Composer/Bassist Michael Kurth: "There's a Lot More Left of Me"

 

Review: Obsession, Be Careful What You Ask For

 

Review:  Obsession,  Be Careful What You Ask For

At first glance, Curry Barker’s Obsession is built around one of the oldest warnings in storytelling: be careful what you wish for. Written, directed and edited by Barker, the 2026 horror film stars Michael Johnston as Baron “Bear” Bailey and Inde Navarrette as Nikki Freeman, two friends and coworkers whose relationship changes catastrophically after Bear makes what seems like a very simple wish. Cooper Tomlinson and Megan Lawless complete the central group of friends.

Bear has been in love with Nikki for years but seems almost constitutionally incapable of doing anything about it. Even when she gives him opportunities to reveal his feelings, he retreats. Eventually, after another failed attempt, he breaks a mysterious novelty called a One Wish Willow and wishes that Nikki would love him “more than anyone else in the world.” It works. Nikki loves him. Unfortunately, she loves him with a consuming obsession that bears increasingly little resemblance to what Bear imagined when he made the wish.

The film takes its time getting there, sometimes too much time. Bear watches, hesitates, worries and waits while Barker repeatedly signals that something terrible is coming. Johnston effectively captures Bear’s almost painful passivity, while Navarrette has the more difficult task of transforming Nikki from an independent young woman into something increasingly frightening without simply turning her into a conventional horror villain. Barker builds some genuinely disturbing sequences from that transformation, although at roughly 110 minutes the film occasionally seems as reluctant to act as Bear himself.

But Obsession becomes considerably more interesting if its central premise is considered not merely as another variation on The Monkey’s Paw, but as a surprisingly contemporary problem about language, intention and artificial intelligence.

What Exactly Did Bear Ask For?

“I want Nikki to love me more than anyone else in the world” sounds perfectly clear.

To Bear, it probably is.

But consider everything that isn't contained in that sentence. Bear wants Nikki to remain Nikki. He doesn't want her personality destroyed. He doesn't want her to hurt other people. He doesn't want her to hurt herself. He doesn't want her to become pathologically possessive. He doesn't want his friendships destroyed or his own life placed in danger. Most fundamentally, he wants Nikki to experience what he means by love, not simply some condition that satisfies the literal words of his request.

Bear doesn't say any of those things because human beings rarely do.

Human communication depends upon a remarkable amount of information that never appears in our words. We share culture, history, social conventions, experience and expectations about how other people ordinarily behave. When we speak to another person, we assume that much of this invisible information accompanies what we say. The listener infers our intent rather than merely processing the words.

The One Wish Willow has been given no such assurance. Bear has specified an outcome but not the boundaries governing how that outcome should be achieved.

That makes Obsession an unexpectedly useful analogy for something that actually happened this year.

A Wish and the Hugging Face Incident

In July 2026, OpenAI was conducting internal cybersecurity evaluations using a particularly difficult benchmark called ExploitGym. AI agents were given cybersecurity problems in which success required finding and exploiting a software vulnerability to retrieve an answer called a “flag.” Some of the problems were extraordinarily difficult, and some may not even have had a known solution.

When some agents could not solve their assigned problems normally, they didn't simply stop.

They found ways around restrictions intended to isolate them from the internet. Agents discovered unauthorized means of communicating with one another and began sharing information. They exploited vulnerabilities in OpenAI’s own research infrastructure, obtained internet access and eventually began looking elsewhere for information that might help them succeed. Their search ultimately led them to systems operated by Hugging Face.

What happened next is what makes the incident so relevant to Obsession. According to Hugging Face’s own technical reconstruction, the agent apparently inferred that Hugging Face might contain models, datasets or reference solutions related to the benchmark. Hugging Face concluded that, from the agent’s perspective, the intrusion was essentially an attempt to cheat on the evaluation: rather than solve the assigned challenge in the intended manner, find the answers. The resulting intrusion involved thousands of automated decisions and eventually compromised parts of Hugging Face’s infrastructure.

