{"id":223754,"date":"2025-09-13T14:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T14:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/223754\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T14:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T14:23:10","slug":"dallas-symphony-opens-with-barber-beethoven-and-john-adams-harmonielehre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/223754\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas Symphony opens with Barber, Beethoven and John Adams\u2019 \u2018Harmonielehre\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

For an orchestra that\u2019s been playing to too many empty seats in recent years, Friday night\u2019s opening concert of the Dallas Symphony<\/a>\u2019s classical season seemed an odd mix.<\/p>\n

Social media ads made a big deal of Emanuel Ax playing Beethoven\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 3, and the program opened with Samuel Barber\u2019s aptly flashy Overture to The School for Scandal. But the second half of the concert, at the Meyerson Symphony Center, was devoted John Adams\u2019 44-minute Harmonielehre, not exactly easy listening. <\/p>\n

Connoisseurs of the American composer\u2019s oeuvre consider the 40-year-old triptych one of his masterpieces. But its busy overlays of pulsings, throbbings and twitters, with occasional brass blasts \u2014 and free-range quasi-melodies \u2014 are a lot to digest. And it does go on.<\/p>\n

It would be worth programming later in the season, but for opening night? <\/p>\n

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It seemed doubly unfortunate to open the season without the orchestra\u2019s music director, Fabio Luisi<\/a>, who isn\u2019t booked here until Oct. 2. But guest conductor David Robertson led clearly and authoritatively, and the orchestra played impressively well after two months away from classical concerts.<\/p>\n

For my money, Adams\u2019 program notes explaining inspirations behind the three movements do nothing to elucidate the music. The untitled first movement, longest of the three, is mainly mobile, with shifting meters and accents. Melodic impulses, including a horn solo beautifully played by principal Daniel Hawkins, surface from the chatters and gurglings before the movement ends in a great surge of energy and volume.<\/p>\n

The second movement \u2014 titled, for what it\u2019s worth, \u201cThe Amfortas Wound\u201d \u2014 builds from hushed basses and cellos, the latter initiating lyric inclinations passed around the orchestra. A tartly harmonized quasi-chorale for winds is answered by brasses. A crescendo to a loud, dissonant climax is followed by a decrescendo into a more reflective epilogue.<\/p>\n

In \u201cMeister Eckhardt and Quackie,\u201d sonic glows and glistenings give birth to a lullaby of harmonies slowly gliding by. The music becomes more agitated, the pulsings more urgent, building to a heroic, brassy end.<\/p>\n

Keeping all those repetitive and shifting rhythms together is no small task, but Robertson\u2019s incisive beat and cues kept the orchestra alert and responsive.<\/p>\n

The Barber was quite brilliantly dispatched, the violins tautly coordinated and finely polished in ways they haven\u2019t always been in recent seasons.<\/p>\n

The Beethoven amply displayed Ax\u2019s nuanced command of tone and shape. But, with strings only slightly reduced, the orchestral sound was often too heavy and too loud for music conceived for smaller ensembles. <\/p>\n

A rather deliberate first-movement tempo fell shy of Beethoven\u2019s \u201callegro con brio\u201d marking. The concerto as a whole felt monumental when it wanted to be eager, comfortable when it wanted to be urgent.<\/p>\n

The audience loved it, though, and Ax supplied Liszt\u2019s gentle arrangement of Schubert\u2019s St\u00e4ndchen (Serenade) as an encore.<\/p>\n

Details<\/p>\n

Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. $37 to $184. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>Dallas Symphony changes drinks policy for classical concerts<\/a><\/p>\n

The orchestra announced the change in a quippy Instagram video this week. \u201cNo more \u2018where are my glasses?\u2019 moments!\u201d the caption read.<\/p>\n

\"Zachary<\/a>North Texas Giving Day sees record participation as nonprofits face funding challenges<\/a><\/p>\n

Over 3,600 nonprofits are participating in the 17th annual event to support the region<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For an orchestra that\u2019s been playing to too many empty seats in recent years, Friday night\u2019s opening concert…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":223755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,76314,7260,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-223754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-symphony-orchestra","11":"tag-performing-arts","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-tx","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115197445276902949","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}