Dallas Symphony Orchestra Jaap van Zweden, conductor
Britten Violin Concerto op.15
“Classical music review: With loving, focused detail, Dallas Symphony Orchestra delivers a serious program”
11:48 PM CST on Thursday, February 18, 2010
By SCOTT CANTRELL / The Dallas Morning News
If you haven't heard the Dallas Symphony Orchestra lately, you owe it to yourself to hear the wonders Jaap van Zweden has worked. Two weeks in a row, and only halfway into his second season as music director, the Dutch conductor has turned out performances of a focused intensity and musical finesse unimaginable a couple of seasons ago.
This week's program is a serious one: Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto and Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony. The former was completed just as World War II was breaking out; but it's also haunted by an earlier visit to Spain, where Fascist stirrings would soon explode in civil war. The Shostakovich was composed during the Nazis' three-year-plus siege of Russia's great imperial city and bears war's wounds along with a promise of triumph.
Although the two composers met only in 1960, Britten was an early admirer of his slightly older Russian contemporary. And the concerto's ironic second-movement scherzo could almost pass for Shostakovich, or maybe Prokofiev. A particularly witty gesture is the passing of a high solo-violin trill to a piccolo, with, of all things, a tuba counterpoint.
In the first movement, the opening timpani motif is taken up by bassoons and later reprised, pizzicato, by the solo violinist, in a kind of Spanish dance. Prefaced by a quirky solo cadenza, the finale isn't the usual flashy affair, but a serious passacaglia, a set of variations on an upward-sweeping theme.
The finale does perhaps outlast inspiration. But the concerto is a substantive work, hugely demanding on the soloist, and a welcome change from the double handful of violin concertos that gets recycled year after year. The Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma supplied depth as well as dazzling virtuosity, and van Zweden got taut, responsive collaboration from the orchestra.
The Leningrad repeatedly outlasts at least one attention span, especially the outer movements. But you'd be hard pressed to hear a performance more fastidiously gauged from threshold of audibility to ferocious assaults, or one more lovingly formed and detailed. The symphony opened in a glorious panoply of string sound, and brasses brayed and shrieked savagely when called for. But there was also one eloquent wind solo after another, notably from bassoonist Wilfred Roberts and oboist Erin Hannigan.
