Photo by Luca Valenta
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert on Friday evening featured a seldom-heard symphony and a virtuoso violinist in a concerto that is a favorite in the repertory.
Violinist Augustin Hadelich played the familiar Concerto in D major by Ludwig van Beethoven with extraordinary evenness and consistency of sound. His clean, compact and pure tone is graceful and elegant, moving with precision through any fast passages. His is not a large sound, but it easily carries out into the hall and above the orchestra.
There is something restful and soothing about listening to Hadelich, because his playing seems to come not from fire within but from serenity. The audience loved him, bringing him back for several curtain calls, ending in an encore of Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 19, which Hadelich sailed through with ease. Edo de Waart conducted the orchestra with finesse that matched the soloist’s.
Every once in a while we hear a symphony by Danish composer Carl Nielsen. This 150th anniversary year of his birth was good reason to hear his Symphony No. 5, composed in 1921-22. Only two movements long, the piece feels nonetheless like a spacious, grand statement. The first movement builds to a sort of organized cacophony, with the snare drum daringly driving. Exciting stuff!
De Waart’s technical, unsentimental treatment of any score is no surprise after many years here. Occasionally I still wonder, though, that his clear-eyed musical approach can create spine-tingling, teary response in me. It happened at the big moment in the symphony’s first movement when the insistent rhythm stops and the music warmly soared.
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Every aspect of the orchestra’s playing was top-notch terrific, playing in sharp ensemble, expressive at any volume, with each section getting to shine. Todd Levy cast a spell with a plaintive solo at the end of the first movement. The MSO strings were impressive in some fiendishly difficult and relentless parts in the second movement. The brass section created huge climaxes without any hint of strain in the sound.
Do the people of this area really grasp how amazingly good the MSO has become? I surely hope so.
