Symphony Preview: For the final 'Music You Know' concert,...
You might have noticed that there's no Friday, April 29, performance this weekend of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert featuring William Kraft's Timpani Concerto No. 2 and Schubert's Symphony...
View ArticleSymphony Preview: SLSO Principal Timpani Shannon Wood on playing above the...
 The big news about the St. Louis Symphony concerts this weekend (April 29-May 1) is the local premiere of the Timpani Concerto No. 2, "The Grand Encounter," written in 2005 by former Los Angeles...
View ArticleIn her SLSO debut, Natahlie Stutzmann puts a unique and joyous stamp on...
 The St. Louis Symphony concerts this weekend (April 22-24, 2016) offered a remarkable study in contrasts, with familiar classics by Mendelssohn, Sibelius, and Dvořák getting novel, idiosyncratic,...
View ArticleSymphony Preview, April 22-24, 2016: Familiar music, brand-new conductor
The St. Louis Symphony program this weekend consists entirely of well-known classics: Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave) overture, Sibelius's Violin Concerto, and one of my favorites,...
View ArticleLouis Lortie and Yan Pascal Tortelier deliver musical pictures with power and...
 Most folks come back from vacations with snapshots or souvenirs. The great French composer Camille Saint-Saëns came back from a winter trip to Egypt with a piano concerto, which was performed with...
View ArticleSymphony Preview, April 15 and 16, 2016: Saint-Saëns' symphonic selfies
My wife and I have become dedicated travelers over the last couple of decades, but we can't hold a candle to the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). Over the course of his long and...
View Article'E.T' in concert shows its age, and that’s a good thing
 Steven Spielberg's blockbuster E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a live concert version of which is on view at Powell Hall this weekend, is 34 years old now and beginning to show its age -- which is not...
View ArticleThree versions of childhood at the St. Louis Symphony, April 2-3
Childhood is not always as simple as it might seem; we all know that. Composers certainly know that, whether they idealize a child's evolvement, as did Robert Schumann, or whether they ruminate on a...
View ArticleHeart and mind at the St. Louis Symphony, October 14-16
 Although Antonin Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B Minor, dating from 1895, stands as one of the Romantic warhorses, it defies narrow definition into time, place or style. It is a work that bespeaks the...
View ArticleAutumnal drama at the St. Louis Symphony with Măcelaru and Shaham
 The St. Louis Symphony gave us an appropriately autumnal concert this weekend, October 21 - 23, 2016, featuring Rachmaninoff's nocturnal Symphonic Dances in a finely nuanced interpretation by guest...
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