On October 9, 10, and 11, the St. Louis Symphony and St. Louis Symphony Chorus perform Beethoven’s Ninth (and final) Symphony, preceded by selections from Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal. I write about the two works here (my essay begins on p. 25):
Category Archives: Music Writing
All-Strauss program at the St. Louis Symphony
I have been terribly remiss in updating my blog, but better late than never, I suppose. In these program notes for the St. Louis Symphony (this weekend! I know! I suck!), I wrote about the much-misunderstood Richard Strauss: specifically, his tone poems Don Quixote and Macbeth, as well as the final scene from his final opera, Capriccio. I have many more things to say about Richard Strauss than I could express in the allotted space, and I think I’m going to start adding “extra” content to my blog posts. Why not? But not right now because other deadlines are nigh.
Anyway, here is a link to this weekend’s fantastic concert. If you didn’t manage to score tickets, you can listen to the live radio broadcast on St. Louis Public Radio beginning at 8:00 Central Time TONIGHT (Saturday, 9/26). It will be streaming on the St. Louis Public Radio website if you don’t live within the broadcast region of FM 90.7.
Here are my program notes for the concert:
http://tinyurl.com/qbwkr3z
Romantic Projections
The St. Louis Symphony performs Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, Glanert’s Frenesia (in its U.S. premiere!), and Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (with pianist Emanuel Ax) on Saturday, April 25, and Sunday, April 26, 2015. My program notes start on p. 26.
Surviving Wagner
Gabriel Fauré, Ladykiller
This weekend (March 6 and 7) the St. Louis Symphony performs Fauré’s Elegy for Cello and Orchestra, Wagner’s “Brünnhilde’s Immolation” from Götterdämmerung (Christine Brewer, soprano); and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 3.
My program notes are here:
All-Beethoven program at the St. Louis Symphony
It has been a terribly long time since I have updated my blog. I have been writing a lot of program notes–mostly for the Dallas Symphony, and more on that in a future post–but I haven’t been blogging, and I apologize to the half-dozen or so of you that follow my lame ass.
My lameness aside, I am very, very excited about this weekend’s upcoming performance by the St. Louis Symphony. As most of you know, two of the pieces on this program, Three Equali for Four Trombones and the Mass in C, are very rarely performed. The St. Louis Symphony, in fact, hasn’t ever performed either of them. (The other piece, Symphony No. 8, is performed far more often but still not as often as many of his other symphonies: the even-number curse, perhaps.)
Without further ado, here is a link to my notes on the program. I’m also including a link to a profile on St. Louis Symphony Chorus Director Amy Kaiser, which I also wrote. Ms. Kaiser is celebrating her twentieth-anniversary season with the symphony this year, and we are all very grateful to her for making the Chorus one of the best in the country.
The St. Louis Symphony performs this all-Beethoven program on January 23 and January 24:
Click to access sls-jan15-insert2-4-final.pdf
An interview with Amy Kaiser, St. Louis Symphony Chorus Director:
http://www.playbillarts.com/features/article/8850.html
Brahms/Glanert and Brahms
On October 4 and October 5, 2014, the St. Louis Symphony performs Four Serious Songs, by Johannes Brahms, with linking preludes and a postlude by the 21st-century composer Detlev Glanert, who also arranged the songs for orchestra. After the intermission, the St. Louis Symphony Chorus joins the orchestra for Brahms’s sublime A German Requiem. Markus Stenz conducts, and the soprano Carolyn Sampson and the bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi are the soloists. The program is here:
Click to access sls-oct14-insert1-4-final.pdf
(My notes begin on p. 26.)
Opening Weekend at the St. Louis Symphony
On September 12 and 13, 2014, the St. Louis Symphony performs Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending, and Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable.”
My program notes are here if you would like to read them:
http://tinyurl.com/mhyqr76
Adam Schoenberg, Copland, Mahler, Respighi
The last St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra concert of the season takes place on Sunday, June 1, at 3:00 p.m. On the program: Adam Schoenberg’s “Up”; selections from Copland’s orchestral suite Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo; Mahler’s “Adagietto” (from his Symphony Number 5), and Respighi’s Pini di Roma (Pines of Rome). My program notes are here:
Tickets are free (with a $1 service charge). You can order them online at http://www.stlsymphony.org or buy them at the Powell Hall box office.
Brahms, Wagner, Schoenberg
Arnold Schönberg: Blaues Selbstportrait, 1910 (source: Wikipedia Commons)
On March 28 and 29, the St. Louis Symphony performs Brahms’s Symphony No. 3, Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, and Schoenberg’s Erwartung. Here is a link to the program (my essays start on p. 26).
Wagner, Elgar, Tchaikovsky (St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra)
The St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra will be performing Wagner’s Rienzi overture, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5. The concert takes place on March 23, 2014, at 3:00, in Powell Hall.
My program notes are here:
René Spencer Saller 