Kevin Puts (b. 1972)
Concerto for Orchestra
Silent Night Elegy
Virelai (after Guillaume de Machaut)
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra/Stéphane Denève
rec. live, 21/22 September 2019 (Virelai), 7-9 February 2020 (Silent Night Elegy), 21/22 January 2023 (Concerto for Orchestra), Powell Hall, St. Louis, USA
Reviewed from a WAV download: 44 kHz/16-bit
Delos DE3620 [51]

The first thing we hear on this disc is vibrato-less strings. The first violins and cellos are playing a simple descending two bar melody in C major, which resolves on the tonic. The seconds and violas are playing almost in contrary motion. The pattern repeats. Flutes and oboes join on the third repetition playing an equally unembellished but wider ranging motif. Horns and clarinets take over, the string pattern repeating all the time. It’s apparently uncomplicated writing, unadorned, certainly unostentatious. But it has an almost unbearable poignancy. This is the startlingly effective opening of the Concerto for Orchestra by Kevin Puts, whose first movement is his response to reading Amanda Gorman’s poem Hymn for the Hurting, inspired by a high school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022. The playing becomes impassioned with the strings being freed from their repeated pattern to develop an urgent, lyrical theme and the feeling of agitation is brilliantly conveyed by Puts by switching to triplet patterns, full of repeated notes, expressing it seems a struggle for articulacy against the unspeakable. The movement, less than a minute and a half in length, is sufficient to tell us that we are in the hands of an accomplished composer. It makes for a memorable start to this new disc of Puts’s orchestral music, played by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Stéphane Denève to whom the work is dedicated.

Puts describes Hymn for the Hurting as ‘the creative entry point’ for the wide ranging Concerto for Orchestra, a formally inventive and varied work and one which, as its title suggests, provides a showcase for the gifted St. Louis players. The second movement which follows without a break is entitled Caccia, a reference to a fourteenth-century musical form depicting the hunt. Its compound time beat is maintained throughout by three percussionists who play identical collections of six drums, over which we hear various groups of the orchestra playing highly syncopated rhythms. The movement as a whole effects a transition of from the mood of the opening movement, and when we reach the third, Music Box with Arietta, we’re in another place again, immediately surrounded by gentler sounds, harp and celesta in conversation, supported by vibraphone, glockenspiel and chimes. It’s absolutely a music box sound and the later introduction of chattering woodwind figures is charming. The fourth movement Toccata is a rapid series of virtuosic exchanges between instrumental groups which is eventually dominated by the brass section. There follows a brief refrain of the first movement’s theme, this time led by oboe, clarinet and bassoon, which leads to a sophisticated, highly stylised Sicilienne, by far the longest movement in the work. Marked ‘with tenderness’, it starts with a beguiling piano solo, firmly based on the lilting rhythm suggested by the movement’s title but quickly developing into something more complicated based on groups of three semiquaver triplets played over the original left hand accompaniment. These figures on the piano continue for most of the movement, joined by other instrumental groupings playing similarly lyrical themes. I kept being reminded of the slow movement of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Not really because the music is at all similar but because the mood of serenity the piano creates feels the same. Democratically, the name of the piano soloist isn’t highlighted in the booklet given this is a concerto for all of the orchestra but Peter Henderson, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra’s keyboardist does deserve especial commendation I think for his sensitive, finely judged playing. Another short refrain of the Hymn for the Hurting theme introduces the last movement, another Caccia, featuring the briefest of quotations from Act 3 of Le Nozze di Figaro which provided the creative spark for the movement appropriately titled Ecco la Marcia? before the march proper gets under way. It’s taken at a cracking pace, the frenetic writing alternating with the Mozart theme and other more reflective passages with the same battery of percussion on hand to underpin the forward momentum. It makes for a tremendous conclusion to a striking and original new work, which deserves wide hearing. The St Louis players and Stéphane Denève have set a high benchmark with their vibrant account and it’s good to see they are programming it in their 2025/26 season.

Kevin Puts is an accomplished opera composer of course and his Silent Night Elegy is a single movement work for orchestra using music from his first opera, Silent Night. The opera is based upon the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, which tells the story of the spontaneous ceasefires that took place along the Western Front on the first Christmas Eve of World War I. Silent Night Elegy follows the narrative of the film and consists of five sections: a scene setting introduction; a visceral battle; a reflective aftermath where those killed in the battle are buried; a portrayal of the furious reaction of the generals on each side to the ceasefires; and a conclusion where the soldiers drift off to sleep singing about home. Puts has done a tremendous job in distilling the nearly two hours worth of music into a piece about a sixth of the length. He retains the textural and scenic feel of the opera and provides the listener with a sense of the narrative and dramatic action at every stage. Like the original he eschews both conventional musical gestures and sentimentality and his use of the orchestra is immensely skilful. The work was a co-commission by the St Louis Symphony and Denève and again they deliver an account full of belief and conviction. This is a work to sit alongside another recent release of excellent orchestral pieces inspired by contemporary opera, Beyond (ORC100368, review). But if you can, do also seek out the complete opera which has been excellently recorded by Naxos (8.669050-51). Its drama and force really come across powerfully in the account from the Minnesota Opera conducted by Courtney Lewis.

The disc ends with an exuberant short work, Virelai (after Guillaume de Machaut) which takes Machaut’s melody Dame, a vous sans retollir and transforms it courtesy of Puts’s signature orchestral flair. Ravel’s Boléro was also an inspiration, as can be heard as the music’s volume and intensity increase as different instruments take up the melody. The work was commissioned to mark the start of Denève’s Music Directorship of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in 2019, and they play it here with a relish and joy that’s infectious.

I’ve enjoyed this disc immensely. Puts has given us some sophisticated, imaginative orchestral writing that is inherently accessible. A really refreshing experience.

Dominic Hartley

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