Milwaukee Symphony concert evokes British Isles
The Milwaukee Symphony managed to take a stroll through the British Isles Friday evening without ever leaving Uihlein Hall.
Playing under the baton of Londonborn conductor Alexander Shelley, and joined by Canadian violinist Blake Pouliot, the orchestra delivered a wonderfully evocative program of music written in and/or about the British Isles.
Pouliot joined the orchestra for a consuming rendition of Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy” for violin and orchestra.
He played with a completely captivating mix of musical fervor, some blindingly fast technical passages, simply stated traditional folk tunes, and a completely disarming grin that popped up in the middle of musical pyrotechnics.
Pouliot moved between lovely, limpid lines with a ringing, brilliant sound, to wonderful interactions with the orchestra, and on to fiery technical passages that blended the precise, controlled technique of a fine classical player with the catch-me-if-you-can freedom of a spectacular Celtic fiddler.
William Walton’s wrenching Symphony No. 1 closed the evening with a vivid expression of anger (the second movement is marked “con malizia,” which translates to “with malice”) and loss.
In the States we don’t hear a lot of British composer William Walton’s music. In this MSO premiere of his extremely expressive first symphony, written as Walton suffered the breakup of his marriage, Shelley and the orchestra captured the anger and grief the composer packed into the music.
Instead of creating a melodramatic hash of the piece’s intense expressions of emotion, Shelley, who conducted from memory, steered the ensemble through an interpretation built of clearly defined sections and moods.
They brought both subtle and blood shifts of temperament and color to the foreground, using such musical devices as tightly executed, broad crescendos and diminuendos, biting attacks, phrases shaped like long sighs, emphatic percussion lines, and bold brass sounds to give the piece shape.
The concert opened with an energetic performance of Mendelssohn’s "The Hebrides" Overture (“Fingal’s Cave”), built of forward-leaning tempos, lovely full-orchestra sounds, and wonderfully evocative musical images, if a bit of uncertain pitch in a few spots.