Robert X. RodriguezPhoto: Gabriel Berdé

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January 31, 2015 The splendid French pianist Michel Dalberto, in his third  annual appearance with the San Antonio Symphony, applied his impeccable technique and  spirited musicianship to an unusually demanding and generous pair of concerti — Maurice Ravel’s Concerto in D for the Left Hand and Richard Strauss’s brilliant “Burleske.”  Those two composers, near-contemporaries of each other and each a gifted orchestral colorist, dominated the whole program, the third in the symphony’s Strauss Festival. Strauss was also represented by the First Waltz Sequence from the opera "Der Rosenkavalier." Ravel’s "Valses nobles et sentimentales" and "La valse," stitched together as a unit, closed the concert.  The opening work, continuing the season’s remarkable string of 75th-anniversary commissions, was "Fanfarria Son-Risa" by San Antonio native Robert X. Rodriguez. Music director Sebastian Lang-Lessing was in charge in the Tobin Center’s H-E-B Performance Hall. Strauss began writing the piece that he eventually would name “Burleske” in 1884, when he was just past his teens and his music was still heavily influenced by Johannes Brahms. The work had its premiere in 1890, after considerable revision. In between came the tone poem “Don Juan,” which established  Strauss’s mature style and his reputation as a master of orchestration and a forward-thinking composer.  So “Burleske” is a kind of chronicle of the composer's early development. It also is one of his most ingratiating works, full of youthful energy and hints of the plump lyricism of Strauss’ maturity. The solo part, sometimes in striking dialog with the timpani (the wonderful Peter Flamm), is one of the showiest in the literature, but the virtuosity never seems gratuitous.  Ravel composed his Concerto for the Left Hand on a commission from the pianist Paul Wittgenstein (brother of the eminent and influential philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein), who had lost much of his right arm in battle early in World War I. Quite a bit deeper than Strauss’s work, Ravel’s concerto opens with the orchestra playing dark, quiet, slowly roiling music that features the contrabassoon and builds to a blazing crescendo full of rich dissonances. The piano’s explosive entry evokes artillery with powerful passages in the lowest octave. Much that follows is ruminative or wistfully lyrical. Mr. Dalberto was fully equal to the demands of both works for speed and power — in the Ravel, he often used his right hand to grasp the piano frame, enabling him to use his torso to enhance the power in his left arm. Moreremarkable, however, were the delicacy and fluidity he brought to  pianissimo runs in the “Burleske” and the fine control of articulation and color with which he delineated voices in the Ravel concerto.  Mr. Dalberto once again showed himself to be in every sense  complete musician.  He and Mr. Lang-Lessing made a superb team, fully in accord in matters of timing and rhythm.  On his own, Mr. Dalberto offered an uncommonly lovely encore, his own transcription of the Strauss song “Beim schlafengehen,” from the Four Last Songs for soprano and orchestra. Rather than reproduce the song’s violin solo on the piano, Mr. Dalberto recruited concertmaster Eric Gratz to do the honors, which he did beautifully.  Strauss himself assembled the First Waltz Sequence from Der Rosenkavalier in 1944 for his friend Max Reiter, who conducted the world premiere with the San Antonio Symphony. The work contains a good deal of transitional material that does not appear in the 1911 opera. Mr. Lang-Lessing conducted it with a very Viennese approach to rhythm and a light touch, maximizing the stylistic distance from the earlier “Salome" and “Elektra” and emphasizing the Mozartian character that Strauss sought to recall in “Der Rosenkavalier.”  The Ravel orchestral pieces were beautifully put together — clear, rhythmically urgent, richly detailed and with a fine sense of color. Mr. Lang-Lessing did not match the mad, frenetic, malevolent character of Christopher Wilkins’s astonishing account of “La Valse” in the 1990s, but in that regard Mr. Lang-Lessing was more in line with Ravel’s own stated intentions. Mr. Rodriguez’s very brief — under three minutes — “Fanfarria Son-Risa” was a celebratory, texturally complex take on the mariachi idiom. As is sometimes the case with his music, the contrapuntal, polyrhythmic sophistication somewhat muddied the results, though a little more rehearsal time might have clarified things.  Mr. Lang-Lessing and the acousticians from Akustiks seem to be zeroing in on the optimum concert configuration for the H-E-B Performance Hall. For the most part the arrangement duplicated that from the previous weekend — rear wall of the shell set forward, tilted forestage reflector, stage extended forward with the use of the first pit lift. For this concert the violins returned to antiphonal seating, and the front desks were placed a couple of feet farther back from the apron, to accommodate the piano. The timpani were placed in the stage right corner rather than stage left and, for some reason, sounded cleaner and less boomy in the new location.  I traded seats at intermission with a friend on the front row of the mezzanine, near the center. (My usual seat is on the fourth row of the mezzanine, center right.) The sonic differences were large and interesting. On the front row, the sound was much brighter and more aggressive, and more spacious. It reminded me a little of the sound in the balcony at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. The sound on the fourth row was leaner and more evenly balanced, and instrumental timbres projected in high definition. (Principal oboe Paul Lueders's instrument sounded much more distinctive on the fourth row, more generic on the first.) Here, the sound reminded me of Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. I’ll explore other locations in future concerts, but, on the basis of what I've heard the past two weeks, the multi-purpose H-E-B Performance Hall is proving to be a national treasure for orchestral acoustics, comparable to the best single-purpose concert halls and superior to all the other multi-purpose halls I've heard.  Mike Greenberg

A young Richard Strauss

San Antonio Symphony, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Michel Dalberto

Michel DalbertoPhoto: photoX

Gifted colorists — Strauss and Ravel

H-E-B Performance Hall on Jan. 30: Rear wall set forward, forestage reflector tilted, stage extended forward with use of first pit lift.  

incident light

Maurice Ravel

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