Concert Review
James L. Paulk. 8 p.m. Jan. 23. Additional performances January 25 at 7:30 and January 26 at 2:00. $24-$75. Symphony Hall , 1280 Peachtree Street, Atlanta. 404-733-5000. www.atlantasymphony.org.
As her Atlanta Symphony Orchestra debut concert opened, pianist Wu Han swept onstage in a shimmering pink satin cape atop black stockings and bright pink shoes. Then, during the wildly virtuosic opening movement of Benjamin Britten’s Piano Concerto, an ASO premiere, it became clear that we were in the presence of a major artist.
Wu Han is a formidable presence in the classical music world, but much of her work has focused on chamber music. She frequently performs with her husband, cellist David Finckel, and with other ensembles. Her orchestra performances have been much rarer, often with Robert Spano, ASO’s music director, who even conducted the Britten concerto with her last summer at the Aspen Music Festival.
Britten, known for such works as the towering “Peter Grimes,” was England’s greatest opera composer of the 20th century, and opera companies everywhere are busy celebrating the centennial of his birth. Hobbled with short seasons and a modest budget, Atlanta Opera has only performed one Britten opera in its history (the quirky “Albert Herring” in 1992). So the ASO took up the cause, and we got this obscure work, Britten’s only piano concerto. It doesn’t sound at all “Brittenesque.” He wrote it when he was 24, before he had come into the wondrous sound world that characterizes his operas. A gifted pianist himself, Britten performed the world premiere.
The concerto is a showpiece, with perhaps more flash than substance. Wu Han clearly has the chops for the whirlwind passages, but she seemed determined to take a balanced approach, holding back a bit even in the most percussive moments. Sensitive and incisive in her playing, she made a persuasive case for a work new to virtually the entire audience. Her rendering of the first movement cadenza had the audience holding its collective breathe.
There were times when the orchestra threatened to overwhelm the soloist. It may be that Spano is still having to adjust to the effect of the new orchestra shell. Despite its fine effect on the sound in Symphony Hall, it does change the way things sound on stage.
In yet another ASO debut, Wu Han performed using an iPad score reader tricked out with a Bluetooth foot pedal for turning pages.
After the break, we got Hector Berlioz’s influential “Symphonie Fantastique.” The work is “program music,” with a detailed text spelled out by the composer (and printed in the program) all inspired by the composer’s stranger-than-fiction obsession with an actress he pursued and eventually married, partly with the help of this symphony. The five movements include such scenes as a “Witches’ Sabbath” and a hallucinatory execution. The ASO was in its glory here, with a richly textured sound from each section and fine solos all around. Spano gave the work a sense of drama, never neglecting the moments when detailed playing needed to emerge from the storm of sound.
Another first: The score calls for church bells, and the orchestra recently acquired a fine pair of gigantic bells via the estate of Eugene Allen Rehm, Jr. Rehm was an ASO percussionist for almost 50 years. Tom Sherwood, the orchestra’s principal percussionist, was the estate’s executor, and he played the bells (with finesse) on their first outing.
About the Author
