FORT WORTH \u2014 Familiar composers Joseph Haydn and Johannes Brahms, born almost exactly a century apart, were paired in the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra\u2019s Friday night concert. But one of the pieces was presented in a world premiere arrangement.<\/p>\n
With Haydn\u2019s\u00a0London\u00a0Symphony (No. 104) on the program, the obvious link was Brahms\u2019 so-called Variations on a Theme by Haydn (although the theme probably wasn\u2019t original with Haydn). The novelty, conducted by music director Robert Spano at Bass Performance Hall, was pianist Dejan Lazi\u0107\u2019s piano-concerto arrangement of Brahms\u2019 Double Concerto for violin and cello.<\/p>\n
A Croatian native trained in clarinet and composition as well as piano at the Salzburg Mozarteum, Lazi\u0107 has composed original works as well as an earlier piano-concerto version of Brahms\u2019 Violin Concerto. What\u2019s billed as the Brahms\/ Lazi\u0107 Piano Concerto \u201cNo. 4\u201d leaves the orchestral score untouched but adapts the solo parts for more or less Brahmsian pianistic effects.<\/p>\n
At intermission, I asked two musicians I greatly respect what they thought of the arrangement. The pianist didn\u2019t like it, thinking the piano writing could have been much more developed. The violinist very much liked it.<\/p>\n
I rather enjoyed it. Lazi\u0107\u2019s arrangement supplied pianistic sonorities that effectively filled in solo parts originally for just a violin and a cello. Whether unaccompanied or integrated within orchestral textures, the piano parts sounded plausibly Brahmsian to me. I\u2019d be glad to hear it all again.<\/p>\n
Brahms was no stranger to rearrangements. He developed his Piano Concerto No. 1 from a two-piano sonata and an intermediate symphonic version. And he produced piano arrangements of all four of his symphonies. Arnold Schoenberg transcribed Brahms\u2019 G minor Piano Quartet for symphony orchestra.<\/p>\n
Lazi\u0107 played his Double Concerto arrangement with panache \u2014 and generous expressivity where called for. Spano and the orchestra supplied spirited, authoritative collaboration.<\/p>\n
The Haydn Variations, marvels of rhythmic, textural and contrapuntal imagination, were well paced and shaped, although the orchestra wasn\u2019t always as finely focused as it was in the rest of the concert. The horns audibly enjoyed their jolly contributions in the sixth variation.<\/p>\n
The Haydn symphony was given a big-band treatment, complete with six double basses. I wished for a stylishly smaller ensemble and more lightness of touch. And longstanding evidence suggests a late 18th-century minuet like this \u2014 a scherzo in all but name \u2014 should go quite a bit faster than Spano\u2019s courtly pace.<\/p>\n
But overall, the performance was personable and caringly formed, and violins produced a particularly lovely silvery sheen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I rather like the current FWSO practice of introducing concerts with well-produced videos featuring members of the orchestra. The videos are projected on a large screen that\u2019s retracted before the performance. Friday\u2019s was amiably done by principal keyboardist Buddy Bray. But isn\u2019t it past time to put the national anthem to rest as a starter?<\/p>\n