ASO principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis solos in the Cello concerto No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, led by guest conductor Alexander Soddy. (credit: Jeff Roffman)
ASO principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis solos in the Cello concerto No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, led by guest conductor Alexander Soddy. (credit: Jeff Roffman)

Atlanta Symphony Orchestra brings forth its best in music of Clyne, Shostakovich, and Elgar

CONCERT REVIEW:
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
May 12 & 14, 2022
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
Alexander Soddy, conductor; Rainer Eudeikis, cello.
Anna CLYNE: Sound and Fury
SHOSTAKOVICH: Cello Concert No. 1 in E♭ major, Op. 107
ELGAR: Variations an an Original Theme, Op. 36 (“Enigma”)

Mark Gresham | 13 MAY 2022

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra was at the top of its game Thursday night, performing under the baton of British guest conductor Alexander Soddy, with ASO principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis as the featured soloist.

Anna Clyne, composer (credit: Christina Kernohan)

Anna Clyne, composer (credit: Christina Kernohan)

The program opened with Sound and Fury by British composer Anna Clyne, which draws inspiration from two unrelated historical sources: Josef Haydn’s Symphony No. 60 (“Il Distrato”) and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In composing the work, Clyne utilized key elements from Haydn’s music that caught her attention: rhythmic gestures, melodic motifs, and harmonic progressions. Toward the end of the work, she included a recording of Macbeth’s final soliloquy (Act V, Scene 5) upon learning of the death of Lady Macbeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

And thus the origin of Clyne’s title.

Within a remarkably cohesive structure, layers of repeated rhythmic fragments tick off the passage of time. Fierce gestures fly between the string sections in jittery fits. Stimulating passages contrast with the tranquil and contemplative.

Sound and Fury offered strong witness that Clyne is a composer possessing a formidable craft. It is a worthy new work that engages the listener and holds the attention from start to finish.

Under Soddy’s direction, the ASO performed with an amazingly cohesive and confident sound. That would be equally true of the next piece, forging what felt like the most decisively strong first half of an ASO concert I have heard in quite a while.

ASO principal cellist Rainer Eudeikis was the soloist for that next piece, the Cello Concerto No. 1 in E♭ major, Op. 107 by Dmitri Shostakovich.

It is one of the most challenging concertos for cello and is one of my favorites. From my advantaged listening point of a mere five rows from the stage, Eudiakis was never overwhelmed by the orchestra during the three movements in which it is involved – the third movement of the four being entirely devoted to being the cadenza for the solo cello.

I love it when a member of the “home team” appears as a featured soloist, and Eudeikis did not disappoint, giving the concerto a compelling performance heard with great clarity.

Given the experience of hearing him conduct the works by Clyne and Shostakovich, it is interesting that Soddy’s biography in the program booklet almost exclusively references his background as a conductor of opera. I would not have guessed such from the program’s first half, although the excellent musical communication between him and Eudeikis in the concerto could have been a clue. The performance of the music itself did not feel “operatic” in character.

That feeling would come after intermission with Sir Edward Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 (“Enigma Variations”).

Elgar never wrote an opera, although he began working on one late in life that was left unfinished. But like many late-19th-century British composers, Elgar was influenced in his larger works by German music, notably the music dramas of Richard Wagner.

Soddy seemed to conjure that Wagnerian operatic atmosphere in this performance of the Enigma Variations, particularly in the first nine sections (through “Nimrod”). After that, it felt a little less so, and then Soddy and the orchestra gave it the distinctive character of full-suited British tweed for the final variation, a grand finale that could have emerged from nowhere else than the United Kingdom of Elgar’s day. ■

The ASO will repeat this program Saturday, May 14, at 8:00 pm at Atlanta Symphony Hall.

EXTERNAL LINKS:

Mark Gresham

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.