ASO magnificent outdoors

Orchestra’s offering more articulate than forced banter.
By Pierre Ruhe
For the AJC
Monday, June 29, 2009

My car’s dashboard thermometer read 94 degrees on the way to the Atlanta Symphony’s “Magnificent Mozart” concert Saturday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park, in the north Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta.

A hot evening for a concert, yet Encore Park is favored by what winemakers would call a good terroir: the site’s unique mixture —- artistically and geographically speaking —- of nutrients and cultivation and the slope of the hill. So long as there’s a light breeze and the humidity isn’t too punishing, the terroir allows the 12,000-seat pavilion to overcome all sorts of limitations to a good concert. It’s got an enviable sense of place.

It helps, too, that the ASO musicians don’t slump for these outdoor performances, but play with the same vitality and care that they would for indoor gigs at Symphony Hall.

Saturday’s guest conductor, Grant Llewellyn, is a gray-haired Welshman who leads the North Carolina Symphony and is principal conductor of Boston’s venerable Handel and Haydn Society. For reasons unknown, he introduced himself from the podium, microphone in hand: “You might have guessed I’m not from around here,” he observed helpfully in his Welsh accent, while throwing in a few “y’alls” to prove he’s no Euro-snob.

Is it an ASO marketing strategy to address the audience as inanely as possible at Encore Park? As an intermission feature, ASO program annotator Ken Meltzer, a smart guy who knows music, offers similarly “lite” banter, as if afraid the audience will bolt if the discussion rises above what local TV anchors give between news reports. It felt forced, not organic.(If they want to entertain at intermission, I’d rather hear the evening’s soloist play a Mozart sonata or something.)

Fortunately, the music spoke more eloquently than the professionals. Llewellyn and crew dispatched “The Marriage of Figaro” Overture with pep and crisp lines.

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20, the sublime D-minor masterpiece, is all about touch and balance, storm and pathos. It is performed frequently but can be interpreted so many ways that it remains fresh.

Bosnian pianist Pedja Muzijevic, an interesting musician, was here making his ASO debut, as was the conductor. Although his touch at the keyboard sounded acidic and tinny —- the fault of microphone placement or audio engineers twisting knobs, most likely —- he crafted an uncommonly compelling role for the piano, as a personality in direct communication with the orchestra.

He ornamented his singsongy phrases neatly, and with Llewellyn’s assistance, brought the middle movement, almost a garden serenade, to a gorgeous, peaceful ending.
In this concerto, most pianists play Beethoven’s cadenzas —- those extended solo passages that offer the soloist a flight of fancy —- since Mozart’s own have been lost.

Muzijevic instead played cadenzas composed by Paul Balascora (in the first movement) and J.N. Hummel (in the third). It was a small point but well taken: Muzijevic is a thinking musician, eager to go his own way.

Mozart is often thought of as an 18th-century urban creature, but Llewellyn found in his last symphony, the Olympian “Jupiter,” a pastoral quality, lifting flute flutters to the stature of birdcalls. The Andante Cantabile slow movement evoked a mood that was fragrant and idyllic —- music that seemed to cool a hot summer evening.