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Review: Atlanta Baroque Orchestra
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
— The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Sunday at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, in Buckhead.
Last season, the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra searched for a music director, but came up empty. With several candidates but no resolution, there was a sense in the local music community that this invaluable, seven-year-old ensemble didn’t itself know in which direction to grow.
In the spring, top candidate John Hsu of Cornell University, a shockingly good conductor and star of the early-music scene, declined the music directorship — too busy, he said. But he was pleased with the vitality and potential of the ABO, and signed on this season with the open-ended title of “artistic advisor.�
So while the search for a full time chief continues, Hsu is conducting the first and last of the season’s five concerts — and offering suggestions for the others. (He'll be back in May for the season finale.)
What’s so special about Hsu? We heard it all Sunday, when the period-instrument players tuned up in the small chapel of Peachtree Road United Methodist Church, opening its eighth season with a program of heavyweights. The concert had the stuffy title of “Concerto Grosso: a Cameo of Contrasts,� which told us the show was thick on orchestral pieces with prominent virtuosic soloists — the working definition of concerto grosso — and that it would be business as usual.
Happily, the repertoire was the only thing routine. They gave a very rough start to Vivaldi’s hauntingly exquisite Concerto in D minor for two violins (RV 565), from his crazy-popular “L’estro armonico� set of a dozen concertos. (Bach admired them so much he transcribed six for his own use.) Then, after a few minutes, Hsu’s straight-ahead conducting stabilized what had been shaky. He clarified what had been hazy.
That was the pattern through the concert. Like a Michael Jordan, Hsu is the sort of performer who elevates the play of those around him. Are his powers of concentration superior? Is it baton charisma? Talent hitched to iron resolve? Whatever the secret, Hsu’s got it.
In each work, like Handel’s Concerto Grosso in D minor for two oboes (Op. 3, no. 5), the orchestra opened with raw playing, scrapes and some wayward intonation. The interpretation gelled as they went, and by the final allegro movement they were white hot and playing like a well-drilled unit.
Bach’s “Brandenburg� Concerto No. 1 held a lot of noisy playing and a few sonic jewels: the trio sections of the finale brimmed with joyous, almost circus-like enthusiasm. Indeed, the players were beaming at what they’d accomplished.
With the sure-bet Vivaldi-Handel-Bach trifecta conquering the concert, only Telemann’s semi-obscure Concerto in D for two flutes, violin and cello (TWV 54: D1) seemed to drag, its four movement running on and on longer than the material merited. Even here, though, Hsu and friends emphasized the compelling parts, like a flute duet (played by Catherine Bull and Janice Joyce on wooden Baroque flutes) that sounded like rippling water. The effect was magical.
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