With the Dallas Opera, Dallas and Fort Worth symphony orchestras all opening Nov. 3, coverage had to be spread out. The world premiere of Joby Talbot’s Diving Bell and the Butterfly came first in line, followed by the DSO on Saturday night and FWSO Sunday afternoon.
The DSO concert, under British guest conductor Mark Wigglesworth, was one of the orchestra’s most satisfying — and, when appropriate, thrilling — in recent memory. It helped that the program comprised only two standard repertory pieces, with no brand-new and often challenging music to take up lots of rehearsal time.
But the frequent shifts of pace and texture in the Sibelius First Symphony allow no auto-pilot coasting. And the loving attention to detail in the Brahms Violin Concerto, with the excellent violinist Maxim Vengerov, was something you don’t hear every day.
In the absence of a separate curtain raiser, the program opened with the Brahms. So if you attend the final performance Sunday, which gets a top recommendation, don’t be late.
It was immediately evident that Vengerov and Wigglesworth — and indeed the orchestra — were wholly of one mind in the Brahms. Orchestral dynamics were exquisitely scaled from delicate pianissimos to room-filling fortissimos that were never forced. Vengerov delivered wispy intimations on high as well as impassioned but controlled climaxes. His own first movement cadenza was easily twice two long, but it certainly demonstrated his dazzling technique.
Otherwise, as one, Vengerov and Wigglesworth both felt — and conveyed — the rise and fall of lines, the tightening and loosening of harmonic tensions. Lingering daringly before pivotal downbeats heightened rather than dissipated tension. Even as we stiffened in our seats anticipating that downbeat, we always knew where the music was going, and why.
We’ve had some overwrought Brahms lately, but this felt true and right. Principal oboist Erin Hannigan got a well-deserved bow for eloquent solos in the slow movement. Vengerov responded to the standing ovation with the Adagio of Bach’s unaccompanied Violin Sonata in G minor.
It’s hard to describe Saturday’s thrilling performance of the Sibelius without mixing metaphors. It had at times the whiff of fresh air and moist soil, at other times the feeling of hard, craggy edges of newly thrust mountains. It had organic substance, but, where needed — apart from a couple of really busy violin scurries — finely machined precision.
Wigglesworth could shade pianissimos down to the threshold of audibility without losing the music’s “charge.” Searing climaxes thrilled because only strategically deployed. Horns were in especially fine fettle; at the other end of the dynamic range principal clarinetist Gregory Raden opened the symphony in an apt aura of mystery.
For this music I can’t think of any concert hall to match the Meyerson Symphony Center’s glorious balance of sonic immediacy, warmth and spaciousness.
Details
Repeats at 3 p.m. Sunday at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St. $49 to $199. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.