Photo by Juergen Frank
The main event on the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert last Friday evening was a moving account of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, played in its entirety, without commonly observed cuts, and lasting 60 minutes. It was the best hour of my week.
We’ve long since learned how Edo de Waart approaches a large romantic work. His aim seems to be to play only what’s in the composer’s score, without added schmaltz, an ideal that is elusively difficult to achieve. Logically, one would think that would mean that emotional music such as this would be rendered without heat and sweep, but that’s not De Waart’s result. Instead, the music comes across as self-evident, direct and true when the ensemble is as good as the MSO.
We have come to expect excellence from this orchestra, and it did not disappoint in this symphony. The music soared with clarity and ease and with sensitively balanced ensemble playing. Lushness emerged from the strings. Handsome sounds came from all instruments. Todd Levy’s tender playing of the big clarinet solo in the famous third movement—with expertly shaped phrasing—was as good as it gets. It was so beautiful it could have made grown men cry. I did.
Jennifer Koh was guest soloist in Béla Bartók’s Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra. Some may have liked her aggressive interpretation, and I have to report that the audience gave her a substantial ovation. I found the performance jarringly exaggerated in every way and without a consistent core to the tone of her instrument. Little of the lyricism of the concerto came through. Koh’s constant shake of her attractive mop of hair became visually distracting.
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Within Her Arms by British composer Anna Clyne (b. 1980) is an earnest memorial to her mother. Composed for string ensemble, it is muted and meditative in spirit and not uninteresting. I’m not sure this performance gave it a convincing chance, however. It came across as rather tentative and a bit bland. It is admirable to program works by young composers, but this was not one of the more successful ventures in that cause.
