The Eastern Townships of Quebec in October are simply magnificent. Out our living room (and bedroom) windows we can practically see the colors changing before our eyes. It is curious how one never ceases to be amazed at this annual phenomenon. After many decades on this earth watching the leaves changing colors it is still a wonder, a source of joy and sadness combined. Joy because the colors are so beautiful and sadness because it is a sign that the leaves are about to die and fall to the ground, and that the warm summer days are no more. It is important to us to be here to watch this transition, and again in the springtime as the world seems to come alive once more.

Finally, as the weather begins to turn cold we pack the car once more and head south. This year we left on Oct 17. The first night we stopped in Toronto for one last and very brief visit with our son and his family, then next morning we head west toward Chicago. We get as far as Kalamazoo, Michigan where the city is virtually shut down by thunderstorms and tornado warnings. In the end there is only minor damage and we continue on to the Windy City.

I wanted to visit Symphony Store and make sure they were stocking my Solti book. If people in Chicago are not interested in reading about the man who led the Chicago Symphony  for more than 20 years, then there is not much hope anywhere else. In fact, it was prominently displayed in the store and the employees assured me it was selling well. I also wanted to hear the CSO under their interim chief conductor Bernard Haitink, playing Wagner and Mahler.

Haitink had often struck me as dull. He had many fine recordings with the Concertgebouw but there were also leaden Liszt performances with the London Philharmonic and pedestrian Brahms symphonies with the Boston Symphony. But Haitink is a venerated senior maestro now – he is 77 – and seems to have got a second wind. His recent Beethoven cycle with the LSO was not only solid but exciting.

The program started with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll in the original chamber version, the way Cosima must have heard it from the top of the stairs on Christmas morning. What a present! I came under the spell of the piece once again, not only because of the excellence of the playing but because of Haitink’s sureness of touch. The problem in conducting this piece is that if it is taken too slowly it falls apart and if taken too fast its beauty has no time to register. Haitink appeared to be doing nothing at all in front of his musicians but what he gave them was exactly the right tempos and that made all the difference. After intermission came Mahler’s Symphony No. 6.

A few months ago I was listening to a lot of Mahler Sixth recordings from Barbirolli – one of my favorites – to Bernstein, Karajan, Mackerras, Tennstedt and Eschenbach. I tend to prefer my Mahler over the top, as it were, as a true reflection of Mahler’s personality. Haitink’s approach was predictably less personal than some of the others whose performances I have listed but it lacked neither power nor poetry. I expect my ears to bleed during the climaxes in this symphony and that didn’t happen here but there was so much else to admire I went away satisfied.

The problem with the climaxes has partly to do with Orchestra Hall. The acoustics have always been mediocre here. The sound tends to get hard and distorted under pressure, and the violins get no help at all at any volume level. Haitink has a wonderful ear for orchestral balance and he brought out sounds and colors that I had rarely heard before.

The cowbells were perfectly conceived. They are supposed to sound far off but they must be heard. We recognize this as a herd of cows slowing passing in the distance but as if in a dream. I am sure Mahler intended it this way. I also heard the incomparable Dale Clevenger leading the horn section and playing with the energy and confidence of a man half his age. Then there was the remarkable playing of tubist Gene Pokorny. Arnold Jacobs sat in this chair for many years and became a legend in his own time. But Pokorny has earned the right to sit there as a distinguished successor. One example? After letter 160 in the score Mahler wrote a trill for the tuba marked ff  then sempre ff  that lasts more than three full bars – a total of 13 beats – and I had never really heard it before. Pokorny gave Haitink (and Mahler) full value from the first beat to the last. Mahler’s scores are full of surprises like this and Haitink and his wonderful musicians caught many of them to perfection.

As a stage presence Haitink is as honest and self-effacing as any conductor one is likely to see. Yet on this occasion the effect was charismatic. A fine concert.

The next day we continued our journey, turning south across the Illinois cornfields – more than ever with the current interest in ethanol – and headed to St. Louis. I wanted to hear if the reports were true about the magic David Robertson was making with the St. Louis Symphony It was also a chance to hear Powell Hall for the first time.

This was our first visit to the hall and we were impressed. It is a renovated movie house in the grand style seating about 2,600. The acoustics are very good. Lots of reverb and presence. The hall opened in 1925 as the St. Louis Theatre devoted to film and vaudeville. In January, 1968, after extensive renovations it reopened as Powell Hall, home of the St. Louis Symphony. Walter S. Powell, a local shoe manufacturer, had put up most of the money for the reno.

