Access Atlanta > Arts > Our Reviews > Archives > 2006 > October > 07 > Entry
ASO and Shaham in English
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Friday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats tonight. www.atlantasymphony.org, 404-733-5000.
Music is often called the universal language, which is a lovely, optimistic idea … till you realize that even the fundamentals of human life — love, war, nature — never stand for the same thing over time.
We heard a glaring example of the non-universality of music Friday in Symphony Hall, when the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra played two massive English works from the early 20th century.
Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” composed during the early years of World War 1, is based on astrological imagery. Each of the seven movements — Earth is not part of the zodiac — comes with a subtitle and an attitude.
The score of “The Planets” (published by Boosey & Hawkes) includes the composer’s brief description of each movement. For the mighty opening, “Mars, the Bringer of War,” it reads: “The relentless hammering out of the 5/4 rhythm shows the ruthlessness and the brutal stupidity of war.”
That wasn’t our vibe in Symphony Hall. At a time when kids wear army camouflage as fashion and the country is in perpetual combat against shadowy enemies in far away lands, the audience on Friday night seemed oblivious to Holst’s warnings. With many broad smiles and even more heads bobbing, we were flush with the bring-‘em-on excitement of this militaristic music.
Conductor Robert Spano’s comprehensive and detailed reading, and the orchestra’s darkly ecstatic playing, brought forward the most ominous elements of “Mars,” as if they were marching us to our doom. And we loved it.
The whole piece received as much attention. (The last time the ASO played “The Planets,” in 2002, Spano was still new as its music director and I recall that the conductor’s interpretation was uneven, not fully cooked; his communication with the orchestral players suggested an unsteady, if developing, relationship. Friday’s performance held rhetorical power, with each phrase, and then each section and movement, logically connected.)
In “Venus, the Bringer of Peace,” Spano found almost a Tchaikovskian balletic twinkle and a Straussian love for crystalline chords, as if it were lyrical theater music, meant to be sung or danced.
“Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” includes a notable role for the rarely-used bass oboe. Patrick McFarland moaned on the instrument and made it sound like a big, sad duck, alone on a placid lake. Soon a giant clock starts ticking in the sky, counting down the seconds till, in a section marked “animato,” any sense of lucidity and reason are beyond reach, and the music slips into pleasantly dissonant dementia.
The upper half of the program held just one work: Sir Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto, with Gil Shaham, educated in Israel and at New York’s Juilliard School, as soloist.
Shaham draws the most effortlessly gorgeous tone from his violin, at turns radiant, burnished and as sweetly thick as heavy cream. His instrument contributed, too, a 1699 Stradivari once owned by the French countess de Polignac, who, among other accomplishments, was reputed to have had an affair with Benjamin Franklin. The stories that violin could tell.
While Shaham’s playing was always technically perfect, his reading of the opening movement gained no emotional traction. It’s partly the way the 50-minute concerto is constructed, with its reserved passion and self-conscious attempts to match the grandeur of Brahms’ violin concerto.
What often stymies an interpretation is that Elgar hinted that his concerto is all about secret affections, maybe even a love affair. But if so the music keeps its message behind a door, although a romantically-minded violinist (like Shaham) searches and searches for the elusive key. Perhaps the answer is more obvious: Love, as the saying goes — like war — means different things to different people.
The concerto’s slow middle movement felt more honest and confessional, and here Shaham finally came alive, growing in authority and, by the hauntingly beautiful cadenza — a long, improvisatory-style solo passage — found his bewitching personal voice.
Spano and the orchestra also delivered accuracy and power, but it too often came off as brutal and faceless. They never got involved enough to crack the concerto’s shell.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Classical Music
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Matts
October 9, 2006 3:56 PM | Link to this
I saw the Sat concert and Shaham was fabulous the whole way through and thoroughly engaged the crowd. Have NO idea what this reviewer means with the failing to gain emo traction means…unless he just doesn’t get music.
Also, the Planets was excellent- and no one pays attention to or cares about the program notes (since Holst died, anyway). This music is so engrained in rock music (whole albums have been cribbed from it!), video games, movie soundtracks, and other pop culture that it appeals to many young people and they just like the beat and all the brass, etc. Nothing real deep here….
Entire crowd gave very instant, long, earnest standing O’s for both pieces.
By Sigh!
October 9, 2006 4:07 PM | Link to this
I was at the concert on Saturday night, too. The crowd applauded after EACH MOVEMENT. The “long, earnest standing O’s” meant nothing more to the musicians than missing their trains home. Perhaps people like Matt should look at the program and notice that there are movements listed. It is customary to hold your applause until the end of each piece at a concert. Otherwise, it is distracting to both performers and listeners. Or perhaps you can raise your lighters in the air instead of applauding.
By Peter Stelling
October 9, 2006 4:58 PM | Link to this
Of course we loved the bombast of the Mars movement! It was virtuoso playing by the ASO at its very best, as was the reading and playing of the rest of the movements. The focus is on the music; we are not duty-bound to grab onto some suggestion of contemporary doom which assails us day in and day out from our radios and television sets. Holst’s Mars is more the god of the Trojan War than of today’s frontless, faceless encounters. We are in the concert hall to forget that gruesome business for some fleeting moments. Get over it.