Music Director Fabio Luisi and Dallas Symphony musicians in a socially distanced rehearsal for this weekend’s concerts.
“A new artistic leader’s first season prompts big expectations. So it was with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s 2020-2021 season, its first with Fabio Luisi fully in place as music director,” writes Scott Cantrell in Wednesday’s (9/9) Dallas Morning News. “Heroic works including Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony … were on the bill. Women conductors and composers would be prominently featured, along with new works. But then came the coronavirus pandemic…. Luisi and Peter Czornyj, the vice president of artistic operations, … began to design live chamber-orchestra concerts, with musicians socially distanced … with limited audiences…. As planned, Luisi is conducting this weekend’s opening concerts…. But instead of the originally planned Unsuk Chin Frontispiece, Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1, and Copland Third Symphony, the program comprises … Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Eighth Symphony…. The Verdi Requiem planned for Oct. 29-Nov. 1 is being replaced by a concert of Verdi opera arias, duets and overtures…. Added to the schedule is a Nov. 11 program honoring lives lost to racial violence and injustice.” Luisi says the pandemic restrictions “put me into the core of my responsibilities as music director…. It’s part of the task of a music director not to despair, but to find a way.”
