Conductor Pinchas Steinberg. Photo courtesy of Seldy Cramer Artists.

  

Dallas Symphony Orchestra with Pinchas Steinberg, conductor

Presented by Dallas Symphony Orchestra

January 29 - 30

at
214-692-0203

$17-$114

7:30pm Friday, 8pm Saturday

The program didn’t look particularly engaging—a full evening of Bedřich Smetana’s 75-minute tone poem cycle, Má Vlast. In English, that translates to My Fatherland, or sometimes as My Country. Rainy weather was another discouraging factor, but for those who braved the elements and stayed past intermission, guest conductor Pinchas Steinberg delivered a clean, nuance driven and exciting performance, while the Dallas Symphony Orchestra shined all evening long. Clarinetist Gregory Raden had a particularly good night.

Composer Smetana (1824-1884) is known for only two of his many compositions. One is the overture to his opera, The Bartered Bride, and the other is a movement from the present work, here called Vltava, but much better known by its German name Die Moldau (or The Moldau). Both pieces are regularly programmed by far lesser orchestras than the Dallas Symphony. Even youth orchestras have taken a shot at both.

Má Vlast is a series of six tone poems, some of which describe the native Bohemian landscape while others deal with historic buildings and even a folk legend. DSO's program has Laurie Shulman’s excellent program notes, which lay out all of the programmatic details, but Maestro Steinberg still droned on for at least 20 minutes before the first half of the concert and then again after intermission, covering basically the same ground.

Whatever his failings as a raconteur, as a conductor this music is deep in his psyche. Steinberg conducted it without a score and every detail, from the smallest accent, was evident in the performance. On the podium, Steinberg stands ramrod straight, with his feet set solidly about two feet apart, and delivers precise and sharp motions. In lyric passages, he is much looser. On several occasions, especially in The Moldau, he completely abandoned his usual crisp beat and simply shaped the music outside of any recognizable beat pattern. These were magical moments. When needed, such as in a tricky offbeat pattern in the strings in the last movement, the beat pattern was delivered in geometrically precise 90 degree angles that said "Woe unto them that falleth behind." On this same line, however, he occasionally points imperiously to a player with something important to play—an unnecessary and off-putting gesture.

The opening movement, Vyšehrad, is written about a famous landmark, a rock that overlooks the river Vltava, which runs near Prague. It was the ancient gathering place for the Bohemian Kings of yore. Much of the melodic material that knits the entire cycle together is presented here: A four note motif (B flat/E flat/D natural/B flat). The Moldau movement follows, a justifiably well-known musical picture of the river flowing through the countryside. The third piece takes a decidedly different path with a musical telling of an intriguing Czech legend of warrior women and their leader, Sárka. In order to get vengeance on the unfaithfulness of men in general, they lure some to their lair and ply them with drink. Once the men are asleep, these crazed women kill them all. It was here that the Maestro’s lecture bore some fruit. He described a note in the bassoon that was intended to depict the snoring of the sleeping men. Sure enough, there it was. A low “C” natural, which is completely out of the key, and marked in the score with a sforzando. What a rude noise it is; snickers ensued.

After intermission, it was evident that Má Vlast is a piece that sort of shrinks on you. It starts out enjoyably enough with the river and all, but by the end you begin to understand why the piece is rarely played in its entirety outside of its native land. The second half of the concert began with the fourth movement, Z českých luhů a hájů (From Bohemia’s Forests and Meadows). It is a charming pastoral. The fifth movement is a musical picture of Tábor, a town in southern Bohemia where Jan Hus, a religious reformer and proto-Protestant, was burned at the stake in 1415 for heresy. The final movement is really a continuation of the previous one and is named Blaník, after a well-known mountain. Legend states that it holds a sleeping army, ready to awaken in a time of great need. Steinberg described it as “…nationalistic, but in a good way.” But it was here, near the end, where the music began to wear on the ear. It is fragmented, with sudden changes of pace, sudden stops, over-dependent on the unifying motive and nationalistic indeed (good way or not). A bombastic ending brought the cycle to a rousing close and the remaining audience to its feet.

Unless you plan to attend the annual Prague Spring Music Festival, where the complete cycle is performed every year, this is a rare opportunity to hear Má Vlast from beginning to end. In fact, as Steinberg informed us, he is the only non-Czech conductor ever invited to conduct this yearly presentation, so his is an interpretation that is respected.

The DSO concert repeats at 7:30 p.m., Friday, January 29. This is the Casual Friday performance, which omits the intermission, but plays the entire cycle uninterrupted. This would be an improvement as the intermission is an unwelcome break in the flow of the music. The 8 p.m., Saturday, January 30 performance will go on with intermission restored. There is no Sunday matinee this time.