SLSO opens new season with big, brash, brassy performance at Powell Hall

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra President Marie-Hélène Bernard had already welcomed the audience to the new season when Music Director Stéphane Denève took the stage at Powell Hall, so the conductor could get right down to work. He ripped the orchestra into Hector Berlioz’s Roman Carnival Overture like a man who had been starving to make some music.

The overture proved a perfect choice to open a concert and a season. Cally Banham took the first feature on oboe, but in nine intense minutes Berlioz gave a taste to every instrument, almost every musician, onstage. This was a big band, with robust brass and percussion sections, and even the humble tambourine — played by principal percussionist William J. James — took a bow. I am not sure I have ever thought before that a piece of classical music had a memorable tambourine part.

The only more striking thing than all the individual spotlights was the ferocious ensemble interplay, including feisty calls and responses between the upper and lower strings. Denève had so many dynamics to modulate from so many sectors of the stage that he started conducting and cueing with both arms at once, his baton momentarily dangling, out of service, as he had more pressing uses for his right arm than tapping the time.

I was surprised to see principal bassoonist Andrew Cuneo and principal clarinetist Scott Andrews both sit out this first piece. You are looking at a deep bench when you can have sluggers like that grabbing pine for the season’s opening inning. Some of the musicians departed from the typically staid dress code for opening night, with second associate concertmaster Celeste Golden Andrews and principal violist Beth Guterman Chu in particular checking in with the wow gowns.

Now that the orchestra had been properly reintroduced, nearly chair by chair, Denève brought out the evening’s guest soloist, Yefim Bronfman, and his piano. I love a young, dashing or dazzling concert pianist who you know is selling some sizzle with that steak, but no more than I love someone like the stolid, workmanlike Bronfman who makes playing piano look like the manual labor that it is.

Denève and Bronfman led the orchestra through Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It would be difficult to name a more virtuosic piano part or imagine a pianist more equal to the challenge.

Bronfman plunged his hands deeper into the depths of the left end of the keyboard than I have ever heard them plumbed, playing piano chords from his upper arms. Then he literally tickled the white keys on the right end of the keyboard, moving nothing but the first joints of his fingers. One of his oscillating runs back and forth between the two extremes sounded like the whirring of an outer‑space ship. When the aliens finally drop their covert hi‑jinx and make a formal appearance on Earth, they will beam in on Bronfman playing Liszt.

Cuneo suited up on bassoon for the Liszt, getting a feature on the first passage as if to announce his late arrival onstage. Principal double bassist Erik Harris took his instrument for a dance during some intense brassy moments. (This was a big, brash, brassy opening night.) Associate principal horn Thomas Jöstlein went on a memorable melodic run with the piano soloist. But this performance was principal cellist Daniel Lee’s tour de force. Liszt somehow wrote a cello concerto into a piano concerto that already has one of the busiest piano parts in the literature, and Lee ate it up.

The program’s second half opened with a St. Louis premiere: Andrea Tarrodi’s Liguria. Denève rumbled the entire orchestra in all at once, with loads of brass and percussion rippling the walls of Powell Hall. For the first time of the new season, principal clarinetist Andrews joined principal bassoonist Cuneo in the heart of the woodwinds section. Tarrodi gave most of the fun to the percussionists. At one point three different musicians were hitting planks with sticks. James and associate principal Alan Stewart stood side by side and both edged the side of a little bell with a bow. Kevin Ritenauer, striking chimes to sound like a tolling bell, played what was perhaps the lead part.

Ottorino Respighi pushed a thrillingly over‑the‑top opening program completely over the edge with Pines of Rome and its gonzo score that calls for piano, celesta, organ, five other percussionists, the kitchen sink, so much brass they had to stage six players on the lower balcony, and a vintage Victrola spinning a vinyl 78 of bird‑song field recordings — cued by Stewart, who now can claim Victrola among his many instruments. Denève coaxed from this chaos of instrumentation some bright tonalities I have never heard from them before.

Amid the tuneful and dynamic bombast, I was struck by the quiet, tentative, exploratory clarinet part assigned to Andrews, that latecomer to the night’s party. I was held in awe by the long, nearly solo features Respighi wrote for the lead clarinet. For, in all, three full minutes of a 22‑minute ensemble piece with 62 other musicians onstage with him and six more blowing down from the lower balcony, this was Scott Andrews’ band. I cannot think of any piece of symphonic music that gives that much burden to one musician seated in such a giant orchestra.

Saturday night’s season‑opening concert was followed by a champagne reception — a classy idea — but I wanted to leave with music, not words, in my ears. I had a feeling an ebullient Denève would give the SLSO faithful an earful. When he addressed us to open the program’s second half, he was so excited it sounded like he was lapsing in and out of his native French. He yammered on, uncharacteristically, about minutiae like bowing techniques on the Respighi.

Oh my, I thought with a smile. He has been missing us. He has been dying to talk to us about music. He is so excited to be bringing us music again. It is so good to have the maestro and the band back for a new season. We are here for it.

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