SLSO Pulitzer concert reviewed

The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra presented the first concert in its new series featuring chamber works by modern composers this past week, and Post-Dispatch classical music critic Sarah Bryan Miller was there to review the performance:

"The four works on the program for Tuesday night's concert at the Pulitzer Foundation emphasized the cerebral almost entirely. St. Louis Symphony Orchestra music director David Robertson and a band of adroit musicians made their best case for music by Anton Webern, Morton Feldman, Karlheinz Stockhausen and David Lang, but only partly succeeded in convincing. There was plenty here to engage the brain but little beauty to gratify the soul."

I beleive Ms. Miller, a trained opera singer with a good deal of performance experience, is on the record as not being the biggest fan of modern music, so her assessment should be considered with that in mind. Interestingly, the review also notes that the concert played to a packed house. That's a good sign, one that helps refute the notion that audiences don't like "difficult" music, and if one sellout turns into a trend, it would seem to bode well for the future of the series.