Classical music: Competing concert “train wrecks” happen in summer too. Just look at TONIGHT with the FREE cello choir concert by the National Summer Cello Institute and the opening of the 24th season of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society.

By Jacob Stockinger

Increasingly, the regular concert season is filled with what The Wise Critic calls “train wrecks”: Competing, compelling and appealing events you have to choose between.

But now it happens in summer too.

Take tonight, when two competing concerts will conflict. The Ear would like to hear both and wishes the organizers would arrange it so there is not a conflict.

Here they are:

BACH DANCING AND DYNAMITE SOCIETY

BDDS asks in a press release:

So, what does this year’s theme “Guilty As Charged” mean?

The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society is clearly a criminal enterprise. After all, we are named after the only major composer to ever spend a significant amount of time in jail, Johann Sebastian Bach.

Our crime at BDDS?

We’ve destroyed the stuffy, starched-collar atmosphere of traditional chamber music concerts and replaced it with a seriously fun vibe. We’ve broken down the barriers that separate audience and performer, making our concerts into riotously interactive events. Rather than leading audiences through a museum, we invite audiences to trespass into the creative and re-creative process right in the concert hall.

We own up to our crimes, and we proudly proclaim that we are GUILTY AS CHARGED.

GUILTY AS CHARGED features six programs, each performed multiple times and in multiple venues, and each named after some “crime.”

In the first program of six, tonight’s “Stolen Moments,” we feature music that has been stolen in some fashion: stolen from another composer, stolen from oneself, stolen from a completely different land and culture.

Felix Mendelssohn stole a chorale tune from Johann Sebastian Bach as the basis of the slow movement of his second cello sonata; Franz Joseph Haydn stole from himself to create his flute divertimentos; Ludwig van Beethoven stole Irish and Scottish folksong texts and tunes as the basis for his songs with piano trio accompaniment.

“Stolen Moments” will be performed at The Playhouse (below) in the Overture Center for the Arts, TONIGHT — Friday, June 12, at 7:30 p.m., and at the Hillside Theater at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin compound in Spring Green, on Sunday, June 14 at 2:30 p.m.

Single general admission tickets are $40. Student tickets are always $5.

Various ticket packages are also available starting at a series of three for $114. First time subscriptions are half off.

For tickets and more information, including the specific pieces on the programs, visit www.bachdancinganddynamite.org or call (608) 255-9866.

Single tickets for Overture Center concerts can also be purchased at the Overture Center for the Arts box office, (608) 258-4141, or at overturecenter.com additional fees apply).

Tickets for the Hillside Theater (below) can be purchased from the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor’s Center on County Highway C, (608) 588-7900. Tickets are available at the door at all locations.

NATIONAL SUMMER CELLO INSTITUTE

Writes NSCI director UW-Madison cellist Professor Uri Vardi (below):

It would be great if you could remind your blog readers about the FREE NSCI cello concert tonight — Friday, June 12 — at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall.

The program will include solo pieces in the first half by:

Johannes Brahms, Bela Bartok, Franz Schubert, George Crumb, William Walton, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Dmitri Shostakovich and Samuel Barber.

After intermission, we will play ensemble pieces:

Sonata in C major for Two Cellos by Luigi Boccherini

And the NSCI Cello Choir will perform the following pieces with UW-Madison graduate conducting student Kyle Knox (below):

Adagio from Violin Sonata No. 3 by Johann Sebastian Bach as arranged by Ohashi Akira

“Oblivion” (at bottom in a YouTube video) by Astor Piazzolla, arranged by P. Villarejo

Requiem by David Popper

Requiem “In Memory of Connie Barrett” by UW-Madison School of Music student composer Kyle Price

And “Hymnus for Twelve Cellos” by J. Klengel

Here is a link to the previous post on this blog about the cello institute this summer:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/classical-music-the-sixth-national-summer-cello-institute-and-feldenkrais-for-performers-will-take-place-over-the-next-two-weeks-at-the-uw-madison-school-of-music-the-event-culmina/

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