Leonardo Altino (left) and Soh-Hyun Park Altino.
The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra opened its 2018 concert season with an early Classical hop, an early Modern skip, and a high Romantic jump.
The Jan. 26 concert began with a set of Sinfonias for Strings (Wq.182), known as the “Hamburg Symphonies,” composed in 1773 by J.S. Bach’s progressive son, Carl Philipp Emanuel. The fourth movement is full of restless, quirky twists and turns, which were given a beautifully lucid rendering by the WCO strings under Maestro Andrew Sewell.
Next was a similarly daring piece from a much later generation. Sewell has already given us Arnold Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 2, so this time he went back to the 1906 Chamber Symphony No. 1, scored for 15 instrumentalists. Though provocative in its shift from thematic to harmonic aggressiveness, the coloristic palette reminded me of how much Brahms meant to Schoenberg. Schoenberg found it very difficult to get Brahms’ sound out of his ears, and it constantly pops out in this work. I think that Sewell was fully aware of that as he carefully drew his players through a crisp and lucid rendition of this tricky composition.
Brahms’ Double Concerto for Violin and Cello has, for both practical and musical reasons, taken a back seat to the better-known Violin Concerto and the two Piano Concertos. Still this terminal piece — Brahms’ last orchestral work, written in 1887 — shows the composer dealing imaginatively with the challenge of writing for two soloists, not just one. Brahms treated them as partners, in dialogue with each other and with the orchestra.
That quality suited perfectly the two soloists who played this work. The Korean-born violinist Soh-Hyun Park Altino — an exciting new member of the UW music faculty — and Brazilian-born cellist Leonardo Altino are a wife-and-husband team. They clearly relished their partnership in this work, bringing it to life together. The audience responded warmly to their performance approach.
Although the WCO is not in the business of creating Romantic big-orchestra sound, it did a thoroughly creditable job of realizing the orchestral qualities needed to achieve the burly Brahmsian sound.
