Anastasia Chernyavsky
On Jan. 22, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra played its first 2016 concert, delivering several novelties and two 20th-century piano concertos that featured soloist Adam Neiman, the brilliant young American pianist who has worked productively with the WCO before.
In addition to the concertos, the concert, at the Overture Center’s Capitol Theater, included some more familiar works, such as the Overture to Mozart’s opera Cosí fan tutte, in a crisp performance led by maestro Andrew Sewell.
The first concerto, by Francis Poulenc, is a good example of his efforts to establish himself as a serious composer, as he blended his breezy cabaret melodies with emphatic orchestra effects. It has some amusing, and even attractive moments, but there are too many disparate elements and the work just does not cohere, as a whole, or even movement by movement.
By contrast, the Concerto No. 2 that Shostakovich wrote for his son Maxim to play at his 19th birthday has a swagger and optimism rather unusual for the composer. Its first movement is characterized by prolonged sassiness, the second is laced with Romanic lyricism and the third displays a relentless playfulness. It suggests that young Maxim — who in later years became a wonderful conductor of his father’s music — had a splendid keyboard technique. Neiman, who was elegantly teasing in the Poulenc, had a riotous time playing the Shostakovich, which the audience particularly loved.
Schubert’s Sixth Symphony is one of his works that is performed less frequently. It was the first mature symphony of his post-student years, when Vienna was caught up in a craze for Rossini. Schubert wanted desperately to be a successful opera composer, and he seemed trying to make his melodies fit into the mold of Rossinian arias, even with some attempted imitation of the orchestral writing. In those terms, the symphony does not quite work — trying to fit round pegs into square holes — but Schubert still could not help but write entertaining music. And Sewell conducted it with meticulous care and obvious affection.
Still, I wish he, or someone here, would take up Schubert’s actual Seventh Symphony, a work in E that he finished only in piano score. It has since been orchestrated, notably by Brian Newbould, and a performance of that truly beautiful work would be a treat.
