Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s three-week Beethoven Festival began last weekend. Besides Beethoven symphonies, the programs feature music by John Adams, a composer whose works have a strong connection to conductor Edo de Waart, and Igor Stravinsky.
John Adams, the most successful living American classical composer, was represented in a compelling performance of The Wound-Dresser, a 1988 setting of poetry by Walt Whitman for baritone and orchestra. Whitman spent the years during the Civil War in Washington, D.C., officially working as a federal clerk, but spending all his available time in the self-appointed task of tending to countless injured soldiers. Whitman’s clear-eyed, unflinching account of the experience is told in the poem “The Wound-Dresser.
