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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > April > 07 > Entry
Review: Austin Symphony Orchestra Long Center debut
Subtlety and sharpness marked the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s debut at the Long Center of Performing Arts Friday night.
And music director Peter Bay smartly picked a program that showed off the sophisticated acoustics of the new Dell Hall, the Long Center’s main 2,400-seat venue. With the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet as special guests, Bay presented a program of all Spanish music rife with bright colorations, crackling rhythms and spirited melodies — perfect for making the most of Dell Hall’s exceptional sound.
After all, the Dell Hall is a vastly more complex instrument than we’ve ever experienced in an Austin concert venue. Gone is the need to make every concert simply - and awkwardly — loud as was necessary in the Bass Concert Hall at the University of Texas, the symphony’s home since the early 1980s.
Clarity is the starting point in Dell. Nuance rules. And that means that there’s a whole new range of volumes and colors a symphony orchestra can employ as Bay so deftly demonstrated Friday night, unfortunately to an audience that had noticeable holes of empty seats scattered through it in every of the three levels of seating.
Bay could not have picked a better piece than Luciano Berio’s ‘Versions of ‘Night Retreat from Madrid’’ to start with. Berio’s variations on a popular theme, superimposed on each other, start soft then builds into an impressive volume before receding as if a band of musicians were approaching and then passing along the way. And thanks to Dell Hall’s exceptional nuance, we heard those crescendos and decrescendos with great delicacy.
Though amplified with microphones, the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet nonetheless delivered a crystalline performance of Joaquin Rodrigo’s sensuous and virtuosic ‘Concierto Andaluz.’
Undoutedly the great flourish of the evening’s program was the finale, Manuel de Falla’s ‘Three-Cornered Hat.’ The frolicking piece, originally commissioned as a ballet version of a familiar folk tale, starts with castanet rolls and shouts of ‘Ole’ from the orchestra. Then it’s a sonic celebration as everything from a blackbird’s chirp to a squeaking well is delightfully rendered by the orchestra. At one point a soprano (Liz Cass) sings a tune from off-stage. A sprightly fandango erupts; A snippet from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony pops up in a humouros moment. A cuckoo clock strikes. Could there have been a more charming - and musically eclectic - piece to show off Dell Hall’s dazzling acoustics? Perhaps not, and Bay made it sparkle with finesse.
This reporter spent the concert’s first half in an orchestra level center-section seat, the most expensive the symphony offers. (If bought outside a season ticket plan, the cost is $48.) If there was a fault of the evening, it was that the symphony didn’t take advantage of Dell Hall’s flexibility that allows for the orchestra pit lifts to be raised, thus moving the entire symphony out further into the hall to maximize the acoustics. What was a wonderful sound could have been spine-tingling. And given the number of empty seats around the house and especially in the first few rows, one wonders about the judiciousness of the decision to forego artistry over potential revenue.
But spine-tingling happened in the balcony during Falla’s ‘Three-Cornered Hat.” From a seat in the front section of the balcony - a $27 ticket - every note shimmered and glittered. It was an auspicious debut of Austin’s newest cultural gem.
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