Scott Cantrell

Will someone please sneak into the Dallas Symphony Orchestra library and simply cart off every copy of Stravinsky's Firebird? Not that the Russian composer's early ballet score, in all its manifestations, isn't a masterpiece. But, at least in this decade, it seems the piece most often played by the DSO. Time to give it a rest.

Mike Stone / Special to DMN

Young French conductor Ludovic Morlot leads the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in an uninspired performance of Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales at the Meyerson.

That said, the young French conductor Ludovic Morlot led a crackerjack performance of the 1919 Suite on Thursday at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Quieter music was lovingly finished, with particularly eloquent solos from principal oboist Erin Hannigan. The "Infernal Dance" crackled with savage electricity.

The winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in music, Steven Stucky's Second Concerto for Orchestra, occupied 24 minutes of the program. Dr. Stucky, 58, is a name brand among current American composers. Educated at Baylor and Cornell universities, he has taught at Cornell and served as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's composer-in-residence.

In three movements, Dr. Stucky's piece opens with a whip crack and burbles unabashedly borrowed from Ravel's Piano Concerto in G. From here on, it's a veritable study in hyperactivity. Winds, strings and brasses chatter and pulse, brasses toss nervous fanfares in and out of sync.

The second movement, longest of the three, is a set of variations. But it doesn't so much vary as deconstruct the wandering theme that's hardly a theme in any conventional sense.

The work's sheer busyness is dazzling, and Mr. Morlot seemed in sure command of every bit of it. But send in the Ritalin.

Dutch cellist Pieter Wispelwey gave a bold, frisky account of the Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations. The piece has had more technically perfect performances, but big tone and big personality more than carried the day. The orchestra played as if having a great time.

Opening the concert, the Ravel Valses nobles et sentimentales sounded as if it had gotten short shrift of rehearsal time. It was competently played, but two-dimensional and untouched by magic – like a paint-by-numbers version of a Monet masterpiece.

•Repeats at 7:30 Friday, March 14, (minus Stucky); 8 p.m. Saturday, March 15; and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 16; at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora. $22 to $113. 214-692-0203, www.dallassymphony.com.