In Sunday’s (5/1) St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sarah Bryan Miller writes, “David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will conclude their regular season next weekend with a bang. The program’s marketing is built around Carl Orff’s ‘Carmina burana,’ the magnificently kitschy cantata that launched a thousand derivative movie scores. In danger of being overlooked is the other piece on the program: Christopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 3. It will receive its world premiere in St. Louis this week, with Rouse at hand. Rouse, born in 1949, is an important American composer; the SLSO has performed a number of his works—including his Symphony No. 2, his Trombone Concerto and his Flute Concerto—with considerable success. ‘There is something particularly exciting about a new work from a composer who knows the orchestra personally as well as Chris does,’ Robertson said. … The symphony was commissioned by a consortium of orchestras that included St. Louis, Singapore, Stockholm and Rouse’s native Baltimore. With Robertson conducting, ‘I knew I was in good hands,’ Rouse said, in a telephone interview from his home in Baltimore. The 25-minute symphony is an homage to Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 2; that, in turn, is an homage to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor, op. 111.” The concert on Saturday, May 7 will be broadcast live on St. Louis Public Radio (90.7 KWMU) at 8:00 p.m. CT, and will be available via live internet stream.
Posted May 2, 2011
