Tulsa Symphony Orchestra: Dvořák/Strauss
Tulsa Performing Arts Center
April 12, 2025
The experience of going to a TSO concert is always terrific, especially when accompanied by a fun, knowledgeable friend and a pre-show stop for drinks and fries at Vintage Wine Bar. And the first piece on last Saturday’s program—Dvořák’s Carnival Overture, Op. 92—started us off in TSO’s trademark enthusiastic style, with guest conductor Gerard Schwarz, an actual American music icon and champion of American music, full of energy and charisma, decked out in a tux with tails. (I haven’t seen tails in a while and I want you menfolk to bring them back. There’s just nothing else as dapper.)
Being unfamiliar with Howard Hanson, whose Symphony No. 2, Op. 30, “Romantic,” was the centerpiece of the program, I listened to a recording before the concert. It wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t inspiring, either. I dug further. The only Hanson I had ever heard, I discovered on my deep dive, was during the final scene of Alien in which Sigourney Weaver settles into her sleep pod and the credits roll. That’s the slow theme from the first movement of this symphony, composed in 1930. I also learned—in addition to the details Maestro Schwarz provided before the performance—that Hanson was an academic and a music administrator, that he wrote in the neo-romantic style, and that he has been largely forgotten.
Even though I went in under-enthused about his music, I hoped the excitement of a live performance would reconcile me to it. But even the TSO’s spirited rendition of Hanson’s symphony didn’t get me on board. The melodies are unmemorable; the harmonies are lush but predictable; the rhythms are standard.
The audience didn’t seem to mind, uncharacteristically breaking into a smattering of applause after the first movement. (Come on, Tulsa symphony lovers—you know not to clap between movements! Those few seconds of silence are the amuse-bouche that we need between two beefy entrees.) I turned to my friend as the lights went up for intermission, wondering if I was just cranky.
“What did you think?” I asked her.