The ASO on GPB, August 14 & 17 - Season Finale

Eastern European roots nourish the final concert of the Atlanta Symphony's 2007-2008 season, recorded in June. Music director Robert Spano conducts.

Clarinetist Todd Palmer plays five different-sized instruments as soloist in The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Argentinian-born composer and ASO favorite Osvaldo Golijov draws on Jewish High Holiday liturgy as well as the dancing and keening sides of East European klezmer music in this soulful showcase for clarinet. "Isaac the Blind" is another name for kabbalist rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572).

And the season concludes with a thrilling performance of Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Firebird, based on Russian folklore about a magical, flame-colored bird. This is the piece that catapulted young Stravinsky to fame: his first collaboration with ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, it paved the way for Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. The ASO plays the entire ballet in its full original orchestration - three harps, the works!

Please join host Sarah Zaslaw for the last of this season's 24 episodes of The ASO on GPB, Thursday, August 14 at 8 p.m. and Sunday the 17th at 10 p.m. on GPB radio stations and gpb.org. Please send any comments or questions to ask@gpb.org. Thanks for listening!

The ASO on GPB, August 7 & 10

A Persian-accented world premiere. In June, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra gave the first performances of the Piano Concerto by Behzad Ranjbaran. In this sweeping, grand new work, Ranjbaran was inspired partly by the ancient springtime festivities of Persepolis and the sound of massed Persian alpine horns.

Ranjbaran was born in Iran in 1955, entered the Tehran Conservatory at age 9, and came to the States to study at Indiana University and the Juilliard School of Music. He now is on the faculty at Juilliard. He has written music for violinist Joshua Bell and soprano Renee Fleming to perform, and now for Jean-Yves Thibaudet as well. This piece was commissioned by the ASO, at Thibaudet's request.

The concert opens with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 - with ASO principal players Cecylia Arzewski, Christina Smith, Elizabeth Koch and Tom Hooten as soloists on the violin, flute, oboe and trumpet - and ends with Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony, making three for three Rachmaninoff symphonies this season.

Host Sarah Zaslaw speaks with music director Robert Spano about updating orchestral dress codes and the accuracy of his entry in Wikipedia (and about music too). Spano himself interviews composer Behzad Ranjbaran and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet about the Piano Concerto they've collectively just brought into the world - like a new baby.

Tune in Thursday, August 7 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, August 10 at 10 p.m. over most of these GPB stations and gpb.org.

(Next week: The season finale! Todd Palmer plays five clarinets, albeit not at once, as soloist in the soulful, klezmer-inflected Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind by Osvaldo Golijov, and Roberto Spano and the ASO close out the season with the complete Firebird ballet music by Igor Stravinsky.)

The ASO on GPB, July 31 & August 2

Brush up your Shakespeare on GPB! This week's light-hearted program mixes and matches scenes from Shakespeare's plays with orchestral music and songs inspired by the Bard.

You'll hear not only Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with guest conductor Nicholas McGegan, but also four actors from Georgia Shakespeare (Chris Kayser, Megan McFarland, Chris Ensweiler and Melinda Helfrich) and three singers (Ann-Carolyn Bird, Stacey Rishoi and Andrew Garland) in this multi-arts event recorded Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta.

The scenes come from Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The music is by Berlioz, Gounod, Prokofiev, Sibelius, Mendelssohn (including the famous Wedding March) and Cole Porter (songs from Kiss Me Kate, a musical about a troupe performing The Taming of the Shrew).

Host Sarah Zaslaw speaks with high-spirited, well-educated, English-born-and-bred, San Francisco-based conductor Nicholas McGegan about Shakespeare, music and more.

Tune in Thursday, July 31 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, August 2 at 10 p.m. for The ASO on GPB over most GPB radio stations and gpb.org.

The ASO on GPB, July 24 & 27

For three years as a "conducting fellow" with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Laura Jackson pored over music, peppered senior conductors with questions, led educational concerts, and attended every subscription concert dressed in concert black, in case she should need to step in for the scheduled conductor. In 2007 she struck out to conduct around the country and seek an orchestra of her own.

On The ASO on GPB, Laura Jackson comes back to her friends in the Atlanta Symphony for a concert recorded in May. She talks about the music and her career, and she conducts attractive symphonies by Prokofiev (No. 1) and Dvorak (No. 6).

And host Sarah Zaslaw chats with associate concertmaster William Pu. He grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution. When the Shanghai Conservatory reopened after years of forced closure, some 10,000 aspiring musicians auditioned. William Pu, a preteen who had only been playing a few years, was one of the eight violinists selected that year. William talks with us about his background, his violin, the earthquake, and Buddhism.

We'll conclude with the ASO's new CD of La Bohème, recorded in concert last September with Robert Spano conducting an energetic young cast and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. (The same lineup repeats Puccini's beloved opera this Saturday at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Alpharetta.)

The ASO on GPB airs Thursday, July 24 at 8 p.m., repeating Sunday, July 27 at 10 p.m. over GPB radio stations and gpb.org.

