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REVIEW An extraordinary weekend: Emanuel Ax and Fringe
CONCERT REVIEWS FringeAtlanta. Saturday at Church of the Redeemer on Peachtree-Dunwoody Road. www.fringeatlanta.org and Pianist Emanuel Ax, Sunday afternoon at Spivey Hall, www.spiveyhall.org.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday afternoon at Spivey Hall, star pianist Emanuel Ax played what a Southern chef might call gourmet meat-and-three: comfort food prepared by traditional means and to exacting standards. The sold-out audience knew exactly what they’d get; they left with full tummies and big smiles.
One night earlier and about 40 miles north, Fringe Atlanta broke many of classical music’s most entrenched rules and created a new definition of success.
These two concerts almost cover the current state of classical music in America: an old school that’s rightly satisfied by its artistic merits, and an anxious new generation scrambling to recruit listeners weaned on television and pop. For better and worse, each side probably thinks itself the only way forward.
Fringe is, in fact, one of the most radical classical groups in the country, not because they play the freaky modern stuff or dress like Andre 3000, but because they’ve jettisoned the rituals of the concert hall — since that decorum has, for a lot of people, become more central to the classical experience than the music.
Their philosophy — spelled out in a program-booklet essay titled “Listen to This” by critic Alex Ross, reprinted from The New Yorker magazine — is that classical music is as vital and compelling as any of the popular stuff that the kids enjoy. Classical music appreciation, they reason, will profit from a mixed-media format.
A small exhibition by a local artist (Jennifer Jenkins) was in the lobby. A deejay (DJ Little Jen) spun art-club ambient electronica. People drank beer as they settled into their seats. The lights came down and a short film served as the opening act (Gary Lundgren’s “Wow and Flutter,” about a boy, a girl, and a mix tape).
Stylized, computer-enhanced videos introduced the musicians. Finally, they take the stage and play old classics and audience-friendly newer pieces. The whole concert is available for audio download the next day. It’s a smooth, unpretentious package that works: all the components funnel our attention to the actual performance, rather than distract from it.
Saturday’s music included fiercely argued dance collections by J.S. Bach, Bela Bartok and Astor Piazzola and genre pieces by Sebastian Currier and Toru Takemitsu. “Night Time,” by Currier, a New York composer, premiered in 2000. Violinist Fia Mancini Durrett (a Fringe founder) and New York harpist Bridget Kibbey here made brilliant work of its five snapshots. “Dusk,” the opening movement, involves creepy-crawly sounds alternating with crepuscular lyricism. “Sleepless,” with a pizzacato’d violin part and restless harp, is the sound of caffeine racing through the bloodstream. “Starlight” twinkles silver and blue.
My favorite image was the sight of Kibbey and flutist Julietta Curenton cutting loose on Piazzola’s “Histoire du Tango,” lit by various floor lamps, with Little Jen’s turntables sitting quietly behind them. It spoke of open borders, accepting good music where you find it and living in the present instead of trying to freeze some romanticized notion of the past.
One had to wonder how Fringe enthusiasts would swallow Ax’s recital.
With no fuss, the 58-year-old pianist sported a dark suit and bowtie, padded to the piano named Walter — the more muscular of Spivey’s two instruments and, among pianophiles in the audience, a surprise choice given the seemingly genteel nature of the repertoire — nodded his head and launched into Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in A (D. 664). Under Ax’s fingers, the sonata was stormier than pianists usually imagine it, even as Ax’s velvety tone and relaxed, conversational approach reassured the listener that this voyage would end safely.
A Schubert impromptu and Beethoven’s winter-to-spring “Waldstein” Sonata — an abstract setting of the renewing power of love — filled out the program, but for me the highlight came with Beethoven’s youthful C Major Piano Sonata, Op. 2 no. 3, which was as propulsive, as extroverted and as Gothic as I’ve ever heard it played. Ax pushed the music (and Walter) to the edge of respectability — a lucid, adrenaline-fueled, white-hot reading and exactly the sort of music making that, whether it’s in the formality of Spivey Hall or the with-it ambiance of Fringe, is what will ultimately grab listeners and keep them coming back.
For dessert, Ax rushed through Chopin’s D-flat Nocturne, Op. 27 no. 2, playing it like it was beefy Beethoven.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Classical Music
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By kvp
December 5, 2007 3:55 PM | Link to this
“For better and worse, each side probably thinks itself the only way forward.”
“One had to wonder how Fringe enthusiasts would swallow Ax’s recital.”
I don’t think it’s fair to project a perceived national conflict onto these local performances and performers. To me, it doesn’t appear that Fringe and programs like the one Ax put on are at all forces in opposition. Rather, it seems like the Fringe philosophy you describe – “…Classical music is as vital and compelling as any of the popular stuff that the kids enjoy. Classical music appreciation…will profit from a mixed-media format.” – is one that more mainstream classical music institutions have had in mind in recent years, evident in efforts to reach new, younger audiences (the “kids”) and the addition of visual elements or other media into a program. The end result from both ends of the spectrum is, as you say, classical music appreciation, enhanced or heightened or realized in one way or another. There’s no reason to create divisive conflict where there is none. You underestimate the open-mindedness of Atlanta’s performers and audiences with reviews like these.