Via The Boston Globe
Thirteen years ago this month, conductor Robert Spano was in Seattle, conducting Britten’s “Billy Budd” at that city’s opera company. But he had on his mind a new work by Osvaldo Golijov, an Argentine-born Boston-based composer who was about to begin what would become a rapid career ascent.
The new piece, “La Pasión según San Marcos,” was a polyglot, revolutionary setting of the Passion story from the Gospel of Mark that incorporated dance and African and Latin American musical traditions. Spano was to conduct its US premiere, with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was one of four Passion settings commissioned for the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death and had been premiered in Germany in November 2000. Spano was a new music enthusiast, and he had the score and a video of that performance. Nevertheless, getting inside the piece was a major challenge.
“Honestly, it was like entering a new world,” Spano said recently from his home in the mountains of northern Georgia. “I had to figure out how to conduct it, and I felt like I was learning a new language.” Many of the performers he would soon work with in Boston had played in the premiere; Spano went into the first rehearsal and asked, “What do you need?” It was a way of working himself into Golijov’s musical and theatrical vision.
“I mean, the continuo group being Cuban drummers kind of changed things for me,” he said, laughing at the understatement.
Spano, 52, a former BSO assistant conductor who has been music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra since 2001, returns to Boston next week for three more performances of “La Pasión según San Marcos,” which almost singlehandedly made Golijov’s reputation. Ecstatic ovations greeted those first concerts, and Spano said that the piece has lost none of its intensity in the intervening years.
‘All of these things in one goulash — it’s almost inexplicable. He doesn’t manipulate those styles. They’re just there, as what they are.’
Quote Icon
That enduring vitality has several sources, he explained, one of which is the work’s visual flamboyance. Another is the Apostle Mark’s telling of the Passion, what Spano called its “from-the-street, on-the-scene character. I think [Golijov] really captured that sense of immediacy in the drama.”
And finally there is the music, a carnivalesque mix of dance, folk, pop, and Western classical styles. “All of these things in one goulash — it’s almost inexplicable,” Spano said. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the “Pasión” is how successfully Golijov avoids any sense of kitsch by not trying to incorporate one genre (“Latin American”) into another (“classical”).
“He doesn’t manipulate those styles,” said the conductor. “They’re just there, as what they are.”
Golijov is one of a handful of composers Spano began to work closely with when he came to Atlanta. What began as an effort to tap into American music of his generation has become a full-fledged brand: Those composers — Golijov, Christopher Theofanidis, Jennifer Higdon, and Michael Gandolfi chief among them — have been quasi-officially dubbed “The Atlanta School” for their deep and ongoing relationship to the orchestra.
“Somewhere along the line, probably about five years into my being here, I realized that these composers are all so different from one another, but they do share some commonalities,” Spano said. Those common traits include tonal writing and the influence of pop and world music. “It’s a striking and observational shift, aesthetically, from our teachers.”
So successful has the project been that it’s easy to forget that Atlanta was no hotbed of new music when Spano arrived. When he moved from New York to Atlanta in 2000 — he spent one season as music director designate — he was reading Tom Wolfe’s “A Man in Full,” set in Atlanta. “He described the symphony at one point as a place where they had to play ‘Bolero’ every night to make sure the audience was happy.
“I think one of the things that made it work here was a deliberate and tactical approach,” he continued. “I think I did one piece by a living American composer my first year here. And so we moved slowly and we moved in such a way as to make sure we were building a family for the experience as well.”
Now in its 13th official year, the Spano-Atlanta partnership is one of the longest and most successful among US orchestras. When he took the job, there was talk of it being a steppingstone to a higher-profile ensemble, but he seems almost inordinately happy there.
“It’s home now,” he said, “a musical home and an artistic home and a personal home. It was probably about five or six years in that I stopped feeling like I was conducting the Atlanta Symphony, and that we together were the Atlanta Symphony. There’s something that happens over time where there’s a mutual understanding — it makes digging musically deeper happen more quickly. Because we don’t start from square one; we start from years of experience and musical expectations of one another. And it’s heaven.”
Asked how long he saw himself staying in Atlanta, Spano laughed and said, “Oh, I’d love another 10 years if I can swing it.” He is mindful, though, that change and fresh ideas are essential for any organization, quoting a famous line from Proverbs: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
“I’ve tried to be very sensitive and aware of how we’re doing in that arena. Are we still moving forward? Is there real vision? But I still feel very strongly that we’re riding a wonderful wave, and as long as that keeps going, I’m very happy to be here.”
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Symphony Hall, 888-266-1200. http://www.bso.org
Also performing:
With Orquesta La Pasión and members of the Schola Cantorum de Venezuela, Golijov: “La Pasión según San Marcos”
Date of concert:
Jan. 9-11, 8 p.m.
Ticket price:
$30-$117
David Weininger can be reached at globeclassicalnotes@gmail.com.
The 2001 US premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s “La Pasión según San Marcos” was led by Robert Spano, who returns with it to Symphony Hall.
