This weekend the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is celebrating conductor laureate Leonard Slatkin for his 80 years on Earth and 56 years with the orchestra. For all the longevity and maturity conjured by those numbers, this program of music was startlingly fresh.
On Friday, October 25, Slatkin led SLSO through two world premieres (of Slatkin’s own arrangements of Five Sonatas for Orchestral Wind Ensemble by Domenico Scarlatti and a birthday surprise), a U.S. premiere (of Voyager 130 by the maestro’s son, Daniel Slatkin) and a St. Louis premiere (of Timepieceby Cindy McTee, Slatkin’s wife). All of that and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, which Slatkin first conducted in St. Louis in 1971 and most recently in 1992 but sounded fresher than ever at the Touhill Performing Arts Center on Friday.
That said, these performances of this music also spoke to the facts and the spirit of the occasion. This was mature music performed with sensitive complexity, and it all shared a deep family feeling.
To start with the world premiere we were expecting, we got to hear what Slatkin heard in his head during the pandemic: five of the 555 sonatas composed by Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) that Slatkin arranged for orchestral wind ensemble during his COVID downtime. The maestro conducted the symphony’s winds with no strings or percussion – and no baton. He used both bare hands to draw pictures in the air of these beautiful melodies he had moved off the keyboard into the lungs.
The deft melding of instruments often left me reading the musicians’ lips trying to figure out where the sounds were coming from. Slatkin found and explored the tonal centers shared across various wind instruments. He showed the lightest touch with a trumpet I have ever heard. He really put the bass in bassoon. I imagined a Venn diagram of what instruments played win and thought it could be applied to social constructs as a model for harmonious group behavior.
Slatkin programmed the world premiere of these arrangements after the opening number, SLSO’s first performance of McTee’s Timepiece (2000). The transition was effective. Though McTee wrote for a large orchestra (including percussive gizmos I can’t name) whereas her husband arranged only for winds, both compositions have a relatively narrow range of melody, tempo, rhythm and volume. The effect conveyed was not of limitation or lack but rather the focus of long familiarity. I thought of what the bluesman said to the jazz cat: “You know why you play so many notes? You can’t find the right one.”
The family triptych was scheduled to conclude the concert’s first half with the U.S. premiere of Daniel Slatkin’s Voyager 130 (world-premiered in Dublin just a month before with Daniel’s dad conducting). This composition follows a companion narrative of the namesake spacecraft’s journey into space, featuring electronic approximation of vintage spaceship noises and samples from the Golden Record that went space-borne on the actual voyage.
I enjoyed the widening of melodic, dynamic and ultimately emotional range compared to the McTee and Scarlatti/Slatkin pieces. This befit a younger composer (Daniel was born in St. Louis in 1994) and an expansion of conceptual scope from the centennial of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (celebrated in Timepiece) or the Baroque courts entertained by Scarlatti to the far reaches of outer space. More provincially, it was a delight to see our orchestra’s principal violin and principal cello, David Halen and Danny Lee, play a duet feature. I have never seen that treat before.
Daniel then added an element of alleged surprise in springing the world premiere of a piece he wrote for the occasion, Grand Slam Fanfare. “Have a seat,” he said to the maestro as the son took the baton. The crowd guffawed when this soaring and jubilant tune adapted certain notorious organ vamps played to hype the crowd at baseball games. Cardinals Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith drew gasps from the audience when he strode out onstage carrying a baseball bat that he tapped to mime the percussive note that ended the fanfare.
Gasps are rare enough at symphony concerts, but when did you ever hear a guffaw, a belly laugh? This was some next-level entertainment. I said to a neighbor, “I am starting to think we give nepotism a bad rap.”
At intermission, I bumped into some respectful McCleur North High School students who said they were having a good time.
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, which Slatkin apparently needs to conduct in St. Louis every 20 years, further expanded every imaginable range of music and the orchestra, despite the minimalist percussion of one lone timpani. Tchaikovsky even expanded the spines of the violinists when they stretched to reach some of these long violin lines.
Slatkin must love conducting Symphony No. 5 in St. Louis because of the orchestra’s wide range of musicians who play with both definitive technique and distinct voice. Tchaikovsky showed so much love for so many instruments, to perform No. 5 right you need musicians who can make you wish you knew how to play clarinet, oboe and bassoon, to name three instruments with showpiece parts; the varied roles for winds suggest why Slatkin may have programmed this symphony with his orchestral wind world premiere. At the same time, No. 5 would work as an audition piece for violin, viola and cello. With nothing but the technique and feel to play strings on this symphony, you could play all the others.
Tchaikovsky’s sense of structure made No. 5 the perfect summation of a concert about staying fresh – being fresh – with age and while aging. This music is so consistently varied and surprising, it could work as a blueprint for persisting without stagnation. I especially like to think about how this symphony ends while we are celebrating the lengthening life and conducting of Leonard Slatkin. I stopped counting how many times this thing sounded like it was ending. Tchaikovsky, Slatkin and SLSO showed us how an ending can be endlessly inventive. It was the endless ending.
SLSO performs this program again 3 p.m. Sunday, October 27. Visit SLSO.org.
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