By Scott Cantrell | The Dallas Morning News
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 Dallas Chamber Symphony, the Eroica (No. 3)… 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.
We misrepresent Beethoven by monumentalizing him, by cloaking him in musical equivalents of plush Roman robes and setting him on a throne. Especially from the Eroica on, his is rarely music to comfort the comfortable. It increasingly challenges expectations and pushes boundaries. This certainly came across in Tuesday’s performance. The first movement felt like an excitable conversation among different sections of the orchestra. The famous Funeral March had a deliberate step, not a ponderous one. The scherzo was exhilarating…
McKay boldly sculpted dynamics and gave plenty of thrust to accents, and the orchestra dispatched his brisk tempos with aplomb.