Planet Carlos

Critical Acclaim

They like things big in Texas, so it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that music critics there liked what they heard when Carlos Kalmar led the Dallas Symphony in a late-October series of subscription concerts that featured big performances of the Brahms Violin Concerto (with Midori as soloist), Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Chrisopher Rouse’s Symphony No. 2.

Writing in the Dallas Morning News, Scott Cantrell took particular note of the audience reaction to the Rouse symphony:

“Glory be, there was also a standing ovation for a 25-minute piece of contemporary music that isn’t exactly easy listening,” he wrote. “By turns immensely energetic and emotionally intense, the piece got a vivid, communicative performance” from Kalmar and the orchestra.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s critic praised Kalmar’s pacing of the Brahms, which  “often took on the air of baroque concerto grosso.” (That’s the same work Oregon Symphony audiences get to hear this month, by the way, when Korean-American violin virtuoso Jennifer Koh performs it at the Classical series concerts Nov. 22-24.)

Extra Credit

When he’s not on stage at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall with his Oregon Symphony, Music Director Carlos Kalmar can sometimes be found this season amid the halls of academia, thanks to a new collaboration with composer and University of Oregon faculty member Robert Kyr.

At Kyr’s invitation, Kalmar traveled to Eugene this fall to lend his expertise to music’s next generation of composers and performers.

After making the first what will be several visits to the University of Oregon campus over the course of the school year, Carlos took a moment to turn in this report:

“This was a very nice opportunity to work with the composition and instrumental students there,” he said. “I met with all the composition students in Robert Kyr's class. We talked about new music in general, what a conductor is looking for, my experience in performing new works and how the interaction with several different composers was during the rehearsal time.

“We also set the stage for all these students to write a piece for a selected number of instruments. The purpose of this work, which will be written over a couple of months, is to come up with something that has to be conducted, so that I can weigh in, give some advice and later work on the conducting skills of the students.

“I also conducted a rehearsal with the orchestra of the U of O. We worked on Brahms Symphony No. 2. In this case I not only worked them hard in the usual way; I also tested the waters a little bit in the sense that I asked them about phrasing and style – not only to listen to their opinions, but also to show them that there are different points of view when it comes to interpretation of music.”