The Dallas Symphony got its 2012-13 season off to a rousing start this weekend with a concert that included a spirited rendition of Schumann's Piano Concerto with Joaquín Achúcarro and concluded with Respighi's Pines of Rome.
What better way to bring the house down on opening night than with the extended crescendo of the Pines' finale from this amazing ensemble under the baton of Jaap van Zweden, complete with extra brass (positioned on a balcony above the Meyerson's Choral Terrace) and Mary Preston blazing away on the hall's organ?
The orchestra's second set of concerts (Sept. 20-23) will no doubt end with a similar blast of sound when it lets loose with the "Great Gate of Kiev" at the end of Leopold Stokowski's version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
If you're a fan of Pictures, you no doubt know that Mussorgsky wrote it as a solo piano work and that it's been orchestrated by several different composers. The most famous of those, of course, and the one most of us grew up on, is Maurice Ravel's.
The Stokowski arrangement that the DSO will perform is quite different from Ravel's in some areas and similar in others. Stokowski is said to have wanted to make a more "Slavic" version of Pictures, viewing Ravel's as too "French." That led Stokowski to omit one of the promenades and two sections, "Tuileres" and "The Market at Limoges," of which he may have had doubts about their authenticity as Mussorgsky's.
There are some striking distinctions in orchestral colors, starting with the opening Promenade, which relies on strings and woodwinds rather than the brass of Ravel. In "Il Vecchio Castello" (the Old Castle) Stokowski gives the melody to the creepier-sounding English horn as opposed to Ravel's alto saxophone. And in the "Great Gate," Stokowski -- always the showman -- adds the organ and plenty of percussion to the already large orchestra.
If you go, be prepared to get your socks knocked off.
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