Review | International Woman-Led Orchestral Gleam

Hopefully there will come a time when the rarity of a woman taking charge in a once male-dominated field will cease to grab headlines and gender parity will become more of a norm. But there are biases still left to conquer and bold hirings to trumpet. Take the steady, lofty position of music director in a major symphony orchestra, a job description almost entirely occupied by males until Marin Alsop came along to lead the Baltimore Symphony starting in 2005, moving on in 2021.

Last Friday — International Women’s Day, it so happened — the second such woman in charge of a major orchestra appeared on the Granada stage, when the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) was led, and luminously, by Nathalie Stutzmann, who took command of the ASO’s podium in 2022. She had nothing to prove, in fact. The Parisian-born conductor, also a singer with dozens of respected recordings to her credit, exceeds expectations at the podium, as evidenced by the bold performance on Friday, which also included Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang as soloist for the night.

The ASO, hosted here by the mighty CAMA, was making its official Santa Barbara debut on this night, although the orchestra — led by formidable previous conductor Robert Spano — was the featured ensemble of the 2006 Ojai Music Festival, representing in a programming mode much more adventurous than the Granada show. Here, we had a taut, impressive American orchestra dishing up the standard, greatest hits orchestral fare of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto and Dvořák’s trusty steed, the “From the New World” Symphony No. 9.

All in all, though, this meat-and-potatoes program was not taken lightly, and was instead delivered with persuasive care, and flair. From the earliest moments of the Beethoven Concerto, as the prominent theme was passed over to the elaborations of Zhang’s robust and detail-oriented piano work, it was apparent that some special chemistry is at work in Atlanta, on its symphonic front. The ”Emperor” involves an Adagio of stately poise and infectious beauty, unique to itself, segueing directly into the vigorous Rondo and its finalizing flurry to close. 

From the Beethoven through to an encore of Brahms’s “Hungarian Dance No. 5” (another hyper-hummable chestnut in the repertoire), Stutzmann helped to coax proper orchestral gleam from the stage. She projected a clear and firm hand at the helm of this already finely tuned orchestra, yet maintains the critical expressive flexibility to invest vitality and nuance to the scores at hand.

In a strange way, an orchestra and its conductor can sometimes test their mettle when easing into cozy repertoire turf. Dvořák’s “New World” is old news by now, overexposed to a fault by some of our standards. But it regains its power and relevance when played with the artful assurance such as the ASO displayed at the Granada. The orchestra put forth a strong reading, multi-dimensional in its sweep and sense of structural and dramatic arc.

It is a warhorse that can lead an orchestra into temptations of overstated romantic gestures and sentimental drift, and, to borrow a cliché from the pop-music parlance, possesses “more hooks than a tackle box.” Here, though, Dvořák’s emotional homage to his adopted home country of America in the late 19th century emerged as a polished statement, in proper balance and perspective.

Clearly, Stutzmann is the person for the job. The next time ASO plays Santa Barbara, perhaps the program will reveal more of this orchestra’s well-established sense of adventure, but its virgin voyage in town made a memorable impact on its own terms.