Arts Blog

Orli Shaham, who was to have played the second of two piano recitals this weekend at Collin College's John Anthony Theatre, has cancelled. But in her place, the Texas Conservatory for Young Artists has secured American pianist Spencer Myer for the 7:30 p.m. spot Saturday.

Myer gave quite sophisticated performances in the first round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and quite a few of us were surprised that he didn't advance. He was certainly one of the initial contestants I was most interested in hearing again. (Too bad I can't hear him Saturday; I'll be at the Dallas Symphony.)

Myer's program:
Handel - Suite No. 2 in F Major, HWV 427
Copland - Piano Variations (1930)
Schubert - Four Impromptus, Op. 90
Albeniz - Iberia, Book I
Gounod/Liszt - Valse de l'opera Faust

The theater is sort of on the back side of the College, which is at 2800 E. Spring Creek Parkway in Plano. You can spot it by the stage house projecting above the rest of the complex.

Tickets are $18; discounts for students. 972-985-0392, www.tcya.org

That Myer didn't advance past the preliminary round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition left quite a few of us scratching our

I can't think of a prominent classical pianist who has been blind. But there have certainly been quite a few major jazz pianists, including Art Tatum, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, George Shearing.

And there have been many prominent blind organists, many of them also composers, especially in France. Examples include Antonio de Cabezon (1510-1566), John Stanley (1712-1786) and, in the 20th century, Louis Vierne, Andre Marchal, Gaston Litaize, Jean Langlais, Jean-Pierre Leguay, Helmut Walcha, Alfred Hollins and David Liddle.

The blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii, who took one of the two gold medals at the Cliburn, certainly impressed me with his mastery of major scores. But I kept wanting more color, more rise and fall of phrases; all of the other finalists struck me as more expressive players (although some of the expressivity was more learned than felt).

It has nothing to do with blindness, although I wonder if Tsujii hasn't been cheating himself of scores' interpretive directions by learning by ear--and thus dependent on the vicissitudes of the recording, or the pianist playing the piece for him. Braille music editions, which he does not use, do include those directions.

Some of the most unforgettable piano performances I've ever heard came from a blind pianist, Deborah Saylor, who competed in the Cliburn's 2000 and 2002 amateur contests. She didn't essay the most difficult repertory, but her playing had the kind of spontaneity and fantasy--the amazing color and lavish rubato--associate with recordings of early 20th-century pianists. When another critic complained that her performance of the Chopin "Military" Polonaise was too slow, I went home and pulled out a recording of Paderewski, who took it at almost the same tempo, and with similar freedoms. For an "amateur," Saylor (who I believe learns music by Braille) produced the rich expressivity and coloristic range I kept wanting to hear from Tsujii, who by contrast often struck me as bland. Others, obviously--including the Cliburn jury--felt differently.

The word at the Cliburn was that Nobuyuki Tsujii, the blind gold medalist, finds music much easier to learn by ear than by Braille editions of scores. Here's a contrary view:

"I read your review with great interest since I work with the blind
> community as a sighted certified (Library of Congress certification)
> music braillist. The music braille code is similar to the print code
> which sighted people use and is certainly not cumbrous, nor is it any
> slower than reading print. You do a disservice to the blind musicians
> to say such. I am sorry that Tsujii hasn't had the teachers to
> encourage him to learn and read braille music since then he would have
> been able to make his own interpretation of the music and might have
> presented a better performance. You might find a music braillist to
> further discuss this code and find out more about it. It really is a
> beautiful thing and in lots of ways much superior to print music.
>
> For one thing one doesn't have to worry about ledger lines. In
> braille music an A is an A is an A, just depends on which octave it's
> in that is easily deduced with just one or two dots. Also there are
> many different ways in this Code to show repeated measures or even
> parts of measures. Many of us love the Music Braille Code!
>
> Bettie Downing

The music world has been all abuzz over Benjamin Ivry's Wall Street Journal piece on the Cliburn: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124458728669699751.html.

I found it obnoxious, and inaccurate.

Having covered every note of the 16-day contest, I note that Mr. Ivry nowhere says that he actually attended the competition. If he did, the Cliburn press staff was unaware of it. If his conclusions are based on the webcasts, he should say so. Because of logistical problems, I had to review one of Di Wu's solo recitals via the webcast, and was so aware of its shortcomings for judging tone quality and more that I felt obliged to say so in print.

Mr. Ivry doesn't even get his facts straight. He says John Giordano "leads" the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, even though he was succeeded nine years ago by Miguel Harth-Bedoya. He identifies the Takács Quartet as "from Hungary" although only two of its original Hungarian musicians remain, and the group has been in residence at the University of Colorado since 1983.

What Mr. Ivry describes as the "mediocre" and "dispiriting" FWSO was playing under conditions that would rattle the Berlin Philharmonic: accompanying relatively inexperienced players with wildly different conceptions in long days and nights of multiple rehearsals and performances. I was impressed that the orchestra did as well as it did. The arrangement even required special dispensation from the American Federation of Musicians, which normally would never agree to such working conditions. Having heard the FWSO steadily for the last 10 years, I can vouch for its high standards under normal circumstances.

I share some of Mr. Ivry's reservations with gold medalist Nobuyuki Tsujii. But plenty of us, not just on the jury, would not agree with his obsession with Di Wu as "the most musically mature and sensitive" competitor. My own vote would go to Haochen Zhang, who did get the other gold medal.

Quite a surprise!

Two gold medals: Nobuyuki Tsujii and Haochen Zhang.
Silver medal: Yeol Eum Son
No crystal award.

This is the first time a blind competitor (Tsujii) has advanced beyond the Cliburn's preliminary round. And it's the first time any competitor from the Far East has won the top prize -- in this case, all three top prizes.

We all hate the noise from the audience--the counghing fit, the cellphone that goes off, the crying baby (the last of which you wouldn't hear at the Cliburn, with its strict no one under twelve policy). But what about the noises performers make while performing? The worst offenders at this year's Cliburn were Haochen Zhang, who hummed along and hit the damper pedal so hard with his foot that it sometimes sounded like there was an extra tympani part, and Yeol Eum Son, who made audible breathing noises while playing. Observation: the noises seemed to bother professional and trained musicians in the audience least of all, probably because those folks focus on the music and listen past the noise.

After what amounted to several hours of music from Chopin's back shelf (both concertos and the Rondo, Opus 16), the audience at the final round of the Cliburn Competition in Fort Worth finally got to hear a bit of Chopin that not only reflects that composer at his best but that's rarely heard on the concert stage: the Berceuse. Strategically tucked between the thunderbolts of Beethoven's "Appasionata" and Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody in Noboyuki Tsujii's recital Sunday afternoon, it's a work this longtime concert goer has never heard performed live in a professional concert. The pianist must maintain absolutely steady tempo and convey total serenity; because of its wonderfully lean texture, any missed note is immediately obvious. But anyone who was there or who listened in Sunday afternoon knows that, in the hands of a performer of Tsujii's level, this gentle, profound lullaby can produce tremendous impact.

We're waiting for announcement of winners, due any time now. In the meantime, here are reviews of the last three performances Sunday afternoon:

Nobuyuki Tsujii (20, Japan) At the risk of exciting political-correctness furies, I keep wondering whether Tsujii would be drawing such roaring ovations, or would have advanced this far in the contest, if the contest were held behind a scrim and judged on purely musical issues. It's amazing that at 20-year-old blind from birth has acquired so sure-fire a technique and so basically secure a musicality. But finer nuances of tone and shape sometimes elude him, and sometimes at crucial points. His Beethoven Appassionata began with real authority, but the second-movement variations ambled along on auto-pilot, and there was no sense of cumulative energy in the finale. Nor was there much real poetry in the Chopin Berceuse. Notes and octaves flew by in the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, but without much genuine pizzazz. There's huge potential here, but Sunday's recital sounded like the playing of a very good student.

Haochen Zhang (19, China) gave an amazing performance of the Prokofiev Second Concerto. Introduced with striking graciousness, the first theme was elegantly expanded at its first reappearance, then finally reprised with unassuming artlessness. This is the kind of sophisticated musicality that has made Zhang so arresting a performer. He had the spiky brilliance where called for, and the cadenzas were high drama. Zhang ripped into the finale at a pace the Chicago Symphony Orchestra would be hard pressed to match. Conlon subtly pulled in the reins, but he let Zhang whip up a whiz- bang ending.

Di Wu (24, China) That Wu is a superbly equipped pianist, and one with flair, has never been in question. But her Rachmaninoff Third Concerto tended to be a set of staged events that never quite linked into a compelling narrative. In all three movements, tempo contrasts were just that bit overdone, mainly because slow passages were a little too self-indulgent. If you're going to take the first "more motion" passage of the first movement that briskly (about the speed of Rachmaninoff's own recording), you need to open with more motion so there isn't such a jarring jump.

One of the most disappointing moments of the final round of the Cliburn Competition so far came at the opening of the third night. After Bulgarian pianist Evgeni Bozhanov's insightful and color-sensitive readings of works of Franck and Chopin, I had high hopes for his performance of 20th-century Japanese colorist Toru Takemitsu's Rain Tree Sketch I. Unfortunately, Bozhanov handed out a monochromatic rendition of Takemitsu's brief, intense--and, in a good performance, gloriously shaded--depiction of raindrops dripping from a tree after rain. Bozhanov did neither himself nor Takemitsu any favors with this performance.

