February 10, 2023
First Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
Michael Palmer, conductor; Edith Kraft, piano.
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467
Pyotr Ilyich TCHAIKOVSKY: Romeo and Juliet
Mark Gresham | 13 FEB 2023
Friday evening’s concert by the Georgia State University Symphony Orchestra was both a fond farewell for its director and a happy reunion of two musical artists who had not performed together in decades.
For conductor Michael Palmer, this was his final concert as GSU’s Director of Orchestras and Charles Thomas Wurm Distinguished Professor of Orchestral Studies. Palmer joined the GSU School of Music faculty in August 2004. He is retiring from teaching at the end of the current semester to devote his time to the several professional conducting projects in which he is engaged, including The New American Sinfonietta, a reconstitution of the orchestra with which he toured Europe for ten consecutive seasons in the 1990s, and the newly founded Hamptons Festival of Music, which had its successful debut season this past September on the east end of Long Island, New York.
Palmer began his career in Atlanta at age 21, when he came to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as assistant conductor at the invitation of Robert Shaw. He was soon made associate conductor and also founded and was music director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra.
While in Atlanta, Palmer was honored as one of five of the first conductors in the United States chosen by the National Endowment for the Arts to be Exxon Arts Endowment Conductor, and he was soon in demand with orchestras throughout the country. While continuing with the ASO, he became guest conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra for three years. He also worked extensively with the National Symphony Orchestra and was subsequently named co-principal guest conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra.
After 10 years With the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Palmer accepted appointments as music director of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra, followed by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. He founded and toured Europe with The American Sinfonietta for a decade and was the Founding Artistic Director for the Bellingham Festival of Music for over 29 years.
The concert was also, significantly, a long-awaited musical reunion for Palmer and New York pianist Edith Kraft.
Edith Kraft, a native of New York, began her musical studies at age three and made her first solo appearance with the Hartt Symphony and the Queens Symphony when she was eight. Since then, she has appeared as a soloist with major orchestras across the United States, including a tour of the South as a soloist with Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony, in addition to giving many recitals in Europe and this country.
Kraft was a scholarship student at The Juilliard School, where she earned both a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree. In 1974, she was appointed Artist-in-Residence at Michigan State University. She tied for first prize in the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Competition and received first prize in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artists Competition in 1975, among other awards. Along with her concertizing, Kraft was a member of the Faculty of The Juilliard School for over 30 years.
That 1975 Atlanta Young Artists Competition was when Kraft and Palmer first met and performed together. He was the associate conductor of the ASO at the time. She was the competition winner. The last time they shared the concert stage was in Houston when Palmer was guest conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra (1978–1981). There had been plans for their musical reunion to occur during a recent Bellingham Festival of Music season, but that did not happen due to Kraft contracting COVID at the time.
Friday, April 18, 1975, The Atlanta Journal, Page 5A: Michael Palmer (right), associate conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at the time, talks with finalists in the Atlanta Young Artists Competition. Edith Kraft (at the piano) won the competition. (credit: Bill Mahan/Atlanta Journal)
In Friday’s concert, Kraft was the featured soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467, an ideal showpiece for her small but nimble hands. Kraft’s performance was lucid and assured, with a naturalness of expression that never felt contrived. The most conspicuous aspect of her rendition was her notable use of cadenzas by American pianist Murray Perahia.
According to Kraft, in a post-concert conversation with EarRelevant, Perahia had never written them down and never played them the same way twice. To play them, a pianist is obliged to transcribe from his recordings. Kraft had made an intensive Juilliard-supported study of Perahia’s cadenzas and chose the versions for No. 21 she liked best for this performance. Hers was a good choice; not too long or overdone, but attractively appropriate and to the point.
Edit Kraft was soloist for Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467” Her page turner is Xavier Lynum, one of Michael Palmer’s graduate assistant conductors. (credit: FPCA)
The musical communication between Kraft and Palmer was excellent. Palmer astutely guided the GSU Symphony Orchestra, comprised in this instance of students and freelance professionals, in their task of accompanying Kraft and their own purely orchestral passages.
The excellent acoustics of First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta was an asset for this performance, significantly as the sanctuary’s architecture obliged placement of Kraft and the concert grand piano on the raised chancel directly behind the main body of strings instead of in front of the orchestra as in a concert hall. This arrangement did not impede good balance in any way. The height also provided Kraft and Palmer with good sightlines between them.
Michael Palmer conducting the GSU Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet.” (credit: FPCA)
After intermission, with the piano moved slightly to the side, Palmer returned to the podium to lead a somewhat expanded body of GSU musical forces in Tchaikovsky’s fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet as his personal grand finale as the university orchestra’s director.
But this final GSU concert is hardly a retirement for Palmer. He now steps directly into work on his other varied musical projects, most notably the second season of The Hamptons Festival of Music, which will take place this September 3 – 10 in East Hampton, New York. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Michael Palmer: maestropalmer.com
- Edith Kraft: linkedin.com/in/edith-kraft-2715706a/
- GSU School of Music: music.gsu.edu
- Concerts@First: concertsatfirst.org
Read more by Mark Gresham.
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