Pianist Marc-Andrè Hamelin with conductor Robert Spano and the ASO perform the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi's "Piano Concerto." (credit: Raftermen)

Copland and Gandolfi pair well in a vibrant performance by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

CONCERT REVIEW:
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
November 4 & 6, 2021
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, GA

Robert Spano, conductor; Marc-Andrè Hamelin, piano.
Aaron COPLAND: Fanfare for the Common Man
Michael GANDOLFI: Piano Concerto (world premiere)
Aaron COPLAND: Symphony No. 3

Mark Gresham | 19 NOV 2021

It’s an excitingly atypical week for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Significantly, they present the world premiere of Michael Gandolfi’s Piano Concerto, an ASO commission, with the esteemed pianist Marc-Andrè Hamelin as soloist and Robert Spano conducting. They will perform the work three times in all.

What is unusual is that while the Thursday and Saturday programs pair the concerto with the music of Aaron Copland, Friday night’s performance drops the Copland in exchange for works by four living composers: Brian Raphael Nabors, Krists Auznieks, Adam Schoenberg, and Michael Kurth. (that concert will be reviewed in a forthcoming post.)


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Thursday evening’s program opened with Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man (1942), performed by the ASO’s entire orchestral brass section, timpani, and percussion. Copland wrote the iconic work in response to the US entry into World War II, partly inspired by a speech delivered by then vice president Henry A. Wallace, which proclaimed a coming “Century of the Common Man” to follow the war.

Spano led the ASO brass and percussion in a noble performance of this celebratory work, setting the tone and initiating a satisfying overall arch to the concert.

Immediately after the Fanfare, ASO executive director Jennifer Barlament came onstage to announce that Spano was recipient of a 2021 IP Legends Award from the Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance. The award was given for his dedication to performing and recording new music during his 20-year tenure as ASO music director. A short video about the honor followed the announcement. The music to come next also was dedicated in honor of Spano’s commitment to new music.


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Boston-based composer Micahel Gandolfi has become increasingly familiar to Atlanta audiences over the past 15 years thanks to being one of the original four members of the “Atlanta School of Composers” established by Robert Spano during the early years of his tenure as the ASO’s music director. He has written a good handful of works for the orchestra, including pieces featuring soloists.

Gandolfi’s most recent composition for the ASO is his Piano Concerto, a venture instigated by a friendship developed with Paul and Linnea Bert, who are great admirers of the formidable pianist Marc-Andrè Hamelin, and who had come likewise to admire the music of Gandolfi. The idea was to have Gandolfi write a concerto specifically for Hamelin. [Read more in this interview with Michael Gandolfi.]

Gandolfi has talked extensively about his goal of achieving the same kind of resonance from the piano as found in the great Romantic piano concertos, something deliberately avoided by various late 20th century composers (Gandolfi cites György Ligeti as an example). Yet, one can hardly sum it up as merely an attempt to imbue the solo piano part with a kind of neo-Romantic sonority. There is an Apollonian acuity to the three-movement work’s formal considerations, which do not adhere to rigid textbook models though familiar forms, such as sonata and chaconne, serve as starting points and remain identifiable in basic principle.


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There is driving rhythmic interest in the fast sections, which possibly hearkens to Gandolfi’s background in such popular genres as rock, jazz, and blues, but which in any case definitely gives the music a more modernist bent. One can identify the neo-Romantic character of much of the piano part (especially the second movement) but not finger any specific Romantic composer as being emulated, rather a range of influences here and there. Gandolfi is a guitarist, not a pianist, but he gives Hamelin what seems a rather idiomatic piano part to play that is resonant but lean, and expressive without sentimentality.

Of particular note is a very straightforward chord progression that serves as the introduction, the very first thing heard, played by the solo piano without orchestra. While it is not the primary material of the first movement, it is an important, easily recognizable marker, which recurs at important points within the first movement. It also circles back near the end of the concerto to further emphasize the unity of this appealing concerto, of which Hamelin, Spano, and the orchestra gave a most convincing world premiere performance.

Conductor Robert Spano, composer Michael Gandolfi, and pianist Marc-Andrè Hamelin take a collective bow.

Conductor Robert Spano, composer Michael Gandolfi, and pianist Marc-Andrè Hamelin take a collective bow. (credit: Raftermen)

After intermission came Aaron Copland’s Symphony No. 3 of 1946, often regarded as the “quintessential American symphony.” The Second World War had just ended, with the United States emerging as one of two world superpowers as the dominance of old European world powers effectively came to an end. The nation was ready for unsullied optimism. Copland gave it to them with his Third Symphony, incorporating a substantive expansion of his own Fanfare for the Common Man into the last movement for good measure.

Placing Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man at the beginning of the concert and his Symphony No. 3 as the final work also allowed the Fanfare’s themes to return at the end, helping unify the dramatic arch of the entire program. Similar in the way that the opening chords of Gandolfi’s Piano Concerto circled back as a unifying gesture.

Copland’s Third Symphony has come to typify an “American sound” in classical symphonic music; spacious in its harmonies, frequently lyrical, but more often noble in sentiment, and ultimately triumphant. Spano seemed to be channeling Copland in this vibrant performance, a splendid conclusion to a program that exuded vitality start to finish.

Mark Gresham

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.