On a rainy, cold Tuesday night, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra arrived by bus to play to a full house in the Rhinelander High School auditorium. The program featured three full-bodied works from Berlioz, Mozart and Tchaikovsky.
Before launching into the program, conductor Stuart Chafetz turned to the audience and announced a surprise opening number, the Nimrod of the Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar, "to honor those who have lost loved ones in the Crandon tragedy," he said, referring to the deaths of seven young people on Sunday in a gun-down. The orchestra played the hauntingly beautiful Nimrod with great feeling, creating room in each person's heart to experience the grief and compassion brought on by the events of the past few days in nearby Crandon.
The program was put together with thought. The Roman Carnival Overture by Berlioz showcased the MSO's crisp, clean sound; the Symphony No. 41 in C Major by Mozart exposed the audience to a different , moodier side of that familiar composer; and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E Minor was so nuanced with musical drama that there was no hope of mind-drifting: every passage, as played by this talented group, demanded and rewarded your attention.
The biggest delight of a live performance is watching the musicians give their heart and soul and great skill to bring dead composers' music alive. You could look at any face on that stage at any moment and see how much these musicians love what they are doing. Better yet, you could close your eyes and follow all the intertwining parts and come to the same realization: that this music is a form of love. The audience returned its appreciation with an admiring, standing ovation.
MSO's encore, Johann Strauss's Radetsky march, delighted the audience with its sass, which included tuba player Randall Montgomery wandering off the stage and into the audience, playing the high school "Hodag" tuba (see photo in slide show).
The Symphony, brought to Rhinelander through the auspices of the Northwoods Concert Association, is the jewel of the concert season. Its performance alone well worth the $40 cost of the season's four concerts. While here, the MSO lives up to its mission of exposing a new generation to classical music by presenting a concert to the Rhinelander School District children, as they did Wednesday morning (see photo in slide show).
A season pass includes the following upcoming concerts:
Saturday, Oct. 20: The Hunt Family Fiddlers, an award-winning family of Irish step dancers, fiddlers and singers.
Friday, Jan. 25,2008: Sally Harmon, Pops Pianist, a combination of Liberace, Vince Guaraldi, George Winston and Victor Borge, all rolled up in one dynamic woman.
Saturday, May 17, 2008: Riders in the Sky, the premier western cowboy group in the country, doing cowboy songs with guitar, accordion, violin and bass. All concerts take place in the Rhinelander High School auditorium at 7:30 p.m.
Season tickets can be purchased at the door. To buy a season ticket in advance, or for more information, call Tom Winquist at 362-6988.
