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London Calling for ASO Conductors
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CLASSICAL CON BLASTO blog
When the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s house conductors aren’t waving their batons in Symphony Hall, they’re likely on the podium of some other orchestra, somewhere else in the world: That’s why they’re called “jet-set” and “star” conductors.
In the coming days, in a coincidence of planning, both ASO music director Robert Spano and ASO principal guest conductor Donald Runnicles will lead British orchestras at the most comprehensive and populist classical-music festival in the world, London’s BBC Proms.
The Proms concerts are streamed online — www.bbc.co.uk/proms — where you can listen live and listen again for up to a week after the event. The festival boasts an endlessly impressive list of distinguished performers and fascinating repertoire from the old favorites to world premieres. Many concerts are previewed with an informative “pre-Prom talk,” also streamed on the site.
Runnicles gets the biggest show of the festival, Sunday Aug. 12. Wagner’s marathon “Gotterdammerung” — “the Twilight of the Gods” that concludes his four-opera “Ring” cycle — starts at 11 a.m. Sunday (4 p.m. in London) and runs till about 7:20 p.m. (10:20 in London).
Among his able cast is soprano Christine Brewer as Brunnhilde, perhaps the most maligned and noble female character in all of opera. Brewer has a serious following among ASO audiences, especially for the various Wagner roles she’s sung here, partnered by Runnicles.
Spano takes the stage two days later. On Tuesday, Aug. 14, he’ll conduct the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, a strong regional ensemble, in music he’d recently rehearsed in Atlanta. His program: Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” in a semi-improvised version with the Marcus Roberts Trio as soloists, plus Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka” and dances from Bernstein’s “On the Town.”
Now in its 111th year, the Henry Woods Promenade Concerts, to give the official title, started as a lighter summertime diversion to bring audiences into the then-new Queen’s Hall, near Oxford Circus in London. The cheapest tickets were sold as standing room on the promenade part of the main floor, and the name stuck. After a Nazi V-2 bomb destroyed the hall, the Proms moved into the cavernous Royal Albert Hall. The Albert Hall’s oval shape and flat floor made the standees even more central to the event, visually as well as vocally.
For Spano’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” for example, when the stagehands push the piano on stage and open the lid, expect to hear the Prommers on the floor shout “Heave!” followed by a lusty “Ho!” from the balcony — a tradition of audience participation and fun unlike anything in America. (At the Proms, classical music performances have some of the same urgency and revelry as soccer matches.)
In Atlanta, we talk a lot about how classical music sometimes seems musty to outsiders. Groups like the ASO and Atlanta Opera and Spivey Hall spend countless hours trying to balance lofty artistic standards with the common touch, where great music isn’t intimidating to anyone. We should study how the BBC Proms does it with rowdy success.
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