During Saturday night's concert by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, fireworks went off right outside the hall as Anne Akiko Meyers and the SLSO played Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3. I just about leaped out of my chair.
The racket didn't bother the performers one iota. They continued to make gorgeous music out of a piece Mozart wrote in 1775. Meyers, in particular, was on her game. She's welcome in this ol' town any time.
The smoothness with which she played the Mozart was absolutely heavenly, especially the second movement's adagio. If you ever need music to sooth your savage breast, play the second movement of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 3 and you'll calm down.
This concerto, from the classical era, is not as bombastic as the romantic Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto that Joshua Bell and the SLSO played last weekend to kick off the 2010-2011 season. But its sonority and richness make it attractive to the ear.
In the Tchaikovsky concerto, the soloist dominates. In the Mozart, the soloist collaborates with the rest of the orchestra, especially the strings. Both ways of entertaining are terrific. The contrast was striking, but both concertos were performed exquisitely. (We could've done without the blasted fireworks, though. Good grief.)
Speaking of Tchaikovsky, his magnificent Symphony No. 5 concluded the proceedings Saturday night, and what a performance by the SLSO, led by conductor Louis Langree. The maestro conducted the entire 50-minute work without a score, and he got all the nuances right. It helped that the entire orchestra brought it's "A" game to the hall.
Everyone was great. Principal horn Roger Kaza was wonderful, as was principal clarinet Scott Andrews. Richard Holmes was his usual magnificent self on timpani. All the brass, woodwinds and strings played their hearts out and earned the extended standing ovation from a crowd that was smaller than the one we saw on opening night.
Lest I forget, Langree can return to these environs whenever he's available.
The only oddity of the night was the 12-minute senseless piece by Alfred Schnittke, whose Moz-Art a la Haydn opened the concert. A smallish, chamber-like ensemble did its best with a dissonant work by this 20th-century Russian, who lived from 1934-1998.
Incorporating an idiom that Schnittke called "polystylistic," the dozen or so string players began and ended their performance almost completely in the dark, which the composer called for in his score. I'm sorry, but why? The music doesn't answer the question.
Nor does the music "explain" why the musicians suddenly move to different stands on stage and then walk off before the end of the piece, fiddling as they go, leaving the conductor and the less portable instruments and their instrumentalists behind. That would be two cellos and a double bass.
Maybe "Saturday Night Live" could take the work to the next ridiculous level, add a cow bell, and devise a silly sketch. For now, let me say, thank you, Don Pardo, and good night.
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