Holy bank robbers! Now I've heard everything: Just got an e-mail announcing a world premiere by the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, and it's one that carries with it a big local angle involving Dallas. The renowned La Jolla Playhouse will stage the world-premiere musical Bonnie & Clyde from Nov. 10 to Dec. 20 in the Mandell Weiss Theatre on the campus of the University of California at San Diego. Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel) will handle the music, Don Black (Sunset Boulevard, Song and Dance) will write the lyrics, Ivan Menchell (The Cemetery Club, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) will write the book and Jeff Calhoun (Deaf West's Big River and Pippin, Grease!) will direct. Do I smell Broadway? The La Jolla Playhouse took Big River to Broadway, as well as The Who's Tommy, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Walk in the Woods, Dracula, Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, Jersey Boys and the Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife.

Photo: Actress Faye Dunaway in the movie version of Bonnie and Clyde

Twenty-four hours ago, I complained about inherent weaknesses in Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1. Though I'll still contend that it doesn't so easily reach the heights of that composer's greatest works, I'll admit that Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii clearly knows how to find the logic and passion that most pianists sacrifice while wallowing in the pretty tunes and glittering passage-work that abound in the piece. Performing with the Fort Worth Symphony and conductor James Conlon as part of Day 2 of the final round of the Cliburn Competition, Tsujii not only revealed a solid sense of musical architecture but also displayed the ability to produce a consistently beautiful tone. As of today, stock in Tsujii--and Chopin--is way up in Fort Worth.

I'll be the first to rank Chopin not only among the greatest of composers for the piano, but as one of the greatest composers of all time, right up there with Beethoven, Mozart, and J.S. Bach. But I'll also contend that the two works representing Chopin oin the opening night of the final round of the Cliburn Competition--the Rondo in E-flat and the Piano Concerto No. 1--are among the composer's weaker works. Though both have flashes of the genius we associate with Chopin's Ballades, Scherzos, Preludes, and Etudes, neither approaches the depth or consistency of those pieces. Bulgarian Evgeny Bozhanov came close to making a convincing case for his choice, thanks to the Slavic accent he applied to the lyrical but longwinded Concerto (in collaboration with the Fort Worth Symphony and conductor James Conlon); he probably didn't hurt his chances to end up among the top three when the prizes are passed out onSunday. Italian Mariangela Vacatello, however, who never found momentum or purpose in her reading of the Rondo, may have dealt a deadly blow to her chances to take one of the top prizes home to Italy, particularly considering the generally lackluster quality of the rest of her solo recital.

Music of Alexander Scriabin, a mainstay of Cliburn Competitions past, has been a relative rarity at the 2009 competition. (Twenty years ago, if I had told you performances of Mendelssohn would be as frequent as Scriabin at the Cliburn by 2009, you would have thought I was crazy.) Which made the performance of the Russian romantic composer's Fifth Piano Sonata by Italian Alessandro Deljavan all the more noteworthy. Deljavan fortunately had the easy technical command of the thousands of notes--and the unique musical language--necessary to pull off this masterpiece on the cusp of romanticism and modernism. Given that there's no Scriabin listed for the recitals in the final round, this radiant performance was the last of the music of that composer for this Cliburn. And, given the cycles and fads in repertoire, look forward to a surge in Scriabin in the next two cycles. Thanks, Mr. Deljavan.

You can go to classical concerts for years without hearing a single piece by romantic-era composers Moritz Moszkowski, Clara Schumann, or Nikolai Medtner. Besides playing with consistently beautiful tone and control, Chinese pinaist Di Wu managed the neat trick of slipping all three into her semi-final recital Saturday night--and making it all make sense. Wu opened with a little Mazurka by Clara Schumann, which provided a fascinating prologue to her more famous husband Robert's more Davidsbundlertanze; next up, a pair of "Fairy Tales" from 1909 by Medtner demonstrated (thanks to Wu's perfect insight) why Rachmaninoff regarded that Russian composer so highly. After the obligatory side-trip into American composer Daron Hagen's Suite (from the required works list for the semi-finalists), Wu returned to the romantic era with Moszkowski's Caprice Espagnol, a pianistic fireworks display that only a performer of extraordinary gifts--such as Wu--should attempt.

Wayne Lee Gay, who was for 18 years the classical music critic of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is joining Dr. Carol Leone as a guest blogger on the Cliburn Competition. Wayne and I were friendly duelling critics at the last two Cliburns, so it will be good to have his viewpoints represented again.

Wayne is now finishing up a doctorate in creative writing at the University of North Texas.

Cliburn contestants this time have their choice of three Steinway Model D's: a Hamburg and an American both owned by the Cliburn Foundation, and another American brought in from New York. The Hamburg seems to be the most popular of the three.

It seems to be thought chic to favor the German Steinways for their brighter, clearer tone and, some pianists say, more responsive action. American Steinways tend to have richer (some would say muddier) sounds, with far more resonant bass, and mellower treble. But the Cliburn's Hamburg quickly turns steely if pressed, and there's been quite a bit of steely playing.

None of the three U.S. competitors in the Cliburn's first round--or Naomi Kudo, who lists herself as "United States/Japan"--advanced to the semifinals. For what it's worth, the breakdown of semifinalists' nationalities is: two each from China, Italy and South Korea; one each from Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, Israel, Japan and Russia.

Tuesday night marked the halfway point in the four-day semifinal round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Each of the 12 semifinalists is playing an hour-long solo recital and, at a separate time, a piano quintet with the Takács Quartet. The recitals and chamber-music performances alternate during afternoon and evening sessions at Bass Performance Hall.

Here's a review of Friday's performances:

Haochen Zhang (18, China) may be the most amazing musical talent I've even witnessed. Though the youngest of this year's competitors, he plays with the depth of a legendary veteran. His Chopin Op. 28 Preludes were sheer magic, unhurried, subtly inflected, the fortissimos on Chopin, rather than Bartók, levels. (Well, they got louder at the end, but okay...) Again and again, he got a warmth of tone, even bass resonance, that has eluded other players on the Hamburg Steinway. It was easy to forgive some overpedaling and some right-hand parts that didn't project quite enough. The spell continued in Mason Bates' White Lies for Lomax. Zhang even found elegance, grandeur and tenderness as well as dazzling virtuosity in the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody.

Nobuyuki Tsujii (20, China). This blind pianist's performance of the Schumann Piano Quintet was only his second ever of a chamber work. If it's amazing that he learns solo repertory by ear, it's even more amazing to contemplate picking the piano part out of recordings. He had done his work well, and, perhaps knowing they couldn't count on visual clues, the Takács Quartet took special care with coordination. (A black mark, though, for an ugly and out-of-tune viola entrance in the second movement.) Tsujii turned some lovely phrases, but crescendos and decrescendos weren't always there when needed, and the third movement was too frantic.

Kyu Yeon Kim (23, South Korea) is clearly a serious, thoughtful musician, but there's such a thing as trying too hard. Arty gestures in the Beethoven Op. 101 Sonata--little hesitations, little lingerings--sounded more self-conscious than organic. The finale sounded bangy and scrambled. In the Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition, anything forte and above yielded a hard, steely clang on the Hamburg Steinway. There were more fussy gimmicks even in the "Schmuyle" section. Kim made a fetching case, though, for Daron Hagen's Suite for piano.

The 12 semifinalists were announced around 11:15 Tuesday night:

Evgeni Bozhanov, Ran Dank, Alessandro Deljavan, Kyu Yeon Kim, Eduard Kunz, Andrea Lam, Michail Lifits, Yeol Eum Son, Nobuyuki Tsujii, Mariangela Vacatello, Di Wu and Haochen Zhang.

Amy J. Yang (25, U.S./China). To listen to Yang's Bach French Overture was to marvel that a pianist trained at three of American's top music schools (Curtis, Juilliard, Yale) could evince so little awareness of the last 50 years' research into baroque performance practices. The overture proper began with Lisztian ponderousness, then turned into a shapeless blur, and the succeeding dances were hardly evident as such. Expressive gestures in Schumann's Davidsbündlertänze were right in principle, but everything was overdone, sometimes grotesquely. It was as if a naturally beautiful young woman had slapped on garish lipstick and too much rouge and eyeliner.

Yoonjung Han (24, South Korea). What a difference an hour makes. This young Korean struck me as one of the most winning players we've heard. Even a daringly fast tempo in the finale of a Haydn sonata (in E-flat major) worked because everything was so beautifully shaped. The slow movement sounded made up on the spot, a high compliment. There were some overdone fortissimos in the Chopin F minor Fantasy, but both here and in Granados' El amor y la muerte she could stretch and contract phrases quite boldly, without ever sacrificing urgency and overall continuity. Rarely does one hear expression at once so generous and so organic.

Kyu Yeon Kim (23, South Korea) began with some promise, with a boldly characterized Haydn sonata (in C major). But Schumann's Kreisleriana eluded her. As with so many Schumann works, this one makes much of contrasts, but what emerged here was a random collection of unrelated parts. Kim played lovingly in the dreamy movements, but the impetuous ones were too much so, rushed beyond shapeliness and sometimes in a too-clattery fortissimo. Bartók's three Op. 18 Etudes demonstrated impressive technical prowess--never in doubt--but not much more.

Part of the reason the young pianists tend to rush fast music, I'll bet, is that they do most of their practicing in relatively confined studios or apartments, where the sound ends as soon as they release the keys. But you have to allow more time and space when playing in a large and acoustically "live" hall like the Bass. A fast tempo that makes sense at home will sound breathless and blurry in a big auditorium.

That said, there seems to be more rushing than usual this year.

The disparity between practice and performance environments also tends to show up in players using too much pedal -- again apt in a close, dry environment, but not in a big, resonant one. But I've noticed less overpedalling this time.

The one consistent criticism of performances at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has been excessive speed in fast music. Impatience and showing off are provinces of youth, and a certain amount is to be expected from eager, ambitious pianists ages 19 to 30. But if fast is good, faster isn't necessarily better.

