DCS music director Richard McKay leads incisive, sensitive performances of Joseph Thalken’s ‘Chasing Home’ and Aaron Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring Suite’. The recording, made in the acoustically superb Moody Performance Hall, is commendably clear and natural. Highly recommended.
There’s a special pleasure in hearing a refreshing take on a composition you know pretty well. Not, of course, a performance that’s distorted or belabored with point making. On Tuesday night, at Moody Performance Hall, music director Richard McKay led the Dallas Chamber Symphony in a fresh take on the Brahms Third Symphony.
For Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, McKay opted not for monumentality, but for the high spirits implied by Beethoven’s metronome markings. The outer movements were exhilarating. As throughout the concert, music director Richard McKay conducted clearly and expressively, without ever overdoing it. The orchestra responded with a gently urgent, warmly shaped performance…
The most compelling performance of a Beethoven symphony I’ve heard in quite a while happened Tuesday night at Moody Performance Hall. With music director Richard McKay conducting, the Eroica… must have been pretty close to Beethoven’s lively metronome markings. Proving the oft-disregarded tempo indications both practicable and dramatically gripping, the performance captured a nervous intensity that seems quintessentially Beethovenian.
A most enjoyable program of music unlikely to be heard anywhere else around here was served up Tuesday night by the Dallas Chamber Symphony. At least a quick search turned up no recent record of any other area performance of these three pieces for string orchestra.
Opening the concert, the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, for strings and harp, received a naturally lyrical performance. Some conductors are too deliberate here, but McKay kept the textures clear and moving. He had a sure grasp of structure, pushing the music ahead, and lingering before pivotal downbeats just long enough to make the listener crave the resolution.