MSO Hadelich Plays Tchaikovsky
At the packed concert that closed out the Milwaukee Symphony’s 2023-24 season, I noticed a markedly younger audience than usual. Were they rabid fans of Sibelius or the obscure Lyatoshynsky? Were they excited to see Augustin Hadelich, the virtuoso violinist who has swung through Milwaukee several times in the last few years? Were they desperate for one last drink from the stream of classical music before a summer break? One could speculate to no end, but whatever the case, it was encouraging to see!
As Ukraine has remained in our national consciousness, I appreciated the MSO’s inclusion of Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshynsky. It’s a hard name to spell but one that I’ll be researching in the coming days. His tone poem Grazhyna from 1955, adapted from a poem, follows the story of a noblewoman who dresses in her husband’s armor and fights in a battle against invaders. Opening and closing English horn solos (nicely played by Margaret Butler) framed intense battle scenes with running strings and brassy climaxes. This piece provided the best showcase for the MSO brass in years. I also remember a melody with heart-on-sleeve emotion after the final battle climax. This was a solid piece that other orchestras should be looking into if not already.
Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony took up the rest of the half. It seemed a slight programming misstep to have two long single-movement musical essays back-to-back, demanding a lot of the audience’s focus. This is especially pertinent to the Sibelius piece, which takes extra attention. I admit I don’t always latch onto the musical flow. In this performance, the lengthy monologue for the string section was fine but it was missing something. More shape, more distinction? In the golden climax that I used to hear every time I launched Sibelius 7 notation software, the sound got a little muddy. But the faster sections came off great, with the woodwinds deftly playing the repeated notes and the brass rising up like a huge beast or a wave about to crash on the Baltic shore. And in the closing minutes I heard some of the most absolutely gorgeous playing from the MSO strings in their exposed, feverish lines. Ken-David Masur brought the music to a noble close.
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Gentle, Disarming
Augustin Hadelich has made several stops in Milwaukee, and I missed them all for various reasons. What a delight to finally hear him! In the famous violin concerto of Tchaikovsky, he showed why Milwaukee has so embraced him. His reading of the first movement’s exposition had a perfectly gentle, disarming character. From the second subject on through closing material, tempos became unpredictable, shifting rapidly, but it became clear that this was a rehearsed vision; the orchestra stayed locked in with the soloist. His expressive shifts of tempo and rubato were most evident in the cadenza, where he became a master manipulator of time, molding tempos and silences like putty to keep the audience in the palm of his hand. He had a crisp, focused tone that reminded me at times of Hilary Hahn. Ken-David Masur embraced the big orchestral tuttis, achieving a grand sound. After the first movement, the audience broke out into not only applause but a standing ovation. As good as Hadelich was, I suspect some newer attendees simply assumed that after the evening’s third musical chunk of 17-20 minutes, it was over!
Not much to say about the Canzone except that Hadelich shaped the melody well and found a different tonal character for this melancholy music. The finale was gloriously lively; I’ve always thought of it as an epic expansion of the Russian Dance from The Nutcracker. Hadelich effortlessly tossed off lightspeed passages and high notes and showed a contrasting character in the slow Slavic interludes. Every note was placed just right. I see what the hype is about. Hadelich is one of the most memorable soloists I’ve seen in my time in Milwaukee.
He played two encores to sate the zealous audience. First was a bluegrass fantasia with “Turkey in the Straw” recognizable at times. It was a cool idea to connect the Russian dance feel of the concerto to an American folk fiddle tradition. I was a bit annoyed at the audience’s frequent laughter during this, as if playing something folky in a concert hall was a joke. Let him cook! A few more bows later we got a beautiful arrangement of “Por una cabeza”, sensitively played and with great interplay of high and low voices.
Reflecting on this season, I’m proud of the Milwaukee Symphony’s programming and of some really solid performances. I’ve gotten pickier about some standard-rep heavyweights, but that’s been offset by new musical discoveries and some works that been given very satisfying readings. My favorite individual performance was probably either Hadelich playing Tchaikovsky or Carmina Burana in the previous concert. This season will also be remembered for the passing of Rick Walters, longtime arts critic for Shepherd Express and my former boss at Hal Leonard. We will all miss his insight and knowledge, especially of opera and vocal music.
