Saturday’s performance of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was a good one. It began with the world premier of two new movements of Michael Gandolfi’s “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation” that, together, were titled “A Garden Feeds Also the Soul.” The first of these two movements was titled “The Bone Garden.” It came across as a sort of stately pseudo-march from dark to light, where it lingered somewhere pretty, with a lighter motif supported by the rhythms that brought the music there. Then it turned back towards a last memento mori with an overlay of mystery rather than dread underlying the beginning of the work. It was a beautiful journey guided by some pretty cool music.
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