated the piano, for long stretches, as if he were playing alone and no one else was on the stage, in the concert hall, on Earth. He would lean back, making the piano bench into a recliner. But when Saint-Saëns and Denève called him back to the orchestra, his interplay was as intense as his solitude had been. Denève led Thibaudet through intimate conversations with each and every section of the orchestra.
The first piece on the program was also the least: a world premiere of “Goddess Triptych” (2020) by Stacy Garrop, who attended the premiere and was greeted by a standing ovation when invited onstage. Putting the most favorable construction on the facts, “Goddess Triptych” must have been more pleasing to the subscription-series faithful than just about every world premiere ever programmed by the wildly adventurous David Robertson. On the other hand, “Goddess Triptych” says nothing musical that has not been said better before.
I walked away from this intense concert slightly stunned by it all and wanting to know more about the Ukrainian state anthem. I learned that its words, which had not been sung in Powell Hall, were drawn from a poem composed in 1862 by Pavlo Chubynsky. Translated, the poem opens, “Never perished is Ukraine’s glory and freedom!” I like the sound of that as much as any of the magic music I heard from the stage on Saturday night.
The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra performs this program again 3 p.m. Sunday, March 13. See slso.org.
Former managing editor Chris King is now The American’s classical music reporter.
