Dallas Symphony Concert Looks to Past, Present, and Future

In Thursday’s (4/17) D Magazine (Dallas), Brian Reinhart writes, “The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has spent decades building a legacy of new music to add to the world’s concert stage. This weekend’s concerts are an unusual chance to see that work from two angles. One piece is a world premiere, Dallas’ latest contribution to the classical music canon. Another revives a Dallas premiere from nearly 60 years ago, a reminder that our city already has some classics of its own. First on the program is Adagio for Small Orchestra by UT Dallas professor Robert Xavier Rodríguez, who has been associated with the DSO longer than any other composer…. The Dallas Symphony debuted the piece in 1967 and returned to it several times … Rodríguez, 78, says that its ‘Copland-inspired language’ offers only a few hints of the more complex music he wrote later in his career. Many of those later pieces were written for the DSO…. Sean Shepherd’s Concerto is a world premiere written specially for the DSO and its solo flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon players (David Buck, Erin Hannigan, Gregory Raden, and Ted Soluri). They act as a quartet of soloists, seated at the front of the orchestra…. After the two Dallas premieres, the program’s second half turns to Felix Mendelssohn’s … Scottish Symphony.”