St\u00e9phane Den\u00e8ve has been the music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since 2019, based at Powell Hall. When the hall reopened in 2025 after two years of intensive renovations, Kevin Puts, as Composer in Residence, looked ahead to the future. His new song cycle bursts with optimism and grand emotions, honoring Powell Hall as a house for tomorrow.
\nThe European premiere of Puts\u2019 work shares the stage with a world premiere: Anna Clyne wrote a new piece for orchestra and chorus, commissioned by the Brussels Philharmonic, the Cincinnati May Festival, and Radio France. She selected three poems from Rainer Maria Rilke\u2019s The Book of Hours (Das Stunden-Buch): \u201cTheir inherent musicality, rhythm, rhyme, and highly evocative imagery immediately inspired me.\u201d Rilke\u2019s symbolism, rooted in Russian Orthodox liturgy, led Clyne to borrow a harmonic progression from the final movement of Modest Mussorgsky\u2019s Pictures at an Exhibition, ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’.
\nIt is only fitting, then, that Clyne’s piece is followed by Mussorgsky\u2019s musical exhibition itself. The original piano suite truly comes alive in Ravel’s expert hands: his masterful orchestration brilliantly translates the various paintings, guiding us past a menacing gnome, through playing children in the Parisian Tuileries, all the way to the mighty gate of Kiev.
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St\u00e9phane Den\u00e8ve has been the music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since 2019, based at Powell Hall. When the hall reopened in 2025 after two years of intensive renovations, Kevin Puts, as Composer in Residence, looked ahead to the future. His new song cycle bursts with optimism and grand emotions, honoring Powell Hall […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1940551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"closed","template":"","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n