In Sunday’s (8/25) Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, Missouri), Sarah Bryan Miller writes, “Years in the planning—not to mention negotiating, scheduling and programming—the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s first European tour in 14 years constitutes a musical marathon in more ways than one. … On Tuesday, Sept. 4, music director David Robertson, violinist Christian Tetzlaff and the SLSO will perform in the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall. On the 5th, they’re in the Philharmonie in Berlin. On the 6th, it’s the Lucerne Festival. On the 7th, they play their final concert, at the Salle Pleyel in Paris. On the 8th, they head home. In a sense, the tour begins Tuesday evening, with a free ‘Rally Concert’ at Powell Symphony Hall, featuring repertoire to be performed in Europe. There’s a final rehearsal on Wednesday. Then things get busy. The tour takes 117 people—101 instrumentalists, one music director, one soloist, one assistant conductor, a small stage crew and other staff, a music librarian, a doctor, a photographer and an embedded music critic—to four cities for four concerts in four days. … ‘Nothing focuses the mind like an upcoming tour,’ says David Robertson, who reports that the European presenters ‘are all charged up and excited’ about the SLSO’s impending visit.”
Posted August 27, 2012
