Brahms & Franck @ Dallas Symphony Orchestra
—Review by Gregory Sullivan Isaacs
When the Dallas Symphony Orchestra took the stage on Friday evening, the arrangement of the players was noticeably different. DSO musical director Fabio Luisi has been experimenting with seating placement and acoustics in the Meyerson Symphony Center.
We are used to seeing the violin sections (first and second) grouped together on the conductor’s left side. Luisi split the two violin arrays, placing them on opposite sides of the stage. This arrangement is not all that unusual: some orchestral works actually require such separation.
Luisi’s most unusual experiment, though, was in switching the placement of the horns (previously called the French horns) and the brass (trumpets, trombones, and tuba). This put the assertive brass across the back of the stage on a riser, while exiling the horns to the floor right in front of the timpani. Balancing brass and horns with the full orchestra is always tricky but this change made it nearly impossible. (An aside: The legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski similarly experimented with orchestral seating arrangements, some of them quite odd. In one spectacular acoustic failure, he tried seating the brass in front of the string section.)
The weekend’s program consisted of two 19th-century works, Brahms’ First Piano Concerto and César Franck’s D minor Symphony. Both are romantic and passionate works that require careful control of the dynamics so that both endings are spectacular indeed. However, overblown fortissimo passages came more frequently than they should have in both works, requiring tutti overplaying to reach the intended thrilling conclusions.
Luisi tends toward delivering quite loud passages and scattering them throughout whatever he conducts. The program’s well-known pianist, Hélène Grimaud, took a more moderate approach in the Brahms and delivered some lovely playing as the piece progressed.
César Franck was primarily an organist, and his orchestrations reflect this. He treats the different families of instruments as if they are stops on the organ, adding and subtracting the different sounds for both texture and dynamics. Thus, his music, including this symphony, is often reminiscent of organ improvisation. Franck also created his own distinctive sound, which this brooding symphony demonstrates.
Luisi was in his element with this big, sprawling and romantic work, leading the DSO in a memorable performance. Right from the start (the opening theme is adapted from a Franz Liszt orchestral tone poem, Les Préludes) he created a world of sound that felt dark and foreboding.
The second movement features a sad and supple theme, appropriately scored for the plaintive sound of the English horn. David Matthews beautifully delivered this evocative theme with feeling and just the right amount of rubato. The final movement of the symphony brings some much-needed joy and exuberance to the end of the work. Previously occurring thematic material is incorporated, offering one last moment for reverie. But the celebratory mood cannot be suppressed for long.
Luisi and the orchestra received a well-deserved and spontaneous ovation for their performance of this rarely-heard (and increasingly well regarded) symphony.
WEB: dallassymphony.org
