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.

June 19 & 22, 2008

In certain circles, debate rages over just what Dmitri Shostakovich meant with the end of his Fifth Symphony, which he wrote under the repressive Stalinist regime. Is the blazing, pounding finale supposed to sound triumphantly celebratory? Or does it represent the police bludgeoning the Soviet people into submission? For option A, play it fast and bright. For option B, play it slow and heavy. On an Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert from March, guest conductor Hugh Wolff goes with option B.

Contrasting with that intense (and intensely scrutinized) piece, the first half of the program offers the lively School for Scandal Overture by Samuel Barber and the gorgeous, rhapsodic Piano Concerto Robert Schumann wrote for his wife, Clara, to premiere. As soloist we'll hear Nicholas Angelich ("AHN-ge-litch"). He has been called one of classical music's future superstars.

Conductor Hugh Wolff (right) recently returned to the U.S., together with his wife and three teenaged sons, after several years based in Europe. As a teenager himself, Wolff was a pianist and composer. He took up conducting as an undergraduate at Harvard. This fall he becomes director of orchestras at the New England Conservatory. Throughout the program Wolff talks with host Sarah Zaslaw about music and life. (He compares the sarcastic, coded second movement of the Shostakovich symphony to Tom and Jerry cartoons, in that you're not always sure if it's funny or brutal.)

Please tune in 8 p.m. Thursday and 10 p.m. Sunday for The ASO on GPB over most GPB Radio stations and gpb.org.

June 12 & 15, 2008

Peter Tchaikovsky grapples with fate and sexuality in his Fourth Symphony. Atlanta Symphony principal cellist Christopher Rex tames the fearsome solo part of Samuel Barber's Cello Concerto. And music director Robert Spano unwraps a world premiere, Q & A (Pregunta y Respuesta) by multifaceted Venezuelan musician Gonzalo Grau. That's all on this week's broadcast of an Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert recorded in March. Host Sarah Zaslaw speaks with Robert Spano and Christopher Rex. Listen to The ASO on GPB, Thursday night at 8:00, repeating Sunday night at 10:00, over Georgia Public Broadcasting's radio stations and online at gpb.org.

Note: In addition to leading the Atlanta Symphony's cello section, Christopher Rex directs two chamber music festivals that bring nationally prominent soloists and ensembles to our area. Just this weekend the 2008 Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival is wrapping up, on the Atlantic barrier island just south of the Georgia-Florida border, while the Madison Chamber Music Festival is just getting going with a similarly star-studded lineup in Madison, Georgia.
Christopher Rex paints, too, and he gets full credit for "Niccolo Crabanini," the violin-wielding crustacean on the Amelia Island festival's page.