“On Jan. 16, St. Louisans have an opportunity to hear one of Olivier Messiaen’s most interesting scores, ‘Des canyons aux étoiles… (From the Canyons to the Stars…),’ performed by David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra,” writes Sarah Bryan Miller in Sunday’s (1/10) St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri). “It will be accompanied by a world-premiere visual setting, and preceded by a lecture-demonstration by Robertson and the orchestra. ‘Canyons,’ which was written about American national parks, is being heard in the centenary of the founding of the National Park Service. It’s one of the SLSO’s most important projects this season…. ‘Canyons’ is ‘one of those pieces that’s a real event,’ says Robertson.… The problem, says Robertson, is getting audiences to connect the music with the physical beauty that Messiaen describes in his work. Too few people … have any personal acquaintance with the parks. Robertson … turned to San Francisco-based [landscape] photographer Deborah O’Grady to photograph the sites…. ‘I think (“Canyons”) will be a powerful experience,’ she says…. ‘Rather than one of those things where you watch the movie and then realize you didn’t really hear the music, all along my intention was that you would (get) both.’ ”
Posted January 15, 2016
Pictured: Deborah O’Grady’s images of Death Valley will be part of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s performance of From the Canyons to the Stars.