All too often, the competitors this year have taken fast movements at tempos that just make no sense, that allow for no shaping of the music. A machine could play these pieces this fast, even faster. But the reason we have humans playing the piano is to provide subtleties that a machine, at least on its own, can't.

Slow down!

Well, THAT got your attention, didn't it? But this issue at hand is shouts of approval at concerts. If you want to appear worldly-wise and impress others, it's "BRAVO" for males, but "BRAVA" for females. Some man at the Cliburn Competition seems determined to shout "Bravo" as soon as possible after every performance, whether by a male or a female pianist. Or has "Bravo" become metrosexual?

The 222-page Cliburn Competition program book is a piece of work, with extensive details on the contestants, jury, auxiliary activities and history of the competition. But, maddeningly, it doesn't tell us nearly enough about the music. No movements are listed, and even the individual pieces in, say, Debussy's Images or Albéniz' Iberia aren't identified separately. Ushers ought to be handing out daily program sheets with that information.

Why is it that so many pianists in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition seem to feel they have to play Liszt? There are Liszt pieces worth playing--the B minor Sonata, some of the late pieces--but I get sick to death of all the empty showpieces. Lots of quadruple-forte runs and chords and octaves seem to excite audiences, but what do they have to do with music? Do the competition judges really enjoy hearing all these musical freak shows?

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra's 2010 European tour is the latest casualty of the ongoing international recession. Originally scheduled for next February and March, the tour is being postponed until 2012.

The Philadelphia and Boston Symphony orchestras have also cancelled European tours in 2009 and 2010 because of the economy.

The DSO's ticket sales are said to be strong, but the recession has taken a toll on corporate and individual donations as well as endowment investments. A major part of the European tour was to have been underwritten by two special touring endowment funds.

This was to be the orchestra's first European tour since 2003, and its first under music director Jaap van Zweden. The nine-city ininerary included concerts in van Zweden's native Amsterdam as well as Berlin and Vienna.

The orchestra still plans to appear at New York's Carnegie Hall in May 2011, when it will perform the Steven Stucky oratorio "August 4, 1964."

Pianist Alessio Bax, an SMU alum now on the adjunct faculty of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, is one of five winners of the 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grants. The winners--also including pianist Inon Barnatan, clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein and violinists Augustin Hadelich and Arnaud Sussman--were announced today at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at New York's Lincoln Center.

The $25,000 grants, which have been awarded since 1976, are designed to help young artists early in their careers. Previous recipients have included Jonathan Biss, Hilary Hahn, Anne-Marie McDermott and the Miro Quartet.

Bax, 31, attracted international attention as winner of the Leeds and Hamamatsu competitions. He studied in his native Bari, Italy, in France with Francois-Joel Thiollier and at the Chigiana Academy in Siena, Italy, under Joaquin Achucarro. He moved to Dallas in 1994 to continue his studies with Achucarro at SMU, receiving a master's degree and artist certificate. Now living in New York with his wife, pianist Lucille Chung, he continues to teach part-time at SMU.

If you've tried to order tickets for the Fort Worth Opera festival and had problems, try again. The opera offices have had phone and internet snafus off and on since Friday, but all is now working.

The festival opens Saturday with "Carmen," with "Cinderella" opening Sunday afternoon. "Dead Man Walking" launches May 2.

Call 817-731-0726 or go to www.fwopera.org.

Ivan Moravec is probably my favorite living pianist. I discovered his now legendary Connoisseur Society recordings while an SMU student a "few" years ago. And during the decade I spend as music critic of The Kansas City Star he played in the city's Friends of Chamber Music series almost every other year. I'll never forget performances so beautiful, so eloquent, that they left me literally in tears.

Last Friday, he returned to Kansas City's Folly Theater. Figuring the Czech pianist, now 78, won't be touring many more years, I decided to use a Southwest Airlines coupon for a KC weekend.

In a program of Janacek, Debussy and Chopin, the playing was stll amazing. The Folly's Steinway, which I used to like a lot, has gotten hard-toned, and that got in the way. But Moravec's marvelously subtle, imaginative performances still worked magic. The Chopin G minor Ballade alone was worth the trip.

It was lovely, too, to get to say "hello" to Ivan and his wife, Zuzana. They're the warmest, sweetest people imaginable, and both speak English very well. Having performed and recorded with the DSO, Ivan immediately asked, "How is the Dallas Symphony doing?" He was glad to hear about the great work Jaap van Zweden (whom he didn't know) is doing here.

Once again, I found myself wishing Dallas had a classical presenting series as extensive and sophisticated as Kansas City's Friends of Chamber Music. Cynthia Siebert, who started the series and still runs it, is one of the sharpest impresarios anywhere; I keep wishing she'd start a Dallas spinoff. And would that we had such a great chamber-music hall as the Folly, a turn-of-the-20th-century vaudeville house that's been beautifully restored and modernized.

Saturday will be "Speight Jenkins Day" in Seattle, thanks to a mayoral proclamation honoring Dallas-born Speight Jenkins for 25 years as general director of Seattle Opera.

Jenkins is widely credited with raising Seattle Opera to national prominence, notably with a series of Wagner "Ring" Cycles. Before moving into opera administration, we was a music critic.

Miguel Harth-Bedoya, music director of the Fort Worth Symphony, will lead the Atlanta Symphony in three programs of Latin-American music between May 27 and June 6. The concerts are part of a "Musica Ardiente" Festival to be held at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta.

Complete with meet-and-greet with music director Jaap van Zweden, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is holding an open house from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday (April 25) at the Meyerson Symphony Center. The free occasion will include performances by DSO musicians Mary Preston (organ) and Bruce Patti (violin), a string quartet from Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts and the winner of that morning's Lynn Harrell Concerto Competition.

Guests can meet van Zweden and orchestra musicians and get guided behind-the-scenes tours of the Meyerson. There will be a special $3 rate in the Arts District Parking Garage.

The Meyerson is at 2301 Flora St., at Pearl.

Recent works by four American composers have been picked by contestants in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, coming up May 22 through June 7 in Fort Worth. The works are:

"White Lies for Lomax," by Mason Bates,
"Turning," by Derek Bermel,
Suite for Piano, by Daron Hagen, and
Improvisation & Fugue, by John Musto.

Twenty-eight composers submitted works for what is, in effect, an add-on competition to the piano contest. A jury of composers and other musicians narrowed the field, and then each of the Cliburn Competition pianists was required to pick one of the pieces to perform in the competition's semifinal round.

One of the most astounding pieces of writing on music I've ever read comes on jazz pianist Ethan Iverson's blog "Do the Math" currently. Everson, the keyboard player for the wonderfully hip trio The Bad Plus, is what he calls a "fan boy" of the French-Canadian classical pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin. Hamelin has a lot of fans, includiing in Plano and Dallas where he has played and even recorded. But few know the man's recordings at the depth that Everson does. In this long, long intervew, he goes into details of music and interpretation that only a fellow-musician could manage. I count myself a Hamelin fan, too; I've been listening to and even reviewing his recordings for over 15 years. But I was floored by the comprehensiveness and intensity of the communication in this exchange.

Read it! Read it all the way through! Then go online and buy all the recordings of both guys.

George now joins John as two members of the Beatles who have stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. A local resident, Julianne Fleck, who's a student at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Hollywood, watched the unveiling on April 14 from her classroom.
Here's what AP says about the event:
Hundreds of George Harrison's biggest fans and best friends, including Paul McCartney and Tom Petty, turned out Tuesday to see a posthumous star for the quiet Beatle unveiled during a raucous celebration on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Fellow former Beatle McCartney stood next to Harrison's widow, Olivia, and son, Dhani, as the star was unveiled in front of the landmark Capitol Records building.
"Thank you very much!" McCartney yelled to hundreds of screaming fans wearing Beatles T-shirts and holding signs, albums and flowers to honor Harrison. The only other surviving member of the band, Ringo Starr, did not attend.
Julianne said the Capitol Records building is diagonal from her school, which is on Yucca Street. She said they could hear Harrison's music being played throughout the ceremony. Tom Hanks was there and came out to speak to the crowd. Following the unveiling, fans left tributes and flowers in memory of the youngest member of the Beatles, who died in 2001 at age 58. They also left flower at John Lennon's star.

The Dallas Symphony is one of seven North American orchestra invited to a new Carnegie Hall festival scheduled for May 2011. Called "Spring for Music," the festival is intended to encourage imaginative programming.

This will be the DSO's first New York appearance under its new music director, Jaap van Zweden.

The DSO, with soloists and the Dallas Symphony Chorus, will reprise the Steven Stucky oratorio "August 4, 1964," which it premiered last September in Dallas. Commemorating the centenary of Texas-native President Lyndon B. Johnson, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, the DSO-commissioned work explores pivotal events on the 1964 date.

Also participating in the nine-day New York festival will be the orchestras of Albany, N.Y.; Atlanta; Montreal, Canada; Oregon; and Toledo, Ohio; and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
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I'm not talking about patrons murmuring during performances. I' m talking about presenters and performers talking before concerts. And it's become a veritable plague around here.

Talk, talk, talk -- hey, folks, we come to listen to music, not hear you relish the sound of your own voices over loudspeakers. One of the worst recent examples was Monday's Dallas Chamber Music concert. Pre-concert announcements, introductions, recognitions and what have you, by three different people, took fully 10 minutes.

I wish Fort Worth Symphony music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya didn't feel he had to talk before every single FWSO concert. And he's not really all that good at it -- as opposed to, say, former Dallas Symphony music director Andrew Litton, who DID have a natural way of talking to audiences. And Litton didn't do it very often.

