De Waart joins MSO for Mozart, Ives

Edo de Waart, who left the music director post of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at the end of last season, was back at the podium Friday in the role of guest conductor.

De Waart led the orchestra through a program that looked a bit curious on paper — opening with Charles Ives’ “The Unanswered Question,” and continuing with Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Sinfonia Concertante in B-flat major,” and wrapping up with Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 — but worked beautifully in performance.

De Waart and a small string section took the stage, in what proved to be a contemplative, haunting performance of the brief piece. Opening with soft, hazy strings and punctuated by the distant sounds of a lone trumpet and four flutes (all playing from the wings), the performance effectively left the dangling “question” unanswered.

The Haydn “Sinfonia concertante” that followed may not have the answered the question that ended the Ives’ piece, but it returned the audience to the comfort of the familiar.

The piece, written for four soloists and orchestra, featured soloists from within the orchestra: associate concertmaster Ilana Setapen, principal cellist Susan Babini, principal oboist Katherine Young Steele and principal bassoonist Catherine Chen.

The soloists played as though caught up together in a consuming conversation. They handed phrases back and forth with ease and grace, and did some artful dovetailing of musical lines as well, a couple of slips notwithstanding.

The program’s second half featured a seamless performance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, with De Waart and the players delivering a deftly handled final movement that clipped along at an urgent pace but still gave the audience a clear understanding of the symphony’s exquisite architecture.