March 24 & 26, 2022
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
Jonathon Heyward, conductor; Xavier Dubois Foley, composer & double bass.
BEETHOVEN: Leonore Overture No. 3
Xavier FOLEY: Soul Bass
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 9
Mark Gresham | 25 MAR 2022
Thursday evening’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, led by guest conductor Jonathon Heyward, was a joy to hear.
Jonathon Heyward (credit: Laura Thiesbrummel
The concert opener, Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, felt like how an orchestra should play Beethoven. It was an assured performance that set the high-level positive expectations for the remainder of the evening.
The 29-year-old American conductor is making his Atlanta Symphony debut with this program. Heyward is currently in his first year as a Chief Conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, and his reputation has developed primarily in Europe. But he is making many important debuts this season on his native American soil: Detroit Symphony Orchestra this past July, and the Oregon Symphony Orchestra back in November, for two recent examples.
A native of Marietta, Georgia, composer-contrabassist Xavier Dubois Foley is familiar to ASO audiences. In November 2020, Foley’s “For Justice and Peace” was performed by the ASO in a streamed video concert with associate conductor Jerry Hou conducting. That was his ASO classical subscription debut, in which he shared the solo spotlight with concertmaster David Coucheron.
Xavier Foley solos in his own concerto, “Soul Bass.” (credit: Raftermen)
This time around, Foley was the soloist in another of his works, a new 17-minute contrabass concerto entitled Soul Bass.
With a title inspired by the former television show “Soul Train,” Foley’s Soul Bass is intended to introduce classical audiences to that unique blend of African-American gospel and R&B known as “soul music.”
It proved an appealing piece that is an excellent platform for Foley’s skill as a contrabassist. His orchestration leaves plenty of room for the soloist to be heard clearly and expressively, with great prominence given to the singing qualities of the instrument’s upper register. It was a musical experience readily appreciable by a wider audience.
The program concluded with the Symphony No. 9 of Dmitri Shostakovich.
Although it has five movements, the Ninth is over in less than a half-hour. Unlike the heroic tragedy of his Seventh and the Eighth symphonies, Shostakovich’s Ninth is predominantly of bright mood, hardly dark or opaque. That got the work in trouble with Soviet authorities, as being written in 1945, at the end of World War II and the defeat of the Nazis, they were looking for something more triumphally chest-beating from Soviet composers.
As with the opening Beethoven, Heyward and the ASO confidently and vibrantly brought this Ninth Symphony of Shostakovich to life.
The total amount of music in the concert was just under an hour, which is a little less than typical, but it was a thoroughly satisfying program that felt quite complete, well-played, and enjoyable. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: aso.org
- Jonathon Heyward: jonathonheyward.com
- Xavier Foley: xavierfoley.com
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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