Riteset
Set design, Part I: Adoration of the Earth. Nicholas Roerich, 1913.
Leave it to the St. Louis Symphony to pull off the brilliant hat trick of performing The Rite of Spring just as November’s weather turned bitterly cold. Stravinsky’s work incited riots when it debuted in Paris in May of 1913; Edwardians were too stuffy to feel comfortable with assertive bassoons, strong percussion or ballets based on pagan fertility rites. And, actually, a ballet based on a girl ritually dancing herself to death to ensure the return of spring—basically a human sacrifice—is still pretty shocking. I’ll add, however, that walking across Powell Hall’s parking lot facing a punishing gust of freezing Midwestern wind is pretty shocking too, and tends to kill any iota of Edwardian-ness you might have in you ... the most horrifying thought at that point is the idea that spring won’t return. Which gives you, of course, deeper emotional stakes in this particular ballet score!
Last Saturday, the audience gave the Symphony a standing ovation that lasted for a good seven minutes, at least. I was there as part of SLSO’s “Blogger’s Night,” which means that me and a bunch of mostly punk and rock 'n' roll bloggers were treated to tickets for “Beat Movement,” (a program whose name evokes both drums and Kerouac) so that we could write up the show. The program was geared towards new music, a genius move considering the average blogger’s taste tends more towards Bitch Slap Barbie or Bhob Rainey than Bach. I sat at parquet level, surrounded by local digerati, including filmmaker Carson Minow and the unsinkable Lori E. White (whose acquaintance I first made, oddly enough, via a comment she posted to this blog).
I love The Rite of Spring, but for whatever reason have never heard it performed live (I missed it when SLSO last performed it in 2004). The two pieces that preceded it in the program, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s A Prayer Out of Stillness (2007) and Steven Mackey’s Beautiful Passing (2008) were well-chosen companion pieces. Turnage’s piece was the culmination of the Symphony’s guitar festival, and featured jazz virtuoso John Patitucci playing both stand-up and electric bass behind a shimmering sea of violins and other strings. The thought of combining prickly free jazz bass with the sweetness of strings sounds as appealing (appalling?) as meatloaf ice cream—but somehow, it worked. Beautiful Passing was written to showcase the skills and talent of Leila Josefowicz, who may be the most athletic violinist I have ever seen (to exercise the sort of micro-control she has over her instrument, I would imagine she would need to develop all kinds of weird little arm, wrist and back muscles). Mackey, who was described in the program playbill as a “skier-tennis-player-California-rock ’n’ roll dude,” wrote the piece as his mother was dying—he took the title from her last words, “Please tell everyone I had a beautiful passing.” The piece is supposed to be, as Mackey notes, both “funny and scary.” And truly, the association I had while listening to this piece was with Franz Kafka's stories, which were perhaps some of the most artistically graceful expressions of funny/scary, ever.
Stravinsky’s something else entirely. The Rite of Spring is so archetypal and primal it practically lives outside the canon. Proof of its power: it’s in a freaking Disney movie, certain movements are as recognizable as TV jingles, yet it never seems to lose its power. In fact, when you hear it in a symphony hall, you can still understand, emotionally, why it might inspire people to riot. Before the show, I chatted with Adam Crane, SLSO’s Director of Communications, for a couple of minutes, and he said that he’d heard the piece performed live several times, but this performance was incredible; he heard things in it that he’d never heard before. Stravinsky himself said, “I was guided by no system; I wrote what I heard.” I think that with a piece of music like this, which carries the spark of the collective unconscious within it, there will always be new things to heard inside it, but it takes an exceedingly disciplined and nimble orchestra to reveal those sounds, just as Leila Josefowicz’s muscular control allows her to trick the most subtle, microscopic squeaks and sighs and clicks from her violin. —Stefene Russell
