Homecoming with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Kicking off my 47th season with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra -- as audience member -- was like Homecoming.  Maestro Robert Spano bounded onstage to warm applause, and the orchestra started to play before he even reached his podium to conduct us in singing the anthem. When we cheered at the end, my friend Suzanne said, "Play ball!"

[Photo: Robert Spano]

We were all the home crowd, ready to appreciate everything.  Looking back from Row C and up into three balconies, I saw all rows packed, and lots of smiling faces of different ages and races. The chair of the board, without mentioning the cutbacks and cutthroat politics of some previous seasons, told us that we're back on track with hundreds of new subscribers (!), new music from our composer-in-residence Michael Kurth (who got appreciative tappings of the bow from fellow bassists), and young new hires to fill out our orchestra. In the program, we saw glam head shots of these young musicians and read about their music, guilty pleasures, and how they keep fit.

The program included Bernstein's Symphony #2, based on W. H. Auden's Age of Anxiety; Kurth's rocking arrangement of the national anthem and his new piece 1000 Words; and Gershwin's American in Paris.  All pieces are products of American males under the age of 40 -- or young for 46, in Kurth's case.  There was a lot of head-banging and aggressive drama in the pieces.

Our guest performer is a favorite of the Atlanta audience, French pianist Jean - Yves Thibaudet, playing the solo piano part in Age of Anxiety.  Bernstein's symphony requires a lot of pounding, and extreme virtuosic display in Bernstein's elaborations on a honky-tonk theme; but mostly, Thibaudet struck plummy dissonant chords in space, ruminations of the young man Bernstein.  It's a thankless job, as Bernstein wasn't going for the big hand when he wrote it; he was going for expression.  There's a break-through of warmth in the end, but for sheer beauty and feeling, the opening of the piece is best, a duet of woodwinds.

The movements of Kurth's piece all fascinated, with changes of texture and coloration, best when the percussion wasn't overwhelming the other instruments.

Gershwin's piece struck me as richer than I'd remembered, motifs layered intricately, surprises sprung regularly, melodies growing out of each other.  Hearing it live, you catch things you don't get when you don't see the bows sawing, the percussionist sweating, the conductor cajoling.

At the end, Spano ran about the orchestra, highlighting soloists.  Our tuba player got big applause for his rare moment in the spotlight.  Our composer Michael Kurth seemed shy of the acclaim, but grateful and affectionate when it came to hugging Spano and fellow musicians.

It all felt so good! 

(I wrote about the ASO, Kurth, and Bernstein, too, in an article about the ASO and audience as a "family."  See also my consideration of another fraught work by Bernstein,  "The Weight of Bernstein's Mass.")