Rarely do I attend a classical music concert in Dallas and know no one in the audience. But that’s how it was Tuesday night when the Dallas Chamber Symphony played at Moody Performance Hall. Reaching otherwise untapped audiences is commendable. And it was a good crowd for a school night.
Led by music director Richard McKay, the DCS fills a useful niche, offering music best served by an ensemble smaller than a full symphony orchestra. The DCS also has offered chamber-orchestra performances of Brahms symphonies — surprising, to be sure, but with precedents in the works’ first performances. The 750-seat Moody is an appropriate size for the group, and adjustable acoustics can be fine-tuned for the repertory.
Tuesday’s concert opened with a welcome chance to hear Antonín Dvořák’s Op. 39 Czech Suite. Composed in 1879, between the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, it consists of a Prelude, three movements inspired by Bohemian dances, and a “Romance.” Aside from the finale, incorporating the shifting two- and three-beat patterns of the Czech furiant, it’s mostly gentle music, and unmistakably Dvořák.
That said, Tuesday’s performance lacked energy and shape. Indeed, it sounded a rehearsal away from full readiness, with some fuzzy ensemble and less than tidy upper-register playing from the violins.
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To anyone familiar with Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, for cello and orchestra, Tuesday’s performance often would have sounded, well, unfamiliar.
The piece has usually been performed in a version much edited and revised by its dedicatee and first performer, the German cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen. Alexander Hersh, the soloist here, opted for Tchaikovsky’s original version, uncovered in the 1950s. The variations are disposed in a different order, and some of the solo writing is quite different.
Hersh’s biography tells us he’s won numerous competitions, including the prestigious Naumburg, and he “marries his love of classical music with short films, comedy, and themed merchandise.”
He’s clearly a showman, taking a playful, even irreverent, approach to the Tchaikovsky. With a bright and somewhat granular tone from his G.B. Rogeri cello, he displayed the technical goods for the piece, and McKay and the orchestra collaborated ably.
Authentic Tchaikovsky or not, this version of the Rococo Variations struck me as less satisfying than the familiar revision, and Hersh’s performance struck me as a little too self-conscious. But the audience gave it a standing ovation, which Hersh rewarded with Italian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima’s solo-cello Lamentatio.
With lots of double-stops, some whizzing by at daunting speeds, and various vocalizations, it hardly seemed a lamentation. But it was dispatched with flair and obviously dazzled the audience.
Mozart’s Prague Symphony (No. 38, in D major) got the evening’s best performance. Here everyone seemed on the same wavelength. The spooky first-movement introduction could have used more impetus, but otherwise the music was smartly paced, shaped and directed.
It was good to hear trumpet parts just lightly touched in — 18th-century trumpets weren’t loud. But it was a pity dialogues between first and second violins weren’t brought out by seating the sections on opposite sides of the stage, as they now are at Dallas Symphony concerts.
One request: May we have at least half lighting during the concert, to allow reading the movement markings in the program?
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