Posted Saturday, November 17, 2007 
FWSO excels with Peruvian music  
CLASSICAL REVIEW: Peruvian music tops, but piano soloist flops  
 
By SCOTT CANTRELL / The Dallas Morning News  
 
No one could complain that the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra's concert Friday 
evening at Bass Performance Hall was business as usual.   
 
In the first half, music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya paid homage to his homeland 
with a popular Peruvian tune, and a recent work for string orchestra by Peruvian-American
composer Gabriela Frank.  
 
Both works were performed with overhead projections of Peruvian scenes – cloud- 
capped mountains, terraced ruins, thatched huts and boats, brightly clad children – 
by Peruvian (but now Fort Worth-based) photographer Fabiana van Lente.  
 
The curtain-raiser was "El cóndor pasa," composed by Daniel Alomía Robles, but 
based on an ancient folk tune, and orchestrated by Alberto Gonzales. It began 
dreamily, from rumbles, rustles and rattles, then quickened in two succeeding 
variations.  
 
Ms. Frank, who's the FWSO's composer-in-residence, created Leyendas: An Andean 
Walkabout for string quartet, then arranged it for string orchestra. Twenty-three 
minutes long, in six movements, it sounds like Peruvian Bartók, quite attractively so.  
 
The movements variously evoke folk instruments and dances, a couple of legendary 
figures (a running messenger and a professional mourner), and ends with a 
flirtatious love song. Much is made of duets in parallel motion and special effects 
including pluckings (some hard enough to snap strings against fingerboards), wispy 
high harmonics, slappings of strings with bows. Harmonies are pleasantly piquant.