ARTS SIT AND DELIVER

Starting this month, the Morton H. Mey- erson Symphony Center will echo, or ring, or resound with the sounds of Tchaikovsky, Wag- ner, Bartók, and more. But it’s un- likely you’ll ever hear, within those much-debated walls, the real theme song of the Dallas Symphony as it enters the Meyer-son Era: Got nowhere to run to, baby/nowhere to hide.

Yes, Martha And The Vandellas said it all for the DSO. After years of condemning the acoustical imperfections of the State Fair Music Hall, which, it appeared, were all that stood between the DSO and musical immortality, they now have their $81 million aural Valhalla. Now there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It’s time to sit and deliver.

Doubtless, many members of the general public, listening with untrained ears, thought the old Music Hall carried a tune just fine. That’s all academic now. But you don’t need a pedigree in the three Bs (Bach, Beethoven, Brahms) to know that at least in one sense, bigger is better for the DSO. Getting bigger-specifically, building a bigger string section-would really polish the apple of Dallas’s cultural eye. Now the DSO brass should turn its energies toward strengthening the heart of the orchestra.

This is not something that would be nice to have. It’s an absolute imperative, even though it will cost dearly: almost $300,000 a year for the six to eight new violinists needed. But increasing its string section by at least 10 percent is the least the DSO can do for its city after moving mountains to build yet another building. We may not be technically learned about music, but we know when our orchestra is at full strength, and how important that is. Management may well think it needs a silent partner (in the form of an unrestricted endowment) to help the directors breathe easier, but audiences need the rich embrace of a fully staffed complement of strings.

Well-tuned strings move the soul and sell the orchestra more than all the hype in the world. So: a hundred musicians under contract by 1995, when the modern-day Dallas Symphony will be fifty years old. That must be the goal. An even hundred, or someone should have the devil to pay.

The orchestra as we now know it dates to just after World War II, when Antal Dorati was hired. The brilliant music director accomplished a number of master strokes, simultaneously putting Dallas on the musical map of the U.S. and lording it over Houston by touring in that direction and giving concerts in the Bayou City. Then as , now it was the sound of hype that built the orchestra-big-time guest artists, world premieres, glowing reviews-and on the patron side, pledges of donations that often were not collected, resulting in frequent budget hassles. The momentum gradually petered out during the post-Dorati nurturing era as the orchestra reduced its output considerably in the mid-Seventies.

In his master’s thesis on the DSO, music critic Wayne Lee Gay quotes A.C. Greene’s comment that “Dallas loves the Dallas Symphony more than it loves good music.” But like a high-strung beloved, the DSO has constantly cried for attention, and not just for its concerts. Hype has always been inseparable from the organization, and in the Eighties the hype turned ugly and negative as the DSO attempted to justify the public financing of the Meyerson with a campaign to discredit the State Fair Music Hall.

When Eduardo Mata took the DSO to Europe five years ago this May, while the TV show “Dallas” was an international megahit, he in effect conducted an unofficial survey of his string sound. In Europe, critics criticize, often gleefully. In many different acoustical surroundings and before a wide range of audiences, the DSO shined. How close to perfection did it get? About eight string players away.

The estimable Nicholas Kenyon wrote in The Times of London that the DSO “is certainly not the best, but is definitely among the most energetic and forward-looking of American bands.” He admired “the woody clarinets, the pungent bassoons, agile double basses, and warm-toned brass.”

Elsewhere in his review, however, Kenyon joined at least two other stateside writers in one of the favorite sports of the classical critic’s trade: a little gentlemanly string-bashing. A basically positive notice in Stereo Review of Copland’s Symphony No. 3, recorded at Dallas’s Cliff Temple Baptist Church in the mid-Eighties, damned the strings with faint praise. And an “agreeably homogeneous tone” was all the praise New York Times critic Donal Henahan could muster for the DSO string section in Carnegie Hall last October.

The next goal for the Dallas Symphony should be a sound like an exquisitely marbled beefsteak; the aural version of what is too rich for a healthy heart. But the DSO administration acts like it is either out of steam for such pursuits, or out of money.

Dr. Eugene Bonelli, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts and longtime DSO official, thinks the symphony will sound bigger in its new home, which he says is designed acoustically to enhance the great orchestral repertoire of the 19th and early 20th century.

“If we get that kind of bass resonance and clarity and brilliance, we may or may not find that adding more strings is a crucial immediate priority. It can’t but help the orchestra, but how crucial it will be in the new hall is yet to be determined, in my view.”

Executive director Leonard Stone says “ideally we should have another seven or eight people under contract, but it’s the economy’s timetable that says what the economy will be willing to fund and support.”

Eduardo Mate’s lean and mean strings have their defenders. But far more appropriate to Dallas would be the yearning, emotion-packed lushness of Eugene Ormandy’s Philadelphia Orchestra at its peak, the sound that sold millions of records. Emotion is needed rather than refinement to sustain the Meyerson fever. For it is not the sound of band instruments that an acoustically engineered hall is built for: it is the sound of strings.

Even seven new violins, violas, cellos could be heard, would be heard. How can it be prudent at this stage to wait on the economy? There may be an unwritten agreement around the DSO offices not to push for more musicians right now; after all, some rather large raises were granted to orchestra members just two years ago. But there should be no question at all of Mata’s having a hundred-member orchestra in Dallas, even if the cost has to be shared around. Mata could surpass himself; his track record shows it. He has the popular touch as evidenced by his recordings with RCA, Telarc, and others. And DSO management has been pleased thus far with his hires, which include concertmaster Emanuel Borok, a musician of tremendous authority and range, and Christopher Adkins, the gifted principal cellist.

So let’s keep the pressure on; let’s have those violins. The symphony’s new money man, Fred W. Hosier, is reportedly breaking pencils left and right. We hope it’s for the holy hundred count. Dallas does love the Dallas Symphony-and deserves more of it to love.