Pre-performance comments are effective in inverse proportion to their frequency. Like every third concert, max.

Last Thursday's Dallas Symphony concert was the first time I had ever witnessed a total train wreck in an orchestra concert. Playing the piano as well as sorta-barely conducting the Bach D minor Harpsichord Concerto, guest conductor Asher Fisch got lost at one point in the first movement, but caught up again after vamping for a bit. But in the third movement he had a complete memory meltdown, and stopped playing. He started flipping desperately through a score, trying to find his place, with no luck. Orchestra musicians gradually dropped out one by one--shades of the Haydn "Farewell" Symphony--until Fisch gave a cutoff, then announced a point in the score to start up again. The performance resumed, but...

Afterward, I wrestled with how to treat this in the review.

This was a literally once-in-a-lifetime experience, by definition newsworthy. Should it be the lead in the review? (The old cliche of news coverage: If it bleeds, it leads.) Or should I be nice and bury it toward the end?

I ended up doing the latter. (Take THAT, you who think I'm mean and nasty.) From what I've heard from quite a few readers, they all got to the end of the review and were astonished to read what happened. But I still wonder if I did the right thing.

Ten young singers won prizes in the Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition Saturday. The contest was held in Gooch Auditorium at the UT Southwestern Medical Center.

For the first time in the competition's 21 years, two singers--baritones Steven LaBrie and Michael Sumuel--both were awarded the $6,500 first prize. No award was given for second place. Mezzo Catherine Martin took third place ($3,000) and soprano Icy Simpson won the People's Choice award ($1,000). Two $500 encouragement awards went to tenor Juan Jose De Leon and Mary-Jane Lee. Four additional finalists received $200 awards.

The annual competition is open to Texas singers 18 to 30 who aspire to professional careers.

For anyone headed to a Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra performance this weekend, be sure to bring along some foods to donate. The orchestra is participating in Orchestras Feeding America, the first national food drive by America's symphony orchestras. Non-perishable food items will be donated to the Tarrant Area Food Bank.

Pick-up times are 6:30-8pm today and Saturday, and 12:30-2pm Sunday in Bass Performance Hall's lobby. Curbside drop-off is also available on Fourth Street underneath the angels in front of Bass Hall. For info on what types of food can be accepted, visit www.fwsymphony.org.

Ned Rorem's operatic version of the Thornton Wilder classic is getting four performances in Denton, thanks to the University of North Texas Opera. Performances are at 8 p.m. Friday (4/3), Saturday (4/4) and Tuesday (4/7), and at 3 p.m. Sunday (4/5) in the Lyric Theater of the Murchison Performing Arts Center, at I-35E and N. Texas Blvd. Conductor Stephen Dubberly will give a talk one hour before each performance.

Tickets are $15 to $35; $35 tickets include dessert and wine. For information, call 940-369-7802 or go to www.thempac.com.

Here I was, dying to hear Christine Brewer's Brunnhilde in the Met's "Ring" Cycle, coming up next month. But today came word that she's withdrawn from all scheduled performances because of a knee injury. Her place will be taken by Irene Theorin and Katarina Dalayman.

The Dallas Opera has another partner, the State Opera of South Australia, in commissioning and performing the forthcoming Jake Heggie opera Moby-Dick.

Based on the famous Herman Melville novel, the opera will be premiered at the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Winspear Opera House in April 2010. After six performances here, it will go on to the four other companies co-commissioning the new work: San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, Calgary Opera and the Australian company.

The new opera, with libretto by Gene Scheer, will be presented in Adelaide in 2011.
Star tenor Ben Heppner will sing the lead role of Captain Ahab, with Morgan Smith as Starbuck and Stephen Costello as Ishmael.

For information and tickets for the Dallas Opera's 2009-2010 season, call 214-443-1000 or go to www.dallasopera.org.

Here's a follow-up to Scott Cantrell's post on local orchestras participating in a food drive, which is timed to the release of the movie The Soloist, about a cellist who becomes homeless.

From the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra's press and publications manager:
"The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra kicked off its food drive on Friday night and several boxes of food have already been collected. ... FWSO musicians will perform and collect food items at the Fort Worth Central Market this Sunday from 12-4:30 p.m. and the Orchestra will continue to collect food donations April 3, 4 and 5 at Bass Performance Hall."

Get more details at www.fwsymphony.org.

Photo courtesy of FWSO's Trish Ciaravino

The Long piano duo will perform a recital at 7:30 p.m. on April 4 at Encore Pianos in the Shops at Willow Bend. Admission is free, but a reservation is required.

He was the preppy New Yorker who lasted only four months as general director of the Dallas Opera. He talked big, but didn't seem very interested in bread-and-butter operas, or how an opera company actually runs. Then, after denying any interest in the vacant top job at the New York City Opera, what did he do but snatch it right up and ditch Dallas? We can only wish him well in his new gig, but there were, shall we say, few tears shed here.

Just before and after the NYCO appointment, he was all the buzz on opera blogs--and the butt of many an unkind jab on the gay opera 'zine Parterre Box. He's been conspicuously absent lately on Parterre Box, but he's featured in this week's New York Magazine, in a piece by Justin Davidson:

http://nymag.com/arts/classicaldance/classical/features/55493/

Acknowledging City Opera's uncertain prospects, Davidson is pretty equivocal about the impresario's future at Lincoln Center. Oh, and there's a delicious quote from Jonathan Pell, the Dallas Opera's director of artistic administration. I'm noted as the author of a "dyspeptic" post-mortem on Steel's tenure here.

Dallas Symphony music director Jaap van Zweden was back conducting the Chicago Symphony last week, and once again he was a hit.

"He scored a major success," John von Rhein wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "lifting the performances well beyond the ordinary, infusing the entire orchestra with his intensity, spontaneity and penetrating musical vision.

"The orchestra responded to his clear beat and sweeping gestures as if someone had thrown on an electrical switch."

The program included the "Cyrano de Bergerac" Overture by Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar, the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2 (with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet) and the Brahms Fourth Symphony.

As in his October debut with the CSO, van Zweden was a late replacement for another conductor who had withdrawn because of health concerns--this time Semyon Bychkov.

"Muscular but not heavy," von Rhein continued, "urgent but not hectic, lyrical but not mawkish, Van Zweden's view of the Brahms Symphony No. 4 harnessed the magnificence of the CSO to the magnificence of Brahms. His command of the work took in everything: the larger architecture, the many instrumental details that flesh out that architecture, the developmental logic, the noble sweep."

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Andrew Patner observed that van Zweden's "intellectual work with a piece drives his highly physical conducting." Of the Brahms, Patner wrote, "You could hear how he took the piece apart and rebuilt it, instrumental section by section, especially in the strings. And how he called for long lines of music against sometimes intentionally jagged rhythms."

And Patner ended: "He's a keeper."

Yeah, we know.

The CSO was the first of the first-tier American orchestras to book van Zweden. He's already signed up for another CSO gig, plus guest appearances next season with the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The Richardson Symphony's concert last Saturday was pretty amazing when you consider it was put on with only two rehearsals. And that's with a program including one concerto virtually never performed (Khachaturian's Piano Concerto) and another not that often played (Dvorak's Violin Concerto).

Normally, the RSO does this particular concert, featuring winners of its Lennox International Young Artists Competition, with three rehearsals. But, after fall ticket sales that president/executive director George Landis calls "abysmally horrible," and with corporate donations down 50 percent, the orchestra has been looking at every money-saving option.

"We can't afford to operate at a deficit," Landis says, "because it happened too many years in the past. We eliminated several rehearsals this year, where Anshel (Brusilow, the music director) thought he could do it.

"Anshel is an amazing conductor. He knows exactly what to rehearse, what to let go by and what not to."

The RSO normally does three or four rehearsals for each classical concert, one or two for pops concerts.

"We try to do more rehearsals at the front end of the season," Landis says, "because the orchestra hasn't played together over the summer."

Landis says last season ended with a surplus, "and we're bound and determined to end this year at least breaking even. Our board has instructed me to do whatever we have to do not to have deficits."

The orchestra has an annual budget of $800,000.

There's a change of string quartets for Dallas Chamber Music's April 6 concert.
The Ysaye Quartet, originally scheduled on that date, had to cancel because of a scheduling conflict. In its place, the Orion String Quartet (violinists Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, violist Steven Tenenbom and cellist Timothy Eddy) will perform.
The program, to be presented at 8 p.m. at the Latino Cultural Center, 2600 Live Oak, will comprise Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade, Webern's Six Bagatelles, Mendelssohn's Quartet in D major (Op. 44, No. 1) and Beethoven's Quartet in B-flat major (Op. 130), with the Grosse Fuge finale.
Tickets are $35; discounts for students. For information, call 972-392-3267 or go to www.dallaschambermusic.org.

The Fort Worth Symphony has been hired to provide live music for three Metropolitan Classical Ballet productions next season--the fall and spring programs as well as the annual "Nutcracker." The contract with the Arlington-based company is for approximately $85,000.

Another ballet company, the financially troubled Texas Ballet Theater, recently pulled out of a $350,000 contract with the FWSO.

Media types had a chance to meet new Dallas Center for the Performing Art pres/CEO Mark Nerenhausen Monday. Nerenhausen took over last week, after 11 years running the Brouward Center for the Performing Arts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Nerenhausen is a man of no few words. Did any single question elicit an answer less than five minutes long? As he admitted, being on the job only a week didn't prepare him for much in the way of specific answers. But that didn't stop him from philosophizing at length on things like "making the arts available." Prize statement: "Our job is to create desireable outcomes."

He did acknowledge that most new performing arts centers have run up deficits in their first years, but he said that's no different from startup businesses. He said there's a "three- to four-year cycle before a PAC really hits its stride."

