FORT WORTH \u2014 Are orchestra concerts too visually boring for our hyper-stimulated age? Some say so, and some orchestras have essayed various visual additions to performances. Whether they\u2019re enhancements or distractions can be argued.<\/p>\n
The Fort Worth Symphony<\/a> has added costumed actors and dancers to some concerts and presented semi-staged operas \u2014 even\u00a0Wagner\u2019s complete\u00a0Flying Dutchman<\/a>. Friday night\u2019s concert at Bass Performance Hall, billed as \u201cSpanish Masters: An Evening of Music and Art,\u201d included a performance of Manuel de Falla\u2019s\u00a0Three Cornered Hat\u00a0(El sombrero de tres picos) with over-the-stage projections of Spanish paintings from the Kimbell Art Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n That was the only wholly Spanish item on the program, which opened with the\u00a0Rapsodie espagnole\u00a0of French composer Maurice Ravel.\u00a0Neruda Songs, by American composer Peter Lieberson (1946-2011), set love poems \u2014 in Spanish \u2014 by the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda.<\/p>\n Lieberson\u2019s cycle was a five-part love song to his wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt\u00a0Lieberson, who in a too-short career developed almost a cult following. Already being treated for cancer, she died only a year after premiering the cycle in 2005.<\/p>\n The poems range from the symbolist imagery of the opening \u201cIf your eyes were not the color of the moon\u201d to clear-eyed contemplations of mortality. The orchestra writing represents latter-day impressionism, adding extra tang and ambiguity to passing harmonies, with brighter sonic splashes here and there.<\/p>\n Kelley O\u2019Connor has been a frequent performer of the cycle, and her experience told in vividly personalized and projected singing, with just enough metal to her mezzo.<\/p>\n As in the Ravel and Falla, the orchestra played splendidly for music director Robert Spano. The Falla had a particularly huge dynamic range, appropriately so, with bright flashes of color, but both it and the Ravel\u00a0evinced great care with nuances of rhythm, volume and color.<\/p>\n For the Falla, the orchestra played from stand lights, with lighting effects projected on the stage shell by Krista Billings. O’Connor also sang a couple of brief items from a box on the side of the stage.\u00a0Alas, shifting, panning images projected by designer Jamie Milligan on that huge screen over the stage \u2014 ranging from a medieval altarpiece to paintings by Vel\u00e1zquez, El Greco, Ribera, Murillo, Picasso and Mir\u00f3 \u2014\u00a0had nothing to do with the music.<\/p>\n The score was prepared, after all, for a 1919 ballet about a miller, his wife and a lecherous magistrate,\u00a0with sets and costumes by Picasso. The projected paintings\u2019 religious figures and dour and scowling faces were often utterly at odds with the musical goings-on.<\/p>\n That projections\u00a0can\u00a0dramatically enhance an orchestra concert was demonstrated last November in a St. Louis Symphony performance of Stravinsky\u2019s\u00a0Firebird. With illustrations from the original Ballets Russes production, the projections supplied play-by-play accounts of the ballet\u2019s action \u2014 who was doing what and when \u2014 occasionally pointing out details in the orchestrations. The FWSO\u2019s presentation showed no comparable thought.<\/p>\n Details<\/p>\n