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ASO, Emanuel Ax and Music of Rainbows
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. www.atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra accomplished several of its short term goals Thursday in Symphony Hall.
Preparing for a week-long tour, the ASO and conductor Robert Spano assembled a pleasing, soft-core program that flatters the orchestra, offers an acclaimed recent work, includes the big names — Mozart! Rachmaninoff! Emanuel Ax! — that help sell tickets and won’t upset anyone’s digestion.
That it was magnificently played hits the final agenda point. One performance at a time, the ASO’s is trying to build itself a national audience.
The ASO didn’t commission Christopher Theofanidis’ “Rainbow Body,” music of mild and quasi-mystical bearing. But Spano led the world premiere in Houston, in 2000. With the ASO, he recorded the 12-minute work for Telarc.
The piece even won a British classical-music popularity contest, and plenty of other ensembles have played it in recent years — notably regional American orchestras that shy away from any “modern”-sounding music.
Still, Spano and the ASO seem to own the definitive measure of the score. (They have commissioned and recorded another work from the Texas-born Theofanidis, “The Here and Now,” premiered a couple of seasons ago.)
Spano conducts “Rainbow Body” with a lighter touch than before, more attuned to the cosmic hum buried deep within the music. The introduction is a work of magic and many facets, like mirrors in a fun house, disorienting yet loaded with new ways of thinking. But about four minutes into it, the composer splashes big, wholesome tunes across the orchestra, and what seemed unique, private and special becomes conventional and academic and a little kitschy. The big wind-up to the finish is almost trite: not a summation or deepening of what came before but simply a finale that seems louder and heavier for its own sake. Born in 1967, Theofanidis is still a relative young composer but already an incredible craftsman. He’s possibly still finding his own voice.
Unlike the Theofanidis, Mozart’s E-flat Piano Concerto (No. 22) wasn’t ideally polished, although the woodwinds were wonderfully warm, almost sensuous, in the affecting andante movement — another of Mozart’s creations that somehow perfectly balances the clever and the sublime.
Unmistakably, the genuine rapport between piano soloist Ax and Spano’s accompaniment illuminated the concerto. To describe Ax’s playing — beautifully proportioned, elegant, mellow, inviting, at once “correct” and personal — doesn’t catch the pianist’s endearing way of communicating with an audience.
Without pandering or intellectualizing, Ax elevates the dialogue. We could all feel a little more sophisticated and urbane after his performance.
Rachmaninoff’s muscular, uneven, at times engrossing “Symphonic Dances” have become Spano’s calling card. He programmed them on his high-pressure New York Philharmonic debut in 2003, and he had them lovingly, exactingly prepared Thursday.
There are two more performances in Atlanta, followed by the ASO’s winter tour to the grand cities of Florida: six concerts in seven days beginning Monday at Miami’s new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts and with stops in Gainesville, Sarasota and Orlando.
West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center might not give the musicians the same heady thrill as Amsterdam’s venerable Concertgebouw, but tours typically improve an orchestra’s camaraderie and cohesion. Different venues and different acoustics mean the players can’t rely on their own comfortable listening habits.
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By Peter Stelling
February 23, 2007 2:54 PM | Link to this
It’s nice to see such a positive review of the “product” the ASO is about to take on the road.
The headline in this morning’s printed version (“A treat for us, then on to Florida”) surely took me back. When I was on the staff of the ASO back in the ‘70’s, it was great fun to take to the road on the two ‘hounds with our “band”. Pierre’s comment about camaraderie is right on target. It’s hard work for them, but it’s a wonderful time, too. The sad fact is that they will probably hear each other better on the stages of some of these tour venues than they have ever heard each other on the stage of Atlanta’s Symphony Hall. We owe it to them to raise the money and get the new Hall built without further log jams. Come on you Government leaders and Foundation Administrators: stop waiting for the other guy to make the first move!