Scheherazade: Magic and Myth with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

On March 14, 2026, I made the trip from Chicago to St. Louis to hear the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Scheherazade: Magic and Myth program at Powell Hall. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade is one of my favorite symphonic poems, and I felt overdue for another live encounter with it. I was also curious about Powell Hall itself, and the trip ended up being worth it before the orchestra even played a single note.

When I arrived in St. Louis, I was immediately struck by Powell Hall’s blend of old and new. The renovated spaces feel contemporary and thoughtfully designed, but the hall still preserves the elegance of an old ballroom. This may be a sacrilegious thing to say, but I came away thinking that Carnegie Hall and Symphony Center could take a few notes from St. Louis. The building is impressive, but just as notable was the audience culture around it. Many concertgoers were dressed for the occasion, and during the performance I barely noticed any phones. That level of attention and respect for the music added to the atmosphere of the afternoon.

The scale of the hall also surprised me. I have seen many concert venues, but Powell Hall felt genuinely grand in a way that deserves appreciation. I was initially worried that a room that large might come at the expense of clarity, but Powell Hall’s reputation for acoustics is well deserved. The only hall I can compare it to is Milwaukee’s Bradley Symphony Center, another repurposed space with some character. While writing this, I found out that the same company, Rapp & Rapp, was involved in both halls, which made the resemblance make sense. Needless to say, Powell Hall earned my respect very quickly.

Since I had already made the trip from Chicago, I decided to take in the full experience and attend the pre-concert lecture hosted by assistant conductor Samuel Hollister. It had been a while since I had sat through that kind of lecture, and I was reminded how useful a good pre-concert talk can be. Hollister made several points that stayed with me throughout the performance and helped bring back some details about Rimsky-Korsakov that I had not thought about in a while.

Before getting to the music itself, one more thing deserves mention: I was impressed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s willingness to meet the audience halfway. The conductor took a moment to speak before the Bacewicz opener, and Leila Josefowicz also addressed the audience before the Berg concerto. Most listeners had not attended the pre-concert lecture, so I appreciated the effort to provide some context and emotional framing from the stage. This was a program that benefited from a broader context, and the orchestra clearly understood that.

Overall. The afternoon brought together Grazyna Bacewicz’s Overture, Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz as soloist, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, led by Anna Sulkowska-Migon in her SLSO debut. It was the kind of program that moved from compact brilliance to introspection and then to pure orchestral storytelling. Below is the program, my notes from the pre-concert lecture, and my reactions to the performance. If you are in St. Louis, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is absolutely worth hearing live.

Program

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra - March 14, 2026
Powell Hall

Artists

• Anna Sulkowska-Migon: conductor
• Leila Josefowicz: violin

Works performed

• Grazyna Bacewicz: Overture
• Alban Berg: Violin Concerto
• Intermission
• Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

Notes & reactions

Grazyna Bacewicz: Overture

The first piece of the afternoon was by a composer I had not spent much time with before. The pre-concert lecture opened with an introduction to Grazyna Bacewicz, who was both a violin virtuoso and a serious composer before eventually turning fully toward composition after a car accident ended her performing career. I was struck by how accomplished she had been as a violinist. Hollister mentioned that she received an honorable mention at the Wieniawski International Violin Competition in 1935, the same year Ginette Neveu won first prize and David Oistrakh took second. She also served as a concertmaster in Poland, which makes her output as a composer even more impressive.

I also learned that this overture was written during a period when Bacewicz knew her music was unlikely to be performed. That context gave the piece an extra defiant energy. Another reminder of her remarkable training is that she studied composition with Nadia Boulanger and violin with Carl Flesch. Beyond the biography, though, the music speaks for itself. The overture was exciting, tightly constructed, and full of momentum.

Before the performance, Anna Sulkowska-Migon took a moment to explain why she wanted to program the piece. She noted that people often speak as if Chopin were Poland’s only great composer, and made the case that Bacewicz deserves to be heard as part of that same broader tradition. The orchestra responded impressively. I was especially struck by how precise the string section was in the high passages.

Berg: Violin Concerto

I had heard snippets of Berg’s Violin Concerto and learned about its significance when I was an undergraduate minoring in music. It took me a while to appreciate twelve-tone music, and part of that process involved trying to compose in that style myself. That kind of intellectual exercise is not something a general audience member is likely to do, so the question becomes: how do you make this music approachable? The St. Louis Symphony handled that challenge well by pairing the performance with both a pre-concert lecture and brief remarks from the stage.

During the lecture, Samuel Hollister gave an eloquent analogy between twelve-tone serialism and Pointillism. It is simply a technique for creating an expressive whole; the method itself should not eclipse the result. I thought that was an effective way to frame the piece, and he even walked the audience through the idea of the twelve-tone matrix. He also described Berg as a composer positioned between the late-Romantic world of Vienna and the new musical language that Schoenberg was developing. In that sense, Berg was not writing randomly at all. He shaped his rows so that harmonic progression still mattered.

I also appreciated the discussion of the concerto’s dedication and the religious dimension introduced by the Bach chorale near the end. Josefowicz added a few remarks of her own before the performance, calling the concerto one of the most profound works she has played. That conviction came through immediately. The opening is exposed enough to make any violinist nervous just thinking about it, but Josefowicz handled it with total command. Her tone was gorgeous, and the final high note, sustained with a vivid vibrato, landed with real intensity. She took the dynamic range of the piece all the way to the edge.

Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade

The second half of the concert was reserved for the iconic symphonic poem. This was the reason I made the trip. I already knew the piece well, but the pre-concert lecture reminded me of details I had forgotten, especially Rimsky-Korsakov’s background as a sailor and his relatively unconventional path into composition. Hollister pointed out that, although he was not initially trained as rigorously as some of the other Russian composers, he eventually became a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He suggested that Rimsky-Korsakov’s time at sea may have helped shape the imagination behind Scheherazade, and he walked through how the recurring motifs relate to the characters and narrative world of the story.

For the second half, I was invited by the staff to try a different seat in another part of the hall. From that elevated position above the main floor, I could appreciate the acoustics even more. The oboes and flutes came through with exceptional clarity. I was completely taken in by the interpretation. The trills that pass between the winds and strings were carefully shaped, and in the last movement the tremolo that begins in the timpani and moves into the cello section stood out vividly. The conductor did an excellent job balancing the orchestral layers and helped me hear the piece in a new way.

I have heard Scheherazade many times, but every live performance reveals some new detail. Since the piece contains one of the most famous violin solos in the repertoire, I have to mention concertmaster David Halen. He is clearly more than qualified for it, and I thought his overall interpretation was convincing. I could hear the changes in timbre each time the theme returned, as if the story itself were evolving. There were a few intonation issues that evening. I suspect most listeners would not have minded, but they were noticeable to me because I know the piece so well.

Closing thoughts

I grew up listening to the New York Philharmonic, one of the Big Five. When I moved to Chicago, I was initially somewhat underwhelmed by the orchestra there, perhaps because they were still coming out of the COVID years and settling back into routine. In St. Louis, though, I felt as if I had found a gem. The St. Louis Symphony is comparable to the major ensembles I have heard, and in some ways it even surpasses them.

Watching this concert, I felt a level of commitment and passion that I do not always sense from the larger marquee orchestras. It is the same kind of energy I associate with the New York Classical Players. The St. Louis Symphony is also the second-oldest orchestra in the United States, after the New York Philharmonic, and after this visit I have no doubt it will continue performing at a very high level. I will gladly hear them again.

Links

• Official event page: SLSO: Scheherazade - Magic and Myth
• Program notes: SLSO program notes for March 14-15, 2026