St. Louis Symphony Orchestra this past Sunday: FZ's "G-spot Tornado" segued into Varese's "Arcana"
ZapRatz
By John von Rhein | Tribune critic
November 18, 2008
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-robertson-ovn-1118nov18,0,4130216.story
You know you're attending a David Robertson concert when the only
"standard" work on the bill is Edgard Varese's 1925-27 "Arcana." Such
was the bracing program of 21st and late-20th Century music the music
director presented with his excellent St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on
Sunday at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance.
New works by Steven Mackey and Chicago Symphony resident composer
Mark-Anthony Turnage combined elements of popular music—rock in the
case of Mackey, jazz in the case of Turnage—with classical
compositional techniques.
The most substantial of these turned out to be Mackey's "Beautiful
Passing" (2008). A violin concerto in all but name, the piece
initially treats the soloist and orchestra as musical opposites—the
one luminous, the other raucous and mechanical—before arriving at a
sort-of consensus at the end.
The violin finds ravishing quiet places amid mass hysteria. The score
is beautifully tailored to the astonishing inner virtuosity of Leila
Josefowicz, who played her part from memory.
Turnage's "A Prayer Out of Stillness" (2007) showcased the
multitalented jazz artist John Patitucci, who delivered riffs serene
and sizzling on both the double bass and electric bass guitar.
A movement from a symphony-in-progress by Glenn Branca was all sound
and fury, signifying little. Ali N. Askin's arrangement of Frank
Zappa's wonderfully twitchy "G-spot Tornado" segued into the brilliant
brutality of Varese, whom the young Zappa idolized.
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