Texas Classical Review

Guest conductor Tabitha Berglund, violin soloist Melissa White and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra captivated the audience at the Meyerson Symphony Center Thursday night with a new concerto by Composer-in-Residence Sophia Jani coupled with Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy and Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, Op. 45.

Berglund began the program with Tchaikovsky’s overture, drawing out the solemn introductionbefore launching into the vehement theme embodying the feud between the Capulets and Montagues. A brief respite in the conflict allowed the second theme conveying the love of the titular characters to emerge in successively fuller settings.  Berglund deftly steered the orchestra through the various guises of the love theme as it alternated with passages of conflict before culminating in an anguished rendition expressing despair for the star-crossed lovers before giving way to the overture’s somber conclusion.

The world premiere of Sophia Jani’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra followed with Melissa White as soloist.  The extended consonant soundscapes of Janis concerto provided a distinct contrast to the more traditional Russian pieces on the program, yet it proved to be the hit of the evening.

The German composer wrote the concerto during an extended stay at her Bavarian childhood home in an area adjoining forests and a nearby lake.  She explained that her return to this environment brought new perspectives on her personal experiences there and prompted similar reflections on the nature of traditions, particularly those involving the genre of the concerto.

White opened the first of the three movements with a series of quiet arabesques that developed into gentle arpeggios. The orchestra under Berglund provided soft, sustained accompaniment consisting of harmonic drones, chordal washes, and soft percussive sounds frequently interspersed with layers of gentle ostinatos that suggested sounds of nature such as birds or insects, all periodically punctuated by outbursts from percussion and brass.  The tone of White’s violin was clear and resonant and just loud enough to be heard over the ensemble, allowing her lines to blend in and out of the larger texture.

As the piece continued, two slight yet distinct changes appeared to indicate the onset of the second movement.  White’s solo part became less active, consisting of longer sustained notes that began to shift through slow glissandi, a gesture that the violins in the orchestra began to imitate.  The orchestra then gradually faded to silence, at which point White took up the cadenza. 

Instead of a cadenza built on rapid passagework for virtuosic display, Jani opted for an approach that maintained the focus on sustained calm that informed the rest of the piece.  The virtuosic element came in the form of extreme register, as White’s sustained notes sounded successively higher until the pitches were barely discernible.  The cadenza led to a return of the arabesques from the beginning, initiating a reprise of the first movement, but at a different pitch level, suggesting change and even progression within the apparent stillness. 

The quiet intensity of the concerto was very compelling and received the most enthusiastic response of the program; the audience gave the work a standing ovation and brought both White and Jani back for repeated curtain calls.

Curiously, Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, which made up the second half, were also a product of that composer’s reflection on his past, evident in the number of quotations that Rachmaninoff included from previous works.  Coming after the relative homogeneity of the violin concerto, the abundance of musical ideas in the Symphonic Dances seemed almost overwhelming.

Each of the three movements consisted of a succession of wildly varying dance episodes linked by a common thread, whether being bookended by the animated Russian dance heading up the first movement, the droll and mysterious waltz character informing the second or the eccentric, almost comical allusions to the Dies Irae melody that mark the third.  

Throughout the dances, Berglund put the DSO through its paces, marshaling the string section for lush, expansive melodies, cajoling the woodwinds alternately into delicate interludes or grotesque textures, rallying the brass for resounding declamations and prompting color and rhythmic emphasis from the percussionists. 

The DSO’s rollicking performance of the Symphonic Dances brought the evening to a spirited close and yet, even after the suite’s energy, variety and good humor, the violin concerto and Melissa White’s performance remained the most memorable features of the evening’s program.

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