Texas Classical Review

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra featured two pieces with widely divergent characters that nonetheless brought individual attention to several of the DSO’s principal players on Thursday night.  Guest conductor Jonathon Heyward, music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, joined piano soloist Benjamin Grosvenor in his Dallas debut for a dazzling performance of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 followed by the Symphony No. 9 of Dmitri Shostakovich. 

The bold opening fanfare of the Beethoven concerto launched the program, with the DSO’s initial tutti immediately answered by Grosvenor’s rippling arpeggios.  From the beginning, Heyward demonstrated assured leadership of the orchestra, precisely coordinating the orchestra’s accompaniment as the movement progressed.  Grosvenor’s strong yet fluid playing benefitted from his crisp, clear tone that enhanced his cascading arpeggios and dazzling scalar passages throughout the first movement.

A soft prelude from the strings initiated the Adagio, setting up a song-like figure from Grosvenor that subtly transformed into a gentle accompaniment for the lyrical trio of flutist  Hayley Grainger, clarinetist by Stephen Ahearn and bassoonist Ted Soluri. Heyward maintained a leisurely tempo and clear balance among the soloists.

Grosvenor duly set the finale in motion with a bold restatement of this theme that was promptly answered by the rest of the DSO. In this brisk rondo, Heyward vigorously directed both soloist and ensemble through its contrasting sections, with Grosvenor assuredly returning to the finale’s majestic principal theme.

Grosvenor’s encore, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, showed a lighter, more delicate side. His sparkling arpeggios perfectly captured the intricate play of flowing water implied in the piece’s title, offering a striking contrast to Beethoven’s more consciously assertive style.

Composed in 1945, Shostakovich cast his Ninth Symphony in an ironic and playful style that belied expectations of a grand, festive symphony celebrating the end of World War II, which may have contributed in part to the composer’s second fall from favor of the Soviet authorities in the mid-1940s. 

Much of the humor in the piece stems from its buoyant and spirited references to marches and military gestures that either resemble circus music or otherwise offer frenetic, at times manic, activity.  The characters of the five individual movements are also shaped in no small part by the relatively large number of solo passages, a feature noted by the composer himself.

The polite and graceful strings opening the piece were interrupted by a droll exclamation from Barry Hearn on trombone; this initiated a raucous march led primarily by James Romeo’s piccolo, joined periodically by concertmaster Alexander Kerr on violin. Heyward nimbly steered the march along its madcap course before it concluded with comic abruptness.

Gregory Raden began the Moderato with a mournful clarinet solo that was soon joined by soft strings and a second clarinet by Marci Gurnow before Raden passed his melody on to the flute of David Buck.

The Presto movement brought back the light and busy character of the first movement, this time with relentless activity in the string instruments underscoring a rapid duet between clarinet by Raden and flute by Buck.  A slowing of the tempo by Heyward signaled a transition directly to the Largo which, mirroring the introspective nature of the Moderato, alternately pitted an imperious, chant-like melody from the trombone section with a meditative dirge from the bassoon by Ted Soluri. 

Soluri’s lament quickly evolved into a jaunty melody signaling the Allegretto finale and a return to the lighter, quasi-march character of the first and third movements.  As before, the rapid tempo highlighted the humorous and even satiric quality of the music. In spite of the hectic pace, Heyward remained in complete control, his movements subtly mirroring the activity of the music as he bade the DSO to gradually increase the tempo further, slowly dissolving the humor into an underlying angst.  When the sudden ending came, as in the first movement, the effect was not so much comic as one of exhaustion.

The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday.  dallassymphony.org