Year in Review: Atlanta Opera’s big season lifts city’s music scene

Music critics Pierre Ruhe and Jordan Owen, along with Executive Editor Scott Freeman, look back at the highlights of classical music in Atlanta during 2023.

::

In May, The Atlanta Opera put its ambition to the test with the first part of one of the most hallowed pieces of music in history: Wagner’s four-part “Der Ring des Nibelungen.” The opera’s production of “Das Rheingold” was marked by a cast of top-tier Wagnerian singers and packed houses and confirmed the opera’s status as a world-class company. The opera will perform the second part of the Ring cycle, “Die Walküre,” later this season, and it seems likely Atlanta will become one of the few opera companies to tackle the entire series over the course of the next two seasons. -- SF

::

Credit: Courtesy of Rand Lines

Credit: Courtesy of Rand Lines

For 23 years, Scottish conductor Sir Donald Runnicles served as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor -- just a couple of shows per season. By these brief but regular visits, he enriched the musicians on stage as much as the audience in the seats. In the past 12 months, the orchestra was at its technical and emotional best in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 in January, built up block by block, as if we were inside a giant cathedral of sound. Under Runnicles, we heard what a superlative orchestra the ASO can be. -- PR

::

Banjo luminary Béla Fleck brought his latest ensemble -- a trio featuring the unlikely pairing of upright bass, tablas and bansuri -- to the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts on April 20 for an evening of hypnotic grooves and exotic modalities. On paper, the concept might seem precarious at best and incohesive at worst. But Fleck and company were on their own transcendental wavelength. The result was the kind of avant-garde jazz associated with Sun Ra or Pharoah Sanders: cerebral, exploratory and always festooned with Eastern musical conventions. -- JO

::

Fleur Barron, a multicultural mezzo-soprano with a lustrous voice, made her Spivey Hall debut in March with an eclectic, refined program, titled “HOME(Land),” that spanned from Romantic art songs to modern music to Broadway. With pianist Julius Drake, Barron explored music from several continents, highlighted by her commission of “Ananurhan,” drawing attention to the atrocities against the Uyghur people in far Western China. Performing in the Uyghur language, Barron’s gorgeous singing, radiant top notes and creamy warm lower range were central to the concert’s great success. -- PR

::

In Runnicles’ final concert as principal guest conductor in early May, he led the ASO in overheated late-Romantic music that’s become his speciality. Three excerpts from Alban Berg’s dystopian opera “Wozzeck,” with mezzo Irene Roberts, were a harrowing experience. Closing his tenure with Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 somehow felt right, and the orchestra, on adrenaline overload, delivered for him with precision and deep musicality and love. Runnicles created his own two-decade Golden Age, one that won’t soon be forgotten. -- PR

::

Credit: Rand Lines

Credit: Rand Lines

Nathalie Stutzmann, in her second season as ASO music director, is still finding her bearings with the orchestra. And although she was a celebrated contralto, her recent work with the 155 singers in the world-class ASO Chorus had been somewhat uneven. A huge sigh of relief: They all came together magnificently in a program centered on three short choral works by Brahms in November, exploring lamentation, destiny and fate. She drew an exquisite, beautifully balanced sound from chorus and orchestra. That Stutzmann can, in the right repertoire, draw this level of artistic achievement from her band is promising news indeed. -- PR

::

The Atlanta Opera’s Halloween treat, a performance of Michael Shapiro’s “Frankenstein: the Movie Opera,” was a captivating evolution of a cinematic classic. The piece was written to accompany screenings of the 1931 Boris Karloff classic and serves to underscore the film’s iconic scenes. Shapiro composed the work solely for orchestra but the newly expanded version, which had its East Coast premiere with this performance, featured an ominous chorus with libretto pulled from the traditional Latin requiem mass. It made for an evening of subtle sonic explorations into one of horror cinema’s most iconic monsters. -- JO

::

Credit: Courtesy of Alice Hong

Credit: Courtesy of Alice Hong

The Georgian Chamber Players did a pair of performances this year at Eddie’s Attic, in May and again in November. The informal Decatur venue is more closely associated with acoustic folk balladeers than classical mastery, and the chamber group used that to its advantage. The evenings were laid-back and conversational, which made for a more intimate and personal experience than the grandeur of chamber music’s usual venues of cathedrals and auditoriums. Classical chamber music pairs surprisingly well with the kind of atmosphere normally associated with “MTV Unplugged.” -- JO

::

In the clear and warm acoustics of Emory’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, the Festival Strings Lucerne, a Swiss chamber orchestra on an international tour, brought a pleasingly broad program with refreshing new music, a star violinist (Midori) and a surprisingly vital reading of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in November. Without a conductor, the symphony sounded mostly self-realized, coming together as a conversation between sections, almost as chamber music. Their Beethoven was organic and often thrilling. -- PR

::

Credit: Rand Lines

Credit: Rand Lines

Anthony Parnther conducted the ASO in a compelling world premiere of Chanda Dancy’s “Cacophony of Spirits” in December, the return of former ASO bassoonist Andrew Brady as a concerto soloist and a revelatory performance of Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3, emphasizing the African American idioms, where the music exploded with vitality and groove. It wasn’t part of the show’s billing, but this subscription concert was a powerful acknowledgement of talented Black artists performing at the highest level in what’s predominantly the White space of the classical concert hall. -- PR

::

The DeKalb Symphony Orchestra turned in an amazing show on March 22 with a showcase of up-and-coming youth talent. The evening was far from being a perfunctory acknowledgment of youngsters that play well within their age bracket and instead featured some truly stunning performances by teens who could easily take a seat among their adult counterparts. Of particular note was flutist Chloe Park, whose performance of Albert Franz Doppler’s “Hungarian Pastoral Fantasy, op 26″ was as soulfully penetrating as it was technically mesmerizing. -- JO

::

The Johns Creek Symphony Orchestra scored big with its season opener with Trans-Siberian Orchestra violinist Mark Wood. Rock bands playing with orchestras are always hit-or-miss affairs, so it was nice to hear such a well-balanced sound and compositional interplay between the two. Wood himself is a scorching onstage presence whose classical vocabulary and rock star panache make him equal parts Niccolò Paganini and Eddie Van Halen. The show might not have been the sort of thing that appeals to classical purists, but, for rock fans who like their concerts with a little symphonic grandiosity, it really hit a sweet spot. -- JO

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

MEET OUR PARTNER

ArtsATL (www.artsatl.org), is a nonprofit organization that plays a critical role in educating and informing audiences about metro Atlanta’s arts and culture. Founded in 2009, ArtsATL’s goal is to help build a sustainable arts community contributing to the economic and cultural health of the city.If you have any questions about this partnership or others, please contact Senior Manager of Partnerships Nicole Williams at nicole.williams@ajc.com.