Saturday, March 14, 2026
Powell Hall at the Jack C. Taylor Music Center, North Grand Boulevard, St Louis, Missouri
A concert featuring the distaff side – not only the conductor and soloist but also the Violin Concerto, written in memory of the young Manon Gropius, an “Angel” dead aged eighteen (from Polio), and the young Scheherazade with a stock of stories to read through 1,001 Nights to stave off execution by her husband the king. Conducting prizewinner (including La Maestra, 2022, Paris) Anna Sułkowska-Migoń brought a piece by her fellow-Pole Grażyna Bacewicz, her music attracting much interest at present. Overture (1943), probably her first work for orchestra, is a short piece of contrasts, opening energetically, turning pastoral, then returning to the beginning and continuing to the end at unbroken speed. This charged performance was a spirited introduction to Sułkowska-Migoń (and maybe Bacewicz’s music) and the SLS to her.
Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto (1935), for Louis Krasner, a memorial to Manon (parented by Walter Gropius and Alma, Mahler’s widow), was premiered the following year (Scherchen conducting), by which time Berg was also dead, his second opera, Lulu, left unfinished, although that’s another story… of posthumous premiere and Cerha completion. Leila Josefowicz gave an intense, impassioned account of Berg’s swansong, sometimes at the expense of accuracy, although the dance rhythms of the first movement’s second part were surprisingly rigid (admittedly meticulously notated but can be freed). Allowing for some waywardness from the soloist, and a Public Radio broadcast that may or may not have distanced the impact of, say, timpani and saxophone (or that the refurbished Powell Hall is as deep as it is wide, or the conductor was overly restrained) one sensed the emotional extremes being unleashed rather than being able to be immersed in them. Nevertheless, there was much poignancy when the Bach quotation was introduced, and from there to the ethereal conclusion. (No encore, no matter.)
There is a thought worth pondering that if a concert contains a violin concerto then something like Scheherazade (with plentiful violin solos) should be left for another time; similarly with a piano concerto then (as an example given) Petrushka is perhaps not the best companion. Anyway, here was the Rimsky. There were suggestions during the Berg that Sułkowska-Migoń relishes detail and ensemble interaction, and also likes an orchestra’s character to come through. And so it proved in this superb Scheherazade, notable for wonderful solos and chamber dialogue, with concertmaster David Halen captivating as the story-teller hoping to parade a wealth of tales and avoid meeting an executioner at the behest of the royal’s desire for a daily bride, brought to descriptive life through the composer’s engaging invention and mastery of the orchestra. Sułkowska-Migoń had plenty of ideas as to how this score should proceed and sound (avoiding mannerism and crudeness) without them becoming talking points and overriding the music. The very responsive St. Louis Symphony was on her side, as no doubt its members will again be at 3 p.m. this afternoon (Sunday the Fifteenth) for this concert’s second outing. Watch out for Anna!
Anna Sułkowska-Migoń, conductor (SLSO debut)
Leila Josefowicz, violin
Grażyna Bacewicz Overture (First SLSO performances)
Alban Berg Violin Concerto
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade