Photo Credit: EF Marton Productions
Jeffrey Kahane has been a reliable guest conductor in several stints with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (MSO). His specialty is to play a piano concerto and conduct at the same time, which occurred with his return to the MSO in Wolfgang Mozart’s Concerto No. 14 in E-flat Major, K. 449, at the Friday morning concert. It’s odd that this solid and interesting concerto, which Mozart wrote for himself to perform in 1784, had never before appeared on an MSO concert.
Kahane moved seamlessly in his two roles, with his back to the audience, playing a piano with the lid removed. The music came forth with lively, in-the-moment presence. I think of Kahane as an excellent musician first, and his conducting and playing flowed from that perspective. His performance came from the clearest of musical intentions. This was not a stuffy account of Mozart in the least.
More Mozart came with his Concerto in A Major for Clarinet and Orchestra, K. 622, with MSO principal Todd Levy as soloist. We’ve heard him in this music a few times over the last 20 years, and each time he confirms he’s a master in it, whether athletically bubbling up and down the instrument or in poignant slow phrases. Levy’s way with the simple descending phrase in the second movement could melt the hardest heart. When he returned to the theme again with the tenderest softness, I was surprised by tears rolling down my face. The appreciative audience gave Levy several curtain calls. The MSO is lucky to have him.
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No one knows why Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (sometimes renumbered as No. 7) of two movements was left “unfinished” (hence its nickname), or maybe he intended this to be complete as is. This was a rich and lovely account by Kahane and the orchestra. The tight ensemble playing seemed effortless in all sections. The superb oboist Katherine Young Steele played her solos with a poet’s earnestness.
The audience was sent out with a flashy and colorful account of the overture from Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus, culminating in an exciting tempo that was on the edge of what’s possible.
