Classical music: The Middleton Community Orchestra,
under conductor Kyle Knox, turns in its most
impressive performance so far. The brass proves
especially noteworthy. | February 28, 2015
By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W.
Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of WisconsinMadison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record
Guide, and who for 12 years hosted an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9
FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives preconcert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
The concert by the Middleton Community Orchestra (below) on last Wednesday night at the
Middleton Performing Arts Center, at Middleton High School, drew an audience little deterred by
snow and slow traffic, and greatly rewarded by the results.
The orchestra appeared this time under a guest conductor, Kyle Knox, who has prior and future connections
with it and who is currently both pursuing graduate studies and conducting at the University of WisconsinMadison School of Music.
Knox (below) is a musician of very distinct talents: a knowing perspective on the works he conducts,
a propensity for well-thought phrasing, and an ability to achieve definite rapport with his players.
Regular MCO conductor Steve Kerr was wise to give Knox an opportunity to hone the podium
talents of this very promising conductor, and as a stimulus to this steadily maturing ensemble. (Kerr
himself eventually turned up working the bass drum.)
The MCO delights in taking on compositions that are both challenging and quite familiar. In testing
themselves thus, the orchestra invites its listeners to measure its progress against the orchestras that
have set extremely high performing standards in concerts and recordings. So it is proper that we do
just that, especially in the beloved music from the score for the Incidental Music to “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream” by Felix Mendelssohn.
The conventional five movements were played. In the fabled Overture, the strings had some struggles with
their extremely demanding parts, but generally Knox achieved a well-integrated balancing of the elfin and
the eerie.
Perhaps to avoid straining the players too much, Knox set a slightly slow tempo in the fairyland Scherzo,
which sagged just a bit, but the Intermezzo was beautifully shaped.
Best was the evocative Nocturne, in which the French horn section demonstrated greatly improved
tone and ensemble over recent showings, in a truly beautiful rendition. (You can hear the Nocturne
in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
The Wedding March was also marked by a bit of ragged playing, but Knox paced it nicely and integrated it
successfully. Overall, they get good marks for showing distinct progress in some very satisfying
Mendelssohn.
The novelty of the program was the rarely played Canzonetta for Oboe and Strings by the 20thcentury American composer Samuel Barber (below). This was a late work, the only completed
movement of what was to be a full-length oboe concerto, and was published posthumously.
It displays the familiar qualities of Barber as the pre-eminent American neo-Romantic, in music that
is gentle, gracious and lyrically flowing. But it also highlights another feature of Barber: the
composer’s identification with the human voice. A fine singer himself (he was a baritone), Barber
was a master of song and vocal music, and the solo oboe part is, to a considerable degree, a kind of
song — as the title says, a “canzonetta” or small song.
The oboe soloist, Andy Olson (below), with his own long affiliations with the MCO, clearly
recognized this characteristic, and realized it in his beautiful playing.
For the finale, the other super-familiar score, was the dazzling — and very tricky — orchestration by
Maurice Ravel of the solo piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition by Russian composer Modest
Mussorgsky (below).
At the very outset, in the opening “Promenade,” the brass section displayed a new level of power and
ensemble. The saxophone solo in “The Old Castle” was truly compelling. The heavy cartwheels of
“Byddlo” were inexorable, and “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs” or “Baba-Yaga” (a sorceress) was truly
ferocious.
The triumphant final movement, “The Great Gate of Kiev” was stunning. One feature of old Russian
city portals was the inclusion working chapels. I have never heard the hymn-like quality of the whole
piece, with its interludes of liturgical chanting and tolling bells, so successfully evoked.
Overall, this performance was magnificent, and I have never heard this orchestra play so well.
It was a performance full of head and heart, with open-throttle devotion from the players. Knox
obviously deserves much credit for this, but the players themselves made it clear that they owed no
apologies for the results they could produce. (Below, conductor Kyle Knox singles out the brass for
recognition by the audience.)
The MCO has proven itself to be, more than ever, a really extraordinary factor in the Madison area’s
musical life. It is a non-, or semi-, or extra-professional ensemble whose music-making is truly
inspirational. Its concerts should be supported and enjoyed by all our cultural community.