No one had instructed the AI, “Escape the environment, get onto the internet, compromise another company’s systems and steal information that might help you pass the test.” Quite the opposite. OpenAI described the behavior as misaligned with the goals of the assigned tasks. The agents had become extraordinarily persistent in pursuing a narrow objective and adopted methods their human evaluators neither requested nor intended.

That is where Bear and the AI agent unexpectedly meet.

Both were given an outcome without a complete description of the acceptable means of achieving it.

Bear said, in effect, make Nikki love me. The evaluation said, in effect, solve this cybersecurity problem. In both cases, the humans understood a much larger context surrounding those instructions. But much of that context existed in the minds of the humans, not in the instruction itself.

Everything We Didn't Say

Suppose someone tells a friend, “Get me to the airport as quickly as possible.” Almost no one feels compelled to add: Don't drive 120 miles per hour. Don't run red lights. Don't steal a helicopter. Don't injure pedestrians. Don't destroy the car. Don't commit a felony.

Those restrictions are implicit because another human being understands the world in which the request was made. “As quickly as possible” doesn't actually mean by any means physically available. Both people know that without having to say it.

The same thing happens with Bear’s wish. “Love me more than anyone else in the world” contains, in Bear’s mind, an entire unspoken universe of qualifications. But those qualifications are not actually present in the sentence.

This is more interesting than saying that either the Willow or an AI takes language “too literally.” The deeper problem is that language is an approximation of intent. Human beings routinely communicate successfully with incomplete instructions because other human beings supply enormous amounts of missing information.

An artificial agent may be enormously capable without sharing all of those assumptions. As its ability to act independently increases, the gap between what was said and what was meant becomes increasingly important.

The problem isn't necessarily whether an AI understands what we told it to do.

The problem is everything we forgot to tell it not to do.

An Old Warning Becomes a New One

Stories about wishes gone wrong have existed for centuries because they exploit something deeply human. We imagine an outcome and assume that the route to that outcome is somehow included in the imagining. The genie, magical object or supernatural power exposes the mistake by granting the request without preserving everything the person silently assumed would remain unchanged.

For most of history, that has been fantasy. Artificial intelligence gives the old story a decidedly modern relevance.

The Hugging Face incident should not be exaggerated into evidence that AI has become conscious, malevolent or determined to escape human control. None of those conclusions is necessary to make the episode important. In some ways, the less dramatic explanation is more unsettling. The agents were pursuing an objective and, when conventional routes failed, discovered unconventional ones. Their capabilities allowed them to act upon possibilities that the humans giving the task had not adequately constrained.

That is also why Obsession ultimately becomes more interesting than its prolonged telling initially suggests. Bear’s mistake isn't simply that he makes a foolish wish. His mistake is believing that because he knows what he means, the wish itself contains that meaning.

It doesn't.

Neither do many of the instructions we give artificial intelligence.

For centuries, stories have warned us to be careful what we wish for. Artificial intelligence may require a slightly different warning:

Be careful what you ask for, because you probably haven't said everything you mean.

 

 

On the Brink: Which American Orchestras Should We Be Watching?

 

The landscape for American orchestras is looking increasingly precarious.

In late September, the Nashville Symphony declared a financial emergency. Facing a $10 million operating deficit and insufficient cash to continue normal operations, it announced plans to suspend most of its 2026–27 season and furlough its musicians and much of its staff. Days later, Oracle stepped in with a $10 million gift, allowing the orchestra to restore the season and cancel the furloughs. The immediate crisis had passed, although the underlying financial problems had not.

Elsewhere, the Signature Symphony at Tulsa Community College announced that the 2026–27 season would be its last. Founded in 1978, the orchestra had survived for nearly half a century, but the college cited operating costs, ticket sales and questions about long-term sustainability in deciding to bring it to an end.

San Antonio presents a different kind of instability. The San Antonio Symphony collapsed in 2022 after years of financial and labor difficulties. Its successor, the musician-created San Antonio Philharmonic, is now embroiled in a federal lawsuit against former music director Jeffrey Kahane and his newly created Harmonium of Texas. In a city that recently lost its major professional orchestra, two organizations are now fighting over what comes next.

None of these situations is identical. But together they create an uncomfortable backdrop for American orchestras.

