“On a night when the country anxiously awaited the presidential election results, the Dallas Symphony’s performance provided some relief,” writes Tim Diovanni in Friday’s (11/6) Dallas Morning News. “ ‘Music feels like a much-needed refuge in a week of uncertainty and division,’ said guest conductor Marin Alsop before Thursday’s concert at the Meyerson Symphony Center…. Violinist Hilary Hahn … was the soloist in Mozart’s ‘Turkish’ Violin Concerto. Opening the program was the U.S. premiere of Absence by Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg … conceived as a musical conversation with Beethoven on the 250th anniversary of the German composer’s birth…. American composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery’s Strum for string orchestra begins with pluckings in a viola and second violin—thus the title Strum…. The music falls into a tradition of English folk-influenced string-orchestra pieces—Benjamin Britten and Gerald Finzi for instance—but here the folk influences were American, with recurring minimalist figures…. Hahn’s performance of Mozart’s Concerto No. 5 in A displayed her usual technical brilliance, and a … tone that is at times as sweet as melting caramel…. [In] Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony … Alsop pumped up the volume to vigorous fortes when needed, and drew out the charm and capriciousness of the score.”
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