Category Archives: Orchestra

ASO: Robert Spano with Elizabeth Koch Tiscione, Laura Ardan, Andrew Brady, Brice Andrus, & Jeremy Denk

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This weekend’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra featured good performances of works that aren’t necessarily my favorite. It opened with Gandolfi’s Imaginary Numbers. When I first heard it in 2015, I thought that it had some interesting ideas but that a concerto for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn wasn’t entirely the best thing ever. I felt more or less the same way this time: I did enjoy it and appreciate the performances by ASO principals Elizabeth Koch Tiscione, Laura Ardan, Andrew Brady, and Brice Andrus; but I frequently just felt that the music wasn’t quite taking me anywhere.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Daniel Hope, David Finckel, and Wu Han

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Last night’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert was particularly festive. The concerto for the evening was Beethoven’s Triple Concerto and the triplets for this performance were Daniel Hope, the associate artistic director of the Savannah Music Festival, along with David Finckel and Wu Han, who are the founding artistic directors of Music@Menlo Chamber Music Festival. Robert Spano, the music director of the Aspen Music Festival and School, conducted. Even the concertmaster, David Coucheron, is the Artistic Director of the Kon Tiki Chamber Music Festival. This program will be performed again tonight at the Savannah Music Festival. With that much festivity on one stage, there really should have been a lot more sequins.
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ASO: Henrik Nanasi with David Coucheron

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Thursday’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert was preceded by a wonderful chamber concert programmed by principal harpist Elisabeth Remy Johnson. It featured five women composers in honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day. Sadly, aside from one piece a year by Jennifer Higdon, the ASO includes women composers on the obnoxiously long list of groups of composers that it rarely bothers to program for its Delta Classical Series. This concert represented a 500% increase in the number of women composers that series subscribers will hear in Symphony Hall this year. Kudos to Remy Johnson for pushing for this program and shame on the ASO for failing to deliver a meaningful variety of music to its audiences. I can’t think of a single reason that they couldn’t have put one small piece by a different women composer on each week’s program in March. Or, for that matter, one piece by a Black composer each week in February for Black History Month. It’s absurd that concert goers in the 19th century probably had as much or more exposure to women composers than we do now, with artists like Beach, Farrenc, or Smythe being regularly programmed. Aside from a significant number of contemporary composers, we have centuries of works to draw from so there are no shortages of pieces that will fit into any given program. It bugs the crap out of me that, as a regular concert-goer, I hear the same pieces over and over again from the same men from the Classical Music Pale of Settlement between the Rhine and the Volga when there are so many other amazing pieces of work that are ignored just because the (mostly) men who are in charge of programming were all brought up with the same tradition of music education that seems to have its roots in the toxic German nationalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
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ASO: Stephen Mulligan with Nikolai Lungansky

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The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s concert for the evening was conducted by Assistant Conductor Stephen Mulligan. The program opened with Sibelius’ Symphony no. 1. According to the notes, Mulligan traveled to Finland to study Sibelius’ music and I think it showed in his conducting: he clearly understood the piece and it came across as robust and fully realized under his baton. I do wish that I’d been able to hear his expertise expressed on a different of Sibelius’ pieces, though. Sibelius’ work always makes me think that there’s a certain intentionality to his composition; that every note is carefully considered and every chord formed with a purpose in mind. Often this is what I like most about his works: a sensation that every minor thing in a piece that touches me was an intentional act by the composer to reach me. The first symphony, though, seems a bit over-thought to me. I always feel like there should be more to it for all of the thought that the composer put into it. That’s not to say it’s bad so much as it always leaves me wanting to listen to something else of his instead.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Roberto Díaz

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Thursday’s program for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra began with two pieces that were making their Atlanta debut but, interestingly, had been conducted at their respective world premiers by Robert Spano. The first of these was Alex Turley’s City of Ghosts. The first thing that caught my attention was the diminished string complement: each section had only two musicians with the exception of the solitary double bassist. At first it came across as merely atmospheric, but it quickly became interesting. The strings seemed to be in the background of the piece, with the woodwinds and brass standing out, and occasionally would ease their way to the forefront. At times this was effective, like the strings were apparitions fading in and out of perception, but it often sounded like the dynamics were just off, as though we should have been able to hear the strings more clearly. I’m not entirely sure if this was due to Turley’s intent or a function of the conducting. It’s an interesting piece and reasonably enjoyable but the sense of imbalanced dynamics left me feeling a bit ambivalent towards it.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Johannes Moser

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Thursday’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert was proceeded by a chamber recital featuring three pieces. First was Shostakovich’s Five Pieces for Two Violins and Piano. It’s a good set of pieces and it was played well enough, though I found nothing exciting or exceptional about either the works nor the performance. The next piece featured the first three movements from Smetana’s String Quartet no. 1 with the order of the second and third transposed. This was performed by the Peachtree String Quartet. It’s a good piece but I found the performance a little weak around the parts that required slow and quiet playing. In particular, I felt that the second violin failed to maintain a good sound with his bow wandering up and down the strings. In terms of musicianship, I felt that the final piece was the best played and I ended up enjoying it the most of the three. Arthur Berg’s Woodwind Quartet in C Major came across as particularly upbeat following the Smetana; even the adante middle movement was kind of uplifting. I found myself feeling like it was a delightful shelf upon which to rest my mind while waiting for the orchestra to begin playing the main program for the evening.
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ASO: Edward Gardner with Simon Trpčeski

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Maestro Edward Gardner gave a brief introduction to the pieces on the program before he began conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in last night’s all Rachmaninov program. I always appreciate it when conductors or soloists give a bit of an intro like that: even if everything they say is in the program notes, the way that they say it gives a clue as to how they see the work. He did a decent job as a conductor, too. He took Isle of the Dead dramatically but not without sensitivity to begin the concert. There was nothing exceptional or exciting in his interpretation, but it was good. Similarly, Symphonic Dances at the end of the program got a solid treatment but without anything notable standing out about Gardner’s approach. I don’t think that I had known until I read the program notes before the concert that Rachmaninov had originally started work on the piece as a ballet to be choreographed by Fokine. It’s a shame that the choreographer died before its completion because I think that the music suits his choreographic style immensely well.
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