‘Dives & Lazarus’ @ Dallas Chamber Symphony
—Wayne Lee Gay
It's in music that the British stiff upper lip gives way to blazing passion and softer emotion. Two contemporaneous (but quite different) masterpieces from the first half of the 20th century illustrated this in Tuesday's concert of the Dallas Chamber Symphony at Moody Performance Hall.
Artistic director Richard McKay conducted the orchestra in a configuration of thirty strings (plus harp for one of the works). The Chamber Symphony has, through recent seasons, formed itself into an ensemble ideally suited for the lively acoustic of the Moody, all the while exploring both recognized masterpieces and intriguing side roads of the repertoire. At the same time, McKay and the DCS have created an impressive record of commissioning and performing new scores for silent film classes and encouraging young cinematographers in the creation of collaborative projects.
For this concert, titled “Dives & Lazarus,” the focus was on traditional works for string orchestra, beginning with Elgar's gorgeous Introduction and Allegro of 1905. It draws on the tradition of the Prelude and Fugue (historically epitomized in keyboard works of J.S. Bach), but here is transformed into a canvas for a wide-ranging montage of emotions. Orchestrated with a separate string quartet distinct from the main orchestra, the Introduction and Allegro ranges from scintillating unison passage work and richly layered harmonies to tender, lyrical moments. Except for a tiny mishap in intonation early on in the quartet part, McKay and the orchestra produced a thrilling reading of the work, punctuated by that brilliant pizzicato exclamation point at the close.
Vaughan Williams' Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus for strings and harp (1939) functions as a traditional theme and variations, but is actually a set of consecutive harmonizations of different versions of the same English folk song, as gathered at various locations in England. Vaughan Williams here lavishes his almost miraculous command of modal counterpoint and string colors to create a stunning showpiece and profound tribute to traditional British rural life, evoking the history and landscape of Britain while transcending nationality.
The relatively small orchestra continued to resonate beautifully in the Performance Hall. Concertmaster Kazuhiro Takagi, a Tokyo-based musician who travels to Dallas frequently for concerts with the Dallas Chamber Symphony, shone in the lively violin obbligato solo that opens Variant III. Principal cellist Nikola Nino Ružekić, a Croatian-born member of the faculty at the University of North Texas, was equally impressive in the elegiac solo of the final moments.
Late German romantic composer Carl Reineke's Serenade in G minor from 1898 completed the agenda after intermission. Largely conventional in harmonic practice, and spread out over six movements, the Serenade has many interesting moments and numerous tricks, but didn't quite match the intensity of the Elgar and Vaughan Williams'works. Cellist Ružekić provided another high point in the "Cavatine" movement, a sort of melodic mini-concerto in 5/4 time; this listener would love to see this outstanding artist showcased again in the future.
WHEN: Concert performed on February 21, 2023
WHERE: Moody Performance Hall, Dallas
WEB: dcsymphony.org
