Review: From his concertmaster's chair, Alexander Kerr leads lively, elegant Dallas Symphony performances - The Dallas Morning News

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I’ve long wished the Dallas Symphony Orchestra would start a chamber orchestra series, to explore repertory better suited to smaller forces. The coronavirus pandemic, with needs to limit numbers of both musicians and audiences, has made that a necessity for the orchestra’s 2020-2021 season.

One of the surprises has been how half the usual complement of musicians so completely energizes the hall’s lively acoustics. Big Mahler symphonies and chorus-and-orchestra works aren’t an option for now, but there’s no sense of being sonically cheated.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, led by concertmaster Alexander Kerr, center, performs at the Meyerson Symphony Center on Jan. 8.

Friday night’s program was one of the season’s most imaginative. Opening with an opera overture by the 18th-century French composer Joseph Bologne, also known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges, it continued with Rudolf Barshai’s string-orchestra arrangement of Shostakovich’s Tenth String Quartet and, finally, Mozart’s 29th Symphony.

James Conlon was to be the guest conductor, but he canceled due to a possible covid exposure. So, in 18th-century style, DSO concertmaster Alexander Kerr led from his usual chair, slightly elevated on a low platform.

Few composers could match the colorful life of Saint-Georges. Born in 1745, a decade before Mozart, this mixed-race son of a Guadeloupe planter and his African slave became as famous in Europe as a swordsman (in both senses, apparently) as he was as a virtuoso violinist, composer and musical entrepreneur.

Mozart himself would not have been embarrassed to claim the overture to Saint-Georges’ opera The Anonymous Lover. In classical manner, it opens and closes with lively music — lots of chatter and swoops — with a slower middle section. But why the long pause after the first section? Understandably confused, the audience started to applaud.

Both the overture and the Mozart symphony got spirited, well-sprung, smartly shaped performances. But there were some balance issues in the latter.

Horns were sometimes too loud (and not always secure on top notes), oboes too recessed; one double bass would have been enough. When the orchestra returns to more normal circumstances, first violins will need some polishing.

Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies are mostly public utterances, sometimes even celebrating Communist Russia; whether honestly or ironically remains controversial. His 15 string quartets are more deeply personal, exposing vulnerabilities as well as mockery.

The 10th Quartet, from 1964, is one of the most immediately appealing: a gently exploratory first movement; a stomping, jabbing danse macabre; variations on a theme that moves around lower strings; and, finally, another dance, this one mostly gentle, with echoes of the quartet’s questioning first theme.

Perversely, only well down in René Spencer Saller’s excellent notes did the printed program credit Barshai, the late Russian violist and conductor, for this Symphony for Strings arrangement. Numbered Op. 118a, it’s one of five transcriptions Barshai made of Shostakovich string quartets, with the composer’s approval.

With musicians so widely spaced, ensemble understandably wasn’t always perfect; I suspect those challenges prompted a second-movement tempo slower than usual. But the performance was a marvel of strategic scaling and expressive subtleties. It was a treat to hear. Repeat performances on Saturday and Sunday are sold out.

Find more performing arts stories from The Dallas Morning News here.

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Review: From his concertmaster's chair, Alexander Kerr leads lively, elegant Dallas Symphony performances - The Dallas Morning News
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