Thursday night’s Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert may have had the highest average decibel count of any recent classical performance in the area. Most of that was built into the music, but there was some dynamic inflation — like grade inflation — in the Rimsky-Korsakov Capriccio espagnol.
With assured leadership by the young Uzbek guest conductor Aziz Shokhakimov, the audience responded to all three pieces — including a 2-year-old trombone concerto by Canadian composer Samy Moussa and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring — with audible and visible enthusiasm.
The Moussa replaced a not-yet-ready trombone concerto by American composer Andrew Norman. The Moussa retained the scheduled soloist, the brilliant Dutch trombonist Jörgen van Rijen.
Different sources list seven movements, or four, for the 27-minute Moussa; the DSO program page listed three, which weren’t obvious. The title, Yericho, is a variant spelling of the biblical city whose walls were brought down by sonic assaults. What that had to do with the music wasn’t clear, but never mind.
Scored for two trumpets, four horns, strings, organ and percussion — and, unheard here, optional chorus — it was a showpiece for van Rijen’s burnished but subtly nuanced tone and dazzling virtuosity. Horns and percussion produced some mighty assaults, and organist Bradley Hunter Welch summoned deep rumbles from the Meyerson Symphony Center’s C.B. Fisk organ.
The trombone got a surge of movie-music lyricism at one point, with harmonic support from the strings. But the majority of the string writing was repetitive mini-motifs less interesting than garden-variety Philip Glass.
At the end, Moussa joined van Rijen and Shokhakimov onstage for hugs and bows.
The Rimsky-Korsakov razzled and dazzled, as it should, although mezzo-fortes tended to get inflated into fortes, fortes into fortissimos. I sometimes wonder if conductors accustomed to concert halls with drier acoustics don’t fully adjust to the visceral power and presence of sound at the Meyerson.
Brilliantly dispatched flourishes from co-concertmaster Nathan Olson were joined by notable cameos from David Buck (flute), Gregory Raden (clarinet), Willa Henigman (oboe), David Matthews (English horn), Alexander Kienle (horn), Theodore Harvey (cello) and Emily Levin (harp).
Rimsky-Korsakov was for his day a wizard of orchestration, and his pupil Stravinsky learned a lot from him. The influence is obvious in the brilliant colors of The Firebird, but three years later Stravinsky pushed coloristic touches much further in the huge orchestration of The Rite of Spring.
Evoking primitive sacrificial rites, Stravinsky added sonic blazes, shrieks and squalls. Jabbing, jerking, pounding rhythms, sometimes syncopated and shifting meters measure by measure, can be overlaid in complex textures. But spooky passages create unearthly effects — starting with the bassoon’s high opening solo, beautifully played by principal Ted Soluri.
Shokhakimov led a sonic spectacular of a performance, every section of the orchestra giving its all. In a score composed for a ballet, though, it’s a shame the audience wasn’t given play-by-play supertitles identifying the action represented in the music.
CORRECTION, 12:18 p.m., April 11, 2025: An earlier version of this review misspelled the last name of flutist David Buck.
Details
Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. $71 to $300. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.
