That was an exciting Beethoven Fifth Symphony.
Leading the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Thursday night, music director Fabio Luisi wisely eschewed the overstuffed monumentality that became the default position for too many modern conductors in Beethoven symphonies. If a Beethoven symphony sounds comfortable, the performance has probably missed the point. Even for nominally slow movements Beethoven left pretty mobile beat-per-minute metronome markings.
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Luisi must have been right on Beethoven’s markings for the Fifth’s first two movements — the first edgy, bristling with nervous energy; the second flowing right along. The scherzo may have been even a hair faster than the metronome marking, demanding serious agility from cellos and basses (although they would have had an easier time of it had Luisi favored a lighter touch).
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The finale is actually marked a little slower than the scherzo, for a slightly nobler effect, but Luisi drove it hard. It was exciting, to be sure, but it did throw off the intended proportions of tempos.
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With gentler early-19th-century instruments, Beethoven never heard orchestral sounds as massive as the DSO’s climactic passages. But Beethoven so often seems to be straining at limits, so there was an argument for Luisi’s no-holds-barred approach. More introspective music was elegantly contoured, with particularly eloquent contributions from the winds, singly and in combinations.
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The concert, at the Meyerson Symphony Center, opened with the world premiere of Inscription, by contemporary American composer Raven Chacon. A visual artist as well as composer, drawing from his Navajo Nation heritage as well as avant-garde compositional effects, Chacon won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music with his Voiceless Mass, for organ, winds, strings, percussion and electronic sounds.
Inscription, a DSO co-commission with the American Composers Orchestra and Tucson Symphony, is Chacon’s first work for symphony orchestra. It’s a 14-minute mélange of mostly hushed slides, dissonances (some including between-the-notes microtones) and pulses, with occasional crescendos and decrescendos. Percussion instruments supply rattles, tinkles and the rushing sounds of hands rubbed over timpani heads.
Fourteen minutes of amorphous sonic effects isn’t my idea of fun or a compelling artistic experience. But Luisi supplied clear leadership and applause was enthusiastic, with Chacon appearing onstage for a bow.
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Poor Max Bruch. A German contemporary of Brahms, he composed three operas, three symphonies, three violin concertos and much else, but he’s remembered mainly for his G minor Violin Concerto (the first) and the Scottish Fantasy, also for violin and orchestra.
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The de facto Bruch concerto had a fine soloist Thursday in DSO concertmaster Alexander Kerr. He had assured flair for the showier parts, but in lyrical music he turned one shapely phrase after another.
Luisi was a true partner in shaping and directing the music, and the orchestra played with warmth and élan. I wondered only if some of the climaxes were louder than necessary in alternation with a solo violin.
Details
Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. $58 to $319. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.