Tag Archives: Mahler

ASO: Donald Runnicles

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Well, that was embarrassing. I found myself moved after Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra finished Mahler’s Symphony no. 10 (Cooke III version) so, naturally, I stood during the ovation. And nobody else did. And for some reason nothing was moving on the stage. And I sat down again, not entire sure that it was over, even though they’d come to the last pages of the score and I was certain that all of the movements had been played. And then some other people started standing and finally I got over myself and stood again only to feel a jolt shooting down my sciatic nerve. And then my knee started to get really sore. And I started worrying that I wouldn’t be able to walk to my car to go home. Thankfully, I stretch some and was able to walk out of there with everyone else. For some odd reason, my big toe on that side still hurts, but I’ve done some stretches at home now and everything seems fine. Fortunately, I have a chiropractic appointment for Monday. Yeesh! Anyway, clearly the lesson here is to have the courage of one’s convictions and not to back down so easily in the face of uncertainty.
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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: Robert Spano with Juho Pohjonen

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It seemed that Maestro Spano was so excited about Mahler’s Symphony no. 1 in the second half of the program at this evening’s performance of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra that he forgot that the piano concerto in G major played in the first half was actually written by Beethoven and not Mahler. He conducted it as though it were from the late Romantic period, which sounded horribly off with the smaller orchestra and the whole thing came across as though it were being interpreted by a brooding, teenage goth. Beethoven’s piano concerto no. 4 is one that rarely fails to delight me, but I found this slow, over-dramatic performance to be a total bore. I can’t even comment on Pohjonen’s playing in it because my mind was wandering so much from the tedium of the performance that I barely noticed him. He did, however, impress me with his playing of Grieg’s “Butterfly” during his encore.
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ASO: Donald Runnicles with Russell Thomas and Kelly O’Connor

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There were two novel things about tonight’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The first was that they finally asked people to silence their cell-phones before the concert. They used a modestly witty video featuring some of the musicians to do so. I think that the video will get old after a while and they may want to rethink the tone of it as it sounds somewhat judgmental, but it was still nice that they’re finally showing some awareness that this aspect of audience experience is important enough to comment upon. The other novelty was an introduction by principal guest conductor Donald Runnicles to the two pieces on the program, including a small video explaining some of the Japanese instruments whose sounds are reflected in the first piece.
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ASO: Donald Runnicles

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I’m not feeling that great, so I’m not going to go into detail about this evening’s excellent performance of Mahler’s Symphony no 9 by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Donald Runnicles, except to say that I’m really glad that I got to hear it and that I’m really sorry if I passed my cold on to anyone else. I do want to note that I saw a car with a California plate that said “Gustave M” as I was walking away from the concert along P-Tree, which gave me a nice spurt of joy.