Rave review for Cristian Măcelaru with Alice Sara Ott and the St. Louis Symphony
Alice Sara Ott (Photo credit: Marie Staggat | Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon)
A perfect night at Powell Hall with Ravel and Shostakovich
By Chris King
The St. Louis American
January 15, 2023
The program the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra performed at Powell Hall on Saturday had several forms of perfection. It opened with incidental music (the third “Symphonic Tableau after La foi” by Camille Saint-Saens), progressed to a concerto (Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G), then concluded with a full-blown symphony, Dmitri Shostakovich’s First. It was a perfect evolution of complexity and demands on audience attention.
The music aligned perfectly with the season. On a cold and gray day, the music throughout was warm and full of bright colors. At a time when people are showing new resolve and trying new exercise regimens, the tempos snapped, marched and frolicked in the Saint-Saens and especially the Ravel, one of the most clever 23 minutes of music ever constructed. Yvonne Frindle's probing program notes connect Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 1 in F minor to the films of Charles Chaplin, but Chaplin's playful and gymnastic genius springs up in the Ravel too. If Shostakovich is the complex Chaplin of the feature films, Ravel is the spastic and inventive Chaplin of the two-reelers.
Guest conductor Cristian Măcelaru, music director of Orchestre National de France, addressed the audience between the Saint-Saens and the Ravel piano concerto, partly as a device to welcome soloist Alice Sara Ott onto the stage. On Saturday night, he emphasized the audience's role in completing an exchange of music with the orchestra and noted how wonderful it was to have the opportunity to forget about other cares for a time and just be together with each other and music. This aptly described the experience of the Saint-Saens - which was performed by the orchestra for the first time on Saturday - because it's such a thoroughly ensemble composition and the joy in playing it rippled visibly across the orchestra and into the audience.
Then the Ravel in the hands of Măcelaru and Ott took that dynamic to another dimension. The interplay of soloist and orchestra was a master study in playing together and apart that led to a long enough standing ovation to elicit an encore feature from Ott. Making her first visit to St. Louis, she praised the excellence of the musicians, the intensity of the audience and the sound in the concert hall. She said the hall made her want to play a delicate piece, “Fur Alina” by Arvo Part. After the rowdiness of the Ravel, this spare, crawling piano miniature made for a startlingly intimate moment together with the pianist in the concert hall. As Carlo Ravelli, an Italian theoretical physicist, has said of “Fur Alina,” it's the sound of time stopping.
It also was the perfect experience to punctuate a shift from the rowdy Ravel to the show stopping Shostakovich, which is one of the most athletic pieces to perform in orchestral repertoire. The percussionists were put through every pace (Shostakovich anticipated STOMP by 70 years), including the single most perfect timpani beat/note ever positioned. At one point the poor viola section looked like they were bailing water out of a canoe, their parts were so vigorous.
It's interesting that Măcelaru, a violinist, specializes in this symphony where the violins support more vivid writing for viola and a dramatic cello solo that steals the show of this non-stop showstopper. At the symphony's stormy conclusion, Măcelaru rightly asked the entire orchestra to stand, then went around the ensemble to spotlight multiple players from each section, ending pointedly with principal cello Daniel Lee, a fan favorite who led that dramatic solo cello.
Speaking of fans and favorites, St. Louis Cardinals fans are known to praise Busch Stadium regulars for their baseball IQ. The same can be said for the symphonic and orchestral IQ of Powell Hall regulars. In my experience, we do respond with more intensity to more satisfying performances, and as Măcelaru moved around the orchestra on Saturday night pointing out players who had sparkled on the Shostakovich, the audience responded to each musician reflective of the unique character of their individual performances. The responses to the timpanist, who has that one unforgettable beat, and the pianist, who is basically handed a gag by Shostakovich, were exquisitely nuanced. Even the audience was perfect this night.
Read the full article here.