Music director Stéphane Denève conducts the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra May 14, 2021, at Powell Hall.
This weekend’s concerts by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra brought Finnish conductor John Storgårds and pianist Kirill Gerstein, born in the Soviet Union but an American citizen living in Berlin, in a program of Austrian, British, Finish and Danish music.
The program, called “Changing Times,” was a mixture of nationalities with a Scandinavian emphasis, and a study in large orchestras. Storgårds and Gerstein are both highly experienced, credentialed musicians. For the first three of the four pieces, it was the first time for the SLSO to perform them.
Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 64, “Tempora mutantur” would ideally be performed by an orchestra of the size normal to 18th-century music, and consisting of instruments constructed as they were in Haydn’s time. The St. Louis Symphony doesn’t feature a separate collection of instruments for this situation, so that with 35 players onstage it gave this piece a powerful performance.
Storgårds conducted this music with great enthusiasm and without a baton, emphasizing communication with the orchestra and the shaping of phrases. The first movement, Allegro con spirito, contained a little bit of rough playing in the strings, but the second movement, a Largo, was carefully paced and offered some big contrasts, especially in dynamics.
After the audience applauded those two movements Storgårds made certain that the passage from the Menuet to the concluding Presto went without applause, and this final movement brought the symphony to an energetic conclusion, with Storgårds even jumping a little in enthusiasm.
