By just about any measure — reviews, ticket sales or sheer popularity — Jaap van Zweden’s first season as music director of the Dallas Symphony has been a home run.
He’s even won over Alan Peppard, the Dallas Morning News’ gossip maven, who isn’t likely a pushover when it comes to classical music.
“In addition to bottomless talent and a beautiful family, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s new music director Jaap van Zweden has charm to burn — something that was lacking from other maestros of my acquaintance,” Peppard gushed in a May column.
Colorado audiences will get their own taste of the 47-year- old Dutch conductor’s charms, and, more important, his talent with a baton during the Dallas Symphony’s upcoming eight- day residency at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.
Van Zweden and the orchestra will open the five-week summer series with a concert Wednesday evening featuring pianist Orion Weiss, and then he will conduct two more of the ensemble’s six concerts, on July 5 and 8.
The maestro’s main priority for the nearly 110-year-old orchestra is not complicated: He wants it to perform consistently at a higher level, and he has already seen progress to that end during his first season.
“In the past, sometimes they played great, sometimes they played less great,” he said from Holland. “Under my baton, I would like them to play as much as possible great, but if they have an off night, I would like them to play just a little bit less great and not a lot less.
“I’m trying to raise the level of the concerts every night more and more. That’s very important, because that’s what makes an orchestra a great orchestra.”
The symphony is scheduled to perform in Carnegie Hall in May 2011 as part of the inaugural “Spring for Music” festival, and it has targeted a European tour for 2012 that the conductor said will include stops in such major cities as London, Vienna and Berlin.
At age 19, van Zweden was named concertmaster of Holland’s renowned Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He never gave any thought to conducting until Leonard Bernstein joined the orchestra for a visit to Berlin in 1990.
Wanting to hear how the orchestra sounded in the hall, the celebrated maestro asked the violinist to lead the opening movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Having never picked up a baton before, van Zweden resisted.
“I said, ‘No, I cannot,’ ” he said. “But if Lenny asked you to do something, you had to do it, so I did. I thought it was pretty bad. He told me it was not so great, but he saw something there, and he said, ‘Continue, take it seriously and then we will see what happens.’ ”
Van Zweden followed Bernstein’s advice, assiduously studying conducting and then leading varied regional orchestras. In 1997, he was named chief conductor of the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, and his new career on the podium was launched.
Since 2001, the fast-rising conductor has had guest engagements with some of the world’s top orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony, St. Petersburg Philharmonic and Munich Philharmonic. But when he first led the Dallas Symphony in 2006, he had conducted only once previously in the United States.
Van Zweden proved to be an immediate sensation, and, a year later, he was appointed the orchestra’s music director. He signed a four-year contract that began with the just-finished 2008-09 season.
Instrumentalists regularly try to make the switch to conducting or attempt to fill both roles at the same time, but few attain success at the pinnacle of the field. Off the top of his head, van Zweden could name only two musicians who have managed to do both well — Daniel Barenboim and Christoph Eschenbach, both piano soloists as well as conductors.
“If you do as it hobby, so to say, you will not succeed,” he said. “I really dropped the violin and studied hours and hours every day.”
What significantly aided him, he said, was performing for 16 years in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under a parade of great conductors, such as Bernstein, Bernard Haitink and Georg Solti.
“That was a master class in itself,” he said. “I always tell people who want to conduct and who were soloists before, I always give them the advice to sit in an orchestra for a few years.”
Van Zweden’s trip to Vail will be his first, but he has been to Colorado before. During the summers of 1978-80, he was a student at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied with famed violin teacher Dorothy DeLay, who was also his mentor at the Juilliard School.
The Dallas Symphony is returning to Vail after a two- year absence, and the conductor said he and the orchestra are looking forward to the trip.
“It’s been a while since the orchestra was in Vail, and we are very excited to come back finally,” he said. “To go somewhere is not so important, but if they ask you back — that’s important. So, we have to deliver, and we will.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
CONDUCTOR JAAP VAN ZWEDEN
Symphonic music. Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, Vail. Van Zweden is finishing his first year as music director of the Dallas Symphony. He will lead the orchestra in three of its six concerts at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. 6 p.m. Wednesday, Orion Weiss, piano; 6 p.m. July 5, Orli Shaham, piano, and 6 p.m. July 8, Gary Hoffman, cello.$23-$60. 877-812-5700 or
Orchestra’s visit is first since 2006
The Dallas Symphony is making its first visit to the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in three years. The orchestra had a regular summer residency in 1999-2006 at the event, which also hosts the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra.
Bravo! has a one-year contract with the Dallas Symphony and an option to renew for an additional two years. A decision on whether to exercise that option is expected to be made in August.
According to spokeswoman Rachel Packer, it is “very likely” the contract will be extended because of the buzz surrounding the orchestra’s new conductor and the success in raising funds for the visit among Dallas supporters.
Kyle MacMillan
