Shira Samuels-Shragg: A distinguished conducting debut and two world premieres from Dallas Symphony
Assistant conductor Shira Samuels-Shragg was a late substitute for music director Fabio Luisi.
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Thursday night concert made news.
Assistant conductor Shira Samuels-Shragg made her unscheduled classical series debut, subbing for music director Fabio Luisi, who was called away for a family emergency. And it was impressive indeed.
The concert, at the Meyerson Symphony Center, also included world premieres of two new works: Jonathan Cziner’s Clarinet Concerto, composed for and performed by DSO principal clarinetist Gregory Raden, and the sound of where I came from by Moni Jasmine Guo. Framing the new works were Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 and Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.
In her second season with the DSO, with degrees from the Juilliard School and Swarthmore College, Samuels-Shragg was previously assistant conductor of the Plano and Spokane (Washington) symphony orchestras.
Currently based in Dallas, where he’s artistic director of the modern-music ensemble Voices of Change, Cziner holds a doctorate in composition from Juilliard. Expanding on an earlier piece for clarinet and string quartet, the three-movement clarinet concerto is influenced by both sacred and secular Jewish music, with what Cziner has called “my own kind of American orchestral sound.”
“It’s basically about the state of the world for a Jewish American,” he said in an earlier interview, “and how there’s so much conflict and violence and sadness. But the end of the piece is more celebratory. The buildup of the orchestration is meant to convey some sense of emptiness or loneliness moving toward more fulfillment or satisfaction of celebration.”
The first movement, “Meditation,” is scored just for clarinet, strings, percussion, harp and celesta. From hushed sonic glows at the start, the clarinet expands slow, sustained tones into florid suggestions of cantorial singing in a synagogue.
The middle movement begins as a clarinet cadenza, gradually awakening energies and adding winds before leading directly into the klezmer inflected final “Rikudim”, Hebrew for “dances”. Here trumpets, trombones and tuba join the celebration.
From sustained pianissimos to pitches leaping from top to bottom, to virtuoso cascades of notes, Raden, one of the DSO’s stars, played with assurance and élan. Samuels-Shragg and the orchestra seemed securely in control of frequent shifts of speeds, rhythms, volumes and textures.
A major commission can tempt a composer, especially one earlier in a career, to load the new work with as many tricks as possible. Between a dress rehearsal and Thursday night’s concert, it struck me that Cziner had lots of ideas for the 28-minute piece, and he used all of them.
For all the compositional skill and imaginative orchestration, the piece seemed to shift from one thing to another without an obvious structure — and, ultimately, to outlast its welcome. I was not alone in thinking it could be more effective if tightened by five or six minutes.
It was a nice touch to have Cziner and Guo speak briefly during stage resetting before the concerto. Guo, with degrees from the Peabody Institute and Rice University and a PhD from UCLA, has composed music for concert performances as well as films.
As she explained, the sound of where I came from was inspired by childhood dialogues with her Chinese grandmother. Motifs echoing cadences of their conversations give listeners aural hooks within often complex washes, swells and swirls of sound, the eight-minute piece finally vanishing in sonic vapor. At least on first hearing, the developments held the attention.
The Beethoven and Mozart both got terrific performances, with shape, purpose and fastidious detailing of dynamic contrasts and nuances. Tempos in the symphony may have surprised listeners raised on older recordings, but they were in line with present-day scholarship on turn-of-the-19th-century performance practices.
With no superfluous fuss, Samuels-Shragg’s gestures told the orchestra exactly what to do, and the musicians responded keenly. That she also coordinated two brand-new and complex works, with a few days’ notice, was an impressive accomplishment. I look forward to seeing her back on the podium.
The Dallas Morning News - Scott Cantrell
Complete review here