For its season opener, Milwaukee Symphony goes big with Strauss' enormous 'Alpine Symphony'
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The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra opened its 2022-'23 season Friday evening with a program that pulled out all the proverbial stops.
The orchestra, under the baton of music director Ken-David Masur, spanned two centuries of orchestral music, opening with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis’s “Herald, Holler, and Hallelujah!” (2021). The program’s first half continued with Felix Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra in E major, featuring twin sisters Christina and Michelle Naughton, who grew up in Madison.
The program’s second half was filled to bursting by Richard Strauss’s “Eine Alpensinfonie" ("An Alpine Symphony").
Marsalis’s “Herald, Holler, and Hallelujah,” for brass and percussion, has one foot in the classical world and the other in the jazz, resulting in precision and refinement wedded to relaxed, foot-tapping music. Masur and the players gave a polished, rousing, utterly engaging performance.
The Naughton sisters, seated at neatly nested grand pianos, each played with a fluid, masterful technique, and gave deeply musical, expressive performances. But it was their completely like-minded interpretation that made one’s jaw drop.
Any concerto is a musical conversation between the soloist and orchestra, but the concerto for two pianos allowed the audience to hear a musical conversation between the sisters. One would finish the other’s musical phrases, or echo the other’s phrasing perfectly, sounding at times like a single player.
The sisters returned with an elegant, fluid encore of “Le Jardin Féerique” ("The Fairy Garden"), from Maurice Ravel’s “Ma Mère l’Oye” ("Mother Goose Suite"), for piano four hands (two players at one piano).
The evening ended with 85 orchestral musicians on the stage, an electronic organ in the wings, and a hand-cranked wind machine in the chorus loft for Strauss’s enormous tone poem “Eine Alpensinfonie.”
As is common today, the MSO pared down Strauss’s original roster of 125 players to 85, largely to fit the orchestra on the stage.
Played without pause, the piece depicts a mountain hike Strauss took in his early teens. It opens with a shimmering sunrise, moving to pastoral scenes and a roaring storm (cue the wind machine), before fading to sunset — all depicted by brilliant orchestrations.
The MSO gave a brisk, focused performance filled with colorful string playing, plaintive oboe solos, ringing horn solos and horn section passages, and much more.
The music was beautifully balanced, with the exception of some off-stage brass passages that were largely lost to the onstage sounds. From exquisitely delicate passages to the unbridled roar of the storm, the tone poem was delivered with polish, control, and tremendous musical momentum. It received a shouting, cheering ovation.
If you go
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra repeats this program at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Bradley Symphony Center, 212 W. Wisconsin Ave. Visit mso.org or call (414) 291-7605.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Symphony goes big with Strauss' enormous 'Alpine Symphony'