Note: Owing to technical difficulties beyond our control, Thursday's broadcast of The ASO on GPB has been preempted. Please listen Sunday night instead.  Thanks, and apologies for the last-minute change.

The ASO on GPB, July 10 & 13

Dozens of extra brass players join the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus for this sonically spectacular concert. ASO principal guest conductor Donald Runnicles leads the massed musicians in a program pairing the Sinfonietta by Janacek - a celebration of life - with Berlioz's Requiem, which sets to music the Catholic mass for the dead.

Bookending Leos Janacek's Sinfonietta is a patriotic fanfare he wrote for an athletic event, a Czech gymnastics festival, in 1926. The piece calls for 14 trumpets, for starters. In Atlanta's Symphony Hall, the brass stood on the choral risers, highly visible and highly audible. (At right: ASO principal trumpet Tom Hooten.)

This concert was recorded in early May. For the second half, the venerable ASO Chorus takes to the risers for the Requiem by Hector Berlioz. This Atlanta performance served as a warm-up for a transatlantic trip two weeks later, in which the ASO Chorus and Donald Runnicles repeated the piece in Berlin, with the storied Berlin Philharmonic. The tenor soloist in the celestial "Sanctus" section, in Atlanta and Berlin, was Joseph Kaiser (right). And let's credit the director of the ASO Chorus too, though he wasn't on stage: Norman Mackenzie.

Also on this broadcast, Donald Runnicles chats about tonight's music and about his two new posts in Europe as of 2009, as conductor of both the BBC Scottish Symphony and the German Opera Berlin.

Join host Sarah Zaslaw for The ASO on GPB, Thursday, July 10 at 8 p.m. and Sunday, July 13 at 10 p.m. on most GPB radio stations and gpb.org.

(Next week: Donald Runnicles again leads the Atlanta Symphony in a pair of third symphonies: Henryk Gorecki's "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" and Brahms' Symphony No. 3.)

The ASO on GPB, July 3 & 6

Conducting the Atlanta Symphony on GPB this week is Hans Graf, music director of the Houston Symphony. He leads the ASO in

• Tchaikovsky's little-known piece The Voyevoda, about a jealous husband and a bullet gone astray;
• Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2, with Argentina's award-winning Ingrid Fliter as soloist (she was recipient of the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award in 2006); and
• Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, in all its hour-long glory.

Hans Graf previously led orchestras in Austria, France, Canada and - oh yeah, there was also that year with the Iraqi National Orchestra. He talks with host Sarah Zaslaw about Baghdad in the 70s, and about the flood that devastated the Houston Symphony's underground quarters mere weeks before he started work in Texas.

This is the 18th of 24 concerts from the Atlanta Symphony's 2007-2008 season, all recorded at Symphony Hall in the Woodruff Arts Center. Join Sarah Zaslaw for The ASO on GPB Thursday nights at 8:00, repeating Sunday nights at 10:00 over most GPB radio stations and over gpb.org.

June 26 & 29, 2008

Robert Spano led this program in Atlanta before hitting the road with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus to repeat it in New York's Carnegie Hall.

GPB's broadcast starts in the cold forests of Scandinavia. Tapiola is Jean Sibelius's picture of the home of the god of the forests, according to Finnish mythology. (The god is Tapio. His dwelling place is Tapiola. It's pronounced TAH-pyoh-lah, as Robert Spano demonstrates to host Sarah Zaslaw. Spano's mother is Finnish, so though he doesn't speak the language he knows more about it than the average conductor on the street.)

The ASO Chorus then comes on stage for The Here and Now - composer Christopher Theofanidis's settings of verses by the 13th century mystic poet Jallaladin Rumi. The ASO premiered The Here and Now, which Robert Spano had commissioned, in Atlanta in 2005 and recorded it for an acclaimed Telarc CD. (To see Spano and Theofanidis talk about the project then, click on the link partway down this page.) In 2008 they revived it for this late-March concert and its early-April New York premiere.

The English translations in The Here and Now are by former UGA professor Coleman Barks. Theofanidis picks such verses of Rumi's as

• "Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now," and
• "World power means nothing. Only the unsayable, jeweled inner life matters," and
  
• "The way you make love is the way God will be with you," and
  
• "God picks up the reed-flute world and blows. Each note is a need coming through one of us, a passion, a longing pain. Let your note be clear. Don't try to end it. Be your note. Let everyone climb on their roofs and sing their notes! Sing loud!"

Last but not least: Maurice Ravel's ballet music for Daphnis and Chloe - based on the ancient Greek love story about a goatherd and a shepherdess. This concert features the entire work, not just the popular suite. Listen for a major flute solo, featuring ASO principal flutist Christina Smith; general rejoicing (with wordless chorus) when our pastoral duo, Daphnis and Chloe, finally get it together; and some of the world's all-time most luscious orchestration.

The ASO on GPB airs on GPB radio stations and at gpb.org. Join Sarah Zaslaw this Thursday, June 26 at 8 p.m. and again Sunday, June 29 at 10 p.m.