When guest soloist Conrad Tao came out for his encore at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on Friday, October 18, he said, “Hi, everybody.” A young man from Urbana, Illinois, he was wearing a T-shirt with a logo that I could not decipher (note to self: pack opera glasses) under his jacket. He had just brought down the house performing Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of guest conductor David Danzmayr.
Tao said he wanted to play more music for us, then named three American composers: Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg (that left everyone racking their brains for obscure composers) and Art Tatum. Art Tatum! The jazz giant? That made sense. Tao had just pounded barrelhouse piano out of Saint-Saëns. He had been sliding back and forth on the piano bench like he had wheels under the seat of his pants. He and we were ready for some Art Tatum.
Tao said, “I am going to play my transcription of Art Tatum’s 1953 performance of a little-known tune called ‘Over the Rainbow.’” That explained Arlen and Harburg: they wrote the song for The Wizard of Oz (1939). Tao then turned toward the piano and performed a historical reenactment of Art Tatum making magic and math out of an irresistible melody grooved into our collective brain. I literally would have left my house and gone to the Touhill to see nothing but Conrad Tao performing these four minutes of music.
At one point Tao lifted his right leg and flared it, wide, to the right, like he was playing Art Tatum but channeling Jerry Lee Lewis. That made it all the more clear what he had brought to the Saint-Saëns.
Playing the concerto, Tao at times slashed at the piano – it defied belief how someone could slash a piano to strike that complicated combination of notes. He had the right foot of a punk rock drummer pounding a bass drum the way he hammered that foot pedal. His range of volume was gigantic. While it is extremely difficult to play piano with virtuosity at a tiny volume, every soloist who fronts the SLSO can do that. I have never heard anyone thunder a piano melody without dumbing it down one iota like this guy. Though Tao really did look like he was going to pull a Jerry Lee and stomp on the piano, that was not necessary. He was already stomping on the piano keys with his hands.
When I first settled in for the concert, a tall, thin, boyish young man sitting next to me was ghost conducting, waving an imaginary wand in the air. I narrowly stopped myself from asking him if he wanted to be a conductor when he grows up. I rather thought better and asked if he is a conductor. He said, “I’m the assistant conductor of this orchestra.”
It was Samuel Fargo Hollister, just two months into his eminently enviable new role – indeed, still technically a graduate student at Yale University. After Tao’s encore following the Saint-Saëns concerto, we chatted during intermission. Hollister said, “The way Conrad digs seventy times more sound out of the piano than anybody else but never loses his musicality or touch allows the orchestra to let loose in its usual symphonic way. There’s no holding back so they don’t overwhelm the soloist.”
Tao’s volume might have liberated the musicians to do what they do, but his virtuosity while playing such a complex and dominant solo part also tested the tightness of the orchestra. The orchestra tested tight.
After the intermission, the orchestra stayed tight under Danzmayr’s direction performing Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5 (1830) with simultaneous virtuosity. Perhaps inspired by Tao’s physicality, many of the musicians were bursting out of their seats as they performed this somewhat neglected but jubilant ensemble gem. Violinist Kristin Ahlstrom moved every part of her body, at one time or another, to the tempo of Mendolssohn. Chris Tantillo on viola kicked his left leg looking like he had picked up Jerry Lee from Conrad Tao. Don’t stomp on the viola!
In a brilliant programming move, SLSO prefaced the Mendelssohn – no pause, no applause, in between – with the St. Louis premiere of James MacMillan’s One (2012). As one rarely hears on the symphony stage, this piece is monodic; as promised by the title, there is one melody line. Sam Hollister, the boy assistant conductor, said it well at intermission.
“It’s about the sheer notion of unity, everyone playing one melody with no harmony or counterpoint,” Hollister said. “Yet everyone sounds like themselves. They maintain individual character while coming together, which is the spirit of the orchestra.” You can see why Yale and SLSO wanted this kid.
Having the orchestra perform One as a kind of overture for Mendelssohn 5 showed how this symphony alsostarts monodic before developing harmony and counterpoint. Extending the monody with the McMillan miniature intensified the effect of a monotone coming into color. It made the varied depths of this consummately talented orchestra that much more vivid as they gradually emerged.
This intense and satisfying concert opened with another St. Louis premiere – of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in A minor (1898). Coleridge-Taylor was an African-British composer who died young at 37 (from pneumonia brought on by overwork, Hollister told me) and is enjoying a well-deserved posthumous revival. Though the Ballade is most deeply colored by swooning romantic violins, Coleridge-Taylor wrote for a dynamic ensemble. The piece is nearly featureless until Thomas Frey on clarinet then Phil Ross on oboe got a taste, followed by the low-riding Danny Lee on cello, playing in his first concert of the new season.
Guest conductor David Danzmayr (who looked a bit like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in a black Nehru jacket) is that rare ambidextrous conductor. It’s not that he switched the baton from hand to hand like some novelty act, but rather that his left hand had things to say to specific musicians and sections distinct from his tempo-keeping baton hand. The maestro jumped up and down spontaneously, danced from foot to foot without affectation, snapped a crisp left half turn to cue the violins (but not in a showy way), and did these little hop hops that made you think a skip would soon follow, if he only had more runway.
Maestro Danzmayr showed the concert’s soloist the consummate respect of having the piano set up behind his podium, rather than to his left for access to cues and interplay. This said to Conrad Tao: I know that you’ve got my back and you know this music just as intimately as I do; I’ll see you for the ovations and encore.
SLSO performs this program again 7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 19. Visit SLSO.org.
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