Last May, I covered the launch of Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony’s concert presentation of Wagner’s Ring cycle with performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre. I returned recently to attend the continuation of their bold adventure with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung. Here’s my report for Classical Voice North America:
DALLAS — Having left Brünnhilde deep in slumber at the end of Die Walküre last May, Fabio Luisi and the Dallas Symphony returned to awaken her this month with their continuation of the Ring in concert at their Meyerson Symphony Center home. They presented Siegfried on Oct. 5 and Götterdämmerung on Oct. 8, thereby scaling an Everest normally considered the domain of opera companies. Between Oct. 13 and 20, the adventure will be repeated — this time with the usual interval of just a few days separating the four operas.
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) has just released two additions to its Next Stage Digital Concert Series, now available on the DSO’s YouTube channel: Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln (The Book with Seven Seals)(above) and the DSO’s new Symphony Stream.
Notes the DSO: “Schmidt – whose 150th birthday arrives this December – was a late-Romantic composer who also wrote four symphonies, two operas, and works for piano and organ, but his monumental achievement was Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln, based on the prophetic vision of the final violent destruction of the world in the Book of Revelation. Grammy-winning Louise W. & Edmund J. Kahn Music DirectorFabio Luisi led the performances of the work at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, March 1–3, 2024.
Born in 1874 in what is today Bratislava, Slovakia, but at the time was in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary, Franz Schmidt studied composition and cello at the Vienna Conservatory, eventually obtaining a post as a cellist with the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra, where he frequently played under the direction of Gustav Mahler. He was also a brilliant pianist, and much of his career was dedicated to teaching cello, piano, counterpoint, and composition at the Conservatory. Luisi has long been a champion of Schmidt’s music in general and Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln in particular, conducting performances of the latter around the world, but the video release is especially appropriate this fall, as December marks the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Luisi explains:
“I believe that this work, together with Britten’s War Requiem and Frank Martin’s Golgotha, is one of the most important oratorios written in the 20th century. The visionary energy of St. John’s Revelation is put in music with both grace and power, actually, and quite surprisingly without bombast. It trusts old forms such as the fugue, developed in a very virtuosic manner, and therefore creates a connection with the older style of this genre, especially with Mendelssohn and, of course, Bach and Handel. I hope listeners are seduced by the energy, the gravitas and the important meaning of this work, which also features great vocal parts and fantastic choral moments.”
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 