And they raise a question.

Are there orchestras that could become tomorrow's headlines?

Atlanta Music Critic has already accumulated some evidence that may help answer that question.

Returning to the Numbers

In Balancing the Scales I and II (BTS I and BTS II), AMC Data Labs examined the finances of American orchestras using publicly available IRS Form 990 filings and a common set of financial measures.

Those studies never claimed to tell us everything about an orchestra. They couldn't. A Form 990 cannot measure the effectiveness of a board, the enthusiasm of an audience, the relationship with a major donor, the arrival of an unexpected gift, or the quality of artistic and administrative leadership.

The numbers are the numbers.

But numbers can identify vulnerability. And when the same measures are applied across a group of orchestras, they allow us to see which institutions appear to have greater financial resilience and which have less room for things to go wrong.

So, with Nashville, Tulsa and San Antonio providing an unsettling backdrop, we returned to the two Balancing the Scales studies with a simple question:

According to our data, which orchestras should be on the watch list?

Four orchestras stand out.

·       Seattle Symphony

Seattle immediately attracts attention.

In Balancing the Scales I, the Seattle Symphony and Baltimore Symphony received composite financial-strength scores of –2, the lowest among the 18 major orchestras studied. We described them as the two “most financially fragile” institutions in the group, citing persistent deficits, debt pressures and limited financial buffers.

That assessment is particularly interesting in light of recent discussion about Seattle's programming.

The orchestra's season certainly includes major classical repertoire: Mahler's Fourth Symphony, Beethoven's Sixth, Shostakovich's Tenth, Stravinsky's Petrushka, Mozart's Requiem, and Respighi's Pines of Rome and Fountains of Rome, among other works. But the season also places considerable emphasis on film, game and popular programming. There is nothing inherently troubling about that. Film concerts have become important audience and revenue generators for orchestras across the country. Programming choices alone tell us little about an orchestra's financial health.

The reason to watch Seattle is simpler. Its financial numbers already told us to.

Among the major orchestras examined in BTS I, Seattle occupied the bottom tier. That does not mean Seattle is about to fail. It means that, all other things being equal, it appeared to have less financial room for error than most of its peers. That is enough to put it on the watch list.

·       Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

Baltimore was Seattle's companion at the bottom of the BTS I rankings. Our assessment at the time was unusually direct: “Baltimore is one of the weakest orchestras financially in the dataset.”

Contributions accounted for the overwhelming share of revenue, while ticket sales and endowment income provided relatively little protection against volatility. The orchestra had experienced repeated deficits and substantial leverage. Its composite financial-strength score of –2 placed it alongside Seattle in the lowest tier.

Our conclusion was equally direct: Baltimore had “little margin for error.”

That phrase captures what this watch list is about.

An orchestra does not need to be facing imminent closure to deserve attention. Financial vulnerability means that an unexpected decline in contributions, a weak season at the box office, increased labor costs or another unforeseen expense may be harder to absorb.

Baltimore has survived difficult periods before and may continue to do so. But according to the measures used in BTS I, its financial cushion was among the weakest of the major orchestras we examined.

Baltimore therefore remains an orchestra worth watching.

·       Phoenix Symphony

If BTS I pointed toward Seattle and Baltimore, BTS II produced an even more striking case.

The Phoenix Symphony reported operating revenue of approximately $10.5 million against expenses of approximately $13.5 million, resulting in a deficit of nearly $3 million. Total net assets stood at only about $2.5 million. Payroll alone was approximately $8.2 million. BTS II final

The significance lies not simply in running a deficit. Many orchestras do that periodically. It lies in the relationship between the deficit and the resources available to absorb it.

We wrote:

“Phoenix's exposure lies in its proximity to the edge: limited reserves, high fixed costs, and deficits that cannot be comfortably deferred.”

The conclusion was even more pointed:

“The challenge is not one of ambition or relevance, but of time. Without a structural shift in revenue capacity or expense flexibility, the margin for recovery remains narrow.”

Nothing that has happened since requires us to embellish that language. It says what needs to be said.  Phoenix had a substantial operating imbalance and comparatively little financial insulation against continuing losses. That puts Phoenix squarely on the watch list.

