Dallas Symphony Music director Jaap van Zweden pulled off a neat bit of programming in Thursday night’s concert at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center—and, intentionally or not, gave a boost to the folks next door at the Dallas Opera with a taste of symphonic Wagner, two weeks before that company takes on Tristan und Isolde.

The great thing about the repertoire for the evening was the way it revolved around Wagner, inviting the listener to ponder that titan of romanticism in ..read more

Thursday night, music director Jaap van Zweden returned to the podium of the Dallas Symphony for the first time since being awarded Musical America’s 2012 Conductor of the Year Award. A greeting from the mayor and a warm reply from Van Zweden  provided an appropriately cheerful opening for the evening. However, the irony of upcoming cuts in the orchestra’s classical season hung heavily over the moment. A city that has the privilege of being the home of a great conductor ..read more

In 2011, Dallas Symphony Orchestra Musical Director Jaap van Zweden was awarded one of the classical music industry’s top honors, “Conductor of the Year” from Musical America. And while critics agree that the Dallas Symphony has perhaps never sounded better, the organization — and classical music at large — faces a long list of financial challenges. Van Zweden returns to the Meyerson for his first concert of the new year this weekend, and FrontRow’s Peter Simek sat down with the ..read more

The Lone Star Wind Orchestra begins the New Year with “From Dallas to Valencia: A Cultural Concert,” and we have two tickets to give away. On January 29th the Meyerson will be home to Valencian composers celebrating the new Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. To get your hands on a pair of tickets all you have to do is answer the question in the form below: Name the first building Calatrava constructed in the US. We’ll ..read more

In a letter sent to Dallas Symphony Orchestra board members, board chairman  Blaine L. Nelson and interim president David Hyslop announced that the orchestra successfully raised $5 million during its late-2011 emergency fundraising campaign, ensuring that the symphony’s 2011-2012 season will be completed as originally programmed.

The fundrasising blitz came as Nelson said in November that the funds would need to be raised or the DSO was in danger of running out of cash by the end of January. The $5 million, ..read more

Finland’s cold climate has produced a good deal of musical warmth, as demonstrated by an all-Finnish concert featuring the Dallas Symphony under the baton of Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen Thursday night at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Inkinen opened the evening with Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Manhattan Trilogy of 2004, a work which, though obviously inspired by an American setting (and commissioned by the Juilliard School, where Rautavaara studied during the 1950s), definitely continues the legacy of Jean Sibelius’ opulent early twentieth-century romanticism. ..read more

It has been said, and with good reason, that real music criticism does not exist. What you are reading now is a review—an evaluation, if you wish. Real criticism of music, in terms of the speculative investigation and analysis that characterizes literary criticism, is virtually nonexistent.

However, in her recital Tuesday night on the Cliburn Foundation’s concert series at Bass Performance Hall inFort Worth, pianist Joyce Yang created a program that did, indeed, invite the listener to hear and respond to ..read more

It’s quite an honor. The Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts Varsity String Orchestra was invited to perform at perhaps the most famous venue in the world, New York’s Carnegie Hall on May 5. The only problem: physically getting a high school orchestra to Carnegie Hall is no cheap task. The total price tag of the opportunity of a lifetime is $70,000, and students have been working hard to raise funds via small and large ..read more

Philip Glass’ rambling, 40-minute Violin Concerto No. 2 (The American Four Seasons) of 2009 provided the centerpiece for Thursday night’s concert of the Dallas Symphony at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Soloist Robert McDuffie won the audience over for the work with a passionate, virtuosic reading in which there is little physical or emotional rest for the soloist.

Still, for this listener at least, the performance posed many questions concerning the ultimate quality and durability of the piece. Glass’ essential minimalism, ..read more

This article appears in the January edition of D Magazine.

On a Tuesday in early November, Dallas Symphony Orchestra board chairman Blaine Nelson gathered a small group of upper-tier symphony donors to tell them the bad news: the DSO was running out of cash—fast. In fact, Nelson said, if the symphony didn’t find cash by the end of January, it would hit the $8 million limit on the line of credit it has been using to keep the doors open.

That the ..read more

First, the bad news. The brave tone of the press releases didn’t hide the hard facts: the two flagships of the classical musical establishment in Dallas, the Dallas Symphony and the Dallas Opera, made substantial, noticeable cuts in their core product. The 2012-13 classical subscription series of the Dallas Symphony will feature five fewer classical subscription concert weekends than in recent years (down from twenty-one to sixteen), and Dallas Opera subscribers were faced, for 2011-12, with a season that was ..read more

Two weeks ago, I reported on what might be termed a “post authentic” version of Handel’s Messiah presented by the Fort Worth Symphony at Bass Performance Hall. Sunday, I took in my second Messiah of the season, a purist, devotedly authentic version presented by the Dallas Bach Society at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Arlington and scheduled to be repeated tonight, Monday, December 19, at Morton H.MeyersonSymphonyCenter.

