Print
E-Mail
tool name
closeFriday, Oct. 09, 2009
Time for Three performs with Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra
CHRIS SHULL
Special to dfw.com
Special to the Star-Telegram Bob Haynes
Time for Three, from left, Zachary De Pue, Ranaan Meyer and Nicolas Kendall performed the Concerto 4-3 with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra on Friday at Bass Hall. Special to the Star-Telegram Bob Haynes
FORT WORTH — An American spirit infused the concert by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra on Friday at Bass Hall.
Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducted Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto 4-3, composed in 2007, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, From the New World, written in 1893.
Though the music was different in sound and sensation, both pieces were built around the American musical vernacular.
Higdon’s Concerto 4-3 used bluegrass fiddling as its starting point, with the trio Time for Three as soloists. Violinists Zachary De Pue and Nicolas Kendall and double bass player Ranaan Meyer were front and center as if onstage at a hoedown.
The piece began with rhythmic scraping and string slaps and quickly built into a whirlwind of tuneful bowing and cat-mew slides.
A cadenza of lazy blues led into the second movement, a hymn pungent with longing.
The third movement picked up steam again, with Time for Three playing the rapid, oddly accented fiddling that propels Appalachian mountain music — accompanied by gurgling brass, the snap of timpani and the jitter of marimba.
Higdon’s music is open and alive, bright with the same hopeful essence as music by American masters Copland, Barber and Bernstein. Higdon is their rightful heir; Time for Three, for whom Concerto 4-3 was written, her enthusiastic champion.
Higdon, who is FWSO’s composer-in-residence this season, dashed up on the stage to accept the audience’s affectionate applause.
Dvorak’s New World Symphony similarly projected the feel of America.
Just as Higdon made up her own bluegrass melodies, Dvorak enthusiastically explored American song without resorting to direct quotation.
The symphony’s famous Largo, with its spiritual-sounding lament first played by Rogene Russell on the English horn, conveyed a lovely, wistful nostalgia.
The third movement was rambunctious but always sunny; the finale bold, its strong, striding theme taken up by the brass and carried along by the strings. The orchestra sounded a bit spread at times, and entrances were sometimes ragged. Low brass and timpani were a gusty presence throughout both pieces.
The looseness of the performance echoed the energy of the music. The two pieces captured the open-ended excitement of America then and now.
$9-$78
www.fwsymphony.org; 817-665-6000
DFW.com is pleased to be able to offer its users the opportunity to make comments and hold conversations online. However, the interactive nature of the internet makes it impractical for our staff to monitor each and every posting.
Since DFW.com does not control user submitted statements, we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted on our website. In addition, we remind anyone interested in making an online comment that responsibility for statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not DFW.com.
If you find a comment offensive, clicking the exclamation icon will flag the comment for review by the administrators; we are counting on the good judgment of all our readers to help us.
