Dallas. It doesn't exactly spring to mind when one's thoughts turn to great world centres of classical music, does it? But hang on to your stetsons, you all symphony-goin' folk, because you may just be in for a surprise. After all, if you haven't heard of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, then you won't know that it was founded as a 40-member ensemble in 1900, developed to professional level in the 1940s by Antal Dorati and, in the 1960s and 1970s, attracted such great world names as Paul Kletzki and Sir George Solti.
You won't, presumably, be aware that its permanent home - the gloriously-titled Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center - was designed by the architect I. M. Pei. And you certainly won't be able to imagine the kind of reception the orchestra has had on the Bregenz and Zurich legs of the 11-city tour of Europe which brings it to both Belfast and Dublin over the next week. Unless, of course, you ask the orchestra's young, energetic and uncommonly articulate young conductor, Andrew Litton, how things are progressing on the tour front - in which case, you'll get another surprise.
"The first two concerts went really well," he says. "In fact, the audiences have been going crazy, so that's kind of encouraging." Crazy, maestro? "Well, you know, screaming and stuff - and for the Swiss, that's pretty exciting."
As a former principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and frequent guest conductor with other British orchestras, Litton is something of a tour veteran.
"There's something that happens when you get out and you're playing in different venues for different audiences," he says. "And it has nothing to do with the quality of the venue or the quality of the audience, but a lot to do with showing off to different people. Something psychological, something spiritual - I don't know what it is - but the level of playing improves. It's just the strangest thing. I've noticed it across the board every time I've gone on tour with an orchestra."
So what has the orchestra been doing back home in Dallas for the past 12 years? Well, nine consecutive sell-out seasons of symphony concerts, for a start. "I had nothing to do with the first five of those," says Andrew Litton modestly, "but I'm happy to say that they've carried on since I was appointed in 1994, so I don't need to sweat yet. Nine years of sell-outs is unusual; only four other American orchestras can claim that, so we're pretty happy. We play four times a week, the hall holds about 2,000 people and we've got about 19,000 subscribers, which gives you an idea of the pride people have in the orchestra." Yes, but what about the - well, the stetson brigade? What about the perception of the outside world that Dallas is a cultural desert? Like many before him, Andrew Litton lays the blame at the door of the villainous television oil baron, J. R. Ewing.
"To the rest of the world, Dallas is chiefly known in terms of that television show - and the great shame is, that in the years since the show was in its prime, a great deal has happened culturally in the city. It has a world-class museum and a world-class opera house that is always improving. It's also a great place to work, because it's not in the least pretentious.
"Actually we love living there, which is funny because my wife is English and I'm a New Yorker, which is about as diametrically opposite to a Texan as you can get - and yet to be welcomed as we have been, and made to feel so much at home, is symptomatic of how the people are. I think that after your initial cynicism wears off and you realise that nobody wants anything from you, that that's just the way they are, it turns out to be a really fantastic place."
In Dallas, of course, the desert is - quite literally - at the door. "A lot of what makes Dallas special has been done by man. It's a really unlikely place to build a city - not at all like your classic European geographical set-up. There's no body of water, in fact it's the biggest land-locked city in north America, so there's this very strange terrain in which everything that's nice to look at is manmade." Including the aforementioned Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. "Not only does it look good, though - it sounds good as well," says Andrew Litton.
"It's very easy to make concert halls look good, but it turns out to be quite difficult to make them sound good, and history has proved that again and again. I think where Dallas got it right was that they picked the right acoustician and the right architect.
It was built in 1989, so it was long before my time in Dallas, but apparently it was a real clash of the Titans because both the acoustician and the architect have - justifiably - large egos, and they didn't necessarily have the same agenda, so it was an interesting time, I gather, and fairly fraught. But the result was a fantastic hall. And it's amazing to work in such an incredibly beautiful place, you know? I mean, I hop in the car and that's where I get out! Definitely a perk of getting the job in Dallas, I have to say."
Getting the job in Dallas was actually a triumph of sorts in itself; his appointment there makes Litton the first American conductor to head a major American orchestra in 10 years. He is still conductor laureate of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra; "a very fancy title I thought you needed to be dead to get", he says. He is also a fully-fledged concert pianist - the soloist, in fact, for the performances of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on this tour.
"I was very content with the piano until I started attending young people's concerts in New York City. They were conducted by one Leonard Bernstein; and it wasn't the first one, I have to confess, but the third or fourth that I attended at the ripe old age of 10 that made me come out and say to my mother, `I want to be a conductor'. "And she said; `Sure. Last week it was a fireman'. But I was serious and started pursuing it even then. They'd played Respighi's Pines of Rome, and I think it was hearing the colours and the expressiveness of a symphony orchestra going full throttle that made me suddenly realise piano wasn't going to do it for me any more."
While still a student at the Juilliard School he entered a BBC conducting competition and won; since then, Andrew Litton hasn't looked back. And at Dallas, his emphasis is squarely on the future, for he divides his energies between developing his orchestra and developing his audience.
A series of digital surround-sound recordings on the Delos International label has won him many friends and a Grammy award: a series of ground-breaking television broadcasts is helping to reach a potential new audience of both children and adults. "We've taken a very aggressive role in education because we want to make up for the shortfall in arts education in schools," he says. "Texas is the same as the rest of the country in that the schools have really had to scrounge around to find the money to have arts programmes - basically there's a whole generation of kids who have just lost out, and we feel that if you just hide your head in the sand and play Mahler symphonies it's very short-sighted and there will be no audience in the future. "And I have a rather selfish view on this, because I have a 21month-old daughter and obviously I'd like her to be able to experience great live music in 30 years' time."
Meanwhile Irish audiences can experience the Dallas Symphony Orchestra at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast at 7.30 p.m. on Sunday night, when the programme will consist of Beethoven's Eroica symphony and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris; and at the National Concert Hall, Dublin at 8 p.m. on Monday evening, where Harris's Symphony No 5 will be followed by Mendelssohn's violin concerto with soloist Joshua Bell, and Tchaikovksy's fifth symphony. There will also be a master class given by the orchestra's concert master, Emmanuel Borok, on Tuesday at 4 p.m. in the John Field Room.
