Classical music: Performers and presenters should list individual pieces as well as composers. Plus, a FREE concert of saxophone music is this Friday at noon.

ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, to be held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features Peter and Joseph Ross playing original music for saxophone and piano.

By Jacob Stockinger

This Friday night at 8 p.m. in the Capitol Theater, the Ahn-Core-Ahn Piano Trio (below) returns to Madison to play ….

Well, The Ear just doesn’t know what they will play.

Not the specific works.

Not even the composers.

He can’t find a hint of a program anywhere on the Overture Center website. Just a link for blindly purchasing tickets for $30-$40.

Is The Ear — who is more interested is helping to correct the situation than in scolding — missing something?

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.overturecenter.org/events/ahn-core-ahn-trio

That kind of omission has long been an annoyance for The Ear. It does a disservice to potential audiences and to the performers.

His friend The Curmudgeon agrees.

The Curmudgeon asks: How do you know whether to attend a concert or not when either no program is listed or some kind of generic program saying works by, say, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Benjamin Britten?

Why do press releases and concert listings so often refuse to list specific pieces?

Do they think the name of an individual or group performer is enough to sell tickets?

The Ahn Trio — with its cute proper-name pun Ahn-Core (“encore”) — is hardly alone.

Same goes for the program for the Intergenerational Choir (below) of the Madison Youth Choirs and the Capitol Lakes Retirement Community for this coming Saturday night. All The Ear knows is that it features music by William Billings, Henry Purcell and Bob Dylan as well as some traditional Irish tunes.

The Ear loves piano trios.

So when he looked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music to see what the Perlman Piano Trio (below) will play at its FREE concert on Saturday, April 9 at 3:30 p.m., nothing – not even composers — was listed.

Yet one suspects that the trio is already rehearsing the program, which has been set for a long time. (Below, in a photo by Katherine Esposito, is the current Perlman Piano Trio, made up, from left, of violinist Adam Dorn, pianist SeungWha Baek and cellist Micah Cheng.)

It is also true for this month and in coming weeks.

The UW Symphony Strings, which performs a FREE concert on Thursday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m in Mills Hall, lists neither composers nor pieces on the website calendar for the UW-Madison School of Music.

The same goes for the interesting FREE homage concert to the late French avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez (below), on Friday, March 18, at 8 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall. It has a great faculty lineup, including the gifted UW-Madison bassoonist Marc Vallon, who worked with Boulez. And what is the music? Works by Boulez, Anton Webern, Johann Sebastian Bach and Claude Debussy. Well, that certainly narrows it down.

The examples I cite are not rare.

It happens often and with many groups and individuals, and it looks very unprofessional and proves very unhelpful to potential audiences. You know, the same customers who are supposed to be always right.

To be fair, many major performers and presenters – including the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Madison Opera, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, the Wisconsin Union Theater, the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the Madison Early Music Festival, the Willy Street Chamber Players,  the Ancora String Quartet, the First Unitarian Society of Madison, the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble and the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival among others — generally do list specific works as well as composers.

But when it comes to the ones who do not, it is all very frustrating.

Do such omissions result from laziness or neglect? Or perhaps making wrong assumptions?

Why would they refuse to share their specific program with publicists and the public? Individual works, as well as composers, bring audiences to concerts—or keep them away.

Is The Ear – or The Curmudgeon – alone in thinking this way?

Are you also frustrated when performers and presenters leave out specific programs or make them hard to find?

Do you, as readers and concertgoers, like to see individual pieces as well as composers listed for an upcoming concert program?

Does knowing the individual works to be performed help you decide whether or not to attend a concert?

Leave your opinion in the COMMENT section.

The Ear wants to hear.

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Posted in Classical music
Tags: Ancora String Quarrtet, Arts, avant-garde, Bach, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, Baroque, Bassoon, Beethoven, Benjamin Britten, Boulez, calendar, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, Classical music, composer, concerto, conductor, Debussy, Early music, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Madison Opera, Madison Symphony Orchestra, modern, Mozart, Music, New Music, Orchestra, Overture Center, Piano, Saxophone, strings, Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW Symphony Strings, Viola, Violin, vocal music, web site, Webern, Willy Street Chamber Players, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Wisconsin Union Theater, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart