The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Is this any way to schedule concerts? It’s the usual stacked up weekend as the first semester at the UW-Madison School of Music comes to a close.

By Jacob Stockinger

This weekend, there will be a lot of music-making at the UW School of Music.

So much, in fact, that I bet you and I don’t or can’t get to it all.

As usual, when the end of semester approaches, the concerts start looking like planes stacked up over O’Hare.

FRIDAY

It starts on Friday night at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall wth the UW Wind Ensemble under Scott Teeple (below top) and with guest soloist UW violinist Felicia Moye (below bottom).

The forces will play a FREE concert that includes two works by composers Joel Puckett (below), who teaches at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore but who has been in residence at the UW-Madison.

The full program includes: 
”Septimi Toni a 8, No. 2″ by Giovanni Gabrieli;
”Music for Winds” by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski;
”Suite in E-flat,” by Gustav Holst, as arranged by Matthews;
”Avelynn’s Lullaby” and “Southern Comforts,” by Joel Puckett, 
featuring guest soloist Felicia Moye, who is professor of violin at the UW-Madison School of Music.

Named as one of NPR’s listeners’ favorite composers under the age of 40, Joel Puckett is a composer who is dedicated to the belief that music can bring consolation, hope and joy to all who need it. The Washington Post has hailed him as both “visionary” and “gifted” and the Baltimore Sun proclaimed his work for the Washington Chorus and Orchestra, “This Mourning,” as “being of comparable expressive weight” to John Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning work.

Puckett’s flute concerto, “The Shadow of Sirius,” has been performed all over the world and commercially recorded multiple times. Before the end of 2014, a total of five commercial recordings of “The Shadow of Sirius” will be available.

That event certainly seems appealing and accessible enough.

But what about Saturday and Sunday?

SATURDAY

At noon in Morphy Recital Hall, the World Percussion Ensemble under Todd Hammes and Tom Ross performs a program. Sorry, no details about specific pieces.

At 4 p.m. in Mills Hall, the All University String Orchestra will perform a FREE concert under Janet Jensen (below top, in a photo by Katrin Talbot). There is a program note: Two pieces for oboe and strings are dedicated to Cassidy “Kestrel” Fritsch (below top) and her family and friends. Kestrel played bass in the All-University String Orchestra, but was also a serious oboist. She passed away early in this semester, just into her freshman year. With these pieces, oboe Professor Konstantinos Tiliakos (below bottom, in a photo by Kathy Esposito) and the members of the orchestras give musical voice to their collective sense of loss and sadness for a life that ended too soon.

I. Orchestra, Too!

Adagio from the Concerto for Oboe and Strings by Alessandro Marcello with Konstantinos Tiliakos as oboe soloist and 
Kasey Wasson as student conductor; Johann Roman – Sinfonia XX – Movements 1, 2 and 4; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, “Salzburg” Symphony Movement III; Ingvar Lidholm, “Straktrio”; Ottorino Respighi, “Antique Airs and Dances,” Suite III, 
Movements II and IV; Dave Brubeck, “Blue Rondo a la Turk”; and Scott Joplin, “Palm Leaf Rag”

II. Orchestra I

Morricone – Gabriel’s Oboe, UW oboist
 and soloist Konstantinos Tiliakos; Johann Friedrich Fasch, Symphony in A; Mozart, “Adagio and Fugue,” K. 546, with Kasey Wasson, Student Conductor; Paul Hindemith, Eight Pieces, Nos. 1 and 3; Respighi, “Antique Airs and Dances, Suite III,
Movements I, III, IV; Jeremy Cohen – Tango Toscana; Scott Joplin, “Sugar Cane Rag.”

At 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, the UW Tuba and Euphonium Ensemble, under the direction of composer/tuba player John Stevens (below) perform a FREE concert. The program includes arrangements of works by Anton Bruckner, Claude Debussy, Paul Dukas, Mikhail Glinka, Karl King and Samuel Scheidt, plus original works by James Barnes, Stephen Bulla and Jan Koetsier. Sorry, again no word on specific pieces.

SUNDAY

On Sunday at 2 p.m. in Mills Hall, the University Bands will perform a FREE concert under Darin Olson. Sorry, no word on either composers or pieces.

At 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. in Luther Memorial Church (below), 1021 University Ave., the Prism Concert that features fives choirs will perform a very varied program with FREE admission.

The choral groups include: The UW “Prism” Concert, featuring five combined choirs: Concert Choir (below top) under Beverly Taylor (below middle, in a photo by Katrin Talbot); Chorale, under Bruce Gladstone (below bottom, in a photo by Katrin Talbot); the Women’s Chorus, the Madrigal Singers, under Bruce Gladstone; and the University Chorus.

The generous holiday program will include: “Tantum Ergo,” Op. 65, No. 2, by Gabriel Faure; “
Apple Tree Wassai,” arr. Hatfield; “
Psallite, unigenito” by Michael Praetorius; “
Angelus ad pastores ait” by Andrea Gabrieli; “
Ave Maria” by Fernando Moruja; “
Kling, Glöckchen, Kling” (Tyrolean Carol); “
Resonet in Laudibus” by Chester Alwes’ “
Und alsbald war da bei dem Engel” by Melchior Vulpius; “
Summer in Winter” by Richard N. Roth; “
Benedicamus Domino” by Peter Warlock
; “Upon this night” by Richard Hynson
; “O magnum mysterium” by Tomás Luis de Victoria; “
Hodie Christus natus est,” by Healy Willan
; and “Peace, Everywhere,” by UW alumnus Scott Gendel (below).

At 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, the UW Chamber Orchestra (below) under director and conductor James Smith will perform Chamber Symphony, opus 73a (arranged by Rudolf Barshai from the composer’s String Quartet No. 3) by Dmitri Shostakovich and Symphony No. 8 by Ludwig van Beethoven.

So, which concerts can you get to?

And which ones will you regret having to miss?

Doesn’t it seem like there ought to be a better way to organize and schedule concerts and space things out, and maybe draw bigger audiences from the general public to each event? The Ear thinks that the performers, both faculty and students, deserve better.

 

---