In a striking departure from his originally announced program, Pianist Emanuel Ax offered up a concert devoted entirely to the genre of the theme and variations Tuesday night at Bass Hall.

Although the bulk of the program was given over to recognized masterpieces from the Austro-German tradition, Ax opened the evening with a pungent twentieth-century American work, Copland’s Piano Variations of 1930. Still ten years away from the loveable nationalism of Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, and the Fanfare for the Common Man ..read more

If you haven’t already, check out this report on Art & Seek from Jerome Weeks, who publishes the memo (below) sent out by Dallas Symphony Orchestra board chairman Blaine Nelson, updating staff and musicians about the symphony’s current financial state. In the memo, Nelson suggests a number of routes currently being explored by the DSO, including, but not limited to, a possible merger with the Dallas Opera and “addressing the potential requirements of a possible state of insolvency.”

As Weeks reports, ..read more

Friday night at the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Soundings chamber music series turned to the stepchild of musical genres—the etude, or caprice—to make, as always, an unexpected musical statement, and to make that statement in unexpected ways.

And, as usual, the event challenged preconceived notions of the function and format of a classical music concert. The event opened with the downstairs auditorium of the Nasher darkened and the two performers of the evening, violinist Anthony Marwood and pianist Aleksandar Madzar silhouetted ..read more

Tuesday night, a one-time only special performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under the baton of music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya at Bass Performance Hall celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the first concert of the Fort Worth Symphony.

In all honesty, the history of that organization has not been smooth or unbroken—there are long stretches during the intervening years in which there was no Fort Worth Symphony, and the organization of a fulltime professional ensemble as well as the building a permanent ..read more

Thursday night at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Guest conductor James Gaffigan and the Dallas Symphony presented a program made up entirely of works of Sibelius and Grieg. On first glance, such a program might appear to be inherently problematic. Both composers came from Europe’s cold northern edge; both are late romantic and, though hardly identical, share many stylistic features. Neither, though both are much beloved, rank in the top echelon of the musical pantheon.

But, while contradicting some of the ..read more

Any hippies in the house? Environmentally conscious music lovers, perhaps? Don’t be afraid to raise your hands. We’ve got a show for you (and tickets, too).

The Lone Star Wind Orchestra is celebrating Earth Day to the tune of dance-inspired music. The special concert is titled “As the World Dances,” and will be held at the Eisemann Center on April 22 at 2:30 pm.

Need more info? We’re told that award-winning composer Carter Pann will appear at the concert as a featured ..read more

Sigh, why is this not surprising? After all, it seems like the trend on east side of Flora St. these days is to run organizations without a boss. Last week we learned that the AT&T Performing Arts Center was not going to search for a new CEO anytime soon after the abrupt departure of Mark Weinstein. Now, this notice drops in the inbox: the Dallas Symphony, which has been operating without a CEO since Bill Lively’s abrupt departure a year ago, ..read more

Baritone Nathan Gunn and his wife, pianist Julie Gunn, subbed in for soprano superstar Deborah Voigt Tuesday night on the Cliburn Concert Series at Bass Performance Hall, anchoring their performance with Robert Schumann’s song cycle Dichterliebe (Poet’s Love).

This particular cycle offers plenty of challenges for both pianist and singer—and plenty of rewards for the attentive listener. But the principal obstacles offered here are not physical (indeed, a number of the songs are standard assignments for young students). No, the demands ..read more

Dallas Symphony music director Jaap van Zweden tends to avoid the traditional overture-concerto-intermission-symphony formula for orchestra concerts. At Thursday night’s concert at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, he embraced that recipe but took it in new directions.

In the slot usually assigned, in the tried-and-true manner, to an ear-warming curtain-raiser, Van Zweden and the orchestra presented the twelve-minute Dark Waves of  John Luther Adams (who should not be confused with contemporary composer John Adams, whose presidential-sounding name already stirs a little bewilderment). A twelve-minute compositional tour-de-force that may be taken as either hyper-abstract and minimalist (there is very little variation in pitch and no evident break in phrase) or hyper-representational—in that it quite convincingly evokes the rise and fall of an ocean wave—Dark Waves captures the ears, and, after a minute or two, the imagination of the listener with a flawless marriage of symphonic and synthesized sound. (I was somewhat surprised to find that my own immediate reaction was considerably more enthusiastic than that of the people sitting around me.)

In the slot usually assigned to a concerto, Van Zweden presented, instead of an instrumental soloist, German baritone Matthias Goerne. And, instead of a traditional orchestral song cycle (or a variety pack of operatic excerpts such as one might have expected in an orchestral concert featuring a vocal soloist in times past), Van Zweden and Goerne presented a montage of songs by Schubert and Richard Strauss. Conductor and soloist clearly wished to make a point here, with the intertwining of Schubert’s early and Strauss’ late romanticism. Even the fact the Strauss songs were orchestrated by the composer and the Schubert songs, originally for voice and piano alone, were orchestrated by other composers, added an intriguing aspect to the event.

