Photo by Benjamin Ealovega
James Feddeck
Edo de Waart’s greatest accomplishment at the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has been crafting the ensemble to play at a world-class level no matter who is guest conductor. Earlier in De Waart’s tenure, when he was still making player changes and refining the group’s technique, the MSO could only play at its best with its music director on the podium.
This is all good, and allows for high-quality consistency. It also makes considering a guest conductor interesting and a bit mysterious. Is the performance about what the guest conductor brings to it, or is it about how the orchestra makes any conductor sound good? It’s both, of course.
With James Feddeck as guest conductor, last Friday evening I was impressed with the lovely subtleties in Jean Sibelius’s Valse triste, with the strings in impressive ensemble and freely expressive phrasing. The performance conjured the kind of elegant sadness and suffering reminiscent of a 19th-century novel.
I was engaged by the Concerto for Clarinet by Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), a piece unfamiliar to me, but it felt like an eccentric journey. At the end you’re not exactly sure where you’ve been, but were interested all along the way. Nielsen’s music doesn’t really sound like anyone else’s, especially true of his late works, such as this one. Its aesthetic straddles 19th- and 20th-century sensibilities in an individual voice.
As soloist, MSO principal clarinetist Todd Levy’s way with a phrase, his easy agility and his gorgeous sound in any range made the performance of this very challenging music work. Levy showed impressive dynamic control, including refined, sublime soft sounds that are a hallmark of his playing. Levy brings the insightful taste of a true artist to anything he plays.
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It’s no wonder that listeners have swooned for more than 140 years at performances of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, the definition of lush Russian glamour of the Romantic era. This was a good performance. Hats off to the terrific brass ensemble playing. Feddeck led a highly musical account of Franz Liszt’s symphonic poem Les Préludes, though ensemble entrances were not exactly together at times.
