ASO: Pre-Concert Chamber Music

Posted on November 17, 2016 by Robbie

I had this plan, see: I was teaching a class at a professional conference in Buckhead and I’d been told that I’d probably get out early so I’d finally have the time to make it to one of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s pre-concert chamber music performances. It’s hard for me to make it to them these days because my commute is so awful on Thursdays, so I was excited to take advantage of this opportunity. Doubly so because there was a piece on the program that I really liked and wanted to hear live. I figured that I could grab an early supper nearby and pop in to hear the show.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Elizabeth Pridgen and David Coucheron

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Robbie

What an excellent evening of music from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra! Conducted by Robert Spano, the program was mostly Russian (with a Russian-inspired piece by an Englishman), 100% composed in the 20th century, and made use of two soloists, both of whom were local: Elizabeth Pridgen, best known as the artistic director of the Atlanta Chamber Players, and David Coucheron, best known as the concertmaster of the ASO. This may be the first concert of the main season where every performance and piece on the program appealed to me.
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ASO: Hugh Wolff and Denis Kozhukhin

Posted on October 15, 2016 by Robbie

The main reason that I had a ticket for this evening’s performance was Copland’s third symphony and, honestly, I’m just not that into the first two pieces that I had to sit through this evening to get to hear it. I like a lot of John Adams’ work, but ‘Lollapalooza’ kind of annoys me. It starts off kind of groovy, but the repetition of the lol-la-pa-LOO-za theme gets old pretty quickly and, in the end, it strikes me as being kind of soulless and merely nearly fun. The performance of it this evening under Hugh Wolff’s baton wasn’t spectacular nor was it bad. One of the same violinists who was slightly off in the Adams from last week was the same this week, though it wasn’t as big of a deal since the strings were overpowered by the brass. The person sitting next to me said that it felt a lot longer than the listed runtime and, for once, I just agreed instead of trying to defend a contemporary piece of music.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Pedja Muzijevic

Posted on October 8, 2016 by Robbie

This was one of those bad-audience nights. The person sitting behind me had a deep, sickly, bronchial cough and, on the occasions that she tried to suppress it, made even more noise for longer periods of time getting cough drops from her bag. There were a couple of (probably) middle-schoolers next to me who were were whispering during the performances even more than the two adults sitting in front of me. There was, what sounded like, a hearing aid somewhere to the left of me that was squealing from feedback. And, although I hate to admit that seeing her still gets under my skin, the phony of phonies was there: Lauri Stallings, with whom Robert Spano regularly debases himself by working with her company, glo. Despite all of this, I wasn’t really bothered for the first half of the concert because what was on stage wasn’t really worth hearing or thinking about. Fortunately, things turned around dramatically after the intermission.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Garrick Ohlsson

Posted on September 25, 2016 by Robbie

I guess that because the season premier concert was a one-off performed on a Thursday, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra could get away with calling last night’s performance their opening weekend concert. As per tradition, Spano led the orchestra in the Star Spangled Banner with much of the audience singing along.
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ASO: Robert Spano with Joshua Bell

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Robbie

Despite being down a principal 2nd violinist, a principal percussionist, and a principal trombonist, the ASO began its season with an incredibly well performed concert of Tchaikovsky’s music last night. The evening began with Suite no. 1 from the Nutcracker. This was the first time that I can recall hearing any of the music from the ballet live. It was refreshing not to hear it tied to anything Christmassy and I found that it was enjoyable and had some pretty interesting things in it that I’ve never really noticed before on the radio. There was nothing really exciting about the performance, though Christina Smith’s gorgeous and masterful flute playing really stood out for me in the Dance of the Reed Flutes.
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ASO: Peter Oundjian with Robert McDuffie

Posted on June 4, 2016 by Robbie

The ASO, conducted by Peter Oundjian, didn’t dilly dally this evening and got straight to the concerto: Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2, “The American Four Seasons.” Notable about this performance is that Oundjian and the soloist, Robert McDuffie, premiered the piece in late 2009 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, which had co-commissioned it. The only commercial recording of which I’m aware, with McDuffie soloing with the London Philharmonic under Marin Alsop, makes its way regularly into my CD rotation. Needless to say, I was pretty excited when I found out that it was not only programmed for this season, but that it would be Oundjian conducting it with McDuffie soloing.
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