Symphony Review: Sunshine and shadow with Mǎcelaru, Beilman, and the SLSO

Have you ever walked out of a fiercely air conditioned building and directly into the kind of parboiled summer weather we had this past summer? It’s like smacking into a wall. The impact is visceral.

[Find out more about the music with my symphony preview.]

That’s the sensation I had this past Sunday (October 15, 2023) at the Touhill Center when the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Cristian Măcelaru cranked up the first few measures of the program opener, “heliosis.” Which is exactly what the composer had in mind.

Commissioned by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, “heliosis” (the medical term for heat exhaustion) is the work of Austrian composer/conductor/pianist Hannah Eisendle (b. 1993). Eisendle calls it a “summer piece,” and so it is. But the summer it evokes is dirty, suffocating, sticky with dust.”  Not so much the languorous summer of, say, Honegger’s “Pastorale d’été” (presented by the SLSO in 2021) as that of The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City.”

So that first massive 15-second orchestral assault perfectly set the stage for a brilliantly orchestrated six-minute run through a heat-drenched acoustic landscape. Unorthodox effects like string harmonics and glissandos suggested  something surreal or unearthly (summer on Mars, perhaps?). At one point they combined to produce an effect very much like a tape recording grinding to a halt. There was also an aggressive march that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Shostakovich symphony, and the whole thing built to a final blast reminiscent of the last measures of Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps.”

It was all very unsettling, as Eisendle apparently intended it to be. More to the point, it was brilliantly played by Măcelaru and the band—no small accomplishment, given the wild and wooly nature of the score. It certainly deserved more than the single round of applause that it got, if only for the quality of the performance.

L-R: Cristian Măcelaru, Benjamin Beilman

Ah, well. The Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 that followed dissipated any aural heat exhaustion in short order. The last of the composer's violin concertos, the Fifth is filled with unexpected turns of phrase, including the so-called "Turkish" interlude of the finale in which the cellos and basses strike their strings, col legno, to produce an exotic percussive effect. Or it would have if Mǎcelaru hadn't downplayed it.

There are also multiple cadenzas—one in each of the first two movements and two more in the finale—plus an abrupt interruption in the opening Allegro aperto movement for a six-bar solo Adagio. Mozart was playing around a bit with the concerto form and since he was the original soloist, he had plenty of opportunities to do so.

All this means that there are plenty of chances for the soloist to shine, which Benjamin Beilman emphatically did. Fully engaged with the music, his fellow performers and Măcelaru, he brought a beautifully full tone and wide emotional range to the concerto. I don’t know whether the cadenzas were his own or not—many violinists have written their own, going back to (at least) Joseph Joachim (1831–1907)—but in any case, they exhibited a gratifying variety of expression.

Warm applause was followed by an encore: a pair of Béla Bartók’s brief 44 Duos for Two Violins with Cristian Măcelaru as his performing partner—a reminder that the conductor started his musical life as a violinist, as well as a demonstration that he remains quite a good one.

Concluding the program was the Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73, by Brahms. Written and first performed in 1877, it boasts one of the sunniest final movements you will ever hear, a fact which has led many commentators (including yours truly) to view it as, in the words of Redland Symphony program annotator James Keays, “one of the most cheerful of Brahms' mature works.”

Which it is, at least in its last two movements. The sonic sky is almost cloudless during the Allegretto grazioso (Quasi Andantino) third movement and the Allegro con spirito finale wraps everything up in a blaze of glory. But taken together these constitute only around a third of the work’s roughly 45 minutes. The Allegro non troppo first movement opens with some aural sunshine in the horns, but clouds quickly move in via an ominous roll on the tympani that anticipates the violent confrontations of the ensuing Adagio non troppo.

The Brahms Second is, like many of the composer’s works, a multi-layered work that operates on more than one emotional level at once. It’s one of the things that makes him a great composer and that can make conducting his symphonies a challenge.

When Măcelaru began his performance with a more leisurely tempo than I would have expected, I was afraid that this might be an interpretation that leaned too heavily on the dark side. As the symphony progressed and I became more engrossed in his well-shaded rendering of the composer’s emotionally complex canvas, however, it became clear that such fears were unjustified. Indeed, given the wide interpretive range Măcelaru has displayed with the SLSO in past appearances, I realized that I should have known better. This is a conductor who rarely makes a misstep.

This is an orchestra that now seems incapable of them as well. While all the musicians were in top form, special kudos must go Principal Horn Roger Kaza and the rest of his section. Brahms has given the horns some pretty choice stuff here, and they gave it their all. The long solo in the first movement coda was a “perfect 10.” Congratulations to the strings as well on those wide leaps Brahms hands them early in that same movement.

A few comments on the venue itself are in order. With a smaller stage than the Stifel Center and about half the seating capacity (1600 seats vs. 3100 at Stifel) the Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall at the Touhill Center has a somewhat warmer acoustic signature than Stifel, but it’s still “dry” enough to make individual instrumental voices easy to discern. This was especially beneficial in the Mozart concerto, where even the most subtle of Beilman’s playing was clearly audible. And, of course, the small size means that it’s difficult to get too far away from the orchestra. It is, altogether, a fine symphonic space, at least from the audience standpoint.

Next at the SLSO: Elim Chan conducts the SLSO and piano soloist Ingrid Fliter in a program consisting of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 (“Scottish”), and the symphonic poem “Moondog” by contemporary composer Elizabeth Ogonek. Performances take place at the Touhill Center on Friday at 10:30 am and Saturday at 7:30 pm, October 20 and 21.  The Friday morning performance will be broadcast Saturday evening on St. Louis Public Radio and Classic 107.3 and will be available for streaming for a limited time at the SLSO web site.