Texas Classical Review

Guest conductor Daniele Rustioni led the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in music of Samuel Barber, Alfredo Casella and a Surprise Piece to open the program. 

The most stirring performance of the evening came with soloist Alexi Kenney in Barber’s Violin Concerto. In the first two movements, the orchestra and soloist tend to complement one another rather than act as antagonists.  The tone of Kenney’s violin was ideal for this interaction: rich and full, always distinct and yet blending smoothly with the ensemble when needed.  Kenney began the first movement with a song-like melody that was soon adopted by the string section.  A series of simple melodies followed, settling into a dialogue between the soloist’s initial lyrical air and a rustic tune originating from the winds.

In spite of the peaceful, bucolic nature of the musical material, Rustioni’s broad but measured gestures from the podium coaxed a subtle intensity from the orchestra, infusing it with a yearning that Kenney matched with his own phrasing.  The movement’s climax came with Kenney sounding the winds’ rustic tune in a spirited but contemplative manner that ushered in the movement’s calm ending.

Oboist Mark Debski opened the second movement with a reflective theme.  As Kenney responded with successive arabesques, Rustioni motioned for a gradual crescendo that blossomed into a brief, fervent outburst from the entire orchestra. Kenney’s phrasing and dynamics imbued the movement with a passion matched only by a complementing fervor from the orchestra under Rustioni.  When Kenney finally adopted the song introduced by Debski’s oboe, the effect was not so much one of resolution as of catharsis.

For the finale, the mood lightened and the relationship between soloist and orchestra appeared to shift as Kenney commenced a rapid-fire melodic figure that persisted throughout the movement.  Rustioni and the different sections of the DSO replied to this challenge with melodic fragments and syncopated pulses that worked to disrupt the underlying meter.  As the finale proceeded, Kenney and Rustioni infused the movement with its own intensity that the two both spurred and mirrored with their respective animated gestures before bringing the finale to a jolting end, literally leaping to face each other on the platform as if to square off.

Rustioni briefly remarked on Casella’s friendship with Mahler and admiration for the elder composer’s works as part of his introduction to Casella’s vividly dramatic Symphony No. 2, going on to describe Casella’s symphony as evoking a spiritual and eschatological journey, complete with the agonies of those in hell and a celestial apotheosis. 

The opening movement, a solemn funeral march marked by tolling bells, was interrupted by agitated strings that Rustioni whipped into a shrill, percussion-filled cacophony before reigning in the chaos for a return to the funeral march; after the third such cycle, Rustioni allowed the sonic whirlwind to end the movement. 

The brisk scherzo evoked a demonic chase scene, characterized and propelled by Rustioni’s dramatic motions.  Similarly, his taut direction both prompted and echoed the phrasings of the strings in their alternating laments of despair and appeals for solace in the slow movement.

The finale began as a grotesque military march with hints of the agitation and even stridency of the first movement before ultimately yielding in the coda to the sounds of heaven—including harps, ringing bells, and organ— and bringing the journey, the symphony and the evening to completion.

The experience of Casella’s symphony was thrilling and the DSO’s performance of it was unquestionably spectacular. That said, for all the Mahler influence that the work belies in its striking sound-world, the symphony doesn’t plumb the same depth as its Mahlerian models.

A startling feature of the evening’s Surprise Piece was its accessibility; it was clearly tonal, pastoral, and belied any expectations of modernist dissonance, mechanical rhythms or harsh timbres.  A wistful trumpet melody began the piece before it was taken up by the winds.  Rustioni maintained a calm, relaxed tempo as he brought in the strings. 

Rustioni uncovered the mystery after the intermission, identifying the piece as Blumine, the original slow movement for Mahler’s First Symphony that the composer dropped soon after that work’s premiere. Serendipitously, the Surprise Piece made for an inadvertent prelude to the Casella symphony that comprised the second half of the program.

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