He also said there are only about 30 performing arts complexes in the country, as opposed to one-off theaters, and only about 12 in the DCPA's league.

After dire warnings of traffic and parking issues for the Dallas Opera's "Italian Girl in Algiers" this weekend, no one was complaining at the opening Friday night. The North Texas Irish Festival, running through Sunday at Fair Park, is projected to draw as many as 50,000 people. And maybe crowds will be a problem for the opera's Sunday-afternoon performance. But they weren't Friday.

Parking for opera patrons will still be free, but people attending the festival will have to pay. Which means you won't just be able to drive right in -- so count on delays at the gates.

For the second time this season, Jaap van Zweden is conducting the Chicago Symphony later this month. As back in October, the Dallas Symphony's new music director has been tapped to replace another guest conductor who has withdrawn--this time, Semyon Bychkov. Van Zweden will conduct three performances, on March 19, 20 and 21, of a program including the tone poem "Cyrano de Bergerac" by Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar, the Liszt Piano Concerto No. 2 (with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet) and the Brahms Fourth Symphony.

I hate it that Dallas Chamber Music has scheduled the Ying Quartet's concert on the same evening as the first performance of the Dallas Opera's "Italian Girl in Algiers."

I heard the Yings, four Chinese-American siblings who grew up in Chicago, when they were starting out as a quartet. That was 20 years ago, when they were all students at the Eastman School of Music and I was music critic of the since-vanished Rochester Times-Union. There was something really special about their playing right from the start, and I was hoping to hear them again. Alas, not this time.

The Dallas Opera had a nice box lunch for a few of us media types Friday with Jake Heggie, composer of the "Moby Dick" opera that Dallas will premiere in April 2010. Tenor Ben Heppner will star as Captain Ahab.

Herman Melville's hefty novel might seem a challenge to reduce to a three-hour opera. And Heggie, who has already turned Sister Helen Prejean's "Dead Man Walking" and Graeme Greene's "The End of the Affair" into operas, admitted, "We have to cut like crazy." But ultimately, he said the novel is about "one man's obsession with wanting to control the universe."

The idea for a "Moby Dick" opera originated with playwright Terrence McNally, the librettist for "Dead Man Walking." But when a second bout of lung cancer sidelined McNally, he yielded the project to Gene Scheer, librettist for "The End of the Affair" and a newer collaboration, "Three Decembers." Heggie and Scheer have also been working with dramaturg Leonard Foglia, who will direct the Dallas production.

Unlike that other great seafaring, Melville-based opera, Britten's "Billy Budd," this one will make considerable use of what Heggie called "Melville's ravishing, gorgeous language." Also unlike the Britten, Heggie's opera will have a part for a woman; the young Pip will be a "trousers role," to be sung by a soprano in boy drag.

The opera will be tried out in workshops in August, in San Francisco, after which Heggie expects there will be a good deal more cutting and pasting.

"It's lyrical," he says of the music in his work-in-progress, "but it's much denser and more complex than anything I have written."

...with a pre-season surprise.

If you're planning to go to the Dallas Opera's "Italian Girl in Algiers" this weekend, be warned about potential traffic and parking snarls in and around Fair Park. The North Texas Irish Festival is being held at Fair Park starting Friday at 6 p.m., and is expected to draw 50,000 visitors.

The opera is advising patrons to allow at least AN HOUR AND A HALF TO TWO HOURS to get to Fair Park and find a parking place.

Arrghh.

Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Michael McKean will bring their six-week, 30-city tour to Nokia Theatre at Grand Prairie on Saturday, May 2.

This time, the guys will be Unwigged and Unplugged, performing music from heavy metal band Spinal Tap and folk music from A Mighty Wind, among other selections. It could be considered a 25th anniversary celebration of This Is Spinal Tap. Guest, Shearer and McKean, considered a legendary trio of comedians and musical artists, will be performing their alter ego-music as themselves for the first time. No wigs, no amps, no electric instruments. Let's see if they can hit "maximum volume" in an acoustic setting.

Tickets go on sale Friday through Ticketmaster.

(Photo of (left to right) Shearer, McKean and Guest by Suzanne Tenner/Warner Bros. Pictures)

If that title line above has your brain spinning -- all of that in one concert? -- join the club, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment to all the musicians and singers involved. My mind will be processing, and joyously reliving, Thursday's concert for weeks, months and years to come. James N. Scott, dean of the University of North Texas College of Music, introduced the concert as one that "couldn't have been done anywhere else on the planet." He was right, and those who were there saw the concert of a lifetime.

It was all in celebration of the Murchison Performing Arts Center, which opened 10 years ago this month. The Winspear Performance Hall's fairly intimate (1,050 seats) setting proved perfection, both for the opening Brubeck orchestral/choir compositions -- the upbeat communion hymn "All My Hope" and the solemnly gorgeous, Gregorian-chant-inspired "Pange Lingua Variations" -- and the full-on jazz concert that followed after the intermission.

I enjoyed the story on adapting the iPod for classical music we printed today, but I have developed my own strategies.

I waited a long time before diving into the mp3/download world. What finally got me hooked was realizing that it was great for short works -- lieder, arias, etc. You can make your own programs (and here the shuffle feature is really great). I started out with Schubert lieder -- eventually getting about 2,000 performances into ITunes, including the whole Hyperion collection and the ongoing Naxos survey. (These have all been ripped from CDs I own.) More recently, I've been putting on Handel arias -- seems like a new recital comes out every couple of weeks, mostly recently from the unlikely Rolando Villazon.

I also started listening to jazz seriously again for the first time in many years. I won't even tell you how greedy I got about that.

All the practical tips in the story are good, but I found it useful to put each album (or sometimes group of album) on a playlist, and organize the playlists into folders. That makes it very simple to find a piece, but it is an extra step.

I've also really enjoyed downloading from EMusic.com. The site has loads of really offbeat releases from independents of all sorts, including classical. And the jazz....!

Rachel Steiner talks about the violin she plays and her upcoming performance for the Young Performers Orchestra Concert this Sunday. Her violin is more than two centuries old and was previously used by her great grandfather, a concertmaster in Budapest, Hungary, before he died of tuberculosis in a labor camp during WWII.

Watch this video for more.

The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre are looking promising, with October openings planned for both. But this was a bad week elsewhere for the two buildings' architects: Foster + Partners for the opera house, Rem Koolhaas/OMA for the theater.

On Monday, Koolhaas' under-construction Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Beijing was destroyed by fire, apparently set off by illegal fireworks. (You'd think they'd design a big, high-visibility building like this to be a LITTLE more fire-resistant, wouldn't you?)

And a Foster-designed Harmon Hotel under construction in Las Vegas had to be clipped from the planned 49 stories to a stubby 28, after improperly installed rebar (the steel rods that hold concrete together) was discovered on 15 floors. Oops.

"Bnesbitt"'s comment on a previous blog entry on the Dallas Opera's search for (faux) eunuchs confused the Dallas Opera and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It's the opera company that's looking, and cultivating, sexier images, not the orchestra.

But, although they'd probably deny it, orchestras are also looking to book, and market, sexier soloists. Notice all those pretty young female violinists and pianists--and a few handsome young males--showing up in concert brochures these days?

The Dallas and Fort Worth symphony orchestra and the Youth Orchestra of Greater Fort Worth are among at least 163 orchestras in 45 states joining in food drives in late March. The drives are timed to release of the movie "The Soloist," about a cellist who becomes homeless.

An irreverent list from LA Times art critic Christopher Knight:

The culture industry is cosmopolitan, so flag-waving options are few.
The culture industry is pluralistic, but Congress is only marginally so.
As corporations, arts institutions are nonprofit, so there's no money to be made via lobbyists.
Culture is girlie, not manly.
The arts often look at sexual experience -- eek!

"What's with these dark American concert halls?" Dallas Opera music director Graeme Jenkins asked the other day, commenting on my repeated complaints about blackout conditions at Dallas Symphony concerts. Graeme, who mainly works in Europe, is of course accustomed to the normal European custom of keeping the audience well-lit for classical concerts.

I'm not arguing for full-up lighting, European-style, but concertgoers ought to be given at least enough light that they can read the program--at least to see how many movements are in the next piece. Latest offender: the Fort Worth Symphony--or Bass Hall. At the last FWSO concert I couldn't begin to read conductor Mathias Bamert's biography.

Let there be light!

That's what classical-music doomsayer Norman Lebrecht says on his blog, La Scena Musicale (www.scena.org. If so, that will be the end of one of classical music's most distinguished imprints, whose releases have included the legendary Georg Solti "Ring" Cycle, the first cycle of the complete Haydn symphonies and oodles of operas featuring the likes of Joan Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti. For years distributed in North America on the "London" label, because of a copyright held on these shores by another Decca label, the English-based Decca was also a pioneer in higher-fidelity recording techniques.

Just when you think you've seen everything, here's a press release from the Dallas Opera seeking, among other things, EUNUCHS for an upcoming production of Rossini's "Italian Girl in Algiers." Also sought: imposing man to play "Vlad the Impaler" and two more to play guards. "Girth is no object," the release helpfully adds.

Don't worry: This is make-believe opera, and these are supernumeraries--"supers," for short: people who portray non-singing characters. No physical examinations--or orchiectomies (look it up)--are required.

Casting call is Tuesday (Feb. 10). Contact Emily Gast at The Dallas Opera for times and location: pa@dallasopera.org or 214.443.1037.

Even if you're, ahem, intact.

