May 1 & 3, 2025
Atlanta Symphony Hall, Woodruff Arts Center
Atlanta, Georgia – USA
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Jader Bignamini, conductor; Giuseppe Gibboni, violin.
BOTTESINI: Il diavolo della notte Overture
PAGANINI: Violin Concerto No. 1
RESPIGHI: Fountains of Rome
RESPIGHI: Pines of Rome
Paul Hyde | 8 MAY 2025
He sold his soul to the Devil. What else could explain Niccolo Paganini’s superhuman violin virtuosity?
Paganini, tall and gaunt, was a “rock star” of the 19th century. His extraordinary musical skill, flamboyant personality, and captivating stage presence inspired a fanatical following.
That he was rumored to be in league with dark forces only enhanced his reputation—and he promoted the myth for profit as any good rock star would. Despite a busy performing schedule, Paganini found time to write dozens of pieces for the violin, including six concertos, all designed to test his own musical prowess.
Violinist Giuseppe Gibboni offered a dazzling account of Paganini’s First Violin Concerto, the most-often performed of the six concertos, as a part of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s “Italian Holiday” program on May 1.
It’s a devilishly difficult concerto, relentlessly virtuosic with an abundance of techniques Paganini pioneered or often showcased. Those include left-hand pizzicato, triple-stops (chords), harmonics (lightly touching the strings for a high whistling sound), and ricochet bowing (bouncing the bow on the strings to create a brisk staccato sound).
Gibboni negotiated these challenges with sprezzatura, that wonderful Italian word that refers to effortless grace in making difficult tasks look easy. Gibboni dashed off the lightning-fast passages with assured virtuosity.
The concerto often exhibits operatic qualities, with lyrical melodies and recitative-like episodes. Parts of the second movement, for instance, feature the familiar operatic convention of an aria (played in this case by the soloist) accompanied by the so-called “big guitar” (orchestral violinists playing pizzicato.) Gibboni played these melodies with a marvelous singing tone.
The audience rewarded Gibboni with an enthusiastic ovation. In return, he offered an encore: Paganini’s Caprice No. 24, the most familiar of the composer’s caprices for solo violin with a theme that has been famously adapted by Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Liszt and others. It’s a splendidly showy piece that Gibboni rendered with aplomb.
It’s perhaps no surprise that Gibboni, born in 2001, should excel in works by Paganini. He won the 56th Paganini Violin Competition in 2001, becoming the first Italian winner in 24 years. He’s already performed with major orchestras, and one suspects that classical music fans will be hearing a lot more about this formidably talented young violinist in the coming years.
Guest conductor Jader Bignamini drew vigorous playing from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
Bignamini, music director of the Detroit Symphony, provided dynamic leadership throughout this “Italian Holiday” concert, which began with a curtain-raiser by a lesser-known composer, Giovanni Bottesini, and concluded with two opulent tone poems by Ottorino Respighi.
Guest conductor Jader Bignamini leads the ASO in an ‘Italian Holiday’ concert, May 1, 2025. (credit: Rand Lines / courtesy of ASO)
As the title of the concert implies, there was a certain dolce vita quality to this crowd-pleasing concert. Bottesini’s Overture to his opera Il Diavolo Della Notte (“The Devil of the Night”), less than five minutes in length, opened the concert with Rossini-like effervescence, the musical equivalent of champagne corks popping.
Respighi’s tone poems The Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome, meanwhile, are brilliantly orchestrated tone poems that pay tribute, as the titles suggest, to the fountains and pines of Rome with reflections as well about the indirect images they evoke.
The wonderfully colorful works benefitted greatly from the “live” acoustics of Atlanta Symphony Hall. Bignamini, conducting without a score, drew luscious playing from the strings in the occasionally impressionistic Fountains of Rome.
Perhaps most memorable, however, was the Pines of Rome with its famous concluding section that evokes the ancient Roman army marching in triumph to the Capitoline Hill. Before that, however, Bignamini offered a vibrant account of the first movement (children at play) and an appropriate gloomy rendition of the second movement (Roman catacombs) with a beautiful offstage trumpet solo by acting/associate principal trumpet Michael Tiscione. (It was one of several fine solos that evening.) I’ve always loved the third-movement nocturne as well, which includes a actual recording of a nightingale.
Then came the Pines of Rome finale. It packed a wallop. (I understand that audiophiles once upon a time used to test the power and range of their stereo equipment by blasting this finale at full volume.)
In the concert hall, the surround-sound effect was magnificent, with added brass (two flugelhorns on one side of the balcony, two trumpets on the other side of the balcony, and two euphoniums up front on the audience’s left) providing increased power and radiance.
It was a dynamite conclusion to the concert. To this listener, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra has rarely sounded more glorious. The rest of the audience, too, roared its approval. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Atlanta Symphony Orchestra: aso.org
- Jader Bignamini: jaderbignamini.it
- Giuseppe Gibboni: gibbonigiuseppe.it/en
Read more by Paul Hyde.
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