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Volkov conducts ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
It’s not often three generations of musicians make a mark on a single Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert, but it happened Thursday.
The youngest was on the podium. Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov is just 28 — still a toddler on the conducting curcuit — and has already established himself as a serious artist of the highest potential.
Wisely, the tall, lanky maestro is gaining experience away from the big-city spotlights: he’s currently in charge of Glasgow’s BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He’s been an ASO guest three times in as many years.
His Thursday program centered on the music of birds (and other twittering beasts).
He opened with a fluent, passionate account of Dvorak's Gothic tone poem "The Wood Dove," from an old Czech folk tale. The music graphically depicts a troubled young widow who is courted by a handsome lad, gets remarried, but still can't slip the nagging feeling that poisoning her first hubby was wrong. At his grave, the cooing of a wood dove -- the angel of death, perched in an oak tree -- sends her over the edge of sanity.
Winningly, Volkov played up key scenes, such as the widow’s insincere sobbing at the beginning, depicted by repeated cascades from the strings. “Boo hoo hoo,” she sobs. People who’d read Nick Jones’ program summary beforehand got a laugh out of those for-public-consumption tears.
Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” in the complete, 45-minute ballet score, closed the evening. This is unbeatable music for the concert hall. We love the thick Russian romanticism and glittery exoticism of this, the composer’s first hit.
We love knowing that most of the ballet is drawn from the style of his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, but in those climactic moments, when the magical Firebird's spell enchants the evil-doers, it's the genius Stravinsky shining through, for the first time in his life.
The ASO played with force and precision, and Volkov had all the essentials in place, save one: his interpretation lacked vivid personality. The music overflows with Stravinsky's buoyant energy, which makes it easy for a conductor to simply direct traffic and still take credit for a satisfying show.
But we've come to expect more from Volkov. I wanted the sense that Thursday's performance was a one and only, that it was an event. Instead, Volkov led one of thousands of fine "Firebirds."
Back to the generations thing mentioned earlier. Principal oboist Jonathan Dlouhy, who joined the ASO when Volkov was three years old, here played the solo in Mozart's C Major Concerto for Oboe.
Before wetting his lips to begin, Dlouhy picked up a microphone and, with a deep bow of gratitude, introduced his own teacher who was seated in the audience: John Mack, the legendary former oboist of the Cleveland Orchestra.
Unlike pop music, which so often is about dissing your elders, classical music gains richness from generations of accumulated experience. Dlouhy, via Mack and HIS great teacher, the genius Frenchman Marcel Tabuteau, is a living link to an unbroken tradition that goes back to the invention of the instrument.
In cognac-warm tones, Dlouhy’s approach to the concerto was as our guide. There was no flash to his interpretation but rather a gentle sharing of his beloved Mozart.
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