Left Handed Ravel (and a Shot of Dopamine) at MSO Concert

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Photo by Jonathan Kirn via Facebook

Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

The first piece I heard in the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s September 13 concert was a shot of pure musical dopamine. Festouvertyr, by Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi, worked in some quotes from Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks amid some brass fanfares and little cells of activity. The most prominent Handel section was orchestrated with a constant sheen over everything, a slight blurring of focus, and it had the effect of attending a concert way up in the clouds. I never wanted the moment to end. Really fantastic stuff. 

I was soon unpleasantly earthbound by the longest stage change I’ve seen since I started attending MSO concerts. The musicians and crew choreographed it well, moving seats and stands to make room to roll out the piano. But after just a four-minute opener, would it have been so bad to have the piano already in place? 

That piano was set for the return of Stewart Goodyear, who impressed me last time in back-to-back Liszt concertos. This time he played Ravel’s Concerto for Left Hand, in a vivid reading that emphasized low bass resonance and brought liquid tone to the quieter melodic moments and the long arpeggiated cadenza. His playing sounded more human and less pristine than last time; I heard a few smudged chords here and there, and some of it seemed a bit effortful. The orchestra’s best moment was in the second section’s 6/8 march. The tempo, restrained just a tick, brought out all of Ravel’s detail. The succession of solos, from Catherine Van Handel’s bassoon to Megumi Kanda’s trombone, hit just right. The orchestra was in top form as this whole section developed. As an encore, Goodyear played the aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations. I like this trend of quieter encores that I’ve heard from a few piano soloists lately. 

Late German Romantics 

As this is Ken-David Masur’s last season, he is programming some ambitious works in these final outings with the group. The Strauss tone poem Ein Heldenleben is a true orchestral workout and sits in Masur’s stylistic sweet spot of German late romanticism. From my seat on the first floor near the front, the mix was string-heavy, but I liked what I heard. The orchestra was very responsive in the first movement, with the long unfurling string lines well-shaped and leading to satisfying climaxes. I was also impressed with the violin and viola tradeoffs of melody in “The Hero’s Adversaries”—their tones were completely in sync, like one giant instrument. The solo violin and orchestra dialogue in “The Hero’s Companion” has always been hard for me to follow, and it still didn’t fully gel for me tonight, but concertmaster Jinwoo Lee showed serious talent in delivering this virtuosic, fleet-footed solo. In the later love scene music, Masur conducted passionately, with the touch of an artist. 

In the loudest parts of “The Hero at Battle,” the sound became a bit muddy, but the later victorious moments in that movement were golden. Margaret Butler offered a superb English horn solo in “The Hero’s Works of Peace” and the first appearance of the big slow theme in the finale featured all the strings playing beautifully. Principal horn Matthew Annin was a standout in his duet with Jinwoo Kim. The final brass chord that ended the piece had an odd not-quite-rightness. Some disagreement with tuning, or someone pushing too hard. 

Programming Ein Heldenleben was a big swing, but Masur and the MSO showed they could handle it and bring its excitement and beauty to Allen-Bradley Hall. The Ravel concerto was also a treat, and I was shocked to see it hadn’t been performed here since 1977. I’m still thinking about Stewart Goodyear’s pristine tone in the quiet moments and how magical that bassoon solo sounded over the gentlest staccato strings. And Andrea Tarrodi’s Festouvertyr is a piece I desperately need to hear again.