The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra shows its impressive mastery of many musical styles in a concert of Mozart, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Bruckner that marks again just how superb its music-making has become. Plus, read John W. Barker’s review for Isthmus.

By Jacob Stockinger

There are many ways to take the measure of a performing arts group. And by all the important measures you can think of, the concert Friday night in the Overture Center’s Capitol Theater by the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (below) succeeded superbly.

Not that we should be surprised. For many seasons now, the WCO, under the programming and baton of its longtime director Andrew Sewell (below) has been turning in higher and higher caliber performances in the Masterworks winter series.

But this concert may well mark a new highpoint.

Do you like light and easy-listening fare? Then the opening work, Mozart‘s overture to “The Impresario,” proved a perfect curtain-raiser. It possessed the right energy and articulation to make it seem, at least for a few minutes more than the things that the young Mozart (below) could toss off pretty much without thinking.

Do you like to hear the orchestra accompany a soloist? Then the Croatian guitarist Ana Vidovic (pronounced VIDO-vich, not vik) proved terrific in an ideal vehicle.

It was the Guitar Concerto No. 1 by the early 20th-century Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, whose gift for accessibility, transparent structure and melody may be linked to his composing of movie scores. Take the bittersweet, heartbreaking song, Mozartean in its single-note simplicity, that opens the slow movement (at bottom, in a YouTube video).

True, Vidovic amplified her guitar And while purists might object to that, from where The Ear sat, the amplification helped maintain balance and kept the orchestra from holding back and the guitarist from forcing her sound. Plus, I am not sure the acoustics of the old refurbished Capitol Theater (below) allow for unamplified playing of the classical guitar. (Check out the microphone in the YouTube video at the bottom that comes from a live recording at a prestigious international guitar competition.)

Cutting an attractive figure with her long brunette hair, bright yellow dress and gracious stage presence, Vidovich also offered approving fans a beautiful solo encore, Francisco Tarrega‘s haunting “Remembrances of Alhambra.” The Ear expects, and hopes, we will be hearing her again in a couple of seasons, maybe in a concerto by Antonio Vivaldi or Joaquin Rodrigo.

Do you like music that is “red meat,” as a close friend of The Ear described the Symphony No. 2 in C minor by the late 19th century Romantic Anton Bruckner (below)? Then you wouldn’t have been disappointed either. In fact, this work that lasted over an hour was the only one that brought the audience to its feet -– and in a town renowned for easy standing ovations.

This particular standing ovation, I suspect, was more for the performance than for the demanding music. The audience recognized effort, force and precision when they heard them. The WCO poured itself, heart, soul and body into this work, which was clearly rehearsed long and in careful detail under Sewell’s guidance.

The work itself is early and somewhat disjointed, lurching from the dramatic to the lyrical and back again. Clearly Bruckner relies more on rhythm and pulse than on melody. I do not find that he sings all that naturally or all that much. But he certainly does engage you by the way works over the music, and especially by the way he uses the brass and percussion as well as nthe strings and winds. Bruckner sure was sone kind of orchestrator!

Bruckner’s sound is his own, whatever its historical roots or influences. I am reminded of the scratched out scrawls one sees in Beethoven’s notebooks. I suspect Bruckner, an endless reviser, worked the same way.

The deeply religious Bruckner (below) does not seduce you; sensuality is not his strong suit. Instead he forcefully grabs you and compels you to listen. We should hear more of him, and conductor Sewell, pretty much by himself, seems to be making sure that we do. And his efforts are appreciated.

Not for nothing did that the WCO, on a cold and snowy winter night, play to a full house of about 1,200. At this rate, and with this kind of mastery, one hopes that perhaps the WCO can one day justify doing double performances, maybe a matinee. The quality of the WCO’s music-making certainly deserves it. And so do we listeners.

If you want to compare and see what another critic thought, here is a link to the review the John W. Barker did for Isthmus:

http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=41864