November 4 & 6, 2021
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center, Atlanta, GA
James Gaffigan, conductor; Alisa Weilerstein, cello.
Jean-Philippe RAMEAU: Les Indes galantes (selections)
Osvaldo GOLIJOV: Azul
John Coolidge ADAMS: The Chairman Dances
Maurice RAVEL: Ma mère L’oye (ballet)
Mark Gresham | 5 NOV 2021
Thursday’s performance by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was a refreshing journey off the beaten path, engaging and well-thought-out. What we got under the baton of guest conductor James Gaffigan was a bouquet of cultural, historical, and geographical references that spanned the globe without being in any way a “world music” concert.
The first part of the journey took us to 1735, during the rule of Louis XV of France, and a somewhat Franco-centric world view of foreign cultures deemed exotic and “sauvage.” In this cultutal environment, Jean-Philipe Rameau wrote his opera-ballet Les Indes galantes. The title is often translated as “The amorous Indies,” as in the ASO’s program notes, but perhaps better translated literally as “The gallant Indies” — as in the definitions found in the American Heritage Dictionary for “gallant”: smartly or boldly stylish; dashing; unflinching in battle or action; valiant; nobly or selflessly resolute.
James Gaffigan conducts the ASO in Rameau’s “Les Indes galantes” (credit: Raftermen)
A decade before, a group of Native American tribal chiefs, led by Chief Chicagou of the Mitchigamea tribe of the Illinois Confederation, visited Paris for diplomatic reasons. Chief Chicagou addressed the young French king Louis XV, pledging allegiance to the French crown. The next day, the king took the visitors on a rabbit hunt.
While the chiefs were in Paris, they also performed Peace, War, and Victory dances at the Theatre Italien, which Rameau witnessed. The performance inspired Rameau to write a piece for harpsichord entitled Les Sauvages. A decade later came Les Indes galantes, whose “power of love” stories devotes single acts to the cultures of indigenous Peruvians, Ottoman Turks, Persians, as well as native Americans.
The ASO chose six selections from the opera-ballet in all: “Air de Sauvages,” ”Ouverture,” “Entrée des quatre Nations,” “Menuets,” “Tambourins” and a reprise of “Air de Sauvages.” In the last two, we finally hear percussion: drum, tambourine, and cymbals — popularly called “Turkish music” in the 18th century, but most certainly also meant to imply the other “sauvage” cultures represented as well.
The music and its performance were delightful. Gaffigan and the ASO captured well its quintessentially French Baroque character.
Osvaldo Golijov’s Azul was composed for cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. They premiered it at Tanglewood in 2006, with ASO principal guest conductor Donald Runnicles leading the orchestra. As he is known to do, the composer continued to tweak the score with other soloists and orchestras. The Atlanta Symphony gave its first performance in 2009 with Ma as the soloist but with Miguel Harth-Bedoya as guest conductor.
Alisa Weilerstein solos in “Azul” (credit: Raftermen)
In Thursday’s concert, Alisa Weilerstein was the cello soloist for Azul. Weilerstein made her ASO debut in April 2013, performing the Cello Concerto No. 1 of Dmitri Shostakovich. Azul was a very different listening experience.
While the Shostakovich is one of the most challenging concertos for cello, in Azul the cellist rarely rests. The cello is also the lead voice in a concertino which includes two percussionists wielding colorful instruments (Cyro Baptista and Jamey Haddad), and a “hyper-accordion” which is an electronically-enhanced accordion, played by Michael Ward Bergeman, who developed it. All, including Weilerstein, were amplified.
What we heard was a magnificently-colored half-hour tapestry of sound melded from amplified solo, concertino, and orchestra. The ASO enhanced the performance further with lighting, darkening the stage except for Weilerstein for one long solo passage near the end, as well as colors and a starry sky-like pattern projected on the back of the acoustic shell, adding to the work’s already copious exotic character.
Weilerstein’s encore was an improvisation based on Heiter Villa-Lobos’ “The Little Train of Caipria” )the final movement of his Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2) in which she was joined by the three concertino artists.
Now that two different American composers named John Adams have won Pulitzer Prizes for music, it’s obligatory to distinguish between them in reviews by including their middle names. John Coolidge Adams is the composer of The Chairman Dances, initially destined for inclusion in his opera, Nixon in China. Adams refers to it as an “outtake” from Act III of the opera.
The Chairman Dances (“dance” being a verb) is subtitled “A Foxtrot for Orchestra,” in which the music depicts Chairman and Madame Mao, in memory, are dancing the foxtrot together. All the more intriguing is that there exists traditional Chinese music that sounds like a foxtrot. Adams seamlessly shifts gears between his minimalist take on orientalism and the sound of an American ballroom within the context of the music’s otherwise relentless drive.
The concert closed with another French ballet: Maurice Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye (“Mother Goose”). The pleasant music is delightful, although this ASO performance omitted the Prelude and Interludes. It is worth noting that the standout movement, “Cinquième tableau – Laideronnette, impératrice des Pagodes“ (“Empress of the Pagodas), offers the French view of musical “orientalism“ prevalent in Ravel’s time. That connects well, programmatically, with Rameau’s “savauge” Franco-centric exoticism as well as Adams’ more contemporary take on it, even if such do not necessarily mesh well with current socio-politics about representing varied cultures and ethnicities. ■
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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