Denton resident Duane Hargis is heading to the Grammy Awards Feb. 8 in Los Angeles. A graduate student at the University of North Texas (pursuing a master's degree in jazz studies), Hargis plays trumpet with Ruben Ramos and the Mexican Revolution. The band's "Viva La Revolucion" was nominated in the Best Tejano Album category.
"It's incredible," Hargis said in a press release. "I haven't really realized the depth of this honor yet, and I don't think it will sink in until I am sitting at the awards ceremony."
Hargis joined the Austin-based band in 2008. He also plays lead trumpet for UNT's Four O'Clock Lab Band. He lives near UNT with his wife and two children.

Check out Fort Worth Symphony music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya's English National Opera debut Wednesday (2/4) in the comfort of your own home. The web site www.classicaltv.com is offering a live transmission of "La boheme" (in English) from the London Colisseum at 1:30 p.m.

That's assuming London has cleared away the snow that caused cancellation of the opening performance Monday. Covent Garden cancelled its performance of Korngold's "Die tote Stadt" and bunches of theaters shut down for the evening.

The newest offering in Houston Grand Opera's 2009-2010 season will be Britten's 1954 "Turn of the Screw" -- this for a company with a proud history of premieres. But the six-production season does look interesting: new productions of "Lohengrin" and "Tosca," plus "Xerxes" (with a starry cast including Susan Graham, Laura Claycomb and David Daniels), "The Queen of Spades" and "The Elixir of Love." Check the web site--www.houstongrandopera.org--for details.

It's billed as a pops concert, but the DSO program Thursday and Sunday is basically classical-lite: goodies like the Rossini "William Tell" Overture, the middle movement of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, Sarasate's "Zigeunerweisen" and such. It's also a showcase for outstanding DSO musicians: cellist Christopher Adkins, piccoloist (is there such a word?) Deborah Baron, violinist Gary Levinson, clarinetist Gregory Raden, organist Mary Preston and trumpeter Ryan Anthony.

Principal pops conductor Richard Kaufman leads both performances, at 8 p.m. Thursday and Sunday, at the Meyerson Symphony Center. Tickets $22 to $105. 214-692-0203, www.dallassymphony.com.

Dallas' own Lisa Loeb got hitched Saturday in a Jewish ceremony in New York City as reported in a People exclusive. The groom, Roey Hershkovitz, is a music supervisor for Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Evidently, they met "cute," too. It seems that two years ago he found our Grammy-nominated, platinum-selling recording artist when he was looking for a host for a food show he was developing. They got engaged in November -- which means she was engaged when she performed in the Élan Circle's Deck the Hall -- A celebration of Music for Children at the Meyerson in December.

Parents' Guide to Summer, Guide's annual listing of day camps and classes for kids, is scheduled to be published April 3. We're taking submissions through Feb. 27 at 3 p.m. Submit your programs here.

"No room! No room!" one of Cinderella's sisters wails over the glass slippers that won't fit. And surely every newspaper journalist sometimes feels the same -- more and more, as space gets tighter.

The Dallas Opera's "Roberto Devereux" had some glorious singing at the Friday night opening, and Graeme Jenkins had the orchestra playing elegantly. But about Stephen Lawless' staging I didn't have room to do much more than gripe about all the sitting, sliding and crawling on the floor. On the FLOOR, I say -- this for nobility at one of Europe's great courts and cultural centers.

The other thing I really hated was the big vitrines rolled around with Madame Tussaud figures (actually living ones, I think). The first three, seen during the overture, were presumably King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I's parents, and the young Elizabeth. At the end we saw Robert Devereux and I forget who else. The effect was gratuitous and silly.

I've always said the most important person in an opera company is the one who will just say "no" to directors' loonier ideas.

It's good news that the Dallas Symphony has booked a 2009 European tour, including stops in Vienna, Berlin and Amsterdam. And great that Europeans will hear the amazing partnership with our new music director, Jaap van Zweden.

But couldn't the DSO have come up with some more imaginative programming? Of the three Russian symphonies anchoring the programs, I'm always glad for a great performance of the Rachmaninoff Second. But do European audiences really need to hear another Tchaikovsky Fourth? And, personally, I never want to hear the Shostakovich "Leningrad" again. The opening is stirring, but the interminable "duh, duh, dee-DUH-duh" section drives me nuts. And the rest of the symphony never quite lives up to the opening promise.

Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto is at least a provocative choice. And there's Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto, at least no cliche, but there are reasons it's the least played for the four. And here's an American orchestra going off to Europe with no piece of American music more provocative than Samuel Barber's "Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance."

Contrast, if you will, the programs the St. Louis Symphony is taking on an April tour of California: One program of Stravinsky ("Danses concertantes" and Violin Concero) and Mozart (Violin Concerto No. 2 and "Linz" Symphony), another of Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2, Sibelius Seventh Symphony, Christopher Rouse's "Rapture" and John Adams' "Dr. Atomic" Symphony.

Europeans REALLY want to hear American orchestras play American music. The DSO may be missing a good chance.

John T. Cody, Jr., who's starting his second stint as interim general director of the Dallas Opera, is one of three recipients of the National Opera Trustee Recognition Award. Presented by Opera America, a national service organization based in New York, the annual award honors trustees of U.S. opera companies for "exemplary leadershiip, generosity and audience building efforts."

A retired president and COO of J.C. Penney, John joined the Dallas Opera board in 1993 and served stints as both president and chairman of the opera board. He was interim general director between the departure of Karen Stone and the arrival of George Steel, who's stepping down after less than four months on the job to head New York City Opera. And opera insiders have nothing but good things to say about him.

John and two other honorees, from Lyric Opera of Kansas City and Piedmont Opera, will be honored at a February dinner and reception in New York.;

Just before Barack Obama took the oath of office, the world heard a new piece of classical music. Composed for the occasion by John Williams, of film-score and Boston Pops fame, it was "Air and Simple Gifts," and the quartet of performers certainly upped the inauguration's multicultural ante: violinist Itzhak Perlman (an Israeli native), clarinetist Anthony McGill (a black musician born on Chicago's South Side, now principal clarinetist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra), cellist Yo-Yo Ma (born in Paris to Chinese parents) and pianist Gabriela Montero (from Venezuela).

The "Air" was dreamy, in a manner suggesting some of those early 20th-century British composers--Frank Bridge, say. The clarinet introduced the the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" (memorably arranged in Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring"), and from here the music got up and danced. But it settled down again into the reflective mood of the opening.

Although known mainly for his film scores, Williams has also penned significant concert music. This may not be a masterpiece for the ages, but it was certainly attractive and nicely captured both the sobriety and the hopefulness of the occasion. And it was awfully nice to give classical musicians that kind of exposure.

The hot buzz in the opera world continues to be conjecture on whether George Steel will or will not leave the Dallas Opera to head New York City Opera. Steel, who became general director of Dallas Opera only in October, has admitted to having conversations with City Opera, which was left high and dry when Gerard Mortier said he'd take the job but then pulled out.

Steel has told Bloomberg that he's not in the running for the New York job. But the gossip continues, big time, notably on the campy opera 'zine Parterre Box (www.parterre.com). And a poll of Parterre readers has Steel at the top of the list of named possibilities for the NYCO job, with 17 percent of votes; other names include Renee Fleming, director Francesca Zambello and former Met general director Joe Volpe. The biggest slice of votes goes to "Some (expletive) Brit." (Dallas had two (non-expletives) in a row: Anthony Whitworth-Jones and Karen Stone.)

Not that Parterre readers have inside information, but I'll bet at least a couple do. A couple of responses comment on unhappiness with Steel among both Dallas Opera board and staff members, which has been whispered around here.

I've got a call in to George. Will let you know as soon as I hear anything from the horse's mouth.

The Feb. 2 "Piano Now" concert in the Cliburn at the Modern series, at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, has been cancelled due to a scheduling conflict.

Season ticket holder can receive a refund or ticket exchange for another Cliburn Concerts performance. Individual ticket holders may request a refund. For refunds of exchanges, call Central Ticket Office at 817-335-9000.

The Orchestra of New Spain will appear about 7 p.m. tonight (Wednesday the 14th) on "Dallas Culture Scene," a new TV program from the Dallas Office for Cultural Affairs. The segment will include excerpts from the ensemble's Nov. 30 Christmas concert and school performances.

The show can be seen on the Dallas City Channel: Time-Warner Channel 16, Verizon Fios Channel 47, and live streaming at: http://dallascityhall.com/council_briefings/agendas/index_video-view.html.

The League of American Orchestras, the New York-based national service organization for American orchestras, will hold its 2012 national convention in Dallas. It will bring approximately 3,000 orchestra professionals to the city, and will offer a showcase for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under music director Jaap van Zweden. Will be interesting to see if the Fort Worth Symphony performs as well -- it certainly should.

League conferences explore topics from fundraising and board management to music-director searches and (ahem) dealing with critics. They draw representatives from the biggest orchestras to the smallest. The League (formerly known as the American Symphony Orchestra League) last met in Dallas about 15 years ago, when the DSO, Houston Symphony and Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra all performed at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

This tidbit was revealed by DSO president/CEO Doug Adams at the Wednesday breakfast where the DSO's 2010 European tour was announced.

Just announced at a breakfast media event at Fearing's in the Ritz-Carlton:

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra will play Vienna, Berlin and Amsterdam on a two-week European tour in February and March 2010. This will be the orchestra's first international tour under Jaap van Zweden. The last of its four previous European tours, under music director emeritus Andrew Litton, was in 2003. A highlight of the tour will be a performance in Amsterdam's famed Concertgebouw, where van Zweden served 10 years as concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

The schedule:

I'm probably not supposed to praise anything in a "competing" publication, but bravo to SMU English prof Willard Spiegelman's D Magazine diatribe against deafening restaurants. They're my biggest pet peeve in the world.