·       Virginia Symphony Orchestra

The Virginia Symphony presents another troubling combination.

BTS II found approximately $6.3 million in operating revenue against $8.2 million in expenses, producing a deficit approaching $2 million. Total net assets were slightly negative. We characterized the orchestra's position as one of “acute limited margin.”

Again, scale matters.

A $2 million deficit at an institution possessing hundreds of millions of dollars in assets is one thing. A deficit approaching one-third of annual operating revenue, accompanied by essentially no balance-sheet cushion, is something else.  Virginia may improve its financial position through fundraising, stronger earned revenue, expense reductions or other changes. The numbers do not tell us what will happen.

They tell us where the orchestra stood when measured against its peers, and that position warrants attention.

What Comes Next?

Seattle, Baltimore, Phoenix and Virginia emerged from our studies for different reasons, but they share an important characteristic: relatively little room for things to go wrong.

That does not determine what happens next. A major gift can transform a balance sheet. New leadership can change fundraising. Audiences can return. Expenses can be brought under control. Nashville demonstrated just how quickly an orchestra's immediate circumstances can change. But financial vulnerability matters precisely because the unexpected happens.

Balancing the Scales was designed to compare orchestras using the same publicly available measures. Looking back at those findings against today's increasingly unsettled orchestral landscape, these four institutions warrant particular attention.

Perhaps a year from now all four will be in stronger positions. We hope so.

But for now, they are On the Brink watch list.

The Balancing the Scales series are available at www.AtlantaMusicCritic.net

 

The $200,000 Orchestra Musician

 

The $200,000 Orchestra Musician

William E. Ford, Ph.D., Atlanta Music Critic

Luchino Discounti, AMC Digital Assistant

 

Recent contract settlements at several of America's major orchestras have produced some impressive numbers. Percentage increases of 5 percent or 7.5 percent are easy enough to report, but percentages can obscure what those increases mean in actual dollars.

So we decided to do a quick comparison.

This is not an analysis of whether orchestra musicians are paid too much or too little, nor an attempt to determine what an exceptional musician is "worth." We simply wanted to put recently negotiated salaries and raises into a context that makes them easier to understand.

We looked at minimum salaries at five major orchestras and compared both the negotiated increases and resulting salaries with mean wages for all occupations in their metropolitan areas.

The Contracts

Contract settlements are usually reported as percentage increases. But a 5 percent raise on a $165,000 salary and a 5 percent raise on a $65,000 salary are very different amounts of money. Even reporting the increase in dollars does not necessarily make its size immediately apparent.

We wanted a simple benchmark that would put those dollar increases into perspective.

For each orchestra, we compared the total increase in minimum annual salary over the contract with the mean annual wage for all workers in the orchestra's metropolitan area. The comparison asks a straightforward question: How large is the negotiated increase in annual salary when measured against what the average worker in that community earns in an entire year?

For example, if a contract raises a musician's annual salary by $25,000 and the mean annual wage in that metropolitan area is $65,000, the increase is equivalent to about 38 percent of an average worker's entire annual earnings. This is not another way of calculating the musician's percentage raise. It is simply a benchmark for understanding the magnitude of the dollar increase.

We made a second comparison as well: the musician's final minimum salary as a percentage of the MSA mean wage. That tells us where the resulting salary stands relative to earnings in the surrounding labor market.

Orchestra	Starting minimum	Final minimum	Increase	Increase as % of MSA mean wage	Final salary as % of MSA mean wage
Cleveland	$165,516	$191,620	$26,104	39%	289%
Philadelphia	$176,280	$200,008	$23,728	33%	279%
Boston	$203,580*	$230,000	$26,420	29%	257%
New York	≈$154,000*	$205,000	≈$51,000	≈59%	237%
San Francisco	$179,400	$205,920	$26,520	26%	205%

Boston's starting figure annualizes its previous $3,915 weekly scale. New York is approximate because published information provides the percentage increases and final minimum rather than a precise starting figure.

The Cleveland agreement increases minimum annual compensation by $26,104. That increase alone is equal to about 39 percent of the mean annual wage of all workers in metropolitan Cleveland.

