Photo by Lisa Marie Mazzucco
Itzhak Perlman, with a long career as one of the most famous of classical artists, returned to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra last week for one sold-out concert. The audience was obviously excited to see and hear him.
Perlman plays the violin with the same agility and tone as ever, but without the amount of volume of years past. It’s simply a lighter sound. The Felix Mendelssohn Concerto in E minor, with its light spirit, showed what is best about Perlman’s current playing. The third movement, with its catchy, ethereal dance theme, is one of the great examples of the typical Mendelssohn scurry, music that evokes a sprinting butterfly. Also on the program, Francesco Lecce-Chong, MSO associate conductor, led a solid performance of Symphony No. 2 by Johannes Brahms.
The weekend MSO concert featured an entirely different program. To my ears the two guest conductors this season most impressive as interpreters and musical leaders of this orchestra have been Asher Fisch, who appeared in October, and Cristian Macelaru, who led the concerts of last weekend. Macelaru brought sophistication, insight and versatility to a varied and difficult program. He was convincing as an all-around master musician, persuasively leading the MSO to play with slightly more free expression than is the normal, still excellent sound.
The seldom heard Concerto for Seven Winds, Timpani, Percussion and String Orchestra by Swiss composer Frank Martin (1890-1974) was a fantastic chance to highlight some of MSO’s cornerstone and best musicians, each playing with outstanding finesse and technical accomplishment. They included Sonora Slocum (flute), Katherine Young Steele (oboe), Todd Levy (clarinet), Theodore Soluri (bassoon), Matthew Annin (horn), William Williams (trumpet), and Megumi Kanda (trombone). This tricky piece, composed in 1949, emerged as a journey of the capabilities of each of the solo instruments.
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Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, known to many from Disney’s Fantasia, was a romp of orchestral color. Igor Stravinsky’s wonderful suite Divertimento from the ballet The Fairy’s Kiss, which is sort of like Tchaikovsky on opium, was played with grace and wit. Macelaru led a great rendition, with nuance and power, of Ravel’s La Valse.
