Has it really come to this? Patrons arriving for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra concert Friday night were met at doors by uniformed security personnel demanding to examine women's purses. A sign forbade any bag larger than 12" by 12" by 4." An imposition as offensive as it is ridiculous, it's from Bass Performance Hall management. If I'd been a woman with a purse, I would have turned around and refused to enter.
That said, with music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya back on the podium, it was good to hear the FWSO again sounding like a very good orchestra. After a four-month strike over threatened salary cuts, finally resolved with a new contract, the first two classical concerts of 2017 were led by decidedly sub-standard guest conductors.
Again and again, I marveled at the precision and finesse of the orchestral playing in the Dvořák Cello Concerto, marred only by overly aggressive brass at the end. Harth-Bedoya shaped the music quite nicely, with particularly lovely contributions from the winds.
The German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser tore into his first entrance with a fury better suited to Shostakovich. His was nothing if not an extrovert interpretation, and he certainly had the chops for it--drawing a standing ovation. I hear this as a subtler, less forced piece, though, with less grunt and grain to the bowing, although Moser did supply some fine pianissimos.
The concert opened with the world premiere of La Madre de Agua (Mother Water) by Victor Agudelo, a 30-something Colombian with a doctorate in composition, theory and conducting from the University of Memphis. Commissioned by Harth-Bedoya as an orchestration of an earlier chamber work, it purportedly evokes a water nymph of Colombian legend.
At least on first hearing, I heard nothing very watery aside from some strummed piano strings. The nine-minute piece makes much of shifting rhythms, sometimes pounding, sometimes elaborately layered, with suggestions of South American folk dances. In a more reflective middle section, a solo oboe introduces a three-note motif that the composer, interviewed onstage, said represents a lullaby. But the orchestra again whips up another great commotion to end the piece.
We practically have to beg the Dallas Symphony to program organ-and-orchestra works for the massive Fisk organ in the Meyerson Symphony Center. Undeterred by the absence of a pipe organ at Bass Hall, the FWSO used a digital imitation for the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony; Joseph Butler made it sound better than most, with booming pedal tones. A woman in the audience quite visibly recorded the performance--and a veritable symphony of coughs from the audience--on her smartphone.
Harth-Bedoya paced the symphony's first half sensibly, and again the orchestra played very well, except when the brass got too loud. Tempos in the second half kept getting pushed, though, and hurdles rushed. What should have been exhilarating sounded more frantic than it should have.
Former classical music critic of The Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell now covers the beat as a freelancer.
Plan your life
Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce, Fort Worth. $23 to $88. 817-665-6000, fwsymphony.org.
