Gods and Grids: Tonight at Powell Hall

First, let's get some housekeeping out of the way--literally. As I walked into the auditorium down the south hallway, I saw a housekeeping worker thru the half-open door of a janitor's closet and his cart in the exit way at the far end of the hallway. These things, the public should not see--ever.
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But wait, it gets worse. As I sat in my cheap seat on the right aisle [K30 for the curious], I heard several loud bangs during the first part of the concert. At intermission, I exited the side door on my way to the 'smoking lounge' and the cart was still there, where people had to walk around it to get to the exit door.
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And that's not bad enough. In the second part of the concert, after more bangs and just as the orchestra reached a pause in the music, the janitor decided to move the cart. The wheels were loud enough to overwhelm the last few notes of the movement in their atonal screech. Later, there were three thundering booms that sounded like the ceiling falling in, and more smaller bangs throughout the rest of the performance.
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As much as I admire the symphony as an organization, this is inexcusable. There is often noise from the hallway as people use the adjacent stage door, but it is intermittent

and doesn't happen at every performance. To even have the janitor in the public spaces during the premiere performance is a management fumble of epic scale. At least give the man the dignity of a uniform that blends in with the ushers if he has to be there, and I'm sure there must be a more formal alternative to yellow rubber gloves.
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I noticed this as I was scanning the foyers for kodak moments. It's a velvet dixie cup dispenser! Maybe a velvet housekeeping cart could be justified in the budget...
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Finally, on to business.
Tonight's bill promised a spectacle, and it almost delivered. We heard John Adams's 'Guide to Strange Places', Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto with Yefim Bronfman on piano, and Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. David Robertson conducted the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.
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The concert started with a pleasant surprise in an appearance and short talk by Adams. The highlight of his brief speech was when he said [and I paraphrase] that one of the things about being a composer is that your work appears on the program with the world's greatest masterpieces. Adams's work stood up to the Rachmaninoff extremely well, in my opinion. Adventurous and mysterious, 'Guide to Mysterious Places' takes the listener on, according to Adams, a Fantasia-like journey thru sound. His minimalist style is distinctive for its bold rhythmic structure, but in this piece, the rhythm didn't drive the music as prominently as it does in his other works [many of you know his stunning 'Harmonielehre' from its excerpts quoted in 'The Matrix']. I was immediately reminded of Richard Serra's notorious 'Twain' and pictured myself running around the minimalist sculpture being assaulted by the corporate monoliths that surround it. Fortunately, this imagery faded as the music demanded other visualizations in its constantly-twisting sonic journey. The Symphony nailed the piece, for the most part. I'm no professional musician, so I'll spare you the pretentious musical references and analysis of the conductor's technique, but the musicians played as one just as we expect them to and Robertson did his usual excellent job of bringing the music to life. I just wish the horns would get their act together. I think they call it 'attacking' when the horn comes in too strong, but it's a recurring problem with the SLSO rearing its ugly head again [I missed all of last season, but in the previous season, the horns were perfect, so I'm wondering what happened].
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Rachmaninoff's 3rd has never been one of my favorite pieces of music, and this performance didn't change that. Bronfman was technically spectacular, but thru the first two movements, he was missing a lot of the nuance. A few times, he lost the melody in Rachmaninoff's luxurious runs of scales [there's a musical term for these, but I don't know what it is and expect my readers don't either]. But in the third movement, he hit a home run. It's as if he finally came alive and realized there was more to it than hitting the keys in sequence. Again the horns hit sour, and the standing ovation seemed a little over the top. I broke my normal respectful protocol and left before it died down.
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I quickly lost interest in the Bartok and slipped into my usual distraction of figuring out what shades they need to add to the paint scheme to do justice to the hall's beautiful plasterwork. However, the orchestra was noticeably more on its game for the Concerto for Orchestra. The horns were especially good and deserved their eager applause. The piece deserves it's reputation, I'm sure, but there's just very little from the 40's that interests me musically.
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The biggest surprise of the evening was the audience. It was the most respectful audience I've encountered in St. Louis. There was very little coughing during the Adams, most notably a woman behind me who couldn't be bothered to control herself thru the first five minutes of the piece. They were rapt thru-out the Rachmaninoff, and there was practically no coughing at all, but they made up for it somewhat after intermission. The talking was so quiet I could only barely hear it [and that just doesn't happen with a St. Louis audience]. On the downside, the walking ovation after the Bartok was a civic embarrassment as half the people surrounding me bolted for the door as soon as Robertson put down his baton. People in the aisle in front of me were even rude enough to strike up a conversation with the people they were crawling over.
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And if janitor noise and screeching brass wasn't bad enough, somebody just had to top off the evening by farting in the aisle. It lingered thru the entire ovation, and it smelled like a sewer.
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I wonder if there'll be Lysol on the new velvet janitor's cart.