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arts entertainmentPerforming Arts

A day late, elegant Mozart and Strauss from Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony

Weather delayed the program’s opening night.

This wasn’t the season the Dallas Symphony Orchestra originally planned. But after the coronavirus pandemic doomed the last months of the 2019-20 season, DSO management and musicians were determined to resume live performances in 2020-21.

With musicians reduced to widely spaced chamber-orchestra numbers, with very limited audiences in the Meyerson Symphony Center, the DSO has adjusted with some imaginative programming. Especially with music director Fabio Luisi now in town for four different programs, the concerts have been especially enjoyable — touched, in fact, by magic.

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Bitter cold and icy streets prompted cancellation of Thursday’s performance, but Friday’s program of Mozart’s G major Violin Concerto (K. 216) and Strauss’ Le bourgeois gentilhomme Suite was a delight through and through. Offhand, I couldn’t actually think of a previous live experience of the Strauss.

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Although the medium of incidental music largely disappeared by the first third of the 20th century, preludes, interludes and dances — even background music — accompanied spoken plays as far back as ancient Greece. Strauss assembled this suite of nine movements from incidental music he composed in 1912 for a German adaptation of Molière’s eponymous 1670 comédie-ballet.

The story is of a prosperous middle-class tailor’s son who tries to acquire the manners of an aristocrat, from courtly dancing and fencing to grand banqueting. Strauss’ music occasionally suggests the 17th century, and even gussies up a couple of dances from Molière’s original Jean-Baptiste Lully accompaniment.

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Replete with Strauss’ luscious harmonies and surprising progressions, the score is a brilliantly colored instrumental showpiece. Here and there, it also confides that Monsieur Jourdain’s attempts to put on airs aren’t ultimately successful.

Luisi, with extensive operatic experience, clearly has a flair for dramatic music, and he certainly brought out this score’s rich variety of wit, color and sheer sensuousness. Conducting without a baton, he shaped and balanced the music as lovingly as a sculptor.

Fabio Luisi (right) conducts Mozart Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra in G Major, K....
Fabio Luisi (right) conducts Mozart Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra in G Major, K. 216, with violinist Alexander Kerr (left) at the Meyerson on Feb. 19. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)
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With musicians widely spread, with so much going on in the music, coordination understandably slipped briefly in a couple of spots. Overall, though, one could only marvel at the élan and elegance of one musician, or pair of musicians, after another. With so many worthy of note, I can cite only co-concertmaster Nathan Olson, who tossed off flourishes with the greatest aplomb, and principal cellist Christopher Adkins.

Concertmaster Alexander Kerr was the soloist in the Mozart, supplying silvery tone and apparently effortless technical finesse, if also a few rushed phrase endings. But there was more: an elegance of line and taper, and finely honed interactions with the orchestra. Stylish cadenzas were by pianist-musicologist Robert Levin, an authority on Mozartean performance practice.

Luisi and the orchestra did their part in those sophisticated interactions, with well sprung rhythms and suavely tapered phrases. The big moments were generous in amplitude, but never forced or overdone; the orchestra backed off just so when accompanying the solo violin.

Details

A few tickets are available for the 2:30 p.m. Sunday repeat at the Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora. The concert will also be available for video stream on March 2. Video tickets $10; season pass $125. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org

UPDATED, Feb. 20 at 9:18 a.m.: This story has been updated to reflect new ticket availability.