Review: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra kicks off season with transcendental artistry

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra kicked off its 2025-26 season, its fourth with conductor Nathalie Stutzmann, on Friday, October 3, with an evening of Aaron Copland, Edward Elgar and Richard Strauss. It was, on the whole, an electrifying evening and one that ranks high among the ASO’s seasonal openers.

Stutzmann took the stage to a standing ovation, one that speaks to the tremendously warm welcome she’s received from the Atlanta classical audience at large. She commenced with the customary seasonal kickoff performance of the Star Spangled Banner, and, while the orchestra easily captured the majestic grandeur of the piece, the audience did not. (I hate to tread on the solemn dignity of the moment, but not even the patriotic grandeur of our national anthem can make audience participation in classical music a pleasant experience.)

It seemed a bit redundant to follow The Star Spangled Banner with Copland’s equally anthemic Fanfare for the Common Man, but the sheer energy from the horns more than made up for the sense of repetition. There was something aggressive and primal in their playing tonight — especially in the trombones — that really spoke to the blood. Where the national anthem had been a galvanizing of national identity, this was a testament to the individual human spirit, and one that I could only hope would radiate across the evening’s proceedings.

Radiate it did with guest cellist Alisa Weilerstein joining the orchestra for Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85. Elgar was a product of Edwardian England, the epoch lionized by Anglophiles in shows like Downton Abbey, and while he thrived in the era, he was considered old news amidst the changing musical landscape of late 1910s. In that light, the Concerto reflects his anguish and alienation from a world that had left him behind.

Weilerstein was ready to lean into that anguish in a manner that was so precise as to be disconcerting in its intimacy. In music criticism, there are times when the sheer virtuosity of a player’s technical capacity is impressive enough to warrant commendation. Then there are times, as with Weilerstein’s performance, where the technical facility disappears into the background because it was only a vehicle to take us into the spiritual core of the player and the music they seek to embody. 

There are historical films which feature real life persons portrayed so accurately and effortlessly by the actors that the artifice of acting drops away and we are simply in the presence of the original person. That level of theatrical mastery is what was on display in Weilerstein’s performance: It ceased to be the sound of a cello; it ceased to be the sound of music; it was, simply and hauntingly, a pure and undiluted capturing of the human spirit in auditory form. We were there in the throes of the righteous pain that filled Elgar as he wrote the Concerto, and the cello was no longer an instrument — only a conduit.

The orchestra at large fed off that extraordinary performance and soared in and out of Weilerstein’s phrases with lush, simmering tones that felt infused with her aura. It was musical interplay in its finest form. One watches hundreds of concerts hoping for just one that will emerge with the transcendental artistry that was on display here.

Sadly, Weilerstein also introduced the evening’s only major hiccup by performing an additional unannounced solo piece. This practice has always struck me as needlessly self-indulgent and only serves to forestall the intermission with its promises of a visit to the drinking fountain and a good stretch of the legs. But here it had the added effect of blunting the afterglow of the extraordinary experience that preceded it, like reading the church announcements after a visitation by the Virgin Mary.

Richard Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40 (“A Hero’s Life”) made up the evening’s second half. Once again, the ASO came alive. That fire that first sparked among the horns during Fanfare and crescendoed with Weilerstein was a raging torrent throughout this epic finale. Throughout the orchestra felt positively euphoric: Where I’d criticized them in the past for feeling overly restrained, this was sensory overload in the best possible sense of the term. 

Top honors during the second half go to ASO concertmaster David Coucheron, whose violin solo was a tour de force that oscillated between intense passion and minute, tender immediacy with the commanding aplomb that make him such an enjoyable onstage presence. He knows how to dip down to barely a whisper before sailing back into the stratosphere on the wings of his accompanying ensemble. 

Last year, I critiqued the ASO’s opening night for its soporific lack of energy. If Friday evening’s performance was any indication, they’ve taken my criticism to heart.

Where & When

Opening weekend for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra continues with a second performance this evening, October 4, at 8 p.m. and a third on Sunday, October 5, at 3 p.m. Tickets depend on seating and start around $45.
1280 Peachtree St. NE.

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Jordan Owen began writing about music professionally at the age of 16 in Oxford, Mississippi. A 2006 graduate of the Berklee College of Music, he is a professional guitarist, bandleader and composer.