OK, this is only a semi-preview because this weekend’s first St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert has already happened. That was today, Friday, February 21st at 10:30 am. But that concert was recorded and will be broadcast live on Saturday the 22nd at 7:30 pm on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3. And the final live performance is on Sunday the 23rd at 3 pm at the Touhill Performing Arts Center.
German conductor David Afkham makes his SLSO debut at the podium with piano soloist Saleem Ashkar. Ashkar made his SLSO debut back in 2020 playing Mendelssohn’s Concerto No. 2.
So, let’s talk about the music. Among the subjects that pop up often in concert program notes are: how much a particular piece of music reflects the composer’s state of mind at the time it was written, how much that really matters.
I think those might be common themes (you should pardon the word) running through the whole weekend.
The first piece on the program is “The Ring of Fire and Love” by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen, born 1985. I know, that sounds like the title of a Game of Thrones book but “The Ring of Fire and Love” in actually inspired by a combination of astronomy, geology, and human anatomy.
“The Ring of Fire,” says Tarkiainen, “is a volcanic belt that surrounds the Pacific Ocean and in which most of the world’s earthquakes occur. It is also the term referring to the bright ring of sunlight around the moon at the height of a solar eclipse... Yet, the same expression is also used to describe what a woman feels when, as she gives birth, the baby’s head passes through her pelvis. That moment is the most dangerous in the baby’s life, its little skull being subjected to enormous pressure, preparing it for life in a way unlike any other. The Ring of Fire and Love is a work for orchestra about this earth-shattering, creative, cataclysmic moment they travel through together.”
This is big music, scored for full orchestra including harp, keyboard, and four percussionists. It opens with high woodwinds swirling over percussion and bass; the orchestra’s highest voices paired with the lowest. There’s a sense that something big is coming—maybe an eclipse, maybe an earthquake, maybe a new life beginning. Whatever it is, it happens almost exactly halfway through this ten minute piece and then the scene—this is very visual music—fades slowly to black.
You can hear the whole thing yourself on the SLSOs Spotify playlist:
Up next is the Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor by Mozart, first performed in 1786 in Vienna. It’s one of only two piano concertos in a minor key (No. 20 is the other one) and it’s also scored for what was, for Mozart’s time, a pretty large orchestra, including woodwinds, horns, and tympani. The long, dramatic opening movement would have felt like cutting edge stuff at the time and is widely viewed as one of his greatest piano concertos. Beethoven and Brahms were both big fans.
Is there any connection with Mozart’s life at the time? Hard to say. He was writing it at the same time as his comic opera “The Marriage of Figaro” so maybe, as musicologist Robert D. Levin speculated, it offered an outlet for the dark side of Mozart’s musical moon that would be inappropriate for “Figaro.” Or maybe he was just feeling the stress of being so busy as a composer and pianist.
He certainly wrote the 24th concerto at what was, even for him, a breakneck pace. Mozart served as both conductor and soloist for the premiere, so some of the piano part isn’t written down in the original manuscript. Mozart probably improvised it at the performance, which has made it a bit of a headache for editors ever since.
In any case, it’s emotionally rich stuff. In Men of Music, Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock write that anyone who can listen to this concerto and still say the Mozart is heartless simply cannot listen.
Finally there’s the Symphony No. 1 in C minor, op. 68 by Brahms. What can we hear of the composer’s life here? Well, let’s start with the fact that it took him 21 years to write the thing. His first sketches date from 1854 but the symphony didn’t have its premiere until 1876.
Why so long? Because it was written in the very long shadow cast by Beethoven. 'You have no idea what it's like to hear the footsteps of a giant like that behind you,' Brahms wrote. I think you can even hear those footsteps in the steady tread of the tympani that forms the basis of the magisterial opening of the first movement.
Does that matter? Probably not. But it does seem astonishing that music projecting such assurance could have sprung from the brain of a man so consumed with self-doubt.
If you get the chance, tune in to the live broadcast of this weekend’s concert Saturday night, show up in person on Sunday or, failing that, wait until the middle of the week of the 24th when you’ll be able to listen on demand at the St. Louis Symphony web site at slso.org.
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