Brautigam, de Waart team for dynamic Milwaukee Symphony concert

Friday evening’s Milwaukee Symphony concert was the beginning of the end – the first of conductor Edo de Waart’s last three programs as the orchestra’s music director.

The concert opened with a crisp, colorful delivery of Mozart’s Overture to “Don Giovanni.”

This was an agile performance, moving quickly and easily from light, facile lines to dark, dramatic passages, capturing the drama of the opera it was written to introduce, as well as the mannered style of its era.    

Pianist Ronald Brautigam joined de Waart and the orchestra for a completely engrossing performance of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4.

Brautigam played as though looking out at the audience from inside the concerto, pointing out details that we on the outside might have missed in previous hearings of the work.

He created a fascinating palette of sounds that leaned toward sounds audiences would have heard on the pianos of Beethoven’s day. He altered texture at the keyboard to include glassy, delicate sounds, velvety timbres and richly powerful, forte sounds that were never blurred by the resonance of the instrument.

He created introverted passages and phrases that tapered to the barest possible pianissimo sounds, moving to big, decisive statements that were commanding, yet never domineering. Brautigam, de Waart and the orchestra interacted like members of a tightly knit chamber ensemble.

De Waart and the orchestra filled the program’s second half with a stirring, beautifully balanced performance of Elgar’s Symphony No. 1 in A-flat major.

This interpretation put the piece’s intricately layered construction in the spotlight, with sections and individual instruments within the orchestra artfully dovetailing and overlapping phrases.   

They moved from hymnodic serenity to big moments of power and angst, and passages of exciting front-edge-of-the-beat playing, and to passages of broad, poignant expression. This was a thoughtful, unfussy interpretation, built of the kind of musical reserve and expressive dignity they needed to create achingly long, powerful swells of sound and emotion.

This Milwaukee Symphony performance will be repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Marcus Center's Uihlein Hall, 929 N. Water St.

De Waart will lead the orchestra in a program of Bruckner and Bloch May 19-20, followed by performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 on May 26-28. For ticket information visit www.mso.org or call (414) 273-7206.