Edward Elgar’s monumental The Dream of Gerontius is a repertory staple in Britain, but is not often heard in the U.S. Before last weekend, the last Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra performance was in 1980. Though the

 Brahms may not have been the most enterprising of composers. The first of his four symphonies was 20 years in the making, a gestation period culminating in an initial performance in 1876 when the composer was 44 years

 Avant garde ain’t what it used to be. Forty-five years ago it was still possible to shock and outrage a concert audience. Could that ever happen today? Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Luciano Berio’s wildy

 Rachmaninoff’s music always feels emotionally restless. Whether melancholy or agitated, it inevitably longs for some undefined otherness. Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra played an all Rachmaninoff concert last Friday

The “Edo factor” was in full gear at the All-Beethoven Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concert last Saturday evening. With music director Edo de Waart as conductor, the MSO is a disciplined, efficient entity. There were no guest artists in this meat-and-potatoes orchestral program

I am not alone in admitting that I can’t completely embrace the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. The surface sound of his music, its harmonies and gorgeous sonorities, is readily appreciated. It’s a grasp of structure and emotional narrative within his abstracted romanticism that has eluded me

  The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has become pretty remarkable in the era of Edo de Waart. Under his assured guidance, the orchestra has been transformed by important player changes, new levels of technical discipline

 Was Mahler the new Beethoven? The groundbreaking Ninth Symphony as well as Beethoven’s later sonatas and quartets provided direct antecedence to Mahler, who so startlingly combined the passion of 19th-century...

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) is one of the great composers not programmed enough...

One week. Six North American orchestras. Such was the Spring for Music festival at Carnegie Hall last week, which featured the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra on Friday evening. The festival, for which orchestras compete by proposed...