Photo via Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (Facebook)
Jinwoo Lee (center) with Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
Concertmaster Jinwoo Lee (center) with Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
Man, Hungarian composers have so much soul. The MSO’s program this weekend was bookended by two Hungarian works of such freshness and color that they made the two Mozart masterpieces in the middle seem … ordinary?
In his opening remarks, guest conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni mentioned that the first piece had actually premiered at Door County’s Peninsula Music Festival in 1971, eliciting delighted aahs from the audience. The piece? Györgi Ligeti’s Concert Românesc (Romanian Concerto), an early work showing much influence of Bartók. The music was wonderful, with transparent chamber-orchestra scoring that made all details audible. I especially liked the third movement’s mellow tones of French horn (including a horn calling from up in the balcony), English horn, and oboe. The finale burst with Eastern European folk energy, and Concertmaster Jinwoo Lee dug into his many solos. The coda revealed some of Ligeti’s trademark humor, with Lee’s solo violin becoming a buzzing fly swatted at by the rest of the orchestra.
Mozart piano concertos are guaranteed spirit-lifters, and this performance of No. 21 (K. 467) in C Major was pretty good, but what I missed what next-level magic. Something felt not quite right in the opening exposition tutti, perhaps the slightest lag in focus? Pianist Sir Stephen Hough brought a modern approach to Mozart, with some declamatory gestures coming off fairly severe. In other places he pulled back the volume to a great extent, widening the expressive range. His self-composed cadenza slid into the period style perfectly with a hint of Beethoven around the corner.
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In the famous second movement, featured in the film Elvira Madigan, Zeitouni got a nice balance of Classical restraint and heartstring-tugging. The perky woodwinds in the finale stood out to me, and Hough offered impressive agility in his passagework but sometimes covered it in too much pedal. In this movement, too, he played his own cadenza, again working tastefully within the bounds of the style.
Skirting the Predictable
As an encore, Hough played the iconic Chopin Nocturne in E-flat, in probably the most interesting performance I’ve heard of this piece. His tempo, faster than usual from the start, underwent some extreme rubber-banding, showing a different approach to rubato that kept skirting predictability. Through all of this, he maintained the poetry and mood.
Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony (No. 38, K. 504) is one of his greatest. For some reason, as in the concerto, this performance failed to really move me. And the first movement had a few spots where the ensemble wasn’t clicking 100% in transitions. But Zeitouni got a lot out of the skittering string gestures that made up the fabric of the movement. The Andante brought forth some fine lyrical moments and a sense of style. In the Presto, closing out Mozart’s only three-movement symphony, the MSO woodwinds shone in their cute featured sections. This movement came off well, with good energy.
We returned to Hungary with Dances of Galánta by Zoltán Kodály. Like Bartók, Kodály was an obsessive collector of folk songs around Hungary and Romania. Infused with this vivid sense of place, Dances of Galánta was an absolute winner. The music (according to Zeitouni’s onstage comments) depicted an army recruiting team arriving to a village, bringing lots of alcohol for the local men, and convincing them to sign enlistment papers when they become more suggestible. The orchestra came alive with color in the opening, and principal clarinetist Todd Levy gave an authoritative solo with all the dynamic control and shape we’ve come to know from him. Zeitouni confidently managed the many mood shifts, from gorgeous slow string melodies to various up-tempo dances. The last of these fast dances was positively infectious; it seemed odd for the audience to witness this while sitting still.
Again, these excursions into vibrant folk villages were so incredible that they made Mozart feel square by contrast. I think this program could have fully leaned into the region. Why not a Bartók concerto? Maybe some tone poem from an adjacent area? Whatever the case, it was a generous program. A concerto, a symphony, plus two gems getting their moment in the spotlight.
