Symphony fills up Basilica with Bach
The Milwaukee Symphony and associate conductor Yaniv Dinur offered a beautifully crafted program of Bach, Bach, and more Bach to a sold-out Basilica of Saint Josaphat Saturday evening.
The 12 brief movements of brilliant musical architecture known as Bach’s “Magnificat” got top billing on the program, Moving from an orchestral introduction to movements featuring chorus, vocal soloists and combinations of vocal soloists, the piece won a resounding standing ovation.
Dinur, the orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, and sopranos Sherezade Panthaki and Yulia Van Doren, countertenor Daniel Taylor, tenor Dominic Armstrong and baritone Alexander Dobson captured the individual character of each of the brief movements, knitting them into a compelling musical whole.
The vocal soloists gave musically rich, soaring performances of their solo movements, wrestling a bit with balance in movements for more than one soloist.
The chorus, prepared by chorus director Cheryl Frazes Hill, gave a remarkably clean, taut performance. They used strategically placed accents, deft shortening of held notes, a well-blended sound, and some seriously nimble ensemble singing to make the structure and musical meaning of their portions of the piece discernible in the Basilica’s live acoustic.
Dinur and the orchestra made consistently fascinating music, balancing solo instrumental lines with full-ensemble sounds and giving each movement its own color and shape. Here and throughout the program, the biggest sounds and fastest orchestral passages were somewhat blurred by the reverberation within the Basilica.
Dinur and the orchestra opened the program with delicious renditions of Bach’s first and third Brandenburg Concertos.
In the fullest and fastest passages of the first concerto, Dinur and the ensemble seemed to take a “just play” approach to dealing with the challenges of the room’s live acoustic. They brought full sounds, vigorous accents and a palpable energy to those passages, creating an enveloping wash of lovely sound.
The slower and the less densely scored passages allowed the audience to hear individual instrumental voices and tastefully nuanced playing, as did the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, written for just 11 players — strings and harpsichord.