It isn’t quite John Cage’s 4’33”—the landmark avant-garde composition in which a pianist sits in silence at a piano for four-and-a-half minutes and lets the audience’s fidgety reaction become the “music”—but Morton Feldman’s Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety was an equally fitting curtain raiser to the second half of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s Pabst Theater concert Thursday night. Feldman’s four-minute piece for 12 instruments (dedicated to his childhood piano teacher) is all about stillness gently split by the tick-tock march of time. Most of the piece is governed by the back and forth of two notes—a major third intoned by a flute—while other instruments add ethereal textures.
For the MSO program, conductor Edwin Outwater briefly introduced the piece after intermission, but before the star-twinkle of the celeste could fade, he launched the orchestra immediately into the ominous cosmic door knock that opens Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. In a snap, Feldman’s tender major third became those famous four notes (a minor-third), the composer’s thundering rebellion against the dying of the light.
It was a brilliant way to make Beethoven’s familiar notes new again, and it seemed to help Outwater shape the entire progression of the symphony. In the famous transition between the third and fourth movements, he brought the ensemble down to the softest of murmers, as if to mirror the resigned repose of Feldman’s world. But for Beethoven, of course, resignation is not an option, as the explosive chords of the C-major fourth movement, made clear.
As I’ve written before, the Pabst is a more challenging venue for symphonic music than Uihlein Hall. The close confines make it harder to balance ensembles and make them cohere before the sound reaches the audience’s ears. But that can also lead to a more personal and immediate experience of the music, something that becomes more rare as recording technology becomes more sophisticated. Here—from my seat in the middle of the main floor—there was the occasional imbalance or ragged entrance. But there were also moments of great human clarity, the vibrant presence of the strings in the first movement’s lyrical second theme, or the tender exchange between the woodwinds and cellos in the second movement theme. It was a performance to remember.
But, as they say on TV, that’s not all. Outwater devoted the first half of the concert to two recent works by young American composers. Nico Muhly’s So Far So Good is described as one of his rare forays into non-programmatic orchestral music (Muhly is celebrated for his work in opera), but the opening section—full elegiac strings punctuated by drum taps and a lone trumpet—certainly suggests a requiem for the military fallen. The piece becomes richer as it goes on, taking up a Minimalist-style pulse and expanding the palette of sound: brass chorales, Messiaen-inspired woodwind birdsong, furious and angular ostinatos by the two lead violins. It’s a piece ripe with beautiful surprises.
Outwater opened the concert with Sean Shepherd’s These Particular Circumstances, a richly evocative work for only 16 instruments. Not surprising for a seven-section suite with programmatic titles (“Floating,” “Grinding,” “Sinking”), the piece makes several allusions to Gustav Holst’s The Planets, including a short, wholesale quotation. And though he’s writing for a smaller ensemble, Shepherd certainly shares Holst’s love of varied sonic textures. It starts with an explosive clang (Shepherd calls it a “Big Bang”) and is followed by burbling woodwinds, a clarion oboe solo and a warm lyrical cello phrase. Later, there are majestic brass bell tones, and rarely paired instruments—horn, trumpet and cello, for example—play long unison phrases.
Afterward, Outwater brought Shepherd onstage to talk about the piece, and he eloquently described the challenge and joy of writing for a “sampler” ensemble that contained the breadth of an orchestra, but with only a single instrument of each type. The interest and variety he was able create suggests why he’s one of the most sought after contemporary composers.
Yes, you heard me right. A conductor toying with the conventions of an orchestra concert: Comments from the stage, interviews with composers, using a contemporary work as a “prelude” to an established classic in order to help audiences hear it with fresh ears. That’s the sort of thing American orchestras need if they are to survive and thrive, and it seems as if the MSO is on the right track.
