Review: Dausgaard Conducts, Orchestra Survives

Thomas Dausgaard

My work and travel schedule this week do not permit the type of extended review that I prefer to give.

But it turns out not to be necessary in this case. Before the season started, I would have picked this candidate as perhaps the leader to be the next music director.

Having seen him, he clearly is not.
After the jump a few words concerning why.




I attended the Houston Symphony's Saturday night performance of Beethoven's Leonore No. 3, Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 and Nielsen Symphony No. 4. The Nielsen was clearly the highlight, especially brass playing that was sonorous, powerful and broad, completely without edge and press. I heard the Philadelphia Orchestra last week and will hear the New York Philharmonic this week. I say that only to note that you will rarely hear any orchestra, including these, that outstrip what our own brass section can do.

All in all, the concert way more difficult for the orchestra than it ought to have been. Looking at the orchestra through the opera glasses, I could tell they were working hard to maintain their composure and level of performance.

The Nielsen clearly got the Lion's share of rehearsal time. And reports of the rehearsal are not favorable. Dausgaard is a profligate talker and a goer backer and talk some morer. The lack of rehearsal and directorial competency showed most sorely in the first half of the program, familiar pieces that ordinarily would have come off without a hitch.

Instead, they were nearly all hitch.

I literally could not tell what Dausgaard wanted out of the Beethoven and the Liszt, and from the way the orchestra was playing they could not either. The intended recipient of most of Dausgaard's movements are the audience behind him, not the orchestra in front of him. And when he conducts the correct side of the footlights, he generally conducts only the string quartet right in front of him, creating huge differences of opinion between the front and back of the orchestra concerning where the pulse is.

Exacerbate this with numerous instances of awkward or non-existent cues and what you get is really, really hard sledding for anyone holding an instrument. The musicians had little choice but to wait on and rely upon their colleagues, delay, wait, and hope for the best. And this is what they were doing. They were surviving.

And survive they did.

But the Houston Symphony has been just surviving these last 10 years. The orchestra and its public clearly deserve better.

Before the season, I would have suspected Orozco-Estrada of being hype and Dausgaard of being real. I would have been wrong. Having experienced Orozco-Estrada and what he can do so very very recently, Dausgaard is one I would categorically cross off the list.