From my perch in the Side Loge, Uihlein Hall looked quite a bit shy of standing-room-only on Sunday afternoon. These days, even the stage looks a bit sparse—the recently pared down Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra is often surrounded by a wide apron of bare stage floor. I can’t say I didn’t miss the large-scale Shostakovich symphony originally scheduled for this concert, but there are advantages to a leaner MSO. Playing Mozart and Schubert this weekend, the ensemble never sounded better.
Richard Goode brought calm elegance to Mozart’s 18th Piano Concerto. Or I probably credit both Goode and conductor Edo de Waart. It was a performance of exacting precision, with Goode and the orchestra in communion at every entrance, cadence and punctuation. But it also breathed beautifully and effortlessly, with silken melodies in the strings, and balanced, charming wind motifs, for which the piece is justly celebrated.
It was Mozart to remember.
Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 isn’t a breezy walk in the park like a Mozart concerto, but Shubert’s blend of lovely melody and classical sense of structure is right in Edo de Waart’s wheelhouse, so I had high hopes for this performance. Conductor and orchestra didn’t disappoint.
Schubert wrote his 9th Symphony in the shadow of Beethoven’s 9th (he quotes it in the final movement), but he didn’t respond with shattered traditions and original forms. De Waart showed the best qualities of the piece (and Schubert) by attending to both the lyricism and the architecture. De Waart plays up the rhythmic variety of Schubert’s imagination (particularly in the final movement), but still allows us to make connections between the parts. He chooses tempos that maintain the variety that’s needed for a piece this substantial, but avoids the extremes, keeping a secure bond between the often disparate parts.
