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Friday, January 7, 2005
ASO’s Bumpy Ride for a Valkyrie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Thursday-Saturday, Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St., 404-733-5000, www.atlantasymphony.org.
In August, at the Seattle Opera, Robert Spano will conduct Richard Wagner’s 4-opera, 16-hour epic “The Ring of the Nibelung.” Although Spano has never led a complete Wagner opera, anticipation is already sky-high. The three-week run is completely sold out.
Thursday evening, Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra played about 100 minutes of Wagner’s music to a half-filled Symphony Hall.
For many listeners, aware of the monumental task awaiting Spano, Thursday could have been a first chance to hear the conductor’s comprehensive views on Wagner.
Due to circumstances within his control, however, it didn’t turn out that way. In fact, it was a cumbersome, unrelenting, ear-fatiguing evening.
Spano typically has a knack for smart programming, combining works in unexpected yet revealing ways. Here, the program was part of the problem.
Instead of a full act from a Wagner opera, or a complete scene, or neat juxtapositions with another composer — Wagner with Berlioz? Debussy? Philip Glass? — the ASO performed a pops array of Wagner’s orchestral hits, culled from several operas. It was never made clear why they were doing an all-Wagner evening in the first place, if not as a nod to Spano’s coming assignment. (Interesting comparison: the Los Angeles Philharmonic recently performed Wagner’s 5-hour “Tristan und Isolde” spread out over three nights. It was a critical and box-office triumph.)
The other, more nagging problem concerned the playing.
The evening opened with the overture and campy orgy music from “Tannhauser,” a coming-of-age tale where the title hero chooses goodness over debauchery, then has second thoughts. In the introduction, the often-excellent ASO horns were smooth and firm, and the rest of the orchestra played together, at least in spirit.
Yet Spano’s touch was hammered and clamped tight, lacking lyricism. As sometimes seems the case when Spano hasn’t fully thought-through and digested a score, he drives the interpretation with surface intensity. It’s initially thrilling to hear. But unremitting intensity quickly grows wearisome if it’s not backed by contrasting emotions and ideas.
The “Prelude and Liebestod” from “Tristan und Isolde” came next. The orchestra seemed stressed out, and not all the sounds coming from the stage were pretty, even in rapturously flowing passages. It would have been too much to ask that the opening notes — the famously ambiguous “Tristan” chords — reflected a sense of the opera’s sublime ending, where the world is timeless and constantly recycling back on itself. Not here.
Soprano Jane Eaglen was supposed to provide the evening’s high point. Although she’s internationally famous for her Wagner, her “Liebestod” was rather atrocious: she barked a few phrases, sang below pitch and sounded altogether distant.
After intermission the ASO played orchestral bits from “The Ring,” which received somewhat better treatment. “Ride of the Valkyries” was the power surge that it always is.
“Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey” featured Brice Andrus’s off-stage horn calls, splendidly dispatched. This excerpt held moments of disarming beauty, but never felt like it was part of a larger canvas. It remained an orchestral showpiece.
“Siegfried’s Funeral Music” — these titles are all events from the “Ring” operas — was all about viseral intensity, lacking depth.
Admittedly, for a listener, knowing that Spano has been preparing a “Ring” cycle colors how the music is heard. I was eager for connections, for context, for a slice of opera in a concert format. A listener expecting merely a power rush might have left the hall very pleased. Expectations do matter.
For the Seattle “Ring”, soprano Eaglen will sing the role of the much-maligned Brunnhilde, perhaps the most complexly drawn and sympathetic female character in the theatrical world.
In a savvy and concise new book, “Decoding Wagner,” author Thomas May describes Brunnhilde’s “Immolation Scene” — the last 20 minutes of the 16-hour cycle — as a magnificent “encapsulation of her own evolution and multiple personae: she is lover, enlightened spirit, purveyor of forgiveness, social reformer, even madwoman.”
Get Eaglen a copy of that book. For her “Immolation Scene,” she was a woman with a big voice standing center stage, singing loudly. She sounded oblivious to everything — texts, music, nuances of language, her colleagues on stage.
It was a surreal stretch of time — all this beauty, all this talent, all this accumulated experience, and they were just spinning out the notes. Let’s hope Eaglen and Spano are more with it come August.
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