Thursday night's Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert featured two biggies: the world premiere of Adam Schoenberg’s “La Luna Azul” and an appearance by beloved pianist Andre Watts. The 31 year-old Schoenberg, who lives in Los Angeles, is a member of the “Atlanta School” of composers chosen by ASO’s music director Robert Spano for commissions and performances.
“Accessibility” is the feature most shared by this group and there were passages in “La Luna Azul” that would fit easily into a movie score, a genre Schoenberg said he admires and in which he has begun to work. But the work rarely panders.
Schoenberg said that his music “always tells a story. It’s like song without words.” Here, the story is a “universal love song between the moon and the sun.”
The short work (13 minutes) opens with a gentle, moody tone poem, inspired originally by a piano trio he’d written to his wife. Harmonic progressions from this section carry over to form the basis of the work’s second, “groovy” section. Here, Schoenberg shows his great strength, which is his mesmerizing way of painting colors. The music is “American,” with influences from Aaron Copland, Philip Glass and Hollywood, but it is expanded into Technicolor by Schoenberg’s orchestration, which brings every part of the giant orchestra into play, especially the percussion section.
The work ends in a reflective peaceful section. Spano loves his composers and this one got a performance from the orchestra that was both polished and electric.
Watts is something of an institution. He was performing on national television with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1963 and has been at it ever since. On this occasion he performed Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, one of those warhorse pieces that loses something from overexposure.
Still, Watts is both a virtuoso and a showman and it’s fun to watch him pull out all the stops. He pounds, hammers and storms his way through the heavier passages, but handles the more delicate ones with aplomb. At 65, he still has the fleet fingers for the showy flourishes, which he milks.
Spano took Watts' theatricality as his cue to let loose with the orchestra, so what we got was a pretty stormy version of the Grieg. It worked well. The work seems to thrive on the dramatic license.
After the intermission, we got Carl Neilsen’s Symphony No. 5, a tough piece written just after World War I. The work is a battle between good and evil, with evil represented by brutal militaristic sounds. A snare drum, played ably here by Thomas Sherwood, vividly portrays an advancing army. There is a slower, calmer passage, yet it is filled with pain.
But the forces of good win and a final flourish celebrates their triumph. Patrons who chose flight into the night at intermission missed a chance to hear Spano and the orchestra at their best. Neilsen's 5th is especially demanding, but this performance was precise and powerful, heartfelt.
This concert will be repeated Sunday at 3 p.m.
Concert Review
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. 3 p.m. Sunday. $21-$79. Symphony Hall, 1280 Peachtree St., N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000. www.atlantasymphony.org.
