The greatest surprise in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s ongoing exile from Powell Hall has been the Live at The Sheldon chamber music series introduced last season. In this new series, SLSO musicians are chosen to curate a program of music and staff it with fellow musicians. The second season of Live at The Sheldon kicked off Thursday, October 10 with a program of music for strings curated by Erin Schreiber and Shawn Weil.
They programmed two string quartets, a violin duet, a violin duet with piano, and a piano quintet. They rounded out the musicians in their string quartet with Shannon Farrell Williams (viola) and Bjorn Ranheim (cello), and for piano they tabbed Peter Henderson. They opened the program with a tale of two string quartets.
Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte (2011) is a challenging piece of new music. Shaw has the musicians play dissonant harmonics, one single string – at times, only a total of four strings were being played on the four stringed instruments – and empty air, or what Schreiber described as “sandpaper wings.” I know it’s new music when a musician is making a stringed instrument sound like a dental drill; when a quartet did that, it sounded like a whole dental school. There is an art to making virtuosic musicians sound like they don’t know how to play their instruments, and Shaw has mastered it.
“Molto Adagio” from String Quartet No. 1 (1946) by George Walker – the first Black composer to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Music (for Lilacs for voice and orchestra, 1996) – returned these gifted musicians to playing the customary parts of their strings with the customary parts of their bows. The audience heard melodies and harmonies our ears were accustomed to hearing.
Weil introduced Stefan Freund’s violin duet Delirium (2000) by saying he served as the best man in the composer’s wedding. Freund, who teaches composition at the University of Missouri, then said he wrote the duet as a recital piece for his then-girlfriend to play with her roommate; he and his wife Julia now are parents of a 17-year-old daughter. You could feel the love.
The music, too, was full of love in the form of virtuosic interplay. However, I quibble with the title of the piece. “Delirium” implies a disturbance in attention and awareness, but these parts, as performed by Schreiber and Weil, displayed consummate attention and awareness. This music was not so much delirious as poised, controlled, and intense.
For Pablo de Sarasate’s Navarra (1889), the two curators were joined onstage by Henderson on piano. On a night of string music programmed by violinists, Henderson was treated to some sweet piano parts. Navarra calls for spry cabaret piano, romantic dance piano, and piano as percussion. The piano provided an evolving backdrop for daring and frenzied violin playing, furious sawing with undulating dynamics.
The program closed with Robert Schumann ‘s Piano Quintet in E-flat major (1842), which kept making me think of better words than “delirium” for Freund’s duet and the rest of this intense, exciting concert. Fervor, maybe? They played the Schumann with group ferocity – even the movement that sounded like a dirge was an ensemble dirge, played like lovers clutched in a death grip. Henderson pounded on the piano like a man possessed.
Or maybe that’s what it was – not delirium, but possession.
Part of the fun of Live at the Sheldon is seeing symphony musicians interact in small groups on an intimate stage. Ranheim on cello was engaging throughout the concert, expressive in body and face. Williams on viola at times searched the other musicians’ faces and danced in her chair with the viola playing the Schumann. The curators, however, were sphinx-like. Only when they stood to play the violin duets did they fully use their bodies and show traces of emotion on their faces.
It must be said that they both looked beautiful, however much or little they moved or emoted. With Schreiber in her pale olive gown and Weil in his gunmetal blue suit, they looked like a prom queen and king or a pair of wedding cake toppers.
The strongest group connection was expressed as everyone gathered focus and strength to play the final movement of the Schumann, the last piece of the concert. All five musicians quietly shared a smile just before they started the last movement. When they began to perform again, the Sheldon was audibly and visibly filled with the joy of play – playing music, but it was a spirit of joy in play we took with us out of the concert hall to whatever else we wanted or needed to do.
Live at the Sheldon continues with concerts on December 5, January 30, March 6 and April 24. File under: must see and hear. Visit https://slso.org/get-tickets/concert-series/live-at-the-sheldon/.