SMU's Meadows Symphony opens a new season with an unusual mix | Classical Music | Dallas News

SMU's Meadows Symphony opens a new season with an unusual mix | Classical Music | Dallas News

"Between music director Paul Phillips and a fine instrumental faculty, Southern Methodist University maintains a student orchestra worthy of reviewing as a professional ensemble. If Saturday night's Meadows Symphony Orchestra concert hadn't all the polish of the group's best, each school year--this one only a month old--starts with significant turnover of players....

"Strings were on their own in a warmly rendered Meditation on the Old Bohemian Chorale 'Saint Wenceslas,' by Dvorak's son-in-law Josef Suk. Although this lush, yearning music, from 1914, probably encoded a wish for Bohemian independence from Austro-Hungarian dominance, it could pass for the work of Vaughan Williams or several other early 20th-century English composers.

"The Dvorak [Cello Concerto] had a passionate and technically accomplished soloist in cellist Andres Diaz, one of the stars of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts faculty. From an aptly urgent beginning, the orchestra was in its glory here, Phillips giving the music just enough room to expand, contract and catch its breath.

"Paired clarinets and oboes played with expressive warmth, and the three horns displayed superb breath control. There were notable solos from Garrett Law (horn), Isaac Beu (clarinet) and Hannah Cruse (oboe).

"Alas, the acoustics of SMU's Caruth Auditorium disadvantage any soloist in the usual position left of the conductor, and Diaz was repeatedly swamped by the winds. Fine as Caruth is for smaller-scale music, it is too physically and sonically cramped for orchestral performances. An orchestra of this quality deserves better."