Not the Same Old Mozart 
By E. Noel Preston, MD

   I've had season tickets to the Atlanta Symphony for a long time. Up until I went away to college at Emory, my idea of classical music was Spike Jones playing the William Tell Overture. But when I was in college, Emory's famous anonymous donor, Mrs. Flora Glenn Candler, provided symphony tickets for college kids at the discounted price of five dollars apiece, and I started going to the Symphony. Bald headed Henry Sopkin was the conductor and the orchestra played at the Roxy Theater across Peachtree Street from Crawford Long Hospital. After that the Symphony moved to the Atlanta Auditorium down by Georgia State University and Robert Shaw became the conductor. There have been more conductors and different concert locations since then, but the concert I remember the most was one of those down at the old Roxy. Henry Sopkin was conducting Stravinsky's Firebird Suite and I was absolutely mesmerized. There's a place in the music where the violinists lay down their bows across their laps and slide their right hands up and down the strings of the violins, and the sounds they make are so eerie and mysterious you really would think you had encountered a sorcerer or a wizard or some other sort of magical creature.

   And so I felt more than a little sad when it came time to renew my season tickets to the Symphony this year and, in the true dictionary sense of the word, deliberately chose not to renew them. The new conductor seems to be trying, but I don't think he tries hard enough. There are usually three musical numbers to a concert and one of them involves a guest musician who plays a solo instrument, and most of the time that selection is very good. The other two pieces are purely orchestral, and too many times one of them is merely adequate but the other seems under rehearsed. When I'm not actually dozing off because the performance is dull, I'm aggravated because of a missed note or a sloppy entrance. Maybe this is because I'm older and don't have the energy or the enthusiasm of a young college student, or because I have more than 350 compact discs of the world's finest orchestras and can evaluate a performance better than I could earlier. Maybe it's because the orchestra sounds better when a guest conductor is on the podium, or maybe it's because after spending $90 for a pair of seats and $10 for parking and more money for dinner before and then desserts and brandy afterwards I feel the performance should really knock my sox off but it doesn't.

   I want to go to a performance and feel disappointed when it comes to an end. I want to feel like saying WOW! That was fantastic!!! when it's over. I want to feel I can hardly wait to tell someone about it afterwards. And so thank you, Mrs. Candler, for your kind, gracious and generous gift of music to young students -- I've thought of you ever since every time I've been to a symphony concert anywhere, but for this next year I've decided to try something else..

   This past Sunday I did go to a knock-your-sox-off performance at the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech. The group was Pilobolus, a modern dance/gymnastics troupe of four men and two women from Connecticut who were amazing beyond description. They were beautiful, they were funny, they were strong and graceful and talented, they did things with ropes and poles you wouldn't believe, and I can hardly wait to see them again.

   The Ferst is a small, delightful auditorium that only holds 1000, and it's all stadium seating. It can accomodate 155 more if they use the orchestra pit. There's free covered parking, there's no service charge for using a credit card, and there's no mailing or handling fee. The most expensive ticket is $38, and if you buy tickets for five or more concerts you get a 20% discount. Other performances at the Ferst this season are A Scottish Christmas with Bonnie Rideout, Cirque Eloize, the Moscow Philharmonic, Crazy for You (a Broadway musical revue), and Les Ballets Trockadero, a group of big hairy men who dress up in ballerina tutus and zoom around the stage on roller skates. Now that's entertainment, and I can hardly wait!

E. Noel Preston, M.D. is a pediatrician in solo practice in Peachtree Corners. 6063 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 202-A, Norcross. (770) 448-1553.

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