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Mackenzie’s debut ‘Christmas with the ASO’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW
“Christmas with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.” Thursday in Symphony Hall, Program repeats 8 p.m. Friday and 2 and 8 p,m. on Saturday. www.atlantasymphony.org.
This weekend in Symphony Hall, “Christmas with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra” — a local tradition with roots back to the 1940s and to the late Robert Shaw — continues under new management.
Thursday evening, for the first time, the show was conducted by ASO chorus director Norman Mackenzie. He led a superbly played concert that was unfailingly energetic and often charged with emotion — an all around winning series debut.
Mackenzie opened the program with the magical shimmers of percussion and celeste, introducing “O Come, Emmanuel” (in an effective arrangement by Alice Parker). With powerful abandon, the ASO Chorus landed on the words “rejoice, rejoice,” setting the mood for what followed.
By the now-hallowed Shaw tradition, the 80-minute Christmas pageant moved fast, with few pauses and no intermission. Divided into four parts, Mackenzie combined sacred works, ancient carols, spirituals, festive-sounding orchestral numbers and a few sing-alongs. By design, when you join more than a thousand people to sing a 700-year-old English carol like “The First Nowell,” you gain access to deep psychic memories left untapped in today’s dispose-all culture.
And in the Shaw tradition, the Christmas concert is dominated by choral music. In a capella numbers like Randall Thompson’s “Alleluia,” the ASO choristers sang like they’re the greatest choir in the world — with burnished tone and tender affection.
The men of the Morehouse College Glee Club, directed by David Morrow, offered spirituals and carols with exceptional verve and elegance, highlighted by Babatunde Olatunji’s “Betelehemu,” a fantastical West African carol by sung in the Yoruba language. Nothing tops it, not even the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah,” which followed.
The unblemished voices of the Gwinnett Young Singers, led by Lynn Urda, were at their best in René Clausen’s calypso-tinged “Psalm 100.”
Where Mackenzie’s conducting of the ASO chorus was pristine and passionate, his handling of the orchestra sometimes seemed less involved. He conducted a movement from Poulenc’s “Gloria,” for instance, with an ear for the tangy harmonies but gave a rather boxy shape to the melodic lines — and focused his attention throughout on the chorus. But then his reading of Bizet’s orchestral “Farandole” was big and brassy and exploded with life.
Still, it all came together as a joyous whole. At the end, after a sing-along of “Adeste, fideles,” the appreciative audience cheered and thundered like they’d rediscovered a favorite holiday tradition.
The evening started with a three-minute business transaction: Wachovia Foundation’s $5 million gift to the ASO toward its planned Symphony Center, which carries the fund-raising total just over the one-third mark. (Only $200 million left.)
The little ceremony wasn’t accompanied by music, and normally you want to keep the corporate logos and marketing schemes off stage because they would too easily swamp the art. But perhaps, if these sorts of major Symphony Center gifts must be presented publicly on stage, the orchestra should set the mood by playing the shimmering, love-struck chords from the Presentation of the Rose scene from “Der Rosenkavalier.” It might help convey how euphoric the ASO musicians and concert audiences will feel when Atlanta finally has a decent concert hall.
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By Eleanor M.
December 9, 2005 1:05 PM | Link to this
You are right that the audience last night rediscovered a holiday tradition. The pomposity was gone along with the attempts to be Shaw. Please encourage Mr. Mackenzie to continue on this path. A few new numbers each year would be nice (I still don’t see why we’re singing Dona Nobix Pacem at Christmas) and this audience of 12 thought another number from Morehouse would have been excellent.