Symphony Review: Gerstein and Denève celebrate Maurice Ravel

What’s better than an afternoon with the music of Maurice Ravel? Last Sunday the answer was: an afternoon with the music of Ravel performed by Stéphane Denève and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with piano soloist Kirill Gerstein. Beginning with the gossamer fairy tale world of the “Ma mère l'oye (Mother Goose) Suite", continuing with both of the composer’s piano concertos, and wrapping up with the excessively popular “Boléro,” this was a sparkling celebration of one of the previous century’s great orchestrators and melodists.

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

As Denève pointed out in his pre-concert remarks, Ravel is renowned for his skill as an orchestrator but less often recognized for the long, irresistible melodic lines of his music. Denève held out the second movement of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major as an example. It’s a good one, and only one of many we heard during the program.

Stéphane Denève Photo: Dilip Vishwanat, courtesy of the SLSO

Denève last conducted “Ma mère l’oye” here in 2018. Looking back on my review of that concert, I find that everything I wrote about that resplendent performance would fit this latest one like one of Ravel’s tastefully tailored suits. His approach, then and now, was finely shaded and utterly idiomatic. The musicians responded with their usual élan. 

Ravel provided many wonderful solo moments in his transparent score and the SLSO musicians fully did them justice. The includes, by is not limited to, the interaction between Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews and newly appointed Principal Contrabassoon Ellen Connors in  Les Entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête (Conversations of Beauty and the Beast), the percussion section under Principal Will James in the Gamelan-flavored exotica of Laideronnette, Impératrice des pagodes (Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas), and the chirping woodwinds as the birds in Petit Pouchet (Tom Thumb) who devour poor Tom’s breadcrumb trail through the forest.  

Up next was something you don’t see every day, Chauncey (as they used to say on "Rocky and Bullwinkle"): both of Ravel’s piano concertos in back-to-back performances. Granted, there was an intermission in between, but even so that’s not something every pianist could do. Certainly, there aren’t many who could manage that particular double header as well as Kirill Gerstein did.

It's not just that the Concerto in G and the Concerto for the Left Hand are technically challenging (although they certainly are) but rather the fact that they also call for a deep understanding of Ravel’s characteristic sound world. As a consistently dynamic performer with a wide expressive range and spectacular technique, Gerstein was an ideal choice for this music.

Although completed at around the same time (they were both premiered in 1932) the two concertos inhabit very different emotional spaces. The Concerto in G is the more popular of the two—snappy and jazzy in its outer movements and touchingly lyrical in its famous Adagio assai second movement. The  aforementioned long melodic line in that movement was played beautifully by Gerstein and Principal English Horn Cally Banham. It’s a consistently sunny piece, played with elegance and wit by Gerstein and Denève

The Concerto for the Left Hand in D is another story. Composed on commission for pianist Paul Wittgenstein (who had lost his right arm in World War I), the concerto unfolds in a single 20-minute movement with four interconnected sections. It’s a remarkable piece, with a dark bitonal introduction featuring the contrabassoon (another nice bit of work from Connors) that sounds a bit like a more menacing version of the opening of “La Valse.” The piano enters with a defiant cadenza that sounds like it couldn’t possibly be played by one hand, and we’re off.  There’s a central march/scherzo that might have been written by Shostakovich and an ultimately triumphant finale preceded by yet another alarmingly difficult cadenza.

I can’t praise Gerstein’s work enough here. I have been impressed by his previous work with the SLSO, but this display of virtuosity and emotional range was truly spellbinding. The Concerto for the Left Hand, in particular, was very welcome, given that we haven’t hear it here since 2012 when Leon Fleisher played it with David Robertson at the podium. It was most gratifying to see it done so well by Gerstein and Denève.

Finally, there was Ravel’s Greatest Hit. Denève and the band did a bang-up job of “Boléro,” no question, with impeccable solo and soli moments all the way around. Nearly every player gets a moment in the spotlight, making this a real showpiece for an orchestra with a deep talent pool like that of the SLSO. This is especially true in the early moments of the work, in which the soloists are out on their own with little more than plucked strings and the snare drum behind them. This time around that meant Principal Clarinet Scott Andrews, flautist Jessica Sindell, and Principal Bassoon Andrew Cuneo—the latter playing at the top of his range, as Ravel seems fond of doing with that instrument.

While “Boléro” is one of those works that might be too popular for its own good, it felt like the perfect finale for this particular concert. Its big, gaudy, Technicolor sound neatly balanced the translucent tints of “Ma mère l'oye” and was a fitting contrast to the darker colors of the Concerto for the Left Hand. Fine bit of programming, that.

If you missed this set of concerts, never fear. St. Louis Public Radio’s recording, complete with intermission interviews, will be available at the SLSO web site for the next month.

Next from the SLSO: Stéphane Denève conducts the orchestra and soloist James Ehnes in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Performances are Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 3 pm, January 25 and 26, at the Stifel Theatre downtown. Note that this one, like the other Stifel concerts, won’t be available afterwards.