October 21, 23 & 24, 2021
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, GA
Juanjo Mena, conductor; Midori, violin.
James LEE III: Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula
TCHAIKOVSKY: Violin Concerto
Robert SCHUMANN: Symphony No. 4
Mark Gresham | 22 OCT 2021
Thursday’s performance by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra opened with Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula by American composer James Lee III. This week of concerts is the second time the ASO has programmed this piece. The first time was in 2016 with then assistant conductor Joseph Young conducting.
Commissioned by the Sphinx Commissioning Consortium, Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula was premiered by Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony Orchestra in October 2011.
“Sukkot” is one of the three pilgrimage festivals of Judaism — translated into English as “Feast of Tabernacles” but sometimes called “Feast of the Ingathering” because of its association with the annual harvest. Lee pairs that idea with the “celestial harvest scene” in the Book of Revelation as coming through the Orion Nebula (identified as M42 and NGC 1976 in astronomical catalogs), a diffuse nebula in the constellation Orion that is both bright enough to be visible to the naked eye at night and the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.
Here’s what I wrote about the music in my review of the 2016 ASO performance (slightly edited for style):
James Lee III (courtesy of ASO)
This second time around, the performance, led by guest conductor Juanjo Mena, was more convincing. In both cases, brass and percussion dominated the orchestral sound. In Thursday’s rendition, I felt like there was more clarity, that I could hear more of the inner workings, even though much still felt a bit opaque.
Word is that Sukkot Through Orion’s Nebula is Lee’s most performed orchestral work, although he has 11 purely orchestral works in his current catalog, plus seven concertos and thee choral-orchestral works. It would be interesting to hear the ASO tackle something else by Lee in the future, perhaps a contrasting piece.
Violinist Midori Gotō (五嶋 みどり), known simply as Midori by the concert-going public, draws a crowd wherever she performs. Playing a repertoire favorite like Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto only adds to the magnetism. Now 49 years old, Midori became a star as an 11-year-old prodigy when a last-minute change in a New York Philharmonic concert featuring young performers, conducted by Zubin Mehta, suddenly thrust her into the spotlight.
Midori (credit: Raftermen)
Midori is a formidable, focused performer. She has a beautiful and expressive tone and a vivaciousness that connects musically with her audience. But Midori’s sound is not large. Even though her playing is physically energetic, an orchestra requires a certain judicious delicacy in accompanying her. Mena and the ASO musicians had to ratchet dynamics down a few notches, and that worked splendidly. Midori could be heard clearly, and the orchestra lost none of the music’s passion under Mena’s baton.
Afterward, Midori played as an encore the “Adagio” from J.S. Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor, BWV 1001, for solo violin.
I am not a huge fan of Robert Schumann’s symphonic works, mostly due to their density, but also because Schumann can often beat themes and musical gestures to death. One case in point is Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120. There are two versions. Schumann completed the first one in 1841, then heavily revised it in 1851. It was the latter version that first reached publication in 1882.
Robert’s widow, Clara Schumann, preferred the second version. She claimed that the symphony had merely been sketched in 1841 and only fully orchestrated in 1851. However, that story is untrue. On the other hand, Johannes Brahms preferred the earlier, lighter version of the symphony, and over Clara’s objections, had that version published in 1891.
What we heard on Thursday night from Mena and the ASO was the second version, with German tempo markings and no pause between the four movements. (In the first version, the tempos are in Italian.)
Here again, Mena and the ASO drew the best out of the score. For me, this Fourth Symphony is still a tough sell, although the performance did its best at convincing. It’s just a piece that is perhaps more attuned to other people’s tastes than mine. Like Brahms, I might be more inclined to prefer the earlier version.
However, you still have the opportunity to hear this ASO program and disagree, as it repeats twice this weekend, on Saturday, October 23 at 8 pm and Sunday, October 24 at 3 pm. ■
Mark Gresham is publisher and principal writer of EarRelevant. he began writing as a music journalist over 30 years ago, but has been a composer of music much longer than that. He was the winner of an ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for music journalism in 2003.
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