Of five new or recent compositions booked on four Dallas Symphony Orchestra programs lately, only one is by a Dallas-based composer — and conceived for a specific DSO musician.
Jonathan Cziner’s Clarinet Concerto, to be premiered Nov. 20-22, was composed for principal clarinetist Gregory Raden, who’ll perform it with music director Fabio Luisi conducting. Also on the program are Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3, the sound of where I came from by Moni Jasmine Guo and Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.
With a doctorate from the Juilliard School, Cziner (pronounced ZYE-ner) lives in Dallas with his wife, DSO principal harpist Emily Levin, and he directs the modern-music series Voices of Change.
“It’s certainly influenced by Jewish music,” Cziner says of the concerto, “with my own kind of American orchestral sound.” The first movement, “Meditation,” accompanies the clarinet with only strings, percussion, harp and celesta. It’s influenced by cantorial chants sung in a synagogue — “very melismatic and expressive.”
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The short second movement, mostly a cadenza, introduces winds and horns. Trumpets, trombones and tuba make their entrance in the finale, “Rikudin,” which is strongly influenced by Klezmer dances.
Details
7:30 p.m. Nov. 20-22 at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. $39 to $206. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.
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