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REVIEW: ASO Scores with Familar, Stumbles on
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. www.atlantasymphony.org, 404-733-5000.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s program this weekend comes in two jarringly dissimilar parts. The first is a sort of vast cosmic meditation that tries to link lush romanticism with atonal modernism and, in the process, finds sonic similarities at every turn.
The second part, much better played Thursday evening in Symphony Hall, felt in comparison like an old fashioned pops program. Where the first was fussy and came off as pedantic rather than enlightening, the second was all pleasure and familiar expressions. It thus triggered familiar reactions, from musicians and audience.
Guest conductor Roberto Minczuk, a middle-aged Brazilian steadily building an international reputation, opened the evening with Richard Wagner’s Prelude to his final opera, “Parsifal,” from 1882. Without pause, he then slipped into Gyorgy Ligeti’s sound-sculpture “Lontano,” from 1967.
A brilliant match, at least on paper. The possibilities were infinite: two spectral, radiant, all-but-static pieces that, by design, have escaped their earthly confines and deal instead with higher concerns, of pure sunlight and shadow and deep philosophy. The “Parsifal” prelude starts breaking loose of the traditions of harmony and rhythm.
“Lontano” has no rhythm and no audible harmony. It’s more sonic vapor than musical narrative. In a good performance, it’s breathtakingly majestic, a reference to the “distant” of the title. Its visceral emotions invade your subconscious. There’s actually a long thread of melody in the music, sewn into the fabric, which helps explain what’s supposed to be the sensuousness and organic cohesion within the abstraction.
Minczuk, however, couldn’t keep the orchestra ideally together (or get the musicians to sound involved with the performance) in either piece, so the lesson was lost. It ended up as little more than an intellectual exercise.
Audiences, even the supposedly conservative ones in Symphony Hall, will generally listen to almost anything if a) it’s played well and with conviction and b) if it fits within the frame of the evening. (ASO music director Robert Spano is especially convincing at these old/new, high/low, profound/hollow arguments; Minczuk and the orchestra’s handling of these two pieces may well improve in the repeat performances.)
On to part two. Pianist Dejan Lazic, a young Croatian building an international career, made his ASO debut Thursday with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” a spectacle of keyboard pyrotechnics and heart-on-sleeve emotion.
He nailed every inch of it. His virtuosity is crisp, bright and pounded hard, with no soft spots. And he even added a certain dashing, movie star glitz to the music, which, coming after the mind-numbing Wagner-Ligeti showing, felt liberating, personable, humane.
All that preceded intermission. Afterwards came seven scenes from Sergei Prokofiev’s blue-collar ballet “Romeo and Juliet.” In a fascinating moment of what could have been, the opening of the “Montagues and Capulets” dance sounds like a lot like “Lontano,” of piercing violin shimmers against rumbling bass lines. Clearly, the conductor had a thoughtful agenda in mind, although it failed to gel.
The ASO knows the Prokofiev as second nature, and played it with admirable abandon.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Classical Music
Comments
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By Peter Stelling
November 30, 2007 1:18 AM | Link to this
Pierre, you confound me with some of the statements you make after listening to the same concert that I have listened to with thorough enjoyment. “Profound/hollow”? Profound is what I heard, “hollow” is what you called parts of it. So, all things being equal, I’m glad you were there tonight to make ANY comment whatsoever, however bizarre I may find your take on it, because you missed the concerts last week and on the weekend of October 11. We need you there to provoke our ire or admiration, as the case may be. Without your voice in the Hall, it becomes the vastly expensive non-sound of a tree falling in the desert. A sound unheard is a non- sound. A concert unreviewed is, for the vast population of our youthful metropolis, a bunch of notes that were played that go unnoticed. And we need your voice to keep people interested in attending concerts, donating time and money to the cause, to keep the big and hugely expensive machinery of classical music pertinent to OUR times. And it really is pertinent…believe it or not. Children between the ages of 9-5 (I have four grandchildren in that age range) resonate to classical music. My oldest grandson is playing guitar with a natural talent that awes his parents. Whatever happens in between (the jeering they get from their peers…”it ain’t cool”, “listenin’ to that stuff makes you ‘odd’” … choosing my words carefully…), your column makes the difference…it gives it all validity and makes it real. So write what you will about the “middle-aged Brazilian”…I found him a force to reckon with who got some sounds out of our Orchestra in the Prokofiev I had not heard before that were totally thrilling and revelatory…but write on. Please continue to write on, whatever you choose to say. Party on, Garth!
By TomS
December 2, 2007 7:02 AM | Link to this
“At least on paper.” An apt metaphor, I suggest, for not knowing the score “by heart,” that is, knowing so well that the artist and music are so fully engaged that they become one and thus transcend the notes on the paper. The juxtaposition of Parsifal and Lontano allows us to move toward all sorts of cosmic issues when the artists successfully mediate between music, performer, and listener. The Friday night performance? Isolated and earth-bound.
As for the Rachmaninoff. Technique means nothing without taste, musicianship, class, and soul, qualities virtually absent Friday night. While the orchestra did another “read through,” with the accompaniament, Lazic relentlessly charged and attacked leaving one with the sense of having watched a bloody duel between a wise and aging master and the brash young pupil.
And finally. Why does the ASO program the same work in successive seasons? These “safe bet” audience pleasers disrespect both artist and listener.