William Grant Still (1895-1978)
By Wayne Lee Gay
Fri, Apr 19, 2019
Dallas Symphony Orchestra music director designate Fabio Luisi will
step onto the podium as the orchestra’s fulltime music director
orchestra in the fall of 2020. This weekend, however, he reintroduces
himself to the orchestra and the audience with a set of two
non-subscription concerts at Meyerson Symphony Center, the first of
which took place Thursday night. The program was clearly designed to
demonstrate Luisi’s range and personality as a conductor, including a
touch of unexpected musical eclecticism.
Italian-born Luisi, largely known as a conductor of opera, opened
with a quintessentially American work. Mississippi-born William Grant
Still created a link from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s to the
classical music establishment with a body of work folding a sense of the
depth of the African American experience into late romantic orchestral
style.
His 15-minute Poem from 1944 draws on lavish, Brucknerian
orchestration and late romantic chromaticism, but with a melodicism
clearly inspired by African American spirituals; Luisi, with an
elegantly efficient and precise podium presence created a convincingly
rhapsodic aura—and gave Dallas music lovers a glimpse of a unique
segment of America’s musical heritage.
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