Edo de Waart
Last weekend Edo de Waart returned to conduct the orchestra he built here. The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert featured music strongly identified with him, John Adams’ Harmonielehre, which De Waart premiered with San Francisco Symphony in 1985.
The German word Harmonielehre means the teaching of harmony, and was the title of a 1911 treatise written by Arnold Schoenberg, around the same time he was moving into atonality. Adams’ three-movement work mixes Minimalism with echoes of Mahler, Sibelius and Debussy, using the orchestration of late Romanticism and Impressionism, but with a contemporary twist.
This is difficult music, only for the most technically accomplished of ensembles, and MSO is certainly up to it. As would be expected, De Waart brought discipline and illumination to balance, structure, and detailed orchestral color. There were a few shattering climaxes, but most of the piece is more about a complex, subdued landscape. I felt the adrenaline as the momentum built to a conclusion on Friday evening. The only flaw: a persistent cell phone ringing in the audience as the first movement ended.
Matthew Ernst has been principal trumpet for a couple of seasons, but Aaron Copland’s Quiet City was the first big chance to really hear him as a soloist. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a major new player in town. Ernst played with that hard-to-achieve mix of control plus freedom, making elegant phrases. He was well matched with the other soloist in this piece, Margaret Butler on English horn. In Butler, we know to expect refined and expressive playing, and were not disappointed. The idea of having Ernst play from the back wall, with Butler out front, created insightful balance.
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As guest violin soloist in Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s Symposium, Philippe Quint played with intense rhythmic energy, slicing the air with highly defined dynamics and articulations. Quint was brilliant in the presto of the third movement, and played with delight in the post-Gershwin jazzy section, collaborating with the walking line of the bass section. I can imagine the piece more lyrically approached, but Quint’s take on it was convincing.
