Author Archives: Robbie

ASO: Robert Spano and Stephen Mulligan with Jennifer Johnson Cano and Jorge Federico Osorio

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Although I attended the Saturday concert, I went to the chamber music performance that preceded the Thursday concert. I had to make a huge effort to leave work on time and then, to avoid feeling rushed, I stopped at a Moe’s near the Woodruff Arts Center to have an early and decidedly unsatisfying supper. If I’m completely honest, I’m not sure that it was worth the trouble. Each of the three pieces had at least one performer without whom the works would have sounded a lot better and I wasn’t that fond of the first two pieces on the program.
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Stephen Tharp

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I’ve never really been a fan of the organ. There was even a time when I actually disliked it. I’ve been making an effort, though, and over the years I’ve come to appreciate it more and more, finding that I particularly like the more contemporary works composed for the instrument. Even now, however, I still generally only go to organ concerts when I have nothing else to do and really want to get out of the house. I’m glad that I made it to Stephen Tharp’s recital at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer last night because his both playing and his programming were both excellent.
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ASO: Peter Oundjian with David Coucheron

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I really enjoyed last night’s concert of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. It began with some dancey fun in the form of three dance variations from Bernstein’s ballet “Fancy Free.” It was a vivacious start to the evening and the musicians sounded great under the capable baton of Peter Oundjian.
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State Ballet Theatre of Russia: Sleeping Beauty

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When I bought my ticket for the State Ballet Theatre of Russia’s production of Petipa’s “Sleeping Beauty” at the Fox, I was kind of taking a gamble. I like Petipa, but only when I’m in the right mood. His work generally ranges from pretty to gorgeous, but the way that he just tosses solos around in a work can turn me off sometimes: I’m just much more taken with ensemble work than solo virtuosity. Also, the touring company performs to canned music and, though I love Tchaikovsky and think his ballet is excellent, the sound system at the Fox can irritate me at times. The gamble paid off, thankfully, because I needed a good dose of beauty and this was just the ticket.
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RAIIN Dance Theater: in Human

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I caught a sort of working preview of some of Raianna Brown’s choreography in RAIIN Dance Theater’s “in Human” at group performance concert put together by Nadya Zeitlin at the Midtown Players Club last May and I thought that it was pretty good. Because it was a small excerpt with only a few dancers without any kind of lighting or set pieces, I wasn’t quite expecting the remarkably large production that they put on last night. Remarkably large and really quite good – exceptionally good if you consider that these were mostly semi-professionals and students, the largest proportion of whom are studying things like engineering or psychology and are not dance majors.
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ASO: Spano with Steven Isserlis

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I mentioned last week how I was a bit put off by the fact that they only had the English translations of the movements in Falla’s ‘El Amore Brujo.’ I would have probably had stronger words then if I’d flipped a few pages through this month’s program and seen that the Schumann and Mahler on this week’s program had movements with descriptive names in German that weren’t translated at all. I think that more people in the Atlanta metro will know that “Introducción y escena” means “Introduction and scene” than will know that “Nicht zu schnell” means “Allegro non troppo”…I mean, “Not too fast.” The movements of Verdi’s Requiem next week are in the untranslated Latin of the Catholic Requiem Mass, but for some reason every-day Spanish has to be translated. What schmucks (pendejos)!
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ASO: Jun Märkl with Catalina Cuervo and Bertrand Chamayou

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I ended up going home at the intermission of Saturday’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert. I’m actually pretty sure that the final piece on the program, Beethoven’s symphony no. 4, would have been handled well by conductor Jun Märkl and played well by the orchestra, but I decided that I didn’t want to sit through it. I can take or leave the work itself and my hip was bothering me. Plus, the main work that I was excited to hear was played poorly and there was an excellent encore after the concerto that I preferred to have in my head over the Beethoven.
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