January 19 & 21, 2023
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
Sir Donald Runnicles, conductor; Jonathan Biss, piano.
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466
Anton BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 8 in C minor, WAB 108
Mark Gresham | 20 JAN 2023
Thursday evening’s concert by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra saw the return of Sir Donald Runnicles to the podium for the first of three programs he will lead in his final season as the orchestra’s principal guest conductor.
The program itself was the doppelgänger for a January 2011 program under Runnicles’ baton: Mozart’s multi-hued Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor paired with Bruckner’s massive Symphony No. 8, the only difference being the piano soloist. In 2011, the pianist was then-music director Robert Spano. This time, the pianist was Jonathan Biss.
As it did 12 years before, Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor opened the concert. It’s the first of only two piano concertos Mozart wrote in a minor key, the other being No. 24 in C minor.
Mozart had just turned 29 years old when he premiered it as both soloist and conductor. According to his father, Leopold Mozart, who attended the concert, the piano was the composer’s own, equipped with a pedal board like an organ. We don’t know how he used the pedal board in the concerto, if at all, as none of Mozart’s piano works explicitly include a part for it. But Mozart was also an expert on the organ, so playing a pedal board was reasonably within scope. Today, that piano is on display at the Mozart House in Salzburg, but the pedal board is missing.
Of course, Biss performed it on a modern Steinway concert grand, the standard practice for our day.
Jonathan Biss solos in Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor.” (credit: Rand Lines)
It is a dark-hued concerto, at least in the beginning, taking on a brighter glow as it moves back and forth through shifting light and shadow. There is much richness of texture to be explored within its Mozartean classicism, and Biss played with warmth and clarity that took advantage of its expressive emotional range. At the same time, the orchestra is a full partner of the soloist in this concerto, not mere accompaniment. Biss and Runnicles kept that egalitarian interplay of soloist and orchestra tightly synced through the well-paced first movement, the lyrical central “Romanze,” and the concluding “Rondo” movement which, after its final cadenza, became fully sunny down to the jubilant finish.
After intermission came Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 in C minor, which at almost 80 minutes greatly outsized the half-hour Mozart concerto, both in duration and orchestral forces deployed. It could have served as the entire concert by itself. It exists in two major versions of 1887 and 1890, with multiple editions and controversies surrounding their differences.
Runnicles and the ASO played the 1887 version in the 1972 edition by Leopold Nowak, in which, for example, the “Adagio” third movement is shorter than in the original. We can leave those many detailed debates about versions to the musicologists for now. What the audience had on hand was a performance to listen to, not a dissertation to write.
Part of that experience is Bruckner’s orchestration. It comes across in many ways as if the orchestra were a large Romantic-era pipe organ. In addition to a conventional string section and triple woodwinds, triple trumpets and trombones, one bass tuba, timpani, cymbals, and triangle, the score also asks for eight horn players, with four of them playing Wagner tubas in the first and third movements, then as horns 5 to 8 in the finale).
Most unusual is that the score also calls for three harps, not because there are three different harp parts, but because the single harp part is marked “dreifach womöglich” (“triple possibly”), yet they only play in the third movement. And yes, there were three harps on stage. No skimping in this performance!
Given that, the full orchestra produces a massive, united sound, but what makes Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 feel so monumental is the breadth and scope of the work’s formal structure. It requires a conductor who can grasp its broad architecture and shape its realization in performance. Runnicles is demonstrably that kind of conductor.
The beginning of the Eighth Symphony more than hints at the opening movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the theme emulating its rhythm within an atmosphere of ambiguity. But it develops into what is typically Brucknerian three-subject sonata form. In the recapitulation, the rhythm of that principal theme dominated the climax.
The “Scherzo,” with its repetitive motif, felt ponderous, too slow and weighted, like trying to turn an ocean liner. Although something I rarely suggest, it could have used more velocity in this performance to achieve forward motion.
The “Adagio” third movement is the real heart of the piece, with a structure and scale surpassing the slow movements of any of Bruckner’s previous symphonies. Then the formally complex “Finale” summed up the entire, reworking materials from all four movements into a coherent whole, leading to a triumphant conclusion.
It proved a duly impressive performance by Runnicles and the ASO. ■
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will repeat this program on Saturday evening, January 21, at Atlanta Symphony Hall.
Sir Donald Runnicles will return to podium again next week to lead the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in Brahms’ “Ein deutsches Requiem” and a work by American composer Adolphus Hailstork.
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: aso.org
- Sir Donald Runnicles: donaldrunnicles.org
- Jonathan Biss: jonathanbiss.com
Read more by Mark Gresham.
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