Photo Credit: Jonathan Kirn
This weekend, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra began a new season as it continues to search for its next music director. Ken-David Masur, who led the orchestra in the spring, returned to the podium to conduct two staples of the repertory: Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, and Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73, by Johannes Brahms. The concert showed that, even without a music director, the orchestra’s technique is in top form.
Masur’s take on the Brahms symphony was sophisticated and nuanced with some flexibility in the phrasing. This was quite different from Edo de Waart’s Brahms, with its wonderfully objective transparency or the Brahms performances of former music director Andreas Delfs, which were all about color and warmth. Under Masur, the music emerged with refined subtleties with only rare and selective moments of heat. What seemed to be a bond of trust between musicians and conductor, and vice versa, created especially sensitive playing.
Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg gave a graceful, poetic account of the Rachmaninoff concerto. I’ve heard more powerful playing of this music, but might doesn’t necessarily equal right. Giltburg’s tone had an easy ring to it. What I liked best was that there was nothing forced about this performance. Giltburg’s rather introspective consideration of the score gave freshness to music that can seem hackneyed if heard too often. Masur supported with perceptive conducting, and I listened to the orchestration with new interest. After the summer break, it was like coming home to hear the balm of Todd Levy’s clarinet solo.
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To give the spirit of a gala to the opening night, an orchestral encore was played after remarks from Masur: an elegant account of The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II before the audience headed for a champagne toast in the lobby.
As I’ve written before, the only guest conductors of the last seasons who seem to me to deserve this excellent orchestra as future music director are Fabien Gabel and Asher Fisch. After hearing two concerts in the last few months, I now add Masur to that short list. I can imagine a possible MSO future built on what I heard on Saturday evening.
