The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra season is officially underway with this weekend's performances of the Mahler "Resurrection" Symphony #2.
I'm not a big Mahler fan (or actually a fan of German composers in general, probably because I don't have the correct voice type for singing great big loud Germanic music), but I enjoyed the "Resurrection" Symphony more than I thought I would. Like the Beethoven 9th, it's got a long period of chorus-sitting-onstage-and-waiting-to-sing that can be a bit uncomfortable on the ASOC's folding chairs. Between every movement, there were massive not-quite-surreptitious stretching and shifting position sessions in the chorus, including a completely spontaneous synchronized leg-cross in the back row between movements 2, 3, and 4.
Despite the discomfort, I found that the Mahler grew on me more and more each night. By the third performance of most concerts, I find it very hard to pay attention to the non-chorus parts and the concert usually seems longest that night. Last night's concert seemed to be over quickly, and the chorus part had improved since the previous two nights (which, again, is not always the case. Saturday nights can get fatigued and sloppy.) Robert Spano (ASO principal conductor) spoke to us during our warmup and said, "I'm in a mood tonight, so...as Donald [Runnicles, ASO principal guest conductor] says about Scottish foreplay, 'Brace yerself, lassie!'"
And we did. It was a great night, and the audience was as enthusiastically appreciative as they had been the two previous nights.
Now if I could only get the florid German poetry out of my head, I'd be a lot better off.
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3 comments:
Silly lass, the Resurrection is not for kids.
It's for all of us.
That said, I do hope that you will not delete this comment as well.
If so, I'm out of here.
I only delete the weird spam comments. :-)
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