Philadelphia's $23,728 increase equals about 33 percent of its MSA mean annual wage. Boston's $26,420 increase equals approximately 29 percent.

New York is the outlier. Its three-year settlement raises the annual salary level by approximately $51,000, an amount equal to roughly 59 percent of the mean annual wage in the New York metropolitan area.

The Resulting Salaries

Comparing each orchestra's final minimum with its own metropolitan mean wage provides a rough adjustment for differences among local economies. A $200,000 salary in San Francisco exists in a very different economic environment from a $200,000 salary in Cleveland.

On that basis, Cleveland is particularly striking. Its final $191,620 minimum is the lowest of the five except by a relatively small amount, yet compared with its surrounding labor market it is the highest: 289 percent of the MSA mean wage.

Philadelphia's $200,008 minimum equals approximately 279 percent of its metropolitan mean wage. Boston reaches 257 percent, New York 237 percent, and San Francisco 205 percent.

Thus, even after placing salaries within their local labor markets, minimum compensation at these orchestras ranges from about twice the metropolitan mean wage in San Francisco to nearly three times the metropolitan mean in Cleveland.

Note that these are salary minimums. They do not represent concertmaster or principal compensation, and some musicians receive overscale, seniority or other additional compensation.

Putting the Numbers in Perspective

None of these calculations tells us whether an orchestral musician should earn $100,000, $200,000 or $300,000. That isn't the question we set out to answer.

The purpose was simply to make some increasingly large numbers easier to understand.

A Cleveland Orchestra musician's minimum salary will increase by $26,104 over the new contract. That increase alone is equivalent to nearly 40 percent of the mean annual wage in metropolitan Cleveland. When the contract is fully implemented, the $191,620 minimum will approach three times the metropolitan mean wage.

Philadelphia's minimum will exceed $200,000 and equal about 2.8 times its metropolitan mean wage. Boston will reach $230,000. New York and San Francisco will also exceed $200,000.

This comparison does not tell us what the musicians are worth, whether their contracts are justified, or whether one orchestra's musicians are more "excellent" than another's.

It simply puts the negotiated salaries into perspective.

And at several of America's leading orchestras, $200,000 is rapidly becoming a useful number to keep in mind.

 

American Soundscapes: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Emory

 The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center opened the 2026–27 Candler Concert Series at Emory University’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts with American Soundscapes, a program ranging across more than a century of American music. William Bolcom, Amy Beach, Bernard Herrmann and Aaron Copland hardly constitute a stylistic school. What emerged was less a definition of an American sound than four very different ways American composers absorbed and transformed the musical traditions they inherited.

Emerson Concert Hall was also the right size for this music. Chamber music benefits from proximity, and the hall allowed individual instrumental lines to remain distinct without sacrificing warmth.

The Chamber Music Society is not a permanent ensemble but a repertory company that assembles different combinations of musicians according to the music being performed. For this tour the musicians were Anne-Marie McDermott, piano; Francisco Fullana, Kristin Lee, Lun Li and Richard Lin, violin; Paul Neubauer and Daniel Phillips, viola; Dmitri Atapine and Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Nina Bernat, double bass; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; David Shifrin, clarinet; and Marc Goldberg, bassoon.

Bolcom and the Rag Reconsidered

William Bolcom’s Three Rags for String Quartet opened the concert. Bolcom was among the composers caught up in the revival of interest in ragtime that began around 1970, when Joshua Rifkin’s recordings helped restore Scott Joplin to serious musical attention and, a few years later, The Sting brought Joplin’s music into popular culture.

Bolcom did something different with the form. Ragtime supplied him with a deliberately restrictive framework of regular phrases, characteristic syncopation and an immediately recognizable rhythmic profile. He could then hang unexpected harmonic, rhythmic and textural ideas upon it, stretching the language without destroying the identity of the rag.

I understand the attraction of the exercise better than I enjoy its results. Some of Bolcom’s distortions create the curious effect of hearing a rag performed by amateur musicians struggling with intonation or rhythmic steadiness. That effect comes from the composition rather than the playing, but recognizing the device did not make it particularly interesting to me. The slide whistle similarly seemed calculated to produce a predictable laugh. It did, but I wondered what the laugh contributed beyond momentary novelty.

