Lisamarie Mazzucco
The Madison Symphony Orchestra offers a high-powered Viennese program this weekend, featuring the piano virtuoso Emanuel Ax.
At the opening night concert at Overture Hall, Beethoven’s “Coriolan” Overture provided a forceful opening. He composed it for a play telling the story of the same arrogant Roman leader as portrayed in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. This overture is Beethoven’s miraculous synthesis of the symphonic with the dramatic, in all of eight minutes. On Friday evening, a few rough entries could not spoil the powerful projection of this music, under maestro John DeMain’s leadership.
The guest soloist, Emanuel Ax, originally planned to play two short works, by César Franck (Symphonic Variations) and by Richard Strauss (Burleske). Both are too rarely performed, and deserved hearing. Instead, Ax substituted Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4.
That is an unusual work in many ways, perhaps the lightest of Beethoven’s five concertos, yet a provocative mixture of the gently poetic with the strongly aggressive. Ax is one of the elder statesmen among American pianists, but still on top of his game. He juggles the work’s two elements with total mastery in an immensely satisfying rendition. Fascinating to watch, also, is his total, physical involvement with the orchestra even in the moments when he is not playing.
As an encore, Ax played Chopin’s Waltz in A minor, Op. 34, No. 2.
A generous Viennese dose comes from other end of the 19th century: Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 in G. This is a highly individual work. It vies with the First as the briefest of this composer’s expansive works. It is also, in comparative terms, the most lightly scored of them all, full of lovely melodic writing.
This symphony was an outgrowth of the composer’s Third, in which he included settings of folk poetry from the collection “Youth’s Magic Horn.” With a surplus song — a childish vision of life in Heaven — left to use, Mahler built the entire work as a 50-minute thematic and atmospheric buildup to that song. Buried in the concert program is the German text of the song, with English translation. But the hall is so darkened that it is really impossible to follow these during the performance. As a result, something of the symphony’s program is lost.
A passionate Mahlerite, DeMain gives devoted shaping to the entire score. His soprano soloist in the finale, Alisa Jordheim, has a smallish voice and limited German diction, but does suggest the childish spirit of the text. The orchestra is magnificent.
The program repeats Saturday, March 12 at 8 pm and Sunday, March 13 at 2:30 p.m.
