Conductor Kirill Karabits led a stunning half of a Dallas Symphony concert. The other half, well… – The Dallas Morning News

The second half of Thursday nights Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert, devoted to Tchaikovskys Manfred Symphony, was stunning.

The guest conductor was Ukrainian Kirill Karabits, principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony in England (where one of his predecessors was former DSO music director Andrew Litton).

Nearly an hour long, Tchaikovskys symphonic interpretation of Lord Byrons dramatic poem is a major challenge for both conductor and orchestra. As with the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, composed 55 years earlier, it evokes a traumatic love, with a turbulent first movement, a contrasting pastoral evocation and finale imagining an infernal orgy. (Berlioz turned down a proposal to compose a Manfred symphony.)

Tchaikovskys second movement depicts a waterfall in sonic burbles and cascades worthy of Berlioz. In general, though, sounds here are laid on with a much heavier hand, working up massive climaxes in each movement.

Holding all this together is no simple matter, but Karabits did so, brilliantly. This was the musical equivalent of feng shui, the Chinese concept of controlling energy through space, but in this case through time. Timing and shaping the music most expressively, Karabits sustained tension as powerfully through romantic hushes as through great explosions of sound.

Aside from a couple of fuzzy spots for violins, the orchestra played gloriously, producing quite a sonic extravaganza. Special praise goes to solos by Gregory Raden and Andrew Sandwick (clarinets), Erin Hannigan (oboe) and Kevin Haseltine (horn). Cameron Carpenter played the harmonium part near the end on the organ; its hard to imagine how a lowly reed organ could manage that climactic moment.

Carpenter was the featured soloist in the first-half performance of Belgian composer Joseph Jongens Symphonie concertante. With the Meyerson Symphony Centers massive and indeed famous Fisk organ, its a disgrace that the DSO so rarely programs major organ-and-orchestra works. The Jongen, a splashy, tuneful, Hollywood-meets-Brussels affair from 1926, has been on my wish list for years.

There are at least half a dozen Dallas organists, starting with the DSOs own Bradley Welch, who could have given superb performances of the piece. But the DSO tapped Carpenter, a touring showman with a formidable technique but little respect for composers intentions.

Carpenter thrills rabid fans who know nothing about the organ or its music, and mostly appalls professional organists. He distorts compositions in ways that would be permitted from no other instrumentalist.

Performing from memory, he mostly played what Jongen wrote. At other times he arbitrarily pecked at what should have been legato lines, arpeggiated chords and added silly little decorations. Some registrations were fine, others grotesquely out of scale.

Grabbing stops by hand, seemingly making it up as he went, he resorted too much to the loudest reed stops and most thunderous pedal registers. Crescendos and decrescendos were overdone.

Karabits and the orchestra did what they could under the circumstances, and there were some lovely and exciting moments; but the opening fugue nearly came unglued. There was a rousing ovation at the end.

Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 29 and 2:30 p.m. March 1 no Friday performance at Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St., Dallas. $24 to $139. 214-849-4376. mydso.com.

View original post here:
Conductor Kirill Karabits led a stunning half of a Dallas Symphony concert. The other half, well... - The Dallas Morning News