Some places I've learned to avoid entirely, because I don't relish dining in sound levels at the threshold of pain, or screaming at a companion across the table, and answering everything with, "WHAAT?" Other restaurants I've turned around and left as soon as I've walked in the door. Elsewhere, I sometimes ask waiters, very politely, "Is it possible the music could be turned down a little?" They usually comply, at least by a decibel or two, usually with a scowl. But then it's amazing how even two people in relatively -- only relatively -- quiet restaurants sometimes carry on conversations at levels that could be heard all the way to New Mexico.

We fuss about air polution, but tolerate ever-increasing noise polution in virtually every aspect of our lives. I keep saying I'm going to start investing in hearing-aid companies. They're the growth industry of the 21st century.

Alas, the printed version of my Dallas Symphony review from last Thursday eliminated a couple of cranky final sentences. (The review was complete on the web.)

One sentence complained about the darkness in the Meyerson Symphony Center and asked for at least enough light to read the program page.

The other noted the almost nonstop continuo of coughing. Dallas audiences have seemed to do better about controlling audibly unnecessary coughing in recent months, but Thursday's concert was a real hack-fest.

The New York Times Sunday Travel section listed Dallas at No. 17 in its "44 Places to Go in 2009" story. The reason: the Dallas Arts District, with the Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre set to open in October. Dallas rated behind Vienna, the Galapagos and Hawaii, but ahead of Rome, the Florida Keys, Stockholm and Buffalo.

Funny: This major development wasn't noticed in a certain local newspaper's story on major local developments coming up in 2009.

BERLIN (AP) -- Fans of Germany's renowned Berlin Philharmonic can now follow the orchestra's performances from anywhere in the world through a new "digital concert hall" accessible via the Internet.

Tuesday's performance -- directed by Sir Simon Rattle and featuring Johannes Brahms' First Symphony -- will be the first to be broadcast online from the philharmonic's home concert hall in the German capital.

Single tickets to follow the online performance live, or to access it on demand at any point in a 48-hour period after the broadcast, cost euro9.90 ($13.45). A season ticket for euro149 (about $202) gives viewers access to all concerts during the season.

The concerts can be viewed at http://dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de/#/en/.

Classical music critic Scott Cantrell lists the top 10 events and people of 2008. Do you agree? Share your thoughts with us below.

Rumors that new Dallas Opera general director George Steel has been talking with New York City Opera about the general director's post there are confirmed in an item on Bloomberg.com. But Steel is quoted as saying, "I'm aware of the speculation that I'm a candidate. I'm not interested in the job at New York City Opera." He adds that he's "extremely happy" with the Dallas appointment.

The City Opera post is wide open after director-designate Gerard Mortier quit before even taking the job. Steel, who arrived in Dallas only in October, is well-known in New York for his 11 years at the helm of Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York. And he has said he wants to be the Gerard Mortier of Dallas -- presumably referring to the Belgian impresario's penchant for innovative, even controversial programming, not for leaving a company in the lurch.

Whether Steel's talk about highly innovative programming in Dallas makes sense in the current economy is another matter.

Danail Rachev, former assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, has been named music director of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra in Oregon, starting in fall 2009.

Rachev, who left the DSO last summer to become assistant conductor of the Philadephia Orchestra, will continue to hold that position.

A native of Bulgaria, he was trained at the State Musical Academy in Sofia and at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. He got rave reviews during his three seasons with the DSO, and was much liked and respected by the orchestra's musicians.

The Eugene Symphony has been a career-starter for a number of conductors, including the Fort Worth Symphony's Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony. Giancarlo Guerrero, who has helmed the orchestra since 2002, is leaving next year to become music director of the Nashville Symphony.

Fort Worth's Bass Performance Hall is offering seats for Neal Berg's 101 Years of Broadway buy-one-get-one-free. The event is next Monday, Nov. 24, at 8 p.m. Here's a link for tickets.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has cancelled its May 2009 concert performances of "Madame Butterfly." Instead music director Jaap van Zweden will conduct the Brahms "Academic Festival" Overture and "Schicksalslied" (with the Dallas Symphony Chorus), and the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and "1812" Overture.
The soloist for the violin concerto will be announced later.
The change avoids competing with the Dallas Opera's planned May 2010 staging of Madame Butterfly at the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Winspear Opera House. The new building opens next fall next to the DSO's home, the Meyerson Symphony Center.
Officials at the opera company had been annoyed when the DSO scheduled the Puccini knowing that the Dallas Opera had already booked it.
"We looked at our presentation and their presentation within a year," said Doug Adams, the DSO's president and CEO, "and it didn't make sense. So we're making the programming change.
"I would like to start off with our new neighbor in a real spirit of cooperation."
Patrons who have already purchased tickets for the DSO's Madame Butterfly may keep their seats for the revised program or call 214-692-0203 to exchange tickets.

In Thursday's Dallas Symphony concert, the first two movements of the Brahms First Symphony seemed surprisingly plodding, not at all what I was expecting from conductor Jaap van Zweden. And the review said so. But I heard rumors that both movements had picked up by the next evening's performance. And on Sunday, when I went back to hear the Brahms, all was very well indeed.

The tempo differences can't have been great, but it's amazing how a mere notch on the metronome can transform a performance. And there was just more sense of momentum, and urgency.

The quick tempo van Zweden took in the finale came as quite a surprise in the other direction. But it really worked. And the excitement was racheted up even higher for an encore perofrmance of a Brahms Hungarian Dance. The audience went wild, and deservedly so!

Two principal conductors in a row haven't entirely met expectations at Santa Fe Opera, and have dropped out in short order. First was Alan GIlbert, who in three years spruced up the orchestra but evinced little feeling for opera. He quit at the end of the 2007 season, shortly before being named music director of the New York Philharmonic.

Then last week came word that Edo de Waart is stepping down after only one season, although he'll continue to be involved in auditioning players. The official statement citied his busy schedule and his difficulty with thin air in the high altittude, but his conducting in last summer's "Billy Budd" was surprisingly uninspired.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has named Rei Hotoda assistant conductor. But because of existing commitments as assistant conductor of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra in Canada she won't start here until September 2009.
She'll assist with classical-series concerts and conduct parks, youth, family and other concerts. She'll succeed Danail Rachev, who left this past summer to become assistant conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Born in Tokyo, Hotoda studied conducting with Gustav Meier at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. She holds a doctorate in piano performance from the University of Southern California and an undergraduate degree in piano from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.

John Adams, composer of operas including "Nixon in China," "Doctor Atomic" and "The Death of Klinghoffer," says he gets grilled by airport immigration officers whenever he flies home. In a story in the Sunday Guardian (UK), based on a BBC Radio 3 interview, Adams said he thinks he's on the Homeland Security list because of "Klinghoffer," about a 1985 Palestinian Liberation Front hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro.

In the interview, Adams likened the current American atmosphere to the McCarthy era in the 1950s. "Congress has continued to sign off on these Patriot Acts that continue to clip the wings of human rights," he said.

The Metropolitan Opera is presenting a new production of Adams' "Doctor Atomic," about the development and explosion of the first nuclear bomb, through Nov. 13. It will be transmitted in HD to movie theaters around the country at noon (CST) on Nov. 8.

Dallas Symphony music director Jaap van Zweden got rave reviews for his Chicago Symphony debut last week.

"One of the most impressive podium debuts Orchestra Hall has witnessed in many a season," wrote Chicago Tribute critic John von Rhein of van Zweden's performance of Anton Bruckner's Fifth Symphony.

"There is something of Georg Solti's intensity and electric drive about van Zweden," von Rhein continued, "minus the ferocity. He has a string player's feeling for shaping the arc of a singing line. Nothing he did seemed on autopilot. He found as much drama in the near-silences as in the majestic climaxes. His full engagement with the music and the musicians, body and soul, was never in doubt...

"After this extraordinary performance, the audience was up on its feet, treating the newcomer to a prolonged ovation. Dallas chose well. When can we have him back?

In the Sun-Times, critic Andrew Patner wrote, "Clearly this is a man who has focused himself since his teenage years at Juilliard on understanding orchestral music and leadership from both sides of the podium. [Before taking up conducting, van Zweden was for 16 years concertmaster of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.] He stands at the beginning of a major career with far more going for him than many names with heavier publicity and record label buzz...

"His skills and rapport with the Bruckner-steeped CSO were such that the 80-minute symphony was clearly etched, balanced and gripping from beginning to end.

"On the strength of this remarkable debut, I would go to hear van Zweden conduct anything, anywhere."

New Dallas Symphony Orchestra music director Jaap van Zweden is making his Chicago Symphony debut this week and next. And in a Tuesday advance, Chicago Tribune music critic John von Rhein sounded keen to hear the Dutchman at work. Substituting for an indisposed Riccardo Chailly, van Zweden is conducting four performances of the Bruckner Fifth Symphony. (Look for a review in the Saturday Guide.) This is his first gig with one of the so-called "Big Five" American orchestras (Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Cleveland).

"The Juilliard-trained violinist turned conductor has been stirring up a remarkable degree of buzz in the symphonic world," von Rhein wrote. "And the buzz is only getting louder."

You could have knocked me over with the proverbial feather at the news of Christopher Eschenbach's Washington appointments--as music director of BOTH the National Symphony and the Kennedy Center.

He was popular and artistically successful during the 1990s with the Houston Symphony, really polishing that orchestra. His best performances were transcendent; others were sometimes just slow. But he virtually crashed and burned with the Philadelphia Orchestra, for reasons probably both valid and less so (and too complicated to list here).

It does seem odd that the orchestra in our national capital should hire an European. (Mstislav Rostropovich's tenure there was an obvious jab in the eyes, or ears, of the former Soviet Union.) But it disproves the cliche that there are no second acts in America.

