The Pulitzer Arts Foundation has a performance space with excellent acoustics for string music, as demonstrated in the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s annual Live at the Pulitzer concerts.
This season’s series kicked off Tuesday and Wednesday evening with SLSO violinists Xiaoxiao Qiang and Eva Kozma, violist Shannon Williams and cellist Jennifer Humphreys.
Unfortunately, that space is in certain ways audience hostile. Seating is on folding chairs on the landings of a stairway, so it’s difficult to see the performers at the bottom of the stairs or behind the audience, as was the case with the first and last pieces. And the same acoustics that made the music so beautiful rendered amplified narration filtered through masks indecipherable.
It remains a remarkable museum, and the contemporary chamber music series, started in 2002, is very successful. The concerts coincided with an exhibition by Hannah Wilke; the season is curated by SLSO creative partner Tim Munro.
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The two pieces performed behind the audience were Kate Moore’s “Whoever You Are Come Forth,” a cello solo that opened the concert, and Anna Clyne’s “Rest These Hands” (from “The Violin”), a violin solo that was an homage to the composer’s mother and closed the concert. Both featured slow melodies of long notes, which in the Clyne piece felt like the melody didn’t breathe. Moore’s piece was forlorn and even a little bit spooky, and Clyne’s also exotic and mournful. Both were opportunities for their performers, Humphreys and Qiang respectively, to demonstrate particularly beautiful timbre.
Ted Herne’s “Overlay” from String Quartet No. 1, Exposure involved the full string quartet, beginning with some sparse post-Webernian-sounding gestures, then a loud section, then a period of interesting, beautiful, abstract music, and even a period of silence. The selection likely left listeners wondering what the other movements sound like.
Edmund Finnis’ “Brother” is a duet for violin and viola in four movements, first exotic in extra-high range, then reminiscent of the music of Bela Bartok, then in a beautiful timbre but mournfully long, and finally atmospheric.
Gabriella Smith’s “Carrot Revolution” again involved the string quartet playing at the bottom of the stairs. Another highlight of the concert, it featured drum-like ostinatos in interesting sounds, especially from violin II. A consonant section is a surprise, and there’s something of a Southwestern feeling later in the piece. Smith is definitely in the minimalist camp, but her gestures are interesting, the music vigorous and cool.
With such an amazing pool of musical talent in the SLSO, it’s fortunate that chamber music is performed and especially that such remarkable modern music is given a hearing.