MSO and Chorus deliver rousing performance of ‘Elijah’
The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra filled the Bradley Symphony Center stage Friday evening with orchestra, chorus, soloists and a large organ console for a moving, rousing performance of Felix Mendelssohn’s oratorio “Elijah.”
Conducted by MSO music director, Ken-David Masur, the concert featured four guest vocalists: soprano Sonya Headlam, mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski, tenor Thomas Cooley, and bassbaritone Dashon Burton, who sang the oratorio’s title role.
The oratorio, which filled the program and was divided by an intermission between its two acts, won enthusiastic waves of cheering and applause at the intermission, and again upon its completion.
Masur led a compelling rendition of “Elijah,” which was one of the last works Mendelssohn conducted in his short life.
The evening’s performance was built, in part, on beautiful orchestral balance and careful layering of sections and instrumental solos. Some of the orchestra’s most stirring moments occurred in lines featuring cohesive, sensitive playing from sections within the ensemble.
The quartet of vocal soloists also present some lovely ensemble singing, in smaller pairings within the quartet.
They each delivered meaningful, beautifully crafted solo lines. Headlam, Osowski, and Burton sang with warm, facile sounds, each giving riveting, communicative performances.
Cooley’s tenor sound, which also warm and quite facile, was the most present and pointed of group. He filled the large hall easily, adding an urgency to many of his lines.
From a vantage point fairly near the stage, on the hall’s main floor, some of the soloists’ more understated lines, soft dynamics lines, and musical nuances were lost in the rich textures of the orchestral writing. In passages set to thinner orchestral writing, one could hear their warm sounds and expressive nuances perfectly.
The MSO Symphony Chorus, prepared by director Cheryl Frazes Hill, played an enormous role in the performance and won a good deal of the final applause, as it should in this oratorio. The chorus delivers a good deal of the drama and is essential in creating thrilling full orchestra/full chorus passages.
The chorus brought more than big sounds. Some lovely on- and off-stage work came from smaller ensembles drawn from the large group, and some clear, ringing solo lines were delivered by an uncredited chorus woman.
The final few sections of the long oratorio were marked by a few pitch issues and a little loosening of the cohesive ensemble work heard up to those final sections.