A most enjoyable program of music unlikely to be heard anywhere else around here was served up Tuesday night by the Dallas Chamber Symphony. At least a quick search turned up no recent record of any other area performance of these three pieces for string orchestra.
The first half of the Moody Performance Hall concert was devoted to two works by English composers. Elgar’s 1905 Introduction and Allegro certainly defies latter-day misperceptions of the composer as all stiff upper lip. No, there’s real passion as well as great tenderness here, and artistic director Richard McKay brought out both.
This is another of the area’s part-time orchestras, with a lot of younger musicians, but McKay had it playing with assurance as well as generous expressive flexibility. The solo quartet passages were nicely handled by violinists Kazuhiro Takagi and Martha Walvoord, violist Misha Galaganov and cellist Nikola Nino Ruzevic.
Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Variants on “Dives and Lazarus” was warmly played, too, with Alison Read supplying the harp part. The opening tempo struck me as too slow, judging from modern recordings, but McKay must have been close to the score’s marking of 68 beats per minute.
The real surprise came in the concert’s second half, the G minor Serenade for Strings by the mostly forgotten German composer Carl Reinecke. A contemporary of Bruckner and Smetana, Reinecke lived from 1824 to 1910. Taught by Mendelssohn, Schumann and Liszt, he in turn was an influential teacher at the Leipzig Conservatory and led the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1860 until 1895.
His Flute Concerto and Flute Sonata Undine are sometimes performed today, but virtually unknown is a prolific output of operas, oratorios, symphonies, piano concertos, chamber music and piano pieces. His G minor Serenade, dating from 1898, was the last of nine such works.
Although Reinecke was considered conservative in his day, the G minor Serenade sounds very au courant for 1898. Indeed, six movements contrasting ebullience and reflection could pass for a cross between Dvorák and Elgar. The writing is deft and effective, and McKay led a wonderfully engaged and engaging performance. Ruzevic was the expressive cello soloist in the Cavatine movement.
Unfortunately, all three pieces suffered from overly forced fortissimos that overloaded the acoustics of Moody Performance Hall. With a mere 30 players, the sound was simply too loud at times for music calling for lighter touches. It didn’t help that the hall’s adjustable acoustical banners were almost fully retracted for maximum “liveness.” More sound absorption would have been a good idea — as well as more reserve with those fortissimos.
McKay’s rambling spoken introductions — before every piece — were also amplified to the levels of a sports arena. A brief, well-thought-out introduction before each half would have been OK. For future reference, Vaughan Williams would have pronounced the first name of his folksong theme “dye-veez.”
And next time, please give us enough light to read titles and movements in the printed program.
