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Thursday, September 15, 2005
Mahler Resurrection Symphony opens ASO season
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
8 tonight and Saturday. $10-$53 Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St. NE. 404-733-5000
Although Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus turned their opening night concert —- the ASO’s 61st, Spano’s fourth as music director —- into a memorial for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the mood Thursday in Symphony Hall was brimming with celebration.
Some of it was eerily familiar. As in 2001, when Spano took charge of the ASO just days after the September 11 attacks, the Red Cross was on hand collecting donations. And again the program dwelled on emotionally turbulent and substantive music —- on this night it was Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, which the composer subtitled “Resurrection.”
The evening started, as opening nights do, with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” performed as a sing-along in the plump, Mahlerian-sounding version by Walter Damrosch. A man at the back of the hall then yelled, “Bravo Spano!” and many members of the chorus applauded —- an acknowledgment of substantial artistic gains made in the past few years, both for the conductor and the 300 or so musicians on stage.
Spano gave his vociferous fans a dignified brush-off, of course, instead describing to the audience how the message of Mahler’s music is “fundamentally one of hope, even in the face of death.” With those words in mind, the gritty cello and bass funeral march that opens the symphony sounded especially savage and raw. When musicians have a powerful story to tell, it doesn’t matter so much when the orchestra sounds woolly and inexact, which is the legacy of summers spent in the artistic doldrums of Chastain Park.
Spano invigorated the music, but the symphony felt a few degrees short of the boiling point. My own take is that Spano hasn’t yet thrown his interpretive weight where, for him, it inevitably needs to go.
It’s a simplification, but two basic schools of Mahler interpretation have evolved over the past century. One is cool objectivity, typified by conductors from Pierre Boulez to Yoel Levi. The other, over-the-top extreme came from Lenny Bernstein’s put-me-out-of-my-misery/I’m-in-love approach. In this Mahler 2, Spano threaded between the poles, never quite opening up moments he’d set up to be confessional or even revelatory.
In the opening movement’s descent to the Molto Pesante, where a conductor hangs the full orchestra from the tip of his baton, Spano never shook it enough to yield a head-spinning, goose bump moment.
Elsewhere the playing did give chills —- as in the folk dances of the second and third movements. Properly macabre, the music here made a listener think of those New Orleans bars where patrons continued to guzzle $1 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon even as they stood in a foot of fetid water: Party on till Judgment Day. That was precisely the effect Mahler was after —- and the orchestra caught it.
In the final section, the ASO Chorus entered with perfectly hushed, perfectly anguished singing —- as ever, the best symphonic chorus in the land. The two vocal soloists, mezzo Nancy Maultsby and soprano Twyla Robinson, sang with warmth and clarity in their brief solos.
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Musical about Soho Boho a no-go
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “tick, tick … boom!” Alliance Theatre, Hertz Stage, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-733-3000. www.alliancetheate.org. Through Oct. 2.
Verdict: Might make you watch the clock.
“tick, tick … boom!” the wafer-thin rock musical that quietly opened the Alliance Theatre’s season Wednesday night, probably wouldn’t have been discovered if it weren’t for its famous author.
It’s the posthumously produced autobiographical tale of “Rent” writer-composer Jonathan Larson, who died, at 35 of a sudden aneurysm, before he could be enshrined as the patron saint of the East Village in the time of AIDS. “tick, tick” takes us back to Soho when it was still Boho enough for a guy like Jonathan - a frustrated musical theater writer and brunch waiter whose career is a no-go.
Jon’s greatest fear is that he’ll turn 30 before he can write the Next Great American Musical. His girlfriend, Susan, wants him to move to Cape Cod; his Faustian best friend, Michael, wants him to pursue a high-paid marketing job - with its promise of BMWs and Gucci accessories. For the Sondheim-influenced author of a little show called “Superbia,” it’s produce, or perish.
As sung by leading man Raul Esparza in the 2001 off-Broadway world premiere, “tick, tick” was a sweet bit of juvenilia about the disappointments of youth. Even if it were a story well-trod - Sondheim’s Bobby dealt with the same conflict in the fuller, richer “Company” - Larson’s oh-no, three-O gem had such sparkling ditties as the “Sunday in the Park” valentine, “Sunday,” and the twangy “I’m Not Getting Married” riff, “Therapy.”
Alas, I’m sorry to say that director Kent Gash’s oddly cast Alliance production has traded “tick, tick“‘s inspiration for a lot of perspiration and precious little soul. This is a prodigiously talented trio, but no matter how much they shout it from the rooftops (literally, thanks to Emily Jean Beck’s set), they never muster a persuasive emotional arc or garner our sympathy.
Matthew Scott (Jon) is a terrific actor and singer who sweats profusely but never finds the Elvis Costello-like urgency that the material requires. “Why?” - in which Jon reflects on his friendship with HIV-infected Michael (Dwayne Clark) - is chilling, particularly as delivered by Scott in tones of heartbreaking tenderness.
But Clark can’t convince us for a minute that his character is gay, and the chemistry between Susan (Soara-Joye Ross) and Jon is virtually non-existent. While the original cast perkily glossed over Larson’s rough patches and repetition, this over-stretched ensemble lets the flaws of the three-person musical oddity shine through.
“tick, tick” has a lot more going for it than a creator whose incandescent flame was all too brief. But this production, which hardly feels like the kind of essential theater that we expect from an Alliance opener, doesn’t go deep enough.
And yet, beecause “tick, tick” never picks you up, it never really lets you down, either. All tick and no boom, it’s too technically assured to be dismissed. It will not, however, light your candle.
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