The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Want to hear some Beethoven? A lot of Beethoven? The Edgewood College Chamber Orchestra performs an all-Beethoven concert this Sunday afternoon.

By Jacob Stockinger

Want to hear some Beethoven?

How about a lot of Beethoven?

The Edgewood Chamber Orchestra, led by Blake Walter (below top, in a photo by John Maniaci), will be performing an all-Beethoven concert this Sunday afternoon, November 9, at 2:30 p.m., at Edgewood College in the St. Joseph Chapel, 1000 Edgewood College Drive.

On the program are the dramatic “Coriolan” Overture, the lyrical Romance in F Major for Violin (at bottom in a YouTube video with the famed violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz) with David Huntsman, the group’s concertmaster, as the soloist, and the epic Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, “Eroica.”

People always love to play and hear Beethoven’s music, so The Ear guesses this concert will be well attended eve though it will be competing with the Madison Symphony Orchestra‘s all-Scandinavian program at the same time.

Admission is $5 or free with an Edgewood student ID.

The program is all the more grist for the controversial blog post I did about whether Ludwig van Beethoven’s greatness and enduring popularity has actually harmed classical music. It was written by prize-winning music critic Alex Ross (below) of The New Yorker Magazine, and it drew a lot of passionate reader responses, some pro and many con.

Here is a link. Be sure to check out the reader comments:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/classical-music-was-beethoven-so-great-that-he-hurt-music/