December 8, 10 & 11*, 2022
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
Nathalie Stutzmann, conductor (*Sunday: Jerry Hou, conductor).
Georges BIZET: Prelude to Act I from Carmen
Georges BIZET: Symphony in C major
Pyotr TCHAIKOVSKY: The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a
Mark Gresham | 9 DEC 2022
Thursday’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra marked Nathalie Stutzmann’s third set of concerts in which she ascended the podium as the orchestra’s music director, receiving a very warm welcome from the audience. Stutzmann will conduct the program again on Saturday. But she will not be present to lead Sunday’s performance. Associate conductor Jerry Hou will take over the podium for that one. Stutzmann will instead be on her way to Finland to begin rehearsals with the Helsinki Philharmonic for concerts there on December 14 and 15.
With only 55 minutes of music, Thursday’s program was also remarkably short and felt on the lighter side of classical repertoire.
The concert launched with a genuine curtain-raiser: the Prelude to Act I from George Bizet’s opera, Carmen.
One can quickly find performances on YouTube that border on being too slow, others rather brisk and lively, but on Thursday night, it felt like Stiutzmann was pushing the tempo forward more than a bit much. Nevertheless, it was a reasonably auspicious start for the rest of the program, which did not quite live up to that promise.
Bizet’s Symphony in C major followed the Carmen Prelude. Carmen was Bizet’s final work and his most successful. Exactly three months after the premiere of Carmen at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and 33 performances, Bizet died suddenly on June 3, 1875.
At the other end of the spectrum, Bizet’s Symphony in C major was one of his two earliest orchestral works, written while a 17-year-old student of Charles Gounod. It is a genuinely capable work by a prodigious teenager, even if a student assignment that emulated his teacher’s Symphony in D in manners of style, harmony, and orchestration. But in it, one can hear the beginnings of Bizet’s melodic voice.
This performance felt a little rough, needing more polish, clarity, and a certain spark to sound better than ordinary. Those with long memories may recall distant past performances, such as those led by Yoel Levi in 1994 (the most recent previous subscription performance of this piece, according to the program booklet) and by Michael Palmer in 1974, as having those attributes. The “Scherzo” third movement felt the least cohesive, although it drew interest with an Auvergnese flavor, lent especially by the “Trio” section’s bal-musette drones in the violas and cellos.
Interestingly, the ASO program booklet also states the orchestra most recently performed Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” Suite, Op. 71a, in December 1957 with Arthur Fiedler conducting. That’s not entirely true, though it may be for just the classical subscription series. William Fred Scott led an ASO performance on April 8, 1983, as part of a Primavera Series concert. Of course, individual selections get played in the iconic Christmas with the ASO concerts, almost as if a cultural duty. Still, that’s a long time for such a notoriously popular work like The Nutcracker Suite to go unplayed in its entirety.
Cover to the first edition of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. (IMSLP) Click image to enlarge in new tab.
Alas, I felt The Nutcracker Suite didn’t come across as well as it should during Thursday’s performance. The “Miniature Overture” that opens the Suite had some intonation problems, and the balance felt bass-heavy (as was the Bizet Symphony), which set the general tone for the rest. The Overture begins pianissimo but needs to be highly energized at that soft dynamic, not timid, to achieve its excitement and foreshadow the variety of dances to follow. Consequently, the Suite’s anticipated magic wasn’t there; neither was much of the likewise dancelike character of many of its movements under Stutzmann’s baton. And when the latter’s missing from ballet music, that’s a problem.
The ASO can and should come across better with this music, as clearly demonstrated in its occasional performance of a few excerpts. No doubt one can expect the Suite (indeed the whole program) to go much better over the two final concerts, by Sunday at the very least. The marvelous musicians of the ASO certainly have that bit of magic in them. ■
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra repeats this program on Saturday, December 10, 2022, with Stutzmann conducting, and Sunday afternoon, December 11, with Jerry Hou conducting; both at Atlanta Symphony Hall.
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: aso.org
- Nathalie Stutzmann: nathaliestutzmann.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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