Adagio for Small Orchestra (1967)

The Rodríguez piece was a lovely amuse-bouche. A longtime professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, Rodríguez has had works performed by orchestras, opera companies and chamber ensembles around the country. This Adagio was his first orchestral work, penned when he was a student at the University of Texas at Austin. Premiered by the DSO in 1967, it suggests Copland in dreamy mode, but it’s beautifully wrought, and it was beautifully played.       

Dallas has been making a name for itself lately by commissioning important composers to write substantial pieces for the ensemble. Clearly, it should continue to do so.  But what good is paying for new music that never gets heard again? Mr. Luisi has been asking that question lately, and in a move other ensembles could learn from, he opened this concert with Adagio for Small Orchestra, a work by Robert Xavier Rodríguez given its premiere by the DSO in 1967 and last played 10 years later. The short Copland-esque piece had a disarming frankness and proved an ideal curtain raiser. And in a moment reminding us of music’s long arc, Mr. Rodríguez, present at Thursday’s concert, stood to acknowledge the audience’s applause. 

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has spent decades building a legacy of new music to add to the world’s concert stage. This weekend’s concerts are an unusual chance to see that work from two angles. One piece is a world premiere, Dallas’ latest contribution to the classical music canon. Another revives a Dallas premiere from nearly 60 years ago, a reminder that our city already has some classics of its own.

First on the program is Adagio for Small Orchestra by UT Dallas professor Robert Xavier Rodríguez, who has been associated with the DSO longer than any other composer. This is actually the first piece he wrote for orchestra in his student days. The Dallas Symphony debuted the piece in 1967 and returned to it several times in the following decade. It’s a miniature by orchestral standards, not even five minutes long, led by a solo oboe melody that expresses the kind of optimism we associate with American populists like Copland and Barber. Though the work of a student, it has an easy appeal.

Now, looking back, Rodríguez, 78, says that its “Copland-inspired language” offers only a few hints of the more complex music he wrote later in his career. Many of those later pieces were written for the DSO. Over nearly 60 years, the DSO has commissioned seven new works from Rodríguez and performed 13 of his pieces in total. A Colorful Symphony, based on the classic children’s novel The Phantom Tollbooth, is a favorite on family concert programs. These years of collaboration have cemented Rodríguez as one of the Dallas Symphony’s most important local voices.                                                                                                                                      

In a 2023 conversation about his long association with the DSO, Rodríguez told D, “With orchestras, as with human beings, long-term relationships are the best. With an orchestra, the more individual players I know as people, the better I will be able to let each instrument speak, not just as an abstract sound but as the voice of a specific human being with a story to tell.”