Texas Classical Review

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra welcomed former assistant conductor Maurice Cohn for Thursday’s eclectic program spotlighting Brahms’s remarkable Double Concerto featuring violinist Chad Hoopes and cellist Jan Vogler.  

The program also included a “Surprise Opening Work,” for which the audience was asked to provide feedback, before closing with Kurt Weill’s Symphony No. 2.

The “Surprise Work” was the first in an initiative by music director Fabio Luisi meant to encourage the audience to experience an unfamiliar work without any preconceptions resulting from a title or attributed composer, instead focusing on their reactions to the music. 

Thursday’s piece began with relentless ostinatos sounded by mallet percussion, to which the other sections of the orchestra contributed brief, irregular melodic fragments. Poised in the center of the activity, Cohn coordinated the various instruments into a series of layers moving with inexorable precision, all of which were underscored by a solemn dirge from the low brass. 

About two-thirds of the way through, Cohn cued a lull in the commotion, allowing quiet, sustaining sonorities to provide a brief respite from the incessant bustle before concluding the piece with a return of the opening’s unremitting rhythms. 

The mystery music strongly evoked the post-minimalist style of John Adams. Following the intermission, Cohn announced the work as “Timber and Steel,” the third movement from the Earth Suite (2019) by British composer Dobrinka Tabakova.

The ensuing Brahms concerto commenced with a terse outburst from the orchestra, followed by impassioned statements from Vogler and Hoopes before Cohn and the orchestra resumed.  Vogler’s cello sounded rich and mellifluous, ranging from scarcely audible to matching the output of the entire orchestra.  Similarly, the clear, singing tone of Hoopes’s violin remained consistent through dynamic levels ranging from delicate to powerfully resonant.

The well-matched timbres of the soloists’ instruments mirrored their synergetic and collaborative playing of their closely aligned parts. Rather than set the concerto as a three-way contest, Brahms treats the two soloists as a cooperative duo that together sounds in opposition to the orchestra, a partnership that Hoopes and Vogler embraced fully.  

Throughout both the first and third movements, the solo parts included recurring interactive duets, octave and unison passages, and frequent trading of melodic fragments, all of which Hoopes and Vogler executed flawlessly and with verve.  Indeed, a listener could almost imagine the soloists’ roles taken by a single, complex instrument. During the second movement, the orchestra receded, allowing Vogler and Hoopes more space to engage in a broader conversation made up of more extended passages for each individually.

From the podium, Cohn mustered the DSO’s forces to match the energy of Vogler and Hoopes, alternately shaping the orchestra’s role as a foil to the soloists.

Overtly virtuosic display from either Hoopes or Vogler was conspicuous by its absence, perhaps belying the difficulty of the solo parts resulting not merely from their technical demands, but also from the attention required by each player to maintain the coordination and synergy between the soloists and preserve the duo’s role in the concerto overall.

In response to the audience’s fervent applause, Hoopes and Vogler returned to perform an encore of Reinhold Glière’s Prelude, Op. 39, no. 1.

Weill’s Symphony No. 2 complemented the energy of the first two pieces with its own rhythmic drive even if its sardonic character contrasted with the seriousness of the first half. The DSO under Cohn brought forth the symphony’s acerbic qualities fittingly, playing the waltz-like first movement just a bit too loud and earnest, so as to render it dryly comic, and exaggerating the dynamics and rhythms of the slow movement to enhance its resemblance to a Weimar dance band. 

For the finale, Cohn and the DSO left subtlety behind, infusing the already brisk opening theme with the madcap frenzy of a racing chase, and stressing the odd melodies of the intervening march episodes to the point of absurdity before accelerating pell-mell toward the symphony’s abrupt conclusion, after which the orchestra—and the audience—could take a much-needed breath. 

The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. dallassymphony.org