Worried about sounding like the bland sentiments of a Hallmark card, I would not normally use the words love and joy to describe a performance. However, they richly apply to Nicholas McGegan's work as guest conductor with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra last weekend. His love and joy in music making is contagious, spreading to the orchestra and the audience.
Though I have only heard the last half of the MSO's 50 years, I would guess that McGegan has been the most successful guest conductor in the orchestra's history. This conclusion is surprising, since he came into the mainstream symphony world as a Baroque specialist. A few years ago he led the best Messiah ever heard in Milwaukee. His MSO concerts of Baroque music have been memorable, but he has brought unique sensibility and spirit to other music as well. Now he has shown new aspects of his talent in a sprawling early Romantic work, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique.
This often-played symphony has a far-fetched story. A young man falls insanely in love with an unattainable woman. In his desperate, spurned loneliness he dreams he murders her and is marched to the scaffold to his death, then is tortured by surreal visions of a witches' Sabbath. McGegan narrated it like a master storyteller, delighting in every nuance. As a parallel, imagine Laurence Olivier vividly spinning out a ghastly tale, each syllable annunciated and building to overall effect. McGegan's light touch made the music clear, with playful sharp contrasts and overall restraint, limiting the loudest volume to only the biggest moments.
The result was orchestral balance and sensitive ensemble playing. The musicians sound as if they like playing for McGegan. His conducting techniques are not classic. Without a baton, he is a free dancer on the podium. If nothing else, he proves that a conductor can do anything as long as it works. Conductor and orchestra were no less successful in two Mendelssohn works, The Hebrides Overture and Symphony No. 5 ("Reformation"). I am now curious to hear what McGegan's fine ear, graceful liveliness and taste would bring to practically any music.
Remember when bands cared about albums as an art form? Instead of
slapping together a dozen tracks because, hey, they'll just end up on
everyone's iPod shuffle anyway, musicians considered how their songs
might congeal as a whole or form some sort of dram
Elvis Costello's frequent collaborator T-Bone Burnett produced Secret, Profane & Sugarcane,
an Americana-inflected album working with country and folk traditions
for images of sawdust floors set to mandolin and fiddle. Costello
intended one s
You wouldn’t expect to find T-bone and sirloin dinners at a place with stool seating and a location next to a shop hawking cell phones and cigarettes. But one of the city’s most evocatively named eateries, ZaZa Steak & Lemonade (4919 W. Capito
The enduring fantasy of older men is that a gorgeous
young woman will fall in love with them, find them sexually arousing
and long to imbibe their wisdom while sitting at their feet. That
fantasy is the spring driving Woody Allen's often-hilarious f
Away We Go, a droll comedy-cum-drama by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty),
perceptively explores the lives of more-or-less ordinary 30-somethings
lost in a world without much meaning. Verona (Maya Rudolph) and Bu
