From Mozart to Wagner: Mysticism and Wonder

SLSO Principal Keyboard Peter Henderson joins Assistant Conductor Sam Hollister to reflect on the contrasting musical worlds of Wagner, Mozart, Samy Moussa, and Respighi. He shares insight into the unique color and role of the keyboard within the orchestra, including the shimmering voice of the celesta, and explores how his work as both performer and teacher shapes his musical perspective.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Noted, a podcast that offers a quick look at the personal stories and perspectives behind each SLSO classical program. I'm Sam Hollister, assistant conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Led by conductor Hanu Lintu, this program moves across a wide range of musical styles and sound worlds. It opens with the prelude to Act One from Loen Grin by Ricard Wagner, followed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano concerto number nine, nicknamed Genome, featuring pianist Jan Lysetsky in his SLSO debut. The program continues with the first SLSO performances of Elysium by Sammy Moussat and concludes with Odorino Raspegie's Church Windows. Today I'm joined by SLSO principal keyboardist Peter Henderson. Peter, thank you so much for being here. Sam, thanks for having me. It's an honor. Can you tell us a bit about your journey to the SLSO and what it was like stepping into the keyboard position here?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Well, I should first admit that my orchestral experiences began with listening. When I was about four years old, my dad brought home an LP, one of those big old black discs vinyl of uh Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. And ever since then, the sound of the orchestra has been the most magical for me. We had a piano in the house, and so I learned piano and had some aptitude for it. Along the way, because I loved orchestra so much, I studied some cello in elementary school orchestra, then junior high orchestra, then youth symphony, high school orchestra. Finally, in college, I was actually in a cello choir. But I never really imagined that I could be so involved in the fabric of an orchestra as a keyboardist because the keyboard is kind of an incidental instrument. And while my aptitude was much greater for piano than it is for cello, somehow my orientation towards large ensemble music uh led me to the sound of an orchestra. And I must confess, when I arrived here in town, I was just very fortunate with the timing. Barbara Lieberman was a wonderful orchestral keyboardist, and she had been the principal keyboardist of the St. Louis Symphony for about 30 years. So Barbara retired after David Robertson's first year as music director, which is 2005 to 06. And I already had done some work with David, and so the personnel manager sent me an email, and I all of a sudden had a bunch of work with the St. Louis Symphony. Meanwhile, I was pretty fresh in my job as an assistant professor then at Maryville University. So those were very busy times. Over the years, I just continued to play pretty regularly here. David Robertson relied on me in a lot of ways. He used me a lot for the contemporary music series at the Pulitzer, for example. And then when Stefan Deneve came here, I knew he was a pianist, and so I was a little concerned, uh, a little bit of imposter syndrome. I thought, well, maybe he'll realize I'm actually a fraud. But it turns out he likes my work too. So I'm very grateful for that because he actually appointed me to the orchestra, which is an incredible honor. It's a truly a lifetime honor.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

It is an incredible institution. Well, the four composers on this program, Wagner, Mozart, Moussa, and Verspicy, each have very different styles and worlds. Which contrasts between these composers stand out to you the most?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

I would say the standout there is Mozart, just on the basis of orchestral forces. Wagner is well known as the composer in the 19th century who perhaps expanded the instrumentation of the orchestra more than any other. And so you have uh in in Musa and Respeggi composers who are using post-Wagnerian forces, and so there's a grandeur that's possible in the instrumentation that Mozart would not have considered placing that many instruments on stage. Um just from the standpoint of the sound world, I feel Mozart is a little bit apart. What's interesting with this program, there's a luminous quality to it, I would say. There's a kind of harmonic seeking for Elysium, as explicitly stated by Musa in his title, um, to something eternal. And so you have very long-held chords in the Wagner in the Musa, as well as um the Respigie, who's using sources from Gregorian chant.

unknown 4:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

And instead of the the meter and the rhythm being determined by Latin poetry, he's using meters like 5-4 to expand the sense of the measure and make the breadth of the melody be more uneven and therefore more difficult for the listener to sort of separate into little small atomic bits.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

So in Raspic's church windows, which grew out of a set of piano preludes into a fully orchestrated work, in this piece, the orchestration doesn't involve piano, even though that's sort of where it comes from, but instead you'll play a very significant celesta part. In your imagination, how does that celeste part contribute to the overall color and imagery of the work?

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Aaron Ross Powell I think that composers very often favor the Celesta over the Glockenspiel in settings where they don't want an overwhelming brilliance. The Glockenspiel, of course, is a metal bar like the Celesta, but with the Glockenspiel, you have usually a hard mallet playing that bar. Whereas the Celesta, you have the felt hammer, like with the piano. And so it's a it's a softer sound, and they're wooden resonators inside. So it's just kind of warmer sounding, even though it's also a very high sound. So the Celesta can be used in partnership with the harp also to create a kind of dialogue in that that brilliant high register, also in kind of a warm way. But I would say Rosbeghi is using the Celesta a lot to color woodwind lines.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Adding color to a line that is somewhere else in the orchestra. Yes. It's a great way to add color to the painting of the music. Exactly. Yeah, perhaps it's to create this idea of light. Yeah. You know, light through a window, through a church window. The piece Elysium by Sammy Moussa alludes to this idea of Elysium or Elysian fields in Greek mythology, which is this place of eternal paradise after death. Classically, it's reserved for heroes and those favored by the gods. But in Moussa's own words, he was thinking of Elysium as the idea of a life well lived on this planet. From the first moments of the piece, as you mentioned before, it feels like it's suspended, almost in a state of bliss. For you personally, what moments in life feel like paradise or bring you that sense of bliss?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

To be perfectly honest, it's actually listening to music. I love performing and I love collaborating with others in performance. I mean, I feel so grateful for the opportunity to do this work. But the core of my experience really comes down to that experience I had as a young boy, transfixed in front of a loudspeaker, listening, taking in the sounds, understanding the patterns, appreciating the way that music reflects aspects of time. And music has a way of, I think, potentially taking us outside of time. And in the kind of music that was chosen for this program, these very long harmonies, the suspended sounds, lines which uh might be in somewhat in the high register, it leads one's gaze perhaps upward and it lends to this feeling of timelessness or being beyond time. So actually hearing this kind of music is precisely what gives me that feeling, Sam.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

You mentioned that you are currently associate professor of music and artist in residence at Maryville University. Does teaching and mentoring students influence the way you perform with the SLSO or vice versa?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

You know, teaching and mentoring is something I've love doing. I just love it. And the students at Maryville are they're so talented. They really have so much potential. And so it's another honor to be able to help them realize their potential. And I would say that, yes, my work here with the SLSO has helped me to become a better musician, which has helped me to become a better teacher because I'm able to more concisely present concepts because I have a better understanding of them. And then I would say that teaching has helped me to understand that we are all lifelong learners. And it, in a sense, perhaps here at PAL Hall helps me to give myself grace in the inevitable moment when I do make a mistake. No matter the expertise, there's always something imperfect, and there's always something to be learned, something to be improved in a later performance. And seeing other learners in that process has helped me to, in a sense, be a little kinder to myself in those settings.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Well, Peter, thank you so much for sharing your insights and perspectives with us. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Always a pleasure, Sam. Thanks for having me. And to our listeners, thank you as always for joining us for this episode of Noted. We'll be back with another episode very soon, so stay tuned, and I'll see you at Powell Hall.