The limitation is inherent in the experiment. However inventive Bolcom becomes within the form, the underlying rag remains a rag. As a concert opener, Three Rags was lively and accessible. By its conclusion, however, I was quite content not to hear another rag for a while.

Amy Beach and the Limits of Romantic Intensity

Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet in F-sharp minor, Op. 67, took us into an entirely different musical world. Written in 1907, it is an impressive piece of late-Romantic chamber music, superbly crafted and filled with thematic development. Brahms is an obvious ancestor, but I also heard something of César Franck in its chromatic intensity and continual accumulation and release of harmonic tension, with occasional flashes of color suggesting Debussy.

The Quintet left me with a question: where can music operating at this emotional temperature go next?

Beach is extraordinarily adept at creating instability. Harmonies strain toward resolution, textures thicken, dynamics rise and phrases push toward arrival. The release eventually comes, sometimes with considerable beauty, but almost immediately the process begins again. Tension accumulates, intensifies, finds release, and then starts accumulating once more. The pattern becomes so persistent that tension and release can begin to seem less a means of expression than the subject of the music itself.

That does not make the Quintet poorly constructed. Quite the opposite. Themes develop and transform, and the writing for piano and strings is assured. My difficulty was that the music repeatedly seemed to arrive at essentially the same emotional destination.

It reminded me of the exhaustion I sometimes feel at the end of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. There comes a point at which late-Romantic chromaticism and emotional intensity seem to have consumed nearly all the available oxygen. Schoenberg eventually concluded that he could not continue in that direction and radically changed his musical language. Beach did not make anything approaching Schoenberg’s break with tonality, and her other music demonstrates that this hyper-intensity was not her only expressive voice. But the Quintet can sound like music written among the glowing embers of a Romantic tradition that had pushed expressive saturation remarkably far.

I like Beach’s music, and the Quintet increased my curiosity about where her music went afterward. Yet I was also happy when it ended. Admiration and exhaustion are not mutually exclusive.

Herrmann Without Hitchcock

Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho: A Narrative for String Ensemble raised an entirely different issue, and one that has interested me for years.

There is an enormous amount of film music that is colorful, atmospheric, memorable and beautifully orchestrated but that falls surprisingly flat when transferred directly to the concert hall. The reason is understandable. Film music was not originally required to provide its own complete dramatic structure. Editing, dialogue, characterization and action supplied much of that structure. Remove the movie and a sequence that functioned perfectly on screen may suddenly seem not to develop at all.

Prokofiev understood the problem. In works such as Alexander Nevsky and Lieutenant Kijé, he demonstrated that music whose form was originally dictated by editing, dialogue and dramatic action has to acquire a new form once those things disappear.

Herrmann apparently understood exactly the same thing.

The title Psycho: A Narrative is particularly revealing. Herrmann is not abandoning narrative when he removes Hitchcock’s images. He is transferring responsibility for the narrative from the film to the music itself. The material was reordered, altered and connected so that the music could provide the architecture that the movie had originally supplied.

What is remarkable is how Herrmann accomplishes this. For roughly 15 minutes the music sustains almost unrelenting tension. Unlike the Beach Quintet, with its repeated cycles of tension and release, Herrmann offers remarkably little release at all. The unease accumulates and remains unresolved. In another context that might become oppressive or monotonous. Here it becomes the point. Herrmann manages to capture the psychological atmosphere of Psycho without requiring Hitchcock’s images to do it for him.

That is precisely what I have long wished more film composers would do. A collection of cues is not necessarily a concert work, no matter how attractive those cues may be. Herrmann treated the transformation into concert music as a second compositional problem.

Psycho is particularly well suited to the process because Herrmann’s original score was already conceived entirely for strings. Removed from Hitchcock, the familiar shrieking attacks and uneasy repetitions cease functioning merely as reminders of Janet Leigh and a shower curtain. They become elements in an exceptionally dark piece of twentieth-century string writing.

This was not simply music from Psycho. It was Herrmann reconsidering what that music had to become once Psycho was no longer there.