The sheer beauty of Goerne’s voice as well as his deeply intelligent, obviously passionate reading of the songs was constantly engaging. Here, however, in contrast to my experience with the opening work, I found myself a little less enthusiastic than the folks sitting around me, wishing for a little more contrast and maybe just a touch more direction and obvious momentum in the artificial arrangement.

The evening closed with another refreshing alternative in the spot usually reserved for a major symphony or similar work. Shostakovich’s Ninth can be taken in many ways—rather obviously as an essay in traditional symphonic form, but also as a showpiece for orchestral color and a hearty workout for the winds. Van Zweden chose to underline the darker aspects of this outwardly light-hearted work, composed during the closing years of World War II, at a time when the Russian people, having thrown off the horrors of the Nazi invasion, faced a return to brutal Stalinist tyranny with no end in sight. For this listener, Van Zweden’s reading of Shostakovich’s Ninth produced a complex combination of hidden sorrow and forced rejoicing quite appropriate to the score.

The Soundings “New Music at the Nasher” series, presented at the Nasher Sculpture Center under the direction of Seth Knopp, has, since fall of 2010, brought a breath of fresh air to the Dallas classical music scene with an emotionally intoxicating blend of rule-breaking and innovation, including considerable theatricality and literary content. For Friday night’s “Classical Tradition/Musical Innovation” concert, the series made a strong turn toward a more subtle agenda, focused on an ensemble of flute, viola, and harp in ..read more

Guest conductor John Nelson once again lived up to his reputation as one of the leading interpreters of large-scale choral-orchestral works of our time as he guided the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Chorus through the labyrinthine grandeur of Berlioz’s Te Deum Thursday night at Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

The work, an opulently romantic nineteenth-century setting of a fourth-century Latin hymn, is anything but churchly in mood or outlook; Berlioz took every hint contained in the almost austere text to create ..read more

Here are two things hard to come by in Dallas: an evening of serious (what used to be wrongly called “classical”) music that stunningly combines the old and the new, the conservative and the avantgarde; and a pair of arts patrons who keep themselves well away from the social circuit and the society pages.

Now in its second season, Soundings: New Music at the Nasher has produced this city’s most exciting and intelligent musical programming in the 40 years I have ..read more

For all of you musical purists out there, we’ve got three pairs of tickets up for grabs to the Lone Star Wind Orchestra’s tribute to American composers on Sunday, March 4th at 4:30 p.m.

Yep, that’s right. Not one, but three of you are going to get the chance to impress a date with the music at the Youth Winds “An American Portrait” concert. Swoon over the works of Frank Ticheli, Donald Grantham and Robert Russell Bennett as they come to ..read more

Guest conductor Ed Spanjaard served up a sometimes illogical but generally intriguing menu for his appearance with the Dallas Symphony Thursday at MortonH.MeyersonSymphonyCenter. The opening item, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, appeared to have been chosen primarily as a showcase for Shannon Lee, a young Canadian-born violinist who grew up inPlano and who is currently a student atColumbiaUniversity. Orchestra member Jan Mark Sloman is Lee’s principal teacher; she has a promising career well underway, with a number of somewhat significant competition wins ..read more

The Washington Post looks into the growing trend of performing arts organizations broadcasting their productions to movie theaters around the world. The National Theatre does it. The Los Angeles Philharmonic will broadcast its Mahler’s Eighth, performed by more than 1,000 musicians in Caracas, Venezuela. And at the Angelika this week, you can go and watch a guided walk through of the Leonardi da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery in London.

New York’s Metropolitan Opera, of course, was the pioneer in movie theater performance, and despite initial skepticism from critics, the company has turned the broadcasts, along with accompanying DVDs and recordings, into a profitable business model.

Critics have had to eat their words, since the HD broadcasts are the most successful single element of Gelb’s tenure, and have proved truly visionary. They have raised the profile of opera, created excitement where there was none, and rather than bankrupting the company, as many predicted, they have made money. In 2010-11 they netted an impressive $11 million.

But the Met has a particular brand and audience, built over decades of international radio broadcasts, so the model isn’t exactly replicable for other groups. That has not stopped ballet, theater, music, and other companies from trying. What many have found, though, is  is that not unlike their actually live performances, theater broadcasts require a good deal of marketing to sell tickets. And the competition – deep-pocketed movie studies – is steep.

Photo Marcello Giordani and Angela Meade will perform in the Met’s upcoming broadcast of Verdi’s Ernani.

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