“Miguel Harth-Bedoya conducted the Fort Worth Symphony in music of Clyne, Bernstein and Lopez Friday night,” writes Wayne Lee Gay in Saturday’s (4/7) Texas Classical Review. “Preparing for its close-up moment in the national spotlight [April 10] at the SHIFT Festival of American Orchestras at the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Fort Worth Symphony is first putting its best foot forward for the hometown audience…. The evening opened with Rift, a work by British-born, U.S.-based composer Anna Clyne, written in collaboration with choreographer Kitty McNamee…. With the stage extended forward, an ensemble of six dancers from Texas Ballet Theater performed in front of the orchestra…. Though the dancers … necessarily held the spotlight, the orchestra and Harth-Bedoya maneuvered with clean, taut precision through the rapidly shifting terrain of this score…. After intermission, violinist Augustin Hadelich joined Harth-Bedoya and the orchestra for Bernstein’s Serenade … crafting a flawless interplay of the soloist and orchestra of strings and percussion…. [In] the final work on the program, Peruvian-born Jimmy Lopez’s three-movement Bel Canto: A Symphonic Canvas … the orchestra and Harth-Bedoya pulled off this generally noisy score with the requisite combination of finesse and muscle, and the audience responded with loud approval.”
Posted April 9, 2018
