5 Reasons to Get Excited About November with the SLSO

By Eric Dundon

The weather is cooling down, but the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s 145^th season is as hot as ever. And as November approaches, each week brings new and exciting performances that touch the heart and soul, conjures smiles, and creates lasting memories. Here are five reasons to get excited about November with the SLSO.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have lived more than 200 years ago, but his music still feels as fresh as ever. Music Director Stéphane Denève gets a pure sound from the SLSO through Mozart’s music, and the prolific composer remains one of Denève’s favorite conductors.

A two-week celebration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart begins at the end of the prolific composer’s dramatic life (concerts November 9-10). The Adagio and Fugue, another late work, is a dark and almost mystical vision. Bass-baritone Dashon Burton returns to the SLSO in Detlev Glanert’s arrangement of Johannes Brahms’ final song cycle, the Four Serious Songs. And the Requiem, a subject of the 1984 film Amadeus, remains one of the composer’s most popular creations.

The second program of the SLSO’s Mozart celebration (November 15-16) captures a composer on the move throughout his European life. Opening the concert, Mozart is an eight-year-old prodigy, his First Symphony composed in London demonstrating his raw genius. At home in Vienna later in his life, Mozart wrote the Piano Concerto No. 20, a darker work in stark contrast to the buoyant First Symphony. Then, Mozart is in Italy, writing the opera Mitridate, rè di Ponto. While in France, Mozart wrote the “Paris” Symphony while searching for a job in the French capital.

The SLSO pays homage to veterans in a free community concert at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Chesterfield (November 11). SLSO Principal Trumpet Steven Franklin leads a powerful brass quintet program to honor the Veterans Day holiday. This hourlong event is free, and RSVPs are requested at slso.org. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis. A firm believer in connecting with audiences throughout the community, the SLSO gives many free concerts at schools, houses of worship, and community spaces throughout the season.

Music about death doesn’t have to be depressing—it’s also powerful, moving, and dare we say… fun.

November begins with music composed for the Disney/Pixar film Coco (November 2-3). Inspired by the Mexican holiday Dia De Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, the film follows 12-year-old Miguel as he enters the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, a legendary singer, and confront his family’s ancestral ban on music. The Academy Award-nominated score employs a variety of Latin instruments to create Miguel’s world and is a perfect opportunity to introduce symphonic music to an orchestra newbie. The SLSO performs the toe-tapping score live while the film plays.

Mozart took a more traditional approach to music for the deceased in his Requiem (November 9-10), one of the most popular choral-orchestral works in the entire symphonic canon. The circumstances surrounding Mozart’s unfinished Requiem are shrouded in mystery, but the music’s sorrow and beauty speak across the centuries. A quartet of soloists join the orchestra and St. Louis Symphony Chorus for this profound piece of music. The Chorus will perform for the first time under the direction of Erin Freeman, who was appointed Director of the St. Louis Symphony Chorus in July 2024.

More than 20 years ago, the SLSO and Pulitzer Arts Foundation embarked on a journey to converge the worlds of music and visual arts. That collaboration is still going strong through Live at the Pulitzer, an intimate concert series held within the museum’s galleries where SLSO musicians perform bold and adventurous chamber music in response to the art on display. This season, Live at the Pulitzer starts on November 12 with a program that draws inspiration from the natural world.

In Outside In, Kaija Saariaho invokes the Japanese gardens of Kyoto with field recordings of nature and ritual singing. Windy, high-altitude string harmonics soar in music by Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams. Samuel Adams, an American composer whose music weaves acoustic and digital sound into “mesmerizing” (The New York Times) orchestrations, juxtaposes light and shadow in new quintet for strings and percussion.

The St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra—the region’s premiere training ensemble for the most accomplished young musicians—kicks off its season November 16 under new director. Samuel Hollister, SLSO Assistant Conductor and the Fred M. Saigh Music Director, leads the YO for the first time in a program that juxtaposes tension and relaxation. Valerie Coleman’s Umoja is an anthem for peace, drawing on the entire orchestra to create joy. Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet, Fantasy Overture strikes a notably darker mood, tracing some of the Shakespeare’s plays most dramatic moments. Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 contains elements of both tension and relaxation. Support these young musicians at their concert at the Touhill Performing Arts Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

Eric Dundon is the SLSO’s Public Relations Director.