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It’s a busy time for conductor Nathalie Stutzmann. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s music director, still surfing the first wave of her remarkable career ascent, is making prestigious debuts all over. She is in rehearsals at the Metropolitan Opera for her company debut conducting two Mozart operas: Don Giovanni (opening May 5) and The Magic Flute (opening May 19).
Both shows will be screened at movie theaters as part of the Met’s Saturday afternoon “Live in HD” series: Her Don Giovanni, with a sensationally good cast led by Peter Mattei in the title role, is scheduled for May 20; The Magic Flute, in a new production, is set for June 3.
Stutzmann brought a small preview of her New York music-making Thursday to Symphony Hall, opening her ASO concert with the Magic Flute Overture. First thing you noticed was that the orchestra was reseated, with the violins split on either side of the stage — concertmaster David Coucheron and the first violin section remained in place, with the second violins opposite them, under Stutzmann’s right hand, as it were. The cellos and double bass sections, evicted from their usual spot, took the old second violins’ position.
It’s not what we’re used to seeing and hearing, but historically the split-violins configuration was the norm, and composers wrote with that in mind. In Symphony Hall’s dreary acoustics, the orchestra sounds better, more organically balanced and with a stronger bass response, which is one of the room’s many sonic shortcomings. Some years ago, ASO Principal Guest Conductor Donald Runnicles used to have the ASO reseated this way, and the orchestra instantly sounded more vivid and colorful. Putting the woodwinds and brass on low risers was another immediate improvement.
It bears repeating once per decade: the ASO performs in the acoustically worst hall of any major U.S. orchestra. This fact used to be talked about openly in Atlanta, when the ASO was fundraising for a deluxe new hall. Somehow, over the past couple of decades, orchestras in need built good symphonic-sized halls, from Seattle and Los Angeles to Nashville and Philadelphia. But the ASO’s goal was never met, and instead our old hall’s sound has been tweaked with a series of band-aids. ASO boosters will sometimes say, “At least it’s better than it used to be,” a sad admission that Symphony Hall is still inadequate for an orchestra at this level and with such high artistic ambitions.
But back to Thursday’s concert. In the Magic Flute overture, the scurrying first theme is rewarded by the split-violin setup, with each of the string sections playing the tune in turn — second violins, then first violins, violas, cellos — a fugal volley back and forth, all in stereophonic sound. The woodwinds and those ceremonial trombones — evoking Masonic ideals central to Mozart’s opera — sang with clarity and personality. By the end of the overture, Stutzmann had the ASO alert and buzzing.
That heightened energy continued into Mendelssohn’s beloved Violin Concerto with a sensational discovery, Daniel Lozakovich, as soloist. Born in Stockholm in 2001, he studied in Germany and Switzerland and will soon be a very big name.
Stutzmann started the concerto maybe a half-notch too fast for comfort, which kept the players — especially in the modified floor plan — listening to each other in new ways and slightly on edge. Lozakovich’s tone is compact and sweet, his sound is powerful but not fierce, and his technical skills are so perfect that it all seemed easy to him. Most essentially, he opened his heart to us.
Tall and lanky, he seemed to close his eyes in the concerto’s tender and emotionally disarming second movement, playing the soul of the entire concerto — the heart-breaking double-stop trills, where the violin sings both parts of a love duet — with a mixture of conviction and earnestness. It felt like a larger coming-of-age narrative. I found myself leaning forward when he played, wanting to pull him closer. Pure goosebumps for the listener.
You believed his sincerity and, in the puckish finale, his playful innocence. It’s hard to make this very familiar music sound original, make it sound like more than just thrice re-creative art, but Lozakovich and Stutzmann made it entirely personal and fresh.
The audience gave the violinist one of the loudest and longest ovations we’ve heard in Symphony Hall in a long time. Showing modesty and perhaps inexperience on the big stage, he seemed reluctant to accept the audience’s cheers, instead gesturing to Stutzmann and their tight collaboration. At first she declined, pointing right back at him. Then they held hands and took their bows together.
He returned for an encore that was probably more technically challenging than the concerto he’d just finished: the Solo Sonata No. 3, the “Ballad,” by Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, composed in the 1920s. Like a Cezanne painting, it’s traditional in form but modern in approach, with hummable tunes and angular dance rhythms made a bit abstract. For long moments at a time, you forgot he was playing the violin — it was all communication and story and emotion. It was an inspired choice of encore, inspiring to hear. What a talent!
And so it was puzzling, once again, to find Stutzmann and the ASO on top form for one part of the concert then lackluster elsewhere. Their reading of Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony, after intermission, was often brittle and hesitant, without a comprehensive point of view. Here Stutzmann’s choice of tempos was partly the culprit, mostly too slow and turgid. The second movement was paced as an ode to a dry creek bed. The thunderstorm was exciting, as it always is, but the finale crawled along, as if there were “deep” meaning in examining the shepherds’ songs. It was mostly a clean performance but rather low in energy and, well, boringly interpreted.
The program repeats tonight at 8 p.m.
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Pierre Ruhe was the founding executive director and editor of ArtsATL. He’s been a critic and cultural reporter for the Washington Post, London’s Financial Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and was director of artistic planning for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. He is publications director of Early Music America.
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