Bill Fritsch
John DeMain
Stephen Hough — one of the leading pianists of our time — joins the Madison Symphony Orchestra for its February program, which memorably combines two novelties and one great warhorse.
One of Hough’s performing specialties has been the Piano Concertos of Camille Saint-Saëns, all five of which he has recorded. He imaginatively chose the last of them for this appearance with the symphony Feb. 17-19. The Concerto No. 5 is titled The Egyptian, partly because it was composed on a visit to Egypt in 1896, but also because it incorporates some musical influences there.
With this work totally at his fingertips, Hough has a fine romp with the outer movements, full of good tunes and bouncy spirit. But the meat of the work is its central movement, a remarkable example of “Orientialist” music so fashionable at the time in Europe, and especially France. Hough makes it an absorbing experience in cross-cultural influences.
As an encore on Friday evening, Hough played Debussy’s Clair de lune, taking an all-too-familiar piece and turning it into a miracle of coloristic shadings.
Maestro John DeMain deserves praise for adding one of Samuel Barber’s powerful Essays for Orchestra to the MSO repertoire. The composer suggested that the piece’s dark colors reflect its being written during World War II. But it is essentially a symphonic study in thematic elaboration, and MSO’s performance is appropriately powerful.
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the Pathétique is a score we think we know so well until we listen to it closely. It is the composer’s last work, and it premiered just days before he died. It is often considered autobiographical, and Tchaikovsky had innovation on his mind. The passionate first movement, with its romantic second theme, starts out in sonata-form but then breaks free of it, in a dying away that is paralleled at the end of the fourth movement, an Adagio lamentoso that is surely an evocation of death. In between are two hardly symphonic movements: a quirky pseudo-waltz in 5/4 time, and a rowdy march.
DeMain plays the whole work for melodrama rather than tragedy, and the sumptuous sound sound of the orchestra is quite irresistible.
The program repeats at Overture Hall on Feb. 18 at 8:00 p.m. and Feb. 19 at 2:30 pm.
Bill Fritsch
John DeMain
Stephen Hough — one of the leading pianists of our time — joins the Madison Symphony Orchestra for its February program, which memorably combines two novelties and one great warhorse.
One of Hough’s performing specialties has been the Piano Concertos of Camille Saint-Saëns, all five of which he has recorded. He imaginatively chose the last of them for this appearance with the symphony Feb. 17-19. The Concerto No. 5 is titled The Egyptian, partly because it was composed on a visit to Egypt in 1896, but also because it incorporates some musical influences there.
With this work totally at his fingertips, Hough has a fine romp with the outer movements, full of good tunes and bouncy spirit. But the meat of the work is its central movement, a remarkable example of “Orientialist” music so fashionable at the time in Europe, and especially France. Hough makes it an absorbing experience in cross-cultural influences.
Maestro John DeMain deserves praise for adding one of Samuel Barber’s powerful Essays for Orchestra to the MSO repertoire. The composer suggested that the piece’s dark colors reflect its being written during World War II. But it is essentially a symphonic study in thematic elaboration, and MSO’s performance is appropriately powerful.
As an encore on Friday evening, Hough played Debussy’s Clair de lune, taking an all-too-familiar piece and turning it into a miracle of coloristic shadings.
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the Pathétique is a score we think we know so well until we listen to it closely. It is the composer’s last work, and it premiered just days before he died. It is often considered autobiographical, and Tchaikovsky had innovation on his mind. The passionate first movement, with its romantic second theme, starts out in sonata-form but then breaks free of it, in a dying away that is paralleled at the end of the fourth movement, an Adagio lamentoso that is surely an evocation of death. In between are two hardly symphonic movements: a quirky pseudo-waltz in 5/4 time, and a rowdy march.
DeMain plays the whole work for melodrama rather than tragedy, and the sumptuous sound sound of the orchestra is quite irresistible.
The program repeats at Overture Hall on Feb. 18 at 8:00 p.m. and Feb. 19 at 2:30 pm.