Both performances had much in common: both strove toward the lean textures, pungent sonorities, ..read more

With album titles like The Gift, Joy, and Christmas Romance who better to present the perfect Christmas package. Bass Performance Hall brings two-time Grammy-nominated Jim Brickman, his piano, and a number of special guests to the stage on December 19th and we’ve got a pair of tickets to giveaway. To get your hands on them all you have to do is answer the question in the form below: Christmas jingles weren’t Brickman’s first venture. How did he begin his music ..read more

They told Chris Davis in the early 80s that a Christmas record would never sell. Over twenty years and 27 million Christmas records later, Davis has done the impossible. Mannheim Steamroller is taking over the Meyerson Symphony Center on December 27th and we’ve got a pair of tickets for you. To get your hands on them all you have to do is answer the question in the form below: Mannheim Steamroller began as an alias for Chip Davis. Where does ..read more

Conductor David Thye of the music faculty of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary revealed visionary insight into Handel’s Messiah Monday night at Bass Performance Hall in the traditional annual presentation of the venerable oratorio by the Fort Worth Symphony.

Philosphically, one could question the annual presentation of the same work, year after year, to the point that it becomes more of an icon that a work of art. Likewise, one could question the necessity of trimming the piece into a version that ..read more

Feliz Navidad? More like Fiesta Navidad! The Dallas Symphony Orchestra partners with the Grammy Award-winning Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano for a Mexican/American holiday ensemble on December 6th and we have a pair of tickets to giveaway. Get your Santa hat, or your Sombrero, ready and answer the question in the form below: Which president did founder Nati Cano perform for at the White House? We’ll pick a winner after 3pm.

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The radio stations have officially committed to spreading Christmas cheer, so we no longer feel guilty about entering into a hotbed of holiday giveaways. The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra presents their sounds of the season with ‘Home for the Holidays,’ and we have a four pack for you and the family on November 26th. To get your hands on them all you have to do is answer the question in the form below: Conductor Ron Spigelman performed with several British ..read more

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 used to be one of the most frequently performed works in the orchestral repertoire. An increased interest and understanding of the composer’s other works has pushed it into the background in recent decades, allowing a fresh look at its remarkable and subtle structure, and its intriguing intertwining of virtuosity and expression.

However, Thursday night’s performance of the concerto at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, featuring soloist Lise de la Salle with the Dallas Symphony and guest ..read more

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Holiday concert, A World of Joy, will bring together everyone from conductors Joshua Habermann and Lawrence Loh, to the Christmas Celebration Children’s Choir. We’ve got two four packs of tickets to the performance on December 4th to give away. To get your hands on them all you have to do is answer the question in the form below: What was the date and location of the first official performance of the Dallas Symphony Chorus? We’ll pick a ..read more

One might, at first, feel a little misled by the designation of the mostly-French, totally Francophile program Tuesday at Bass Performance Hall as “An Evening in Paris.” There was little hint of chestnut blossoms or can-can dancers or moonlit fountains.

But, on a more profound level, the repertoire selected for this collaboration of violinist Cho-Liang Lin and pianist Jon Kimura Parker was very much a reflection of a time when Paris had become a focus of reexamination, of deepening of shadows, ..read more

The instrument made by the famous seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian craftsman, Antonio Stradivari, is on loan form an annoymous Fort Worth patron, and it will be played by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra’s Associate Concertmaster Swang Lin. The violin, which was built around 1685, is the second “Strad” at the service of the Fort Worth Orchestra. A 1710 Stradivari has been on loan with the orchestra for three decades, and it is played by concertmaster Michael Shih. Here’s the full release:

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At the risk of being labeled chauvinistic, I’ll opine that, while all music belongs, potentially, to all interpreters, performers often have a special insight into the music of their own country. No one should advocate limiting Tchaikovksy to Russian interpreters, for instance, or Gershwin to American musicians—or Smetana and Janacek to Czech performers. But just as sometimes Americans can bring a special flavor to Gershwin, and Russians often manage to bring a unique perspective to Tchaikovsky, Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa ..read more

On the heels of the naming of Dallas Symphony Orchestra Artist Director Jaap van Zweden as conductor of the year by Musical America, the Dallas Symphony has announced a new business plan which will cut the number of classical series performances but increase the number of community appearances. The release also states that the number of concerts van Zweden and Pops director Marvin Hamlisch conduct each season will stay the same. From Chairman of the Board Blaine Nelson.

“Given the fiscal ..read more

This past weekend, the Soundings new music series, now in its second year at the Nasher Sculpture Center, once again delivered a flawlessly paced program in which the classical tradition intertwined convincingly with frontline musical innovation. And, as usual, musicians from the Yellow Barn Chamber Music Festival inVermontprovided the core of the material.

For this concert, traditionally trained musicians from Yellow Barn (violinist Anna Elashvili, violinist Keats Dieffenbach, violist Margaret Dyer, and cellist Hamilton Berrywere joined by members of Checkpoint KBK, ..read more

The disparity between old and new, serious and “non-serious,” and highbrow and lowbrow is a running theme throughout all art forms, but for various reasons the argument is especially pronounced in modern music. Differing opinions on the relevancy of certain eras or the legitimacy of particular styles can have an impact that ranges anywhere from humorous to devastating. Indeed, history has shown how consideration of this kind can manipulate audiences, patronage, the part of town that an event is held, ..read more