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Marin Alsop conducts the ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. www.atlantasymphony.org.
The world seems to be falling in line for Marin Alsop, who led the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in a terrific concert Thursday in Symphony Hall.
The New York-born conductor made national news in July when the Baltimore Symphony named her music director — the first woman appointed to lead a major American orchestra.
It was an important shattered glass ceiling for classical music, although many of the Baltimore musicians where in open rebellion, citing their exclusion from the selection process. One could guess that the grumpy musicians had a less subtle message to send: Alsop isn’t likely to be as satisfying as their outgoing music director, Yuri Temirkanov, the chronically poetic Russian maestro adored by musicians and listeners alike.
Nevermind. For Alsop, 48, the gig is hers; like a new boss in any workplace, she’ll sink or swim by her own abilities. A MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, awarded in September, and an ongoing series of CDs with the Naxos label confirms Alsop as a distinguished member among American conductors.
Along with the ASO’s Robert Spano — another fast-track maestro from that increasingly elite club — Alsop built up street cred by championing contemporary music while delivering thoughtful, efficient performances of the classics. Gradually, to keep the career on track, “thoughtful” must be replaced by words like “soulful” or “deep.”
With the ASO Thursday, she offered a bright and powerful intrepretation of Brahms Symphony No. 1 that was her own. The opening movement was a study in classical architecture, all white columns and precise geometry.
She loosened up for the middle movements, aided by poignant passages from ASO principals, especially concertmaster Cecylia Arzewski. The allegretto third movement danced playfully, a joy. The weighty finale, too, held its own. At its best, Alsop dug into the score and revealed a few of its secrets.
Alsop showed the other side of her talent when she spoke to introduce Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade,” a sort of violin concerto inspired by Plato’s “Symposium.” Alsop, trained as a violinist, studied conducting with Lenny; the work clearly brings together many of her interests and experiences.
Affable and humorous, Alsop took us through the major themes, with musical examples from the orchestra. She had the audience laughing with the hiccupping Aristophanes and at the rowdy party music at the end. Alsop is very good at this sort of podium-audience interaction — you feel she’s just regular folks, a woman who happens to conduct — and its a sign of a thoroughly modern American conductor. There’s no aristocratic air in her delivery.
Violin soloist Tai Murray, still a student at New York’s Juilliard School, offered many lovely phrases, but her small, feathery tone and quiet persona meant that this narrator’s voice was too reserved to be heard. Here, too, the orchestra delivered splendidly.
The evening opened with Paul Dukas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” from 1895. Although Disney (delightfully) appropriated the music for “Fantasia,” the tone poem carries an anti-war metaphor. Think not of magical brooms ceaselessly fetching buckets of water but of cannon fire mowing down wave after wave of soldiers. Tick tock, tick tock, they’re all dead.
Here the orchestra wasn’t entirely warmed up or unified, and Alsop’s approach was neither comical and cartoonish nor menacing and lamenting. Let’s hope that everyone gets together in the coming performances.
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