By David Weininger | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
JANUARY 02, 2014
Thirteen years ago this month, conductor Robert Spano was in Seattle, conducting Britten’s “Billy Budd” at that city’s opera company. But he had on his mind a new work by Osvaldo Golijov, an Argentine-born Boston-based composer who was about to begin what would become a rapid career ascent.
The new piece, “La Pasión según San Marcos,” was a polyglot, revolutionary setting of the Passion story from the Gospel of Mark that incorporated dance and African and Latin American musical traditions. Spano was to conduct its US premiere, with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It was one of four Passion settings commissioned for the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death and had been premiered in Germany in November 2000. Spano was a new music enthusiast, and he had the score and a video of that performance. Nevertheless, getting inside the piece was a major challenge.
“Honestly, it was like entering a new world,” Spano said recently from his home in the mountains of northern Georgia. “I had to figure out how to conduct it, and I felt like I was learning a new language.” Many of the performers he would soon work with in Boston had played in the premiere; Spano went into the first rehearsal and asked, “What do you need?” It was a way of working himself into Golijov’s musical and theatrical vision.
“I mean, the continuo group being Cuban drummers kind of changed things for me,” he said, laughing at the understatement.
Spano, 52, a former BSO assistant conductor who has been music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra since 2001, returns to Boston next week for three more performances of “La Pasión según San Marcos,” which almost singlehandedly made Golijov’s reputation. Ecstatic ovations greeted those first concerts, and Spano said that the piece has lost none of its intensity in the intervening years.
‘All of these things in one goulash — it’s almost inexplicable. He doesn’t manipulate those styles. They’re just there, as what they are.’
Quote Icon
That enduring vitality has several sources, he explained, one of which is the work’s visual flamboyance. Another is the Apostle Mark’s telling of the Passion, what Spano called its “from-the-street, on-the-scene character. I think [Golijov] really captured that sense of immediacy in the drama.”
And finally there is the music, a carnivalesque mix of dance, folk, pop, and Western classical styles. “All of these things in one goulash — it’s almost inexplicable,” Spano said. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the “Pasión” is how successfully Golijov avoids any sense of kitsch by not trying to incorporate one genre (“Latin American”) into another (“classical”).
“He doesn’t manipulate those styles,” said the conductor. “They’re just there, as what they are.”
Golijov is one of a handful of composers Spano began to work closely with when he came to Atlanta. What began as an effort to tap into American music of his generation has become a full-fledged brand: Those composers — Golijov, Christopher Theofanidis, Jennifer Higdon, and Michael Gandolfi chief among them — have been quasi-officially dubbed “The Atlanta School” for their deep and ongoing relationship to the orchestra.
“Somewhere along the line, probably about five years into my being here, I realized that these composers are all so different from one another, but they do share some commonalities,” Spano said. Those common traits include tonal writing and the influence of pop and world music. “It’s a striking and observational shift, aesthetically, from our teachers.”
So successful has the project been that it’s easy to forget that Atlanta was no hotbed of new music when Spano arrived. When he moved from New York to Atlanta in 2000 — he spent one season as music director designate — he was reading Tom Wolfe’s “A Man in Full,” set in Atlanta. “He described the symphony at one point as a place where they had to play ‘Bolero’ every night to make sure the audience was happy.
“I think one of the things that made it work here was a deliberate and tactical approach,” he continued. “I think I did one piece by a living American composer my first year here. And so we moved slowly and we moved in such a way as to make sure we were building a family for the experience as well.”
Now in its 13th official year, the Spano-Atlanta partnership is one of the longest and most successful among US orchestras. When he took the job, there was talk of it being a steppingstone to a higher-profile ensemble, but he seems almost inordinately happy there.
“It’s home now,” he said, “a musical home and an artistic home and a personal home. It was probably about five or six years in that I stopped feeling like I was conducting the Atlanta Symphony, and that we together were the Atlanta Symphony. There’s something that happens over time where there’s a mutual understanding — it makes digging musically deeper happen more quickly. Because we don’t start from square one; we start from years of experience and musical expectations of one another. And it’s heaven.”
Asked how long he saw himself staying in Atlanta, Spano laughed and said, “Oh, I’d love another 10 years if I can swing it.” He is mindful, though, that change and fresh ideas are essential for any organization, quoting a famous line from Proverbs: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
“I’ve tried to be very sensitive and aware of how we’re doing in that arena. Are we still moving forward? Is there real vision? But I still feel very strongly that we’re riding a wonderful wave, and as long as that keeps going, I’m very happy to be here.”
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Symphony Hall, 888-266-1200. http://www.bso.org
Also performing:
With Orquesta La Pasión and members of the Schola Cantorum de Venezuela, Golijov: “La Pasión según San Marcos”
Date of concert:
Jan. 9-11, 8 p.m.
Ticket price:
$30-$117
David Weininger can be reached at globeclassicalnotes@gmail.com.
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