Samuel Hollister, assistant conductor for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, had a challenge for his first concert conducting the orchestra onstage at Powell Hall in a subscription series. When he stepped in at the last minute for guest conductor Ryan Bancroft, who withdrew due to personal reasons, Hollister inherited a program with a piece of new music the orchestra had only performed once before and a piano concerto by Sergei Prokofiev that places almost constant demands on musicians and conductors.
Tumblebird Contrails by living composer Gabriella Smith sounded just as strange as its title. Smith tasked the musicians to make alternate uses of their instruments more often seen in the SLSO Live at the Pulitzer series featuring contemporary chamber music. Most notably, the horn players often blew air through their mouthpieces to create the effects of wind rather than music. The young composer used the orchestra to make it sound like anything – a jet engine, an air raid siren, a crying bird, a synthesizer, a zephyr, a rainforest, crashing surf – other than an orchestra.
It was such a strange and unfamiliar piece that Hollister and the orchestra could have totally botched Tumblebird Contrails and no one would have been the wiser other than the composer herself (who was not apparently in the house on Saturday night). The same could not be said for Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major by Sergei Prokofiev. Whereas Smith offered almost no melody nor rhythm that musicians could play identifiably right or wrong, Prokofiev gave us all the things, all the time.
I find his Piano Concerto No. 3 one of the most consistently unpredictable compositions, and playing it put this talented orchestra agreeably on edge. Prokofiev set his own standards for how to pace, change, punctuate and structure a piece of music. His concerto compelled this resourceful orchestra to be on top of its game for dynamics, timing, pitch, ensemble instincts, tonality, rhythm, and technique. Though Smith tried to evoke the sounds of animals in her piece, the Prokofiev in the hands of this orchestra actually came alive like a pulsing, unpredictable animate being.
As for the assistant conductor tapping the baton throughout this thrilling performance, frankly he looked a little nervous and restrained, which would be forgivable. I also must confess an obstacle in my perception of this very youthful-looking young man. I was once seated behind him at an SLSO performance at the Touhill and watched him air-conduct the orchestra from the stands. It was adorable but cannot be unseen, and I have seen no one else conduct an orchestra onstage after seeing them air-conduct the same orchestra from the cheap seats.
Let’s just say he in no way hindered this nimble orchestra as they rose to all of Prokofiev’s constant challenges and, if anything, helped hold them together as they were pulled in every direction all at once.
Gabriela Montero was an unpretentious joy as guest piano soloist, though Prokofiev wrote few passages of truly solo, unaccompanied piano. One gets the sense that one unaccompanied instrument left the composer too few tricks to play on the musicians and audience. When Montero was left alone at the piano momentarily, Prokofiev gave her what sounded like too much music for two hands to play on one keyboard, yet she managed beautifully.
More often, the composer shadowed the piano with strings. Then the horns shadowed the strings. This was a shadowy concerto, with doubles constantly stepping out of the ensemble. I thought Prokofiev could have thrived in espionage had the music thing not panned out. Since he worked for the Soviets I thought I should do a quick search to see if the composer had been a spy, and I learned some things about the sufferings of his ex-wife that I now wish to forget.
The audience adored the Prokofiev and Montero, who was compelled to give us an encore. She did something I had never seen before. She asked the audience for someone to sing a melody that everyone knew that she could make the basis for an improvisation. After Montero rejected one suggestion as not familiar enough, someone sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” which the pianist savored with a long, tuneful improvisation that borrowed some licks from Scott Joplin.
The concert closed with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3, presumably Hollister’s call to replace Aaron Copland’s Symphony No. 3, which Ryan Bancroft had planned to conduct before he canceled. If Rachmaninoff’s 3rd had to be performed – and I could skip it – then it should have been programmed as the first half of the show. That daredevil Prokofiev and Montero’s dazzling improvised encore were impossible acts to follow, and Rachmaninoff’s 3rd is a stumbling bore with a third movement that may be the most aimless piece of music written by a once-great composer.
I understand that SLSO has a special relationship with a symphony they first performed just three weeks after its world premiere, and young Hollister said he grew up (not so very long ago) on Rachmaninoff. But despite the engagement of the conductor – who loosened up and began to bust a few moves on the stand – and the consummate performance of the orchestra, this was just not very interesting music to conclude an otherwise enthralling show.
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