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Thursday, March 27, 2008
Carnegie Hall, Here We Come
CONCERT REVIEW Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Thursday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. www.atlantasymphony.org
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Contemporary classical music has evolved into a highly contingent art. The more you’ve heard the stuff, the more attuned your ears will be to the latest offerings.
But that poses a problem for casual concertgoers, who spend their energy purchasing a ticket and expect the music to reach out to them, not the other way around. In recent decades, the wall between living composers and general-interest audiences had grown forbiddingly tall, such that even tuneful, accessible composers were said to dwell in the “new-music ghetto.”
But that barrier is starting to vanish, thanks to composers like Christopher Theofanidis, a 40-year-old Texan who teaches in Baltimore. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra commissioned Theofanidis’ “The Here and Now” and gave its premiere in 2005, then cut a Telarc recording.
Thursday in Symphony Hall, conductor Robert Spano and the ASO and Chorus revisited the oratorio, preparing it for an April 5 concert in Carnegie Hall, a high pressure gig.
The score brims with energy and imagination and communicates directly, seemingly aimed at the first-time listener — contingencies be damned. Theofanidis was inspired by 13th century Sufi poet Rumi, as popularized in the reworkings by Coleman Barks, a former University of Georgia professor.
Almost every one of its 13 short movements includes a splashy bit of scene painting. Stratospheric violin harmonics illuminate a mention of “the light of the stars.” In the most appealing section, “Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you,” the chorus voices cascade softly downward, as petals carpeting the grass under a cherry tree.
Theofanidis’ command of the orchestra and chorus is often brilliant, yet the Rumi fragments selected by the composer edge towards new-agey mysticism and its accompanying banality. Baritone Nathan Gunn, with a voice as sturdy and tightly grained as a tall old oak, sang the “narrative” interludes, bits of hackneyed folk wisdom. One movement, “The urgency of love,” is a duet for soprano and tenor with a swaying Caribbean rhythm, sung here by the vocally fetching Hila Plitmann and Richard Clement.
If the oratorio’s grandiloquence makes it feels longer than the 30 minutes that actually ticked by, it’s perhaps because everything sounded bunched up and at the surface — expertly crafted music in two (but only two) expansive dimensions.
Still, “The Here and Now” fills a valuable niche. So many modern classics are as challenging as they are rewarding, and thus they don’t help refresh the general-interest concert-hall audiences. Theofanidis’ approach, his ear-catching gestures and pale harmonies, earned a sincere standing ovation. The crowd seems poised to think, “I enjoy contemporary classical music.”
The evening’s two other works, Sibelius’ “Tapiola,” a tone poem on the forest god of Finland, and Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe,” on shepherds, shepherdesses and the age of innocence, celebrate the romantic spirit through the neo-pagan. It wasn’t lost that they are also orchestral show-pieces designed to highlight the ASO’s progress.
In the final years of Sibelius’ creative life, his music turned darkly inward, somehow conveying the cycles of life and death and thus a connection to nature primeval. In Spano’s tense reading, I got the feeling that a gardener gets from scooping out compost for a plot of vegetables, where the thick, airy, intense black soil is rich in nutrients, full of the organic decay that yields new life.
The ASO’s playing of “Daphnis” Thursday was less perfect. For Spano, it’s the sort of music where he excels: sophisticated, emotionally neutral, requiring extreme finesse and a sense of rhythm so taut it allows for supple swaying with the breeze.
The ASO Chorus, prepared by Norman Mackenzie, sang the wordless “oos” and ahs” with the force of personality and nuance fully equal to any instrumental section of the ASO. It’s here the Atlantans will likely dazzle the New Yorkers most.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Classical Music
‘Tut 2’ on the way?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The AJC reported last fall that the blockbuster exhibition known as “Tut 2” might be coming to Atlanta.
Looks like we’ll find out for sure next Wednesday. The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University just sent out an advisory saying it would make a “landmark announcement” that day and that Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin has been invited.
We know that the Carlos Museum had been talking with the exhibitors about bringing Tut 2 to the city-owned Civic Center.
Carlos Museum officials say they can’t talk about the announcement, but word is that “King Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs” will be at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center in Midtown this fall.
To learn more about what’s in this massive exhibition, check out the website.
What do you think? Are you interested in seeing the treasures of King Tut?
Permalink | Comments (38) | Post your comment | Categories: Visual arts
Telling tales in Avondale Estates
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A well-run storytelling festival can be a wonderful event, so all good wishes to The Atlanta Storytelling Festival, which makes its debut tonight and runs through Sunday in Avondale Estates. The festival will feature more than 30 area performers who will show how telling stories can be elevated to a performance art.
The weekend will be divided into six 90-minute programs for adults, with themes like Love, Generations and Crossing Boundaries, and four 45-minute programs for children. Among the tellers: Christy Foelsch, Barry Stewart Mann, Wayne Smith, Audrey Galex, and many more.
Performances are at the Academy Theater, 119 Center St., Avondale Estates, which is tucked behind the movie theater. Tickets are $15 per program, $75 for the whole shebang. Details from 404 297-0904 and at the festival’s website.
Meanwhile, up in Marietta…
The Food Network’s Alton Brown is coming to Cobb on Saturday to help the Cobb Library Foundation raise money. Brown’s latest book is”Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run,” about his motorcycle trip along the Mississippi River looking for great American road food. He’ll be at The Walker School, 700 Cobb Parkway, Marietta, talking and signing the book, but fire regulations won’t let him cook anything.
There’s a VIP reception at 11 a.m. ($125) and the regular appearance at 12:30 p.m. ($35). Tickets are nearly sold out, says the foundation’s Donna Espy. You can buy them online or call 770-528-2196.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Books
