Four times this weekend, with the last concert to begin Sunday at 2:30 PM at the Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas residents and visitors have had a perfect opportunity to see and hear a musical package that is as close to an anomaly as I have experienced since my childhood.
<<--Leonard Salatkin
The Dallas Symphony, augmented with so many additional musicians that there was only room on the stage for the back quarter of the 9 foot Steinway grand, totally blew its symphonic guts out, bringing the audience to its feet at the end of the Dvorak finale, with hoops and hollers of praise of a kind and quality last experienced at a Texas-OU football game.
The occasion was very special. One of the world's greatest conductors, Leonard Salatkin, was the guest maestro. One of the world's greatest harpists, Yolanda 
Kondonassis, pulled the Lyon & Healy Salzedo harp strings almost to their breaking point.
Yolanda Kononassis-->>
And the audience heard the premiere of the two-time-winning Pulitzer Prize Chinese composer, Bright Sheng's new concerto for harp and orchestra. It's titled "Never Far Away for Harp and Orchestra." And Mr. Sheng was there to explain the composition to us before it began.
The program started with Maestro Salatkin's interpretation of an interesting piece by Rossini. It's known to Americans as "Overture to the Thieving Magpie."
It was followed by Ms. Kondonassis twenty minute harp solo, backed by the full symphony, of Mr. Sheng's composition. "Never..." is a fascinatingly complex mixture of sounds, music styles and cords and discords. Mr. Sheng's purpose was to integrate Chinese-style music with European romantic-style music.
There 
is little question in my mind that this composition will live as a classic for generations.
And finally, we heard "Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Opus 95" by Dvorak. This is the symphony that everyone knows and is commonly called "The New World Symphony."
<<--Bright Sheng
Maestro Salatkin normally conducts entire performances without a score in front of him, and he did this time as well. I have probably heard most major American symphonic orchestras and a bunch of civic ones, play this Dvorak piece, either in the concert hall or on record.
Never have I heard --- never of all of them have I heard --- a performance that was anywhere near as well interpreted, conducted and executed as it was by Maestro Salatkin and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
The Meyerson for the Friday night performance was, perhaps, one-half full.
I absolutely couldn't imagine couples sitting in all of the Dallas "in" places, dropping hundreds for a scant dinner, horribly overpriced wine and $20 cocktails, when for less than fifty bucks they could have had this magnificant Dallas Symphony experience. And they would have it to remember for a lifetime.
BILL CHERRY, REALTORS
DALLAS
Our 44th Year Selling America!
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1 800-314-7110
Copyright 2009 - William S. Cherry
