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ASO’s Verdi Requiem at Carnegie Hall
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
NEW YORK CONCERT REVIEW
Atlanta Symphony and Chorus. Satuday at Carnegie Hall. www.carnegiehall.org.
New York— Like tourists on a rare visit to the big city, an orchestra that receives a coveted invitation to Carnegie Hall wants to cram as much into the trip as possible.
For the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Robert Spano, the primary goal is enhancing its national reputation. As the crown jewel of America’s music capital, with its golden-wash acoustics and to-die-for guest list, Carnegie is the most high-profile place in the country.
Saturday evening, to vigorous approval and a Standing O from the audience, the ASO achieved its goal, scoring a massive success with Verdi’s Requiem. Some 15 newspaper and magazine critics were on hand to record the event, and the hall was almost packed — despite the fact that the ASO is offering one of four major-orchestra Verdi Requiems this season in New York. What’s become clear by listening to the quality of the music making — and by watching people’s reactions in the hall — is that the Spano-ASO partnership is now among the most celebrated in the country. Make it big in the Big City? Check.
Then there were the ASO’s other agendas. The orchestra’s fund-raising staffers shepherded at least 72 Atlantans over the weekend. These folks included major donors and ATL convention-bureau personnel. They got deluxe treatment: Carnegie Hall and Museum of Modern Art insider tours and meals shared with the more sociable of orchestral players. Others, like musicians’ families and Bill Nigut, president of the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts and Cultural Coalition, came on their own, to see and be seen, to cheer the hometown band.
Although the ASO continues to fundraise for its planned Symphony Center, this trip wasn’t geared to push that specific agenda, said ASO development director Paul Hogle. “Bringing valued members of our community on tour with us is normal development stuff, every orchestra would do it,” he said, regardless of its need to build a $300 million hall.
It helps that the ASO is in demand. Carnegie Hall artistic advisor Ara Guzelimian, who planned the concert with Spano and ASO president Allison Vulgamore, said several factors led to the Verdi. He noted that last spring the ASO gave an eclectic 20th century program at Carnegie (music by Knussen, Debussy and Vaughan Williams) — their first invitation to the hallowed hall after a six-year drought.
And just last month, Spano and the ASO performed at New York’s other big performance space, Lincoln Center, in Osvaldo Golijov’s “La Pasion segun San Marcos.” (A few years ago, Spano led the New York premiere of “La Pasion” with the venturesome Brooklyn Philharmonic, where he’d been music director — a post that established his credentials as an innovator.)
With the ASO getting a New York reputation for the new and the unusual, Guzelimian proposed the reverse. “I thought it would be nice of them to defy expectations,” he said backstage before Saturday’s concert, “and do a big standard repertoire work, like the Verdi Requiem, where the chorus is their huge strength.”
Last weekend in Atlanta, the ASO performed the same program, with the same vocal soloists. Carnegie’s stage is smaller than Symphony Hall’s, so only 170 choristers and about 80 orchestra musicians could fit Saturday (down from 200 and 90 at home).
In form and intent, the Carnegie show was similar to what was heard in Atlanta. With its breathy, air-cushioned sound, clear diction and fiery delivery, the chorus sounded like the most formidable in the world, prepared by Norman Mackenzie. It all came together via Spano, whose interpretation has deepened and gained in character.
He threw some jarringly different tempos at his musicians, too, which gave their much-rehearsed Requiem a healthy dose of spontaneity. The opening “Requiem aeternam,” achingly slow, seemed to congeal out of the ether, as if the music had been in the air all along and we were suddenly made aware of it, as if we were able to pick up the hum of distant galaxies on our FM dial.
Soprano Andrea Gruber, mezzo Stephanie Blythe, tenor Frank Lopardo and bass-baritone Greer Grimsley, the vocal soloists, again delivered nuanced, high-personality readings and with greater finesse than I heard last week. With the men merely agreeable, Blythe again dominated the quartet with her honey-rich transparent timbre, effortless power and scrupulous attention to the printed score. She’s a force of nature.
And Gruber, again, thrashed and bellowed her part. She also, in a few choice tones, touched something very deep, very personal. In interviews, she talks openly about her battles with drugs and drink and how it (almost) shred her vocal cords and derailed her career. For better or worse, she now seems unable to hide her true self — the “mask” of the performer is shattered — and when the voice cooperates, the effect on the listener is chilling.
At the end of the Requiem, when Gruber and the chorus finally let the dying note of the “Libera me” taper into silence, a lone voice from the back of the auditorium summarized what everyone was feeling. In the nobody-can-breathe half-second between music and roaring applause, the guy carefully placed a single word: “Bravi.”
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Classical Music
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By virginia dasher
March 13, 2006 8:41 AM | Link to this
And this from Georgians. Amazing.
By Pierre Ruhe
March 13, 2006 12:42 PM | Link to this
Dear Readers —
I suspect Virginia Dasher’s comment, posted above, is a reference to Bernie Holland’s NY Times review, which concluded:
“[T]he performance made its desired effect. The orchestra’s strings sounded very good. The brass playing was bright and true; and even if its rhythmic sharp angles tended to drawl, remember that these people are from Georgia.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/13/arts/music/13span.html
Anyone care to deconstruct this? —Pierre Ruhe
By Stephanie
March 13, 2006 1:57 PM | Link to this
Those of us lucky enough to be from Atlanta are not at all amazed.
By Charles Tighe
March 13, 2006 3:23 PM | Link to this
Why not use world-class local soloists like Stuart Neill and Helen Bickers, both of whom perform this piece as well as anyone in the world? Both have performed the piece numerous times in major houses throughout Europe and America. The soloists did not match the quality of the orchestra nor the chorus…except Stephanie!
By Kathy Kelly-George
March 16, 2006 8:54 AM | Link to this
I appreciate the review. I think Pierre “gets” the ASO & ASOC. It is difficult sometimes for fans of the Chorus to appreciate any soloists. Stephanie is clearly supremely exceptional, she has always been this way (I’ve known her since 1987.) Andrea Gruber is exceptional as a dramatic soprano and emotes the music. No one has as tender a falsetto as Frank Lopardo and cares more for the text. This was Greer’s first Verdi Requiem and it was good, the voice is great, it will become great as he continues to work his interpretation. The ASOC has been working together for years to develop balance, blend, etc. Busy soloists just have a couple of days together and they have only a short time to master some important things like sight line (can they see the stick); tempi (unique and different to each conductor, even from show to show); acoustics of the stage/hall (overtones, no overtones, delay, etc.); being able to hear each other - especially the men to the women with the podium in between. If the soloists had the pay and luxury to spend as much time together as the ASOC I’m sure, given their level of musicianship, that they could produce a seamless quartet similar to NY Voices or Manhattan Transfer. Let’s not be so judgemental that we don’t recognize wonderful, individual talents. Could they have done better…perhaps, everyone’s human. Did they enjoy the Verdi - absolutely!
I appreciated Holland’s review. He has an educated and critical ear. I think that the comment - if I read it correctly - refers to the repeated sixteenths and triplets from the brass in the Tuba Mirum. In their “tending to drawl” I would imagine that is an effect of the acoustics of the hall and the placement of the trumpets in the balcony. I think Holland was just being jovial in tying the word drawl to Georgia. C’mon now, are we really going to get upset to realize that a southerner drawls! Bring on the dipthongs!
KKG