Verdi a triumph for ASO, chorus at Carnegie Hall

New York --- Like tourists on a rare visit to the big city, an orchestra that receives a coveted invitation to Carnegie Hall wants to cram as much into the trip as possible.

For the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Robert Spano, the primary goal is enhancing its national reputation. As the crown jewel of America's music capital, with its golden acoustics and to-die-for guest list, Carnegie is the most high-profile place in the country.

Saturday evening, to vigorous approval and a Standing O from the audience, the ASO archieved its goal, scoring a massive success with Verdi's Requiem. Some 15 newspaper and magazine critics were on hand to record the event, and the hall was almost packed --- despite the fact that the ASO is offering one of four major-orchestra Verdi Requiems this season in New York.

What's become clear by listening to the quality of the music making --- and by watching people's reactions in the hall --- is that the Spano-ASO partnership is now among the most celebrated in the country. Make it big in the Big City? Check.

Then there were the ASO's other agendas. The orchestra's fund-raising staffers shepherded at least 72 Atlantans over the weekend. These folks included major donors and ATL convention-bureau personnel. They got deluxe treatment: Carnegie Hall and Museum of Modern Art insider tours and meals shared with the more sociable of orchestral players. Others, like musicians' families and Bill Nigut, president of the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts and Cultural Coalition, came on their own, to see and be seen, to cheer the hometown band.

Although the ASO continues to fund-raise for its planned Symphony Center, this trip wasn't geared to push that specific agenda, said ASO development director Paul Hogle. "Bringing valued members of our community on tour with us is normal development stuff, every orchestra would do it," he said, regardless of its need to build a $300 million hall.

It helps that the ASO is in demand. Carnegie Hall artistic advisor Ara Guzelimian, who planned the concert with Spano and ASO President Allison Vulgamore, said several factors led to the Verdi. He noted that last spring the ASO gave an eclectic 20th-century program at Carnegie (music by Knussen, Debussy and Vaughan Williams) --- their first invitation to the hallowed hall after a six-year drought.

And just last month, Spano and the ASO performed at New York's other big performance space, Lincoln Center, in Osvaldo Golijov's "La Pasion segun San Marcos." (A few years ago, Spano led the New York premiere of "La Pasion" with the venturesome Brooklyn Philharmonic, where he'd been music director --- a post that established his credentials as an innovator.)

With the ASO getting a New York reputation for the new and the unusual, Guzelimian proposed the reverse. "I thought it would be nice of them to defy expectations," he said backstage before Saturday's concert, "and do a big standard repertoire work, like the Verdi Requiem, where the chorus is their huge strength."

Last weekend in Atlanta, the ASO performed the same program, with the same vocal soloists. Carnegie's stage is smaller than Symphony Hall's, so only 170 choristers and about 80 orchestra musicians could fit Saturday (down from 200 and 90 at home).

In form and intent, the Carnegie show was similar to what was heard in Atlanta. With its breathy, air-cushioned sound, clear diction and fiery delivery, the chorus, prepared by Norman Mackenzie, sounded like the most formidable in the world. It all came together via Spano, whose interpretation has deepened and gained in character.

He threw some jarringly different tempos at his musicians, too, which gave their much-rehearsed Requiem a healthy dose of spontaneity. The opening "Requiem aeternam," achingly slow, seemed to congeal out of the ether, as if the music had been in the air all along and we were suddenly made aware of it, as if we were able to pick up the hum of distant galaxies on our FM dial.

Soprano Andrea Gruber, mezzo Stephanie Blythe, tenor Frank Lopardo and bass-baritone Greer Grimsley, the vocal soloists, again delivered nuanced, high-personality readings and with greater finesse than I heard last week. With the men merely agreeable, Blythe again dominated the quartet with her honey-rich transparent timbre, effortless power and scrupulous attention to the printed score. She's a force of nature.

And Gruber, again, thrashed and bellowed her part. She also, in a few choice tones, touched something very deep, very personal. In interviews, she talks openly about her battles with drugs and drink and how it (almost) shred her vocal cords and derailed her career. For better or worse, she now seems unable to hide her true self --- the "mask" of the performer is shattered --- and when the voice cooperates, the effect on the listener is chilling.

At the end of the Requiem, when Gruber and the chorus finally let the dying note of the "Libera me" taper into silence, a lone voice from the back of the auditorium summarized what everyone was feeling.

In the nobody-can-breathe half-second between music and roaring applause, the guy carefully placed a single word: "Bravi."

Copyright 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution