Programs don’t get more standard-rep than this: Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Fifth Symphony and Mozart’s A major Piano Concerto No. 23. But there’s a lot to be said for easing an orchestra into a new season with music that won’t require much mechanical assembly, to allow more attention to tones, balances and shapes.
The day is surely past when conductors could dismiss Beethoven’s beat-per-minute metronome markings for his symphonies as mistakes, or products of a broken metronome. More and more conductors are taking more seriously the timings, suggesting nervous energy more than grandeur. And more thought is given to implying the leaner sounds of early 19th-century orchestras, which were generally more like what we’d consider chamber orchestras.
Spano was pretty close to Beethoven’s metronome markings for the last three movements of the Fifth Symphony. The opening of the second movement, beautifully spun out by violas and cellos, had a lovely lilt. And Spano correctly paced the finale that bit statelier than the third movement. The first movement was slower than Beethoven’s marking, but with a large orchestra in a big hall one could make an argument for less frenzy.
There were many lovely pianissimos, but in more extrovert music Spano opted for weight and volume over sinew and clarity. It was more of the same in the Egmont Overture. Beethoven left no metronome markings here, but examples in the symphonies and the dramatic import of music introducing a 16th-century Flemish hero cry out for edge-of-seat excitement scarcely in evidence Friday.
Spano took a relatively big-band approach to the Mozart, too, and both he and Sham opted for comfortable tempos in the outer movements. But Sham, an easy first choice in the 2025 Cliburn, supplied unforced, luminous tone and graciously shaped phrases. And the finale did take off with considerable élan.
It’s a pity Spano didn’t have first violins on the left of the stage and seconds on the right, as both Mozart and Beethoven would have expected. Spano’s predecessor, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, did that for a good deal of his 20-year tenure, and that’s how the Dallas Symphony plays under its music director, Fabio Luisi.
Orchestra programs being typically international, it seems awkward that the FWSO starts every concert with the U.S. national anthem. But with Spano dedicating this concert to the victims of 9/11 it was entirely appropriate.
Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce streets, Fort Worth. $30 to $125. 817-665-6000, fwsymphony.org.