ASO: Donald Runnicles with Christina Smith

I really liked Saturday’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. It began and ended with some decent Beethoven: the Leonore Overture No. 3 and his Symphony no. 6. I kind of got the feeling that Runnicles put a bit more thought into the latter than the former but I enjoyed both. I was in a bit of a weird mood, though, so my mind went to some rather strange and dark places in the sixth…a bit less pastoral than Beethoven’s music generally elicits.
Continue reading

ASO: Donald Runnicles with Christina Smith

There were two concerts for which I originally had tickets but did not attend; one of them was canceled due to weather and the other I decided to skip: they had the poor taste to tack some obnoxious gimmicks onto the performance that were created by two artists who clearly would have nothing of interest to say about the music. That would have detracted too much from the music for me to be able to enjoy myself so I figured that I’d exchange the ticket for one of the concerts that I’d originally not planned to attend. As such, even though I wasn’t excited about the program, I found myself at this evening’s Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert featuring all French composers under the baton of Donald Runnicles. Of the three pieces on the program, I really only wanted to hear one of them, but that one really made it worth it for me to bother with the trip to Symphony Hall.
Continue reading