MSO Performs Bernstein's Attractive 'Divertimento'

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The worldwide year long 2018 celebration of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Leonard Bernstein primarily features the music he wrote in the 1940s-1960s. Last weekend the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra played an attractive later work, Divertimento for Orchestra, composed in 1980. Its mix of popular idioms with classical traditions is quintessentially Bernstein.

Guest conductor Teddy Abrams was best in this Divertimento, a collection of eight concise movements, played with precision and rhythmic verve. This music bubbles with the optimism that is characteristically Bernstein. Solos abounded―too many to mention―all handsomely played. It’s somehow easier to appreciate this composer’s achievements 27 plus years after his death, without his charismatic but sometimes contradictory in-person presence in this world.

Encountering music by African-American composer Julia Perry (1924-1979) felt like a major discovery. Her Short Piece for Orchestra, composed in 1965, shows a master’s grasp of writing for instruments, and an individual, imaginative voice in a time of artistic upheaval.

Soprano Susanna Phillips is perfectly suited to Samuel Barber’s great Knoxville: Summer of 1915, a universal statement about being on this earth. Phillips sang with such simple, earnest expression that James Agee’s poetic prose came through with powerful impact, with the voice easily blooming to full color in climaxes. Abrams is not a singer’s conductor. There were some sections that were plainly too slow on Saturday evening, and he was an obstacle in creating the phrase. But even as my head was aware of this, Phillips had captured my heart.

The All-American program concluded with Aaron Copland’s Symphony No. 3, composed in the same period (1940s) as was Appalachian Spring, Rodeo, Lincoln Portrait, and other pieces that define his distinctive style of Americana. This symphony is cut from the same cloth, with what we know as Fanfare for the Common Man prominently incorporated into the finale. This orchestra is at such a level that it will play well for anyone. However, I found Abrams with a tendency to overstatement and over-gesturing, without shaping the music with an insightful arch. The last movement was just too much static bombast, rather than building to a few carefully chosen high peaks.