Photo Credit: Danny Turner
Andrew Litton
I love the familiar but fairly infrequently played pieces performed at Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra last weekend, which required the musicians to rise to the occasion, despite limited rehearsal time for such challenging music. Veteran guest conductor Andrew Litton solidly led throughout on Friday evening.
The concert began with Samuel Barber’s lively and lyrical Overture to The School for Scandal (1933), a musical rendering of the 18th-century comedy. Margaret Butler’s English horn solo was a highlight.
Leonard Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety (1949) is a hybrid symphony/piano concerto, inspired by W.H. Auden’s lengthy poem of the same title. Bernstein’s score captures various flavors of anxiety, from forlorn paranoia to over-stimulated urban angst. Typical of this composer, it also has elements of modern Americana, an ending of calm triumph, and an eclectic mix of styles, including crunchy and chattering jazz, rather like mid-century bebop. There are echoes of Gershwin here and there. William Wolfram more than capably answered all the difficulties of the piano solo part, playing with rhythmic energy and a sensitive touch.
Sergei Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, one of the greatest of orchestral compositions from the last century, was performed with both power and subtlety. It was a pleasure to hear the catchy themes stylishly passed around the orchestra. I looked forward to so many delicious details in this big sonic landscape, and wasn’t disappointed once in this performance. The trumpets, trombones and tuba again showed how strong this brass section has become, with a sophisticated sense of ensemble sound.
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Earlier in the week I heard a fascinating romp through a variety of interesting and seldom-encountered music by Prometheus Trio, performed with guest singers Jennifer Gettel, Kathleen Sonnentag and Nathan Wesselowski at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. The program featured music by Johannes Brahms, Bohuslav Martinu, the young American composer Caroline Shaw and two almost unknown composers, Robert Kahn (1865-1951) and Vítězslav Novák (1870-1949), plus rarely heard Beethoven settings of English folksongs. Prometheus Trio again demonstrated a knack for finding interesting literature. Violinist Margot Schwartz and cellist Scott Tisdel sound especially good in combination, with the always-able pianist Stefanie Jacob.
