The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: You Must Hear This – the Romance for Viola and Orchestra by Max Bruch. | October 26, 2014
By Jacob Stockinger
I saw and heard Madison -born and Madison-raised violist Vicki
Powell (below) last Wednesday night. That was when the alumna of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO), the UW-
Madison School of Music, the Juilliard School and the Curtis
Institute who now plays with the New York Philharmonic and other prestigious groups and who has participated in the
Marlboro and Aspen festivals, returned from New York City to solo with the Middleton Community Orchestra.

It was a wonderful and thoroughly enjoyable performance as well as very affordable event, as you can read in the review by
John W. Barker that was posted yesterday.
Here is a link: http://welltempered.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/classical-music-themiddleton-community-orchestra-opens-its-season-with-polished-violaplaying-from-vicki-powell-and-infectious-enthusiasm-from-the-entireorchestra-in-a-dvorak-symphony/
After the concert done in the terrific 90-minute, no intermission format that I think attracts many people, there was a meet-andgreet, with cookies and punch, where the public and the musicians could mingle – and did.

That’s when I went up to the lovely, gifted and poised Vicki
Powell and remarked on how beautiful her playing had been with the MCO under conductor Steve Kurr (below top). I was quite taken with her reading of the rarely heard Fantasy on Themes by
Mozart for Viola and Orchestra by Johann Nepomuk Hummel
(below bottom).
Hummel remains a much underappeciated composer who was invited by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself to live in his house and take free lessons.

But what really swept me away was the Romance for Viola and
Orchestra by the 19th-century Romantic German composer Max
Bruch (below).

I have heard Max Bruch’s popular violin concertos – especially No.
1 in G minor — and his Kol Nidre for cello and piano as well as his
Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra.
But this work was completely new and unknown to me, but captivated me from the first notes. No 10 listenings or more needed to like and appreciate this work!
“I am amazed it hasn’t yet been used for a movie soundtrack,” I said to Powell.
“Really?” she said. “So am I.”
That is how beautiful and tuneful, how accessible and emotional, it is.
And maybe you will be surprised too.
So here is a YouTube video of the work performed by violist
Miles Hoffman, who also comments frequently on classical music for NPR ( National Public Radio ). It lasts about 9-1/2 minutes and is pure loveliness.

And maybe it has indeed been used in the movies.
If so and you know, please let us know.
And let us know what you think of the piece, which The Ear thinks deserves to be programmed much more often, even though the viola is not often featured as a solo instrument with orchestra . (All the more reason to admire the Middleton
Community Orchestra and its mission.)
The Ear wants to hear.