It's bad enough that arts-and-entertainment critics are being laid off left and right, as newspapers struggle with rising costs and declining readership. But the Cleveland Plain Dealer has stooped to a new low, forbidding its classical-music critic to review the local orchestra because he has too often criticized its music director.

There's not a more solid critic, or one with more integrity, than Don Rosenberg. I've known him for 20 years, and I have the greatest respect for him. Cleveland has been lucky to have him.

But apparently the town (or the orchestra management and/or supporters) couldn't handle the truth that Don's been dishing out: that music director Franz Welser-Most too often serves up dull, lifeless performances. (That's certainly been my impression from two live performances, and several recordings; not for nothing did he acquire the nickname "Frankly Worse-than-Most.") Somehow, somebody persuasded the Plain Dealer's editors to bar Don from reviewing the Cleveland Orchestra. He'll be allowed to review other concerts, but not the city's well-known orchestra. That job now falls to junior staffer Zachary Lewis, a bright young guy and a good writer, but not yet anywhere near Don Rosenberg's league.

Shame!

The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts has landed its third-largest contribution and a new, improved design for outdoor spaces around the Winspear Opera House and Wyly Theatre, now under construction.

Check out Scott Cantrell's story about it online here late Sunday or in the paper's GuideLive section Monday.

Also online
• See our interactive map and timeline of Arts District developments

This year, the Dallas Children's Theater is celebrating 25 years of bringing high-quality theater to children. As one might imagine, such a task is hardly inexpensive. So, 16 years ago, the DCT came up with a clever idea: It would have as its primary fund-raising vehicle an annual cabaret gala. The best in cabaret would come to Dallas and sing in the draped elegance of the Venetian Room of the Fairmont Hotel, while patrons, dressed in their finery, sipped champagne and sampled desserts. Saturday night's headliner emerged as one of the best ever. Broadway star Liz Callaway (Miss Saigon, Cats) wowed the sold-out crowd with a dazzling array of show tunes and golden oldies. My favorites were the Jimmy Webb songs she chose to cover as only she can: "Up, Up and Away" (made famous by the Fifth Dimension) and an exquisite medley of "Didn't We" combined with one of the middle verses of The World's Longest Song, "MacArthur Park." (Click below to read more!)

Photo: The one and only Liz Callaway

Check out this YouTube video for background on August 4, 1964, the new Gene Scheer-Steven Stucky oratorio being premiered this week by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The five-minute video explains the significance of the date: when Pres. Johnson, prompted by inaccurate intelligence, ordered bombing of North Vietnam, a major escallation in hostilities; and when bodies of three slain civil rights workers were found in Mississippi.

The new work, for four soloists, chorus and orchestra, weaves these two themes together to mark the LBJ centenary. Performances are 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Meyerson Symphony Center. For tickets, call 214-692-0203 or go to www.dallassymphony.com.

The New York Times printed an article by chief classical critic Anthony Tommasini on George Steel, who's leaving Columbia University's Miller Theater to head the Dallas Opera. It expressed some amazement that Steel, known for highly innovative programming, is taking over an opera company whose playlist has become increasingly conservative--indeed, this season, downright boring. And also that the opera company would hire someone with little experience with opera. It will be either a brilliant move or a catastrophe--we hope the former.

There was also a hefty Daniel Wakin article on "August 4, 1964," the new Gene Scheer-Steven Stucky oratorio being premiered here this week by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. That's on top of mentions of it in two season-advance stories the week before.

Also heard from several Saturday-night DSO-goers that the DSO's recording of the Beethoven Fifth Symphony was playing loudly over loudspeakers in the Meyerson Symphony Center during intermission. They all HATED it, and so would I if I had been there that evening.

Live music during DSO intermissions was the worst idea of former DSO CEO Fred Bronstein, and fortunately it eventually disappeared. Pre-concert music may be okay, although personally I'd prefer it not even then. But between halves of a concert the ears need a REST. If this keeps up, I may recruit readers to join me in a protest march!

So much for the power of the press. After a rave review for Jaap van Zweden's main-series debut as Dallas Symphony music director, several people reported a sparse crowd Saturday night. Probably because of worries about Hurrican Ike, which, blessedly turned into a non-event hereabouts. You know how skittish Dallasites are about the slightest hint of bad weather.

From Roy Cherryhomes, one of the DSO's recording engineers:

"As we were leaving by the elevator last night, throngs of people were shouting jubilant screams as the orchestra members filtered by. Looked like a Dallas Cowboy scene!"

At Dallas Symphony concert Thursday had a nice intermission chat with Thiemo Wind, music critic of the major Dutch paper De Telegraaf. He's followed the DSO's new music director, Jaap van Zweden, from his earliest outings as a conductor--"and saw him make all his mistakes." But he clearly respects van Zweden, and says he has become a major figure in Dutch musical life. And Wind was very impressed with the Meyerson Symphony Center.

More out of town critics are expected next week for the DSO's world premiere of the Gene Scheer-Steven Stucky LBJ oratorio.

Those who accuse symphony orchestras of elitism could have found ammunition in the DSO's Wednesday-night gala, Jaap van Zweden's first concert here as music director. You couldn't walk in the door for less than $1,000. So the Meyerson Symphony Center looked to be less than half full. In the past, you could buy more reasonably priced tickets just for the gala concert, passing on the fancy dinner. Several music-loving friends told me they would have loved to go to the concert, which included what were billed as van Zweden's final performances on the violin, but they just couldn't afford $1,000.

Proceeds were to go to the DSO education and outreach programs, worthy causes. But did the evening's exclusivity really send the right message?

The gala concert's major work, the Mahler Fifth Symphony, will be repeated in regular classical concerts tonight through Sunday.

The surface parking lot between the Meyerson Symphony Center and Nasher Sculpture Center is torn up for what appears to be new landscaping. So fewer than 1/3 of the parking places are now available. An attendant said that will be the case "for a while."

That's on top of raising the parking rates there last season to an astronomical $10 for an evening concert. Fort Worth has the right idea, offering free parking at night in the big garage across from Bass Performance Hall.

Last Friday's New York Times included two notices of the DSO's upcoming world premiere of August 4, 1964 by librettist Gene Scheer and composer Steven Stucky. The DSO and the Boston Symphony Orchestra were the only non-New York ensembles cited in chief critic Anthony Tommasini's story on new and recent works booked for the fall season. And it was a conspicuous outsider in music editor James Oestreich's rundown of season highlights.

DSO music director Jaap van Zweden conducts the new work, honoring the centenary of President Lyndon Johnson, Sept. 18-21 at the Meyerson Symphony Center.

With only the rarest exceptions, I've avoided the Pandora's Box of reviewing faculty recitals at area colleges. ("You reviewed his recital -- why not mine?") So I went to Larry Palmer's organ-and-harpsichord recital Monday at SMU's Caruth Auditorium not to review it, but because I like and respect Larry (who came to SMU when I was an undergraduate--gasp--40 years ago). It was billed as his 39th faculty recital, but it came up fresh as could be. Ever the rebel, Larry played, as usual, in jeans and a non-dress shirt.

Well, maybe Bach's G minor English Suite went on auto-pilot here and there, and Charles-Marie Widor's sendup of Bach's "Wachet auf" was pretty silly. But a movement from Josef Rheinberger's Fourth Sonata for organ was played with appropriate grandeur and two sets of chorale variations by Hugo Distler (on whom Larry wrote an important book) were dispatched with panache and wit. Pieces from recent decades by Stephen Dodgson and Glennn Spring proved that the harpsichord remains a viable medium for modern composers. The program was refreshing, the playing buoyantly musical.

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra's recording of the complete Gershwin works for piano and orchestra, with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott and conductor Justin Brown, gets a glowing review in the October issue of Gramophone magazine. "McDermott and her (British) conductor do Gershwin the courtesty of playing all the scores uncut and observing his dynamics and performance instructions to the letter," writes Jeremy Nichols. "The Dallas strings lend a Hollywood swoon to the big tunes in the Rhapsody and the Concerto while the remaining two pieces are more coherent and convincing than in the hands of some far more famous names. Strongly recommended." Recorded in summer 2007, the performances are issued on CD in the Bridge label.

The Dallas Wind Symphony is back in the Meyerson Symphony Center this weekend, recording yet another CD for the audiophile label Reference Recordings. With 14 CDs already in the RR catalogue, this one will feature music by one of the most popular wind-band composers, the Australian-American Percy Grainger (1882-1961). The performances will include all the optional (and rarely heard) percussion parts in the scores.

"At several points we will have 15 percussionists, 28 members of the Arts District Chorale, piano, harmonium and celeste," says DWS co-founder and executive director Kim Campbell, "plus the usual assortment of woodwinds and brass augmented by bass saxophone and basset horn."

The CD is expected to be out by November.

Think of it as an American Idol for kids with chewy, jelly bean center. The Oompa Loompas (from Willy Wonka) are so excited about the Giant Chewy Nerds, that they are, as the press release says, at a complete Loss for Lyrics. Tweens and teens ages 8-18 are invited to visit the traveling Wonkalicious Lounge in the Stonebriar Centre in Frisco Saturday from 1-6 p.m. or log onto WONKA.com with witty songs about the new Giant Chewy Nerds starting today and continuing through Sept. 21.

The winner of the Loss for Lyrics video contest will be flown to Los Angeles to record his or her song with Raven-Symone. And we, hope, to get a few of those Giant Chewy Nerds.
Also, anyone under 18 can enter the Rating Sweepstakes to rate their favorite submissions and be entered into a sweepstakes to win weekly WONKA prizes.