The blog is going away but the reviews are not. You can find them here in the online print edition.
Home > ATLarts > Archives > 2008 > June > 05 > Entry
ASO Premieres Ranjbaran Piano Concerto
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. 404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta Symphony is more convincing than most major U.S. orchestras when it comes to contemporary music. They’ve made a big deal of new works by Osvaldo Golijov and John Adams and Jennifer Higdon — a spectrum of styles and influences — and the payoff has been huge, boosting its national reputation and creating local enthusiasm for its experiments.
Some have got to be more successful than others.
Behzad Ranjbaran’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra was commissioned by the ASO for pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and given its world premiere Thursday in Symphony Hall. By design, it’s a concerto in the grand model, where a loud and resplendent orchestra sometimes supports, sometimes clashes with a heroic soloist. What actually came across was a 32-minute piece of music plump with intriguing details but that had trouble expressing itself beyond the stock gestures of late 19th century Romanticism.
Born in Iran in 1955 and now living in New York, Ranjbaran includes Persian imagery in the concerto, albeit filtered through a standard orchestral vocabulary. He uses his musical heritage not so much as spices in a meal as for the colorful serving dish that holds boiled meat and mashed potatoes.
It opens with a muscular horn call and thwacks on the drum before the piano roars in, commanding the full keyboard yet, curiously, not making much of a statement. The orchestral textures are generally clear, where instrumental sections don’t blot each other out. Occasionally, a perfumed, modal and ear-catching sound rises from the ensemble, and it’s a pity these never develop into meaningful expression.
The composer tailored the solo part to Thibaudet’s athletic and crystalline playing, yet the solo part comes off mostly as filigree. Lots of notes, all 10 fingers cascading down the keys at top speed, expressing no emotion. It’s a hollow part.
The nocturnal second movement, subtitled “Distant Dreams,” held more appeal and the promise of intimacy, with delicate, lovely dialogue between Thibaudet and harpist Elisabeth Remy Johnson. The third movement skips along, reprising bits heard earlier, revving up for a showy, explosive finale.
Still, these might be minority opinions: the audience gave the concerto a sustained standing O, and brought Thibaudet, conductor Robert Spano and the composer back to center stage at least three times.
The concerto, to my ears, evoked the romantic bombast of reheated Rachmaninoff. So it was a delight to hear the source in a major work of quirky imagination.
You’ve got to admire Spano’s conviction that all three of Rachmaninoff’s symphonies, which might best be described as “inspired but uneven,” are worth the effort and expense of playing and hearing. The first two were offered earlier this season. The Third, from 1936, closed the evening Thursday.
Spano has described himself with some enthusiasm as a “Rachmaninoff freak,” so we can believe that his evangelicalism for the cause is genuine. And at the start of this season, in an interview with me, Spano said of the symphony: “There’s a grit and acidity and classicism and cleanliness in the third. By the end, it’s Apollonian and lean.”
Spano is good on his word. Thursday he drained what little fat and voluptuousness thicken the score, especially in the long-limbed second movement. He didn’t conduct the Third as modernized Hollywood, as many interpreters do, but as a kin to Sibelius, brooding and organic and on the threshold of deep self-discovery. The ASO responded magnificently.
Bach’s “Brandenburg” Concerto No. 2 — it was an ill-fitted program — opened the evening. It didn’t sound well rehearsed, although the quiet middle movement settled into pure serenity, with violinist Cecylia Arzewski, flutist Christina Smith and oboist Elizabeth Koch trading phrases of imperishable beauty.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
Comments
By Peter Stelling
June 6, 2008 12:28 AM | Link to this
The Brandenburg #2 seemed a perfect way to introduce an evening reminiscent of Alexander the Great and the Russian Revolution. Why not begin with a small baroque gem, particularly given the chance to enjoy a standing solo from our soon- to-depart concertmaster and the lovely young principal oboist who plays right up to the mark with her more experienced colleagues? Hooten was right on the mark with the taxing piccolo trumpet part, as well. And then the drums began to beat! It was exciting to be present in a premiere performance audience for a new piano concerto. Remember, audiences in Paris used to throw chairs at premieres. We Atlantans are far too polite to throw chairs…instead, we give standing ovations. Dare I agree with Pierre?..sorry, I must…the orchestral writing in the concerto was inspired, but the solo part was “filigree”. Ouch. I have witnesses I told this to before I read the review. In the best of all possible worlds, this piece needs to be revisited and the solo part needs to be given more lyricism and more prominence. As it stands, it is hugely taxing to the soloist, and it offers slim rewards to the listener. The pre-performance talk was, “this is a prototype Tchaikovsky concerto for the 21st century.” It doesn’t live up to that hype. I would like to think the composer will revisit and revise this work and add more lyricism and prominence for the solo part…then in 5 years, the ASO can perform it again and record it. If the soloist was Darius, and the Orchestra was Alexander the Great, we already know who won the Battle of Persepolis. My lasting impression was not of the usual give and take of a concerto but more of a trouncing by superior forces.