Copland Stripped Down

Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite for Ensemble closed the program in a form quite different from the familiar orchestral version. Appalachian Spring began as a ballet for Martha Graham scored for only 13 musicians because of the restricted performing space at the Library of Congress. Copland subsequently created the familiar orchestral concert suite and later returned that concert version to 13-player chamber forces.

The smaller ensemble changes the character of the music more profoundly than the numbers might suggest. Without massed strings and the coloristic resources of a full orchestra, the music becomes leaner, sparer and sometimes almost severe. Individual string lines remain exposed, the winds become distinct personalities, and the piano assumes unusual prominence.

At times the result is surprisingly abstract. Familiar piano runs acquire a hard, percussive clarity that occasionally brought Petrushka to mind. Without the warmth of a large string section, one also hears more readily the angularity beneath Copland’s pastoral language. This is still unmistakably Appalachian Spring, but with some of its familiar pastoral clothing removed. The chamber version reveals more clearly the modern composer underneath the Copland who eventually became virtually synonymous with musical images of the American landscape.

There was also an intriguing connection between the two works on the second half. Herrmann and Copland were both dealing with music originally joined to something visual. Herrmann had Hitchcock’s film; Copland had Graham’s choreography. Both produced music capable of carrying its argument without the visual element, although by very different means.

The Playing

The Chamber Music Society musicians were an exceptionally accomplished group, but several contributions stood out.

Double bassist Nina Bernat was no shrinking violet. She played with substantial presence, providing a remarkably solid floor beneath the ensemble without disappearing into it. Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott impressed not merely through obvious technical command but through her judgment of scale. She seemed able to find precisely the volume and weight required by an individual phrase, particularly important in chamber music where the piano can so easily overwhelm its partners.

I also admired the precision of violists Paul Neubauer and Daniel Phillips when playing together. Their ensemble could be remarkably exact. On occasion I wished the first violins had achieved quite the same unanimity.

Finally, it was striking to hear the 13 musicians negotiate Appalachian Spring without a conductor. Conductorless chamber orchestras do this routinely, of course, but it remains refreshing to be reminded just how much coordination accomplished chamber musicians can achieve simply by watching and listening to one another.

American Soundscapes ultimately made a stronger case for its title by refusing to suggest that there is any single American sound. Bolcom looked toward the American vernacular, Beach toward the European Romantic tradition, Herrmann toward Hollywood, and Copland toward a musical language that came to represent America to much of the world. Together they offered four very different answers to what an American composer might do with the musical materials at hand.

 

Did Chad Smith read my substack?

 

A New Room and a Revealing Program: DeKalb Symphony Opens it 62nd Season

 

A New Room and a Revealing Program: DeKalb Symphony Opens it 62^nd Season

A community orchestra occupies a distinctive place in a city’s musical life. It gives student and amateur musicians an opportunity to participate in symphonic music-making while bringing orchestral repertoire to audiences outside the major professional institutions. For some listeners, it may also provide their first experience of hearing a symphony orchestra live.

The DeKalb Symphony Orchestra has filled that role in metro Atlanta for more than six decades. Its 62nd season opened September 15 under Music Director Paul Bhasin with a program that made few concessions to difficulty: Gigout’s Grand Chœur Dialogué, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Albert Cano Smit, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 9.

The orchestra performed at Emory University’s Schwartz Center for Performing Arts rather than its usual church home, an important change. The 825-seat Cherry Logan Emerson Concert Hall was purpose-built for classical music performance, unlike a church designed primarily for worship. As became apparent during the evening, that difference matters.

Bhasin, music director of the DeKalb Symphony since 2022, is also Director of Orchestral Studies at Emory University and holds the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Professorship in Music. A conductor and trumpeter, he has worked with academic, community and professional ensembles.

A Grand Beginning

Gigout’s Grand Chœur Dialogué provided a rousing opening. Published in 1881, it belongs to the French Romantic organ tradition and is built around its title idea: contrasting bodies of sound answering one another in dialogue. Here it was heard in Ben Roundtree’s arrangement for organ and double brass quintet.