The look of Powell Hall is either magnificent or absurd depending on your point of view. In 1968 did they really have to model the lobby after the royal chapel at Versailles? Some will view the renovation as a welcome relief from all the “modern” concert halls being built then and now. It is definitely old-fashioned in its look and feel. It gives the impression of having always been there, a part of history, when, of course, it is nothing of the sort. It is ersatz history having very little to do with the history of St. Louis or the United States for that matter. And while the current music director is a man of the future – more about him in a moment – the hall is more like a museum and this is by no means the image the St. Louis Symphony is trying to cultivate at the moment.

The program was a thoughtful one – Berlioz’ King Lear Overture and La Mort de Cléopatre (Susan Graham), Zimmermann’s Musique pour le soupers du Roi Ubu and Ravel’s La Valse. As the program book annotator Paul Schiavo put it:  “the first three works are  portraits of unhinged individuals. Our final offering (La Valse) suggests an entire society coming undone.”

Except for La Valse these were also little-known pieces. The conductor was David Robertson and he deserves enormous credit for his program building and for his conducting. He is terrific. He knew the pieces inside and out and conducted with authority and energy. I loved the concert. I never cease to be amazed at Berlioz’ orchestral imagination and for me there were plenty of ‘how did he do that’ moments in these two pieces. I can’t recall hearing either of these pieces in a concert and they should certainly be done more often. Cléopatre was composed just before the Symphonie fantastique and the King Lear Overture just afterwards.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970) was a German avant-garde composer who experimented with all sorts of styles including serialism and jazz. Musique pour les soupers du Roi Ubu from 1966 is loosely based on the infamous absurdist play Ubu Roi (1896) by Alfred Jarry. The music is a collage of sorts with glosses on familiar pieces including Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Like Berlioz in his time Zimmermann loved to experiment with unusual instrumental combinations. In this piece the only strings were four double basses, joined by several amplified guitars, brass, winds and percussion. The piece is at best a novelty item but it was well played and was done with some theatricality e.g. photos projected, and an actor in costume questioning the king’s authority between movements.

Finally, Robertson reassembled the entire St. Louis Symphony and they gave a spectacular performance of La Valse. This orchestra was excellent under Leonard Slatkin and Hans Vonk and after one hearing seems to me just as good under Robertson.

My overall impression was that David Robertson has a refreshing view of what a symphony concert should be. He has a wonderfully infectious curiosity about music and while his tastes may be eclectic he is very much at home in standard repertoire too. He is a fine conductor and just what is needed if orchestras are going to survive and regenerate themselves. The only question in my mind is whether St. Louis is the place to do it. As I recall, St. Louis ultimately tired of Slatkin’s commitment to contemporary music and welcomed the old world style of his successor Hans Vonk. Is the St. Louis audience prepared to go where Robertson leads them? We’ll see.

Two days after the St. Louis concert we were back in Austin and attending the first concert of the season presented by Salon Concerts. This series is the creation of an amazing musician named Robert Rudié. For many years he was concertmaster of the Oklahoma Symphony, after that held the same position with Stokowski’s American Symphony, and played in numerous Casals festivals. He came to Austin to join the Austin Symphony but really to be with a remarkable woman, Kathryn Mishell, pianist, composer and broadcaster.

We have got to know Robert and Kathryn quite well and Robert has allowed me to question him endlessly about Stokowski for my forthcoming book. But back to Salon Concerts. The idea of this series is to give chamber music concerts in private homes, the perfect sort of venue for this music, but it is more than that. The musicians, led by Robert, are the finest Austin has to offer, the homes are among the most beautiful in the city and after each concert there is an exquisitely catered meal with wine – all for $35! And there is even more than that! Since 1991 Salon Concerts has been offering weekly chamber music coaching to student ensembles in Austin public schools.

For the first concert of the new season Robert chose one of my favorite pieces: Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence for string sextet. This is a piece full of the glorious melody we expect from Tchaikovsky but it is also a work that shows the composer’s incredible mastery of string textures. The interplay is endlessly inspired and to hear it played up close in a private home is a privilege and a pleasure. The concert began with a Boccherini Quintet.

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