MSO’s happy Mozart, epic Shostakovich

Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 is not the heroic stuff of standing ovations. It’s genteel and witty, even arch. The sentiment that crops up now and then is of resigned, knowing nostalgia. At least, that’s what the concerto was all about at Friday’s matinee, as Jeremy Denk played it with guest conductor Shi-Yeon Sung and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Denk’s deft touch made the music airy and transparent except for the cadenzas, where he added a little more weight. Even then, he bore it lightly. I admire Denk’s intelligence, apparent throughout in lightly drawn but sure and persuasive phrasing and in his grasp of overall design.

In the first movement, he presented the first theme as prim and taut and the second as more expressive and expansive. In the second movement, he inverted that relation. That’s smart, engaging strategy, a way of bringing out the Classical symmetry of the music and changing things up at the same time.

The finale could be a buffa romp, in the way of a Beethoven finale, but Denk and Sung stuck with their thesis. It was little girls dancing in the garden, not Figaro banging around the Count’s larder.

Speaking of which, Sung took a very different approach with the Overture to Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro.” She set a furious pace and didn’t stop to breathe and piled phrase upon phrase in a headlong rush.

I’m not so sure about that approach. Think of the opera; yes, its pace is fast, yes it’s farce, but it does stop long enough for the Countess to sing “Dove Sono.” We have  time to catch our breath and think about the moral and human implications of the hi-jinks. The Overture, brief as it is, needs a whiff of that.

Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 is a cinematic epic about the failed Revolution of 1905 and the brutal massacre of demonstrators that triggered it.

Sung was wonderfully patient with the endless muted string passages, which are so suggestive of the hush of a world buried in new snow. The strings put a slow, chilly, hypnotic pulse to it. Trumpeter Mark Niehaus and horn player William Barnewitz called out, as if from afar, a looming military presence.

Sung’s patience paid off by way of contrast with the stupendously violent outbursts that signify the one-sided battle and, in the finale, the tide of popular anger rising to a Revolution that would not fail.

The young conductor, whose gestures are very beautiful to watch, showed a firm grasp of the vast score’s details and drama. The Symphony No. 11 is the heroic stuff of standing ovations, and Sung earned hers Friday afternoon.

This program, given at Marcus Center Uihlein Hall, was repeated at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7. Tickets are $25-$93 at the Marcus box office, 414 273-7206.

Other reviews: Elaine Schmidt.