Performing Arts

FORT WORTH–Miguel Harth-Bedoya has the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra sounding quite good these days: well-tuned, rhythmically taut and tonally polished. As a conductor he has a sure command of loud and soft, fast and slow, and how to get from one to the other.

But the FWSO's music director too rarely conveys emotional intensity, whether romantic, angry or ironic. This was a problem Friday night in the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony.

Solomon Volkov's Testimony, purporting to record the Russian composer's own thoughts, describes the symphony's finale as forced rejoicing, as if beaten by a stick. However one judges Mr. Volkov's controversial book, surely the symphony is shot through with irony and anxiety.

The loud parts can take care of themselves, and Mr. Harth-Bedoya and the FWSO whipped up jolly noises. But he found no irony in the finale, and the slow movement and the first movement's slow introduction had hardly a whiff of tension or tragedy.

The orchestra played well, but this emotionally charged symphony sounded strangely inconsequential. It didn't help that Bass Performance Hall seemed acoustically drier than usual.

The Mendelssohn E minor Violin Concerto had the splendid services of violinist Leila Josefowicz. She seemed to pick up Mr. Harth-Bedoya's businesslike manner in the slow movement, which even at a mobile tempo wanted more expressive give and take. But she delivered the virtuoso writing with shape as well as skill. The orchestra's contributions were marred only by a couple of overly harsh fortissimos.

PLAN YOUR LIFE Repeats at 8 tonight and 2 p.m. Sunday at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce, Fort Worth. $15 to $76. 817-665-6000, www.fwsymphony.org.

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