Grand Avenue, St. Louis
St. Louis’ Grand Center was one of the many ideas to revitalize St. Louis over the last three decades. It includes Powell Hall, the home of the St. Louis Symphony, the Fox Theater (Broadway), the Sheldon (chamber music) and the Pulitzer Museum (modern art). It is located between the downtown and the lively residential and retail center of the Central West End. Powell Hall recently underwent a $140 million renovation led by Snønetta. On a recent trip to hear the Symphony perform Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, the outdoor public spaces were empty before and after the concert. The neighborhood is essentially a collection of unconnected institutions that people drive to.
But the headline is that the St. Louis Symphony is, under the leadership of Stéphane Denève, is one of this country’s finest. Like the Pittsburgh Symphony, it is the equal of any of the traditional “Big Five” American orchestras, except for the superlative Cleveland Orchestra (the other being Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Boston), despite not being a member of that august group. The strings play with great warmth and cohesion and there appear to be no weak links among the wind and brass players. Even the often-problematic horn section went blatless during this monumental 90-minute work.
I hear the SLSO every year in the pit of Opera Theater of Saint Louis and, particularly under the baton of Maestro Steven Lord, they were one of the great assets of OTSL. But it has been decades since I had heard them in Powell Hall, their 2,700-seat home since 1968 – an adaptively reused grand movie theatre. In the 80’s the orchestra drove to the front ranks of American ensembles and national attention under Music Director Leonard Slatkin, who stood out as an American conductor who highlighted American composers. More recently, American David Roberston has cut a somewhat lower profile. Denève has led the orchestra since 2019.
Jack Taylor Center
The War Requiem calls for a large choir, a children’s choir and three soloists. All were superb in St. Louis and performed for a sold out, cheering audience. It is a demanding work for both performers and audience. Soprano, Christine Georke was scheduled, but withdrew and was replaced by Felicia Moore, who had not previously performed the work – and began learning the part on the Monday before the Friday opening (I attended the Sunday matinée). Moore’s voice effortlessly floated above the huge orchestra with an admirable absence of excess vibrato and pinpoint pitch. Ian Bostridge is the ideal tenor soloist in this work that features the savage poetry of Wilford Owen describing the horrors of the First World War battlefield with stark directness. The War Requiem is a shattering experience and with Bostridge, a noted scholar and writer, singing and declamation of text fully revealed Owen’s bleak, tortured world. Roderick Williams was a fine, dramatic baritone counterweight to Bostridge’s very English (reedy) tenor.
The choirs were astonishingly made up of amateurs, but this was choral singing that was a match for a professional choir anywhere. It tells us something (although I’m not sure what) that St. Louis can muster not only hundreds of fine adult choral singers, but a near perfect children’s group of a couple of dozen young singers (which sang from a balcony). This was a community event of the best possible sort. And while the War’ Requiem’s devastating, humanistic anti-war message is always timely, as a civic event it seemed especially pointed and relevant now. It was an exciting, thought provoking, satisfying event.
Denève’s work was admirably controlled and understated – in a piece that calls for wide contrasts of volume. The male soloists are accompanied by a chamber group of a dozen players. The choral sections, which set the extended form of the Latin requiem mass generally call on large forces, which Denève deployed with great restraint. As a result, moments of quiet reflection and passages invoking the colossal, swirling dark forces of hell had unusual impact. With all that was going on each of the sections, including the brass, played elegantly, rather than blaringly. Again, the emotional content of the string writing was especially moving.
The hall renovation is particularly successful in the pre-existing public spaces – where the lighting is sparkling, and mirrors and crystals have been buffed to a high shine. The paint color chosen for the main auditorium struck me as dull by contrast and gave off something of an institutional feeling, as did the conventional orchestra shell over the stage. The pre-concert projections on a screen at the back of the stage were tacky and low tech. The auditorium also features new carpets and seats, which give it a well-cared for feel. The acoustic where I was sitting in the orchestra section was very fine – neutral, leaning towards the clear and warm. Apparently, traditionally, the prime seats have been regarded to be in the balcony. While the orchestra seats were lower than the stage platform, limiting visibility to the first row of players, otherwise the experience was first rate.
Powell Hall
The Sønetta addition is odd. It appeared to me to be designed around addressing practical needs – more restrooms, elevators, backstage and educational spaces. The addition is shoehorned onto the side of the old theater facing a bleak plaza – why the squeezing with all that empty plaza space? There is a glassed-in oblong lobby with a compressed, open stair – again on the side, rather than in the back of the house. The ground floor elevator lobby is very narrow and also services a coat check and restrooms – creating a pinch point for patrons. I don’t get the logic behind the design of these cumbersome spaces.
The biggest question is why the empty, windswept plaza? The building, which has a traditional entrance facing the street and narrow adjacent sidewalk, now faces from the side onto the plaza. It doesn’t do anything to activate Grand Avenue – as might a ground floor restaurant or other retail use. I had lunch in a place that was obviously Black owned (all Black staff, images of famous Black musicians on the walls) across the street from Powell Hall that was nearly empty before the concert. Why was this? The food was fine. The service was friendly. Locals took me for dinner after the concert to a place in the Central West End. St. Louis remains one of our most segregated cities. White St. Louisans clearly chose to take their patronage elsewhere than Grand Center, other than for the performances and art exhibits. But the St. Louis Symphony is clearly well worth the trip into the city for.