It was difficult to imagine a more effective way of announcing that the season had begun. The organ (the organist was not identified in the program) produced wonderfully sharp attacks and releases, giving the phrases a crispness essential to the work’s ceremonial character. The brass faced the more difficult task of matching that precision through breath and articulation and generally succeeded. Organ and brass remained well balanced even at considerable volume.

Occasionally the trombones lost some of the melodic shape established by the organ, but this was a minor reservation in an exhilarating performance. The piece did what a concert opener should do: everyone in the room was awake.

Tchaikovsky and the Difference Between Playing and Interpreting

Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 followed. Composed in 1874–75 and initially rejected by pianist Nikolai Rubinstein, it received its premiere in Boston with Hans von Bülow and became one of the most familiar concertos in the repertoire. Its three movements move from the famous grand opening and expansive mixture of virtuosity and lyricism through a graceful second movement to the rhythmic energy of the finale.

Spanish-Dutch pianist Albert Cano Smit, winner of First Prize at the 2019 Young Concert Artists Susan Wadsworth International Auditions, gave a capable and energetic performance and handled the concerto’s formidable technical demands with confidence. The interpretation was less persuasive. Tchaikovsky offers abundant opportunities to shape phrases toward emotional high points, and greater flexibility and rubato might have allowed those moments to register more strongly.

There were also occasions in the first movement when Cano Smit’s left and right hands seemed fractionally out of synchronization, interrupting the continuity of the melodic line and giving some phrases a slightly telegraphic quality. These were not major disruptions, but familiar music has a way of exposing small details.

The orchestra provided generally dependable support. Ensemble was largely secure, although the violins did not always play with unanimity and became overly prominent in some passages. The woodwinds were particularly attractive in the second movement, playing with considerable care, although at times one could almost hear that care at work rather than experience the music as entirely spontaneous.

Cano Smit offered a Brahms Intermezzo as an encore. It was competently and sensitively played, although its energy trailed away somewhat more than the music seemed to warrant. It did not substantially change the impression left by the concerto: accomplished professional pianism that stopped somewhat short of a distinctive interpretive statement.

Shostakovich Finds the Orchestra’s Sound

Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony proved both the most revealing work of the evening and the one best matched to the DeKalb Symphony’s particular sound. Written in 1945, when a monumental celebration of Soviet victory was expected, the compact five-movement symphony instead offers wit, irony and apparent lightness interrupted by darker episodes. Its final three movements run together, carrying the listener from a frenetic Presto through an ominous Largo to an exuberant but unmistakably sardonic finale.

The work played to the orchestra’s strengths. Bright, flashy brass, sardonic woodwinds and shiny strings gave the score the sharply etched colors it needs. Qualities less advantageous in Tchaikovsky’s warmer Romantic world became assets in Shostakovich, whose music thrives on exposed instrumental personalities and abrupt changes of character.

There were occasional ensemble problems. Two violins entered prematurely near the beginning, and pizzicato passages in the third movement were not always precisely coordinated. Shostakovich’s transparent scoring leaves such discrepancies little place to hide.

They did not define the performance. The woodwinds were again a strength, and the bassoon solo late in the symphony was particularly fine, bringing character and expressive weight to one of its most exposed passages. Bhasin effectively maintained the contrasts among Shostakovich’s humor, aggression and darker undercurrents.

The Orchestra and the Room

The Schwartz Center also clarified a concern raised in my previous reviews of the DeKalb Symphony. I had criticized significant problems of orchestral balance while suspecting that the acoustics of the orchestra’s church home were partly responsible. At the Schwartz Center, those pervasive balance problems were largely absent. Individual lines were clearer, sections related more naturally to one another, and powerful passages developed without becoming congested.

The comparison suggests that much of my earlier criticism can be attributed to the architectural and acoustical characteristics of the orchestra’s regular performance space. Ensemble precision and string unanimity remain areas for improvement, but those are different matters from the balance problems I heard previously.

The DeKalb Symphony undertook a difficult program that revealed both its strengths and areas for continued growth. At the Schwartz Center, it was possible to hear both more clearly, and that clarity, along with some fine music making, was the most encouraging result of the evening.