Hadelich excels in Dallas Symphony program of Brahms, Bruckner
Thursday’s program by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Fabio Luisi, included Johannes Brahms’ Violin Concerto and Anton Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony. The combination gave audiences a glimpse into a debate surrounding the two composers since their days as contemporaries in late 19th-century Vienna: the terse, tightly constructed, Beethoven-inspired music of Brahms versus the sprawling, prodigious, Wagner-inspired music of Bruckner.
The compact dynamism inherent in the Brahms concerto was given a boost by the equally compelling dynamism of guest soloist Augustin Hadelich. Named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America, Hadelich showed why he is described as one of the greatest violinists of our time. Following the concerto’s grand orchestral introduction, Hadelich dominated the performance visually even as he was complemented sonically by the orchestra. From his first notes, Hadelich seemed poised for action, here performing rapid arpeggios and other virtuosic figuration, and there eliciting singing lines covering the entire register of his instrument.
All the while, his attention seemed focused inwardly on the music, interrupted only briefly during the few times that his eyes met those of Luisi in anticipation of the next structural cue. Luisi himself is a consistently dynamic figure on the podium, and yet it was difficult to take one’s eyes off of Hadelich’s commanding presence.
Highlights of the already memorable performance included the cadenza toward the end of the first movement – a solo passage distilling the dazzling display and lyricism of the soloist’s part overall – and the Finale, with its boisterous Hungarian-styled main theme voiced in challenging double stops that Hadelich performed flawlessly. The concerto prompted three curtain calls for Hadelich, the third due to the persistent audience applause despite the raising of the house lights for the intermission.
In contrast to the bold yet succinct verve of Brahms’s concerto, Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony evoked an extended emotional journey from anticipation to grief, resolution, and apotheosis over its four movements. Maintaining a coherent dynamic trajectory over the course of the expansive symphony, Luisi guided the DSO through the multiple episodes comprising each movement, resulting in a palette of shifting instrumental colors not unlike changes of registration on an organ. (Bruckner was a renowned organist as well as a composer.)
The Adagio is the best-known part of the symphony; its funereal character is attributed to Bruckner’s learning of the death of his hero, Richard Wagner, while composing the work. Luisi facilitated the movement’s dialogue between a dirge-like melody sounded by the brass (augmented by Wagner tubas) and a declamatory lament sounded by the full strings, ultimately bringing the two sections together in an elegiac conclusion to the movement.
Similar juxtapositions of orchestral choirs occurred in the other three movements to denote successive themes, usually by contrasting the strings and brass. Occasionally, wind instruments formed a third choir (headed by principals David Buck, Erin Hannigan, and Gregory Baden on flute, oboe and clarinet, respectively), providing pastoral respites from these heavier passages, but otherwise the winds tended to augment one or the other of the brass or strings. The orchestra collectively followed Luisi’s lead as he shaped the distinct characters of the continual episodes into a cohesive emotional arc culminating in the spiritual uplift conveyed by the finale.
Such climactic moments in this symphony, like the sustained full brass chords, vociferous unison melodies, and other vivid gestures, recalled similar passages from Wagner’s Ring Cycle, performed by the Dallas Symphony last fall, only this time with no onstage narrative to give context to their power. Instead, Luisi harnessed the symphony’s internal drama to bring forth the full magnitude of Bruckner’s work from the complementary sections of the DSO, using his own authoritative presence on the platform.
The DSO may not have settled any debates over the respective merits of Brahms and Bruckner as composers, but their performance Thursday, especially with the participation of Augustin Hadelich, gave the audience a compelling forum for considering them.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. dallassymphony.org
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