Steven Brown

The challenge is so great that no U.S. orchestra has pulled it off in recent decades: a concert-hall presentation of Richard Wagner’s four-opera epic, The Ring of the Nibelung. But the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is taking it on.

After taking the helm at The Cliburn, which runs the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth, Jacques Marquis looked back across the contest’s winners and noticed a pattern.

Almost overnight, orchestral concerts went through a revolution.