The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Meet Mexican tenor Javier Camarena who got to perform an encore at The Met. Plus, today is your last chance to hear pianist Garrick Ohlsson and the Madison Symphony Orchestra in a program that gets raves from the critics

ALERT 1: This afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in Overture Hall at the Overture Center, is your last chance to hear pianist Garrick Ohlsson and the Madison Symphony Orchestra under conductor John DeMain in a program of the Piano Concerto No. 1 by Johannes Brahms; the tone poem “Don Juan” by Richard Strauss; and the Symphony No. 1 by Steven Stucky. Critics have loved the performances.

Here is a link to a review by John W. Barker for Isthmus:

http://isthmus.com/music/enterprise-and-mastery-madison-symphony-orchestra/

Here is a link to a review by Lindsay Christians for The Capital Times:

http://host.madison.com/ct/entertainment/arts_and_theatre/brahms-and-strauss-dabble-in-love-on-mso-s-april/article_eca654f4-f889-11e5-a327-af48290d204d.html

ALERT 2: UW-Madison clarinetist Wesley Warnhoff will perform a FREE recital, with renowned UW-Madison pianist Christopher Taylor, on Tuesday night at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall. They perform a sonata by Johannes Brahms and a rhapsody by Claude Debussy among others. Here is a link to more information and the compete program:

http://www.music.wisc.edu/event/wesley-warnhoff-clarinet/

By Jacob Stockinger

At the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, not many singers get to stop the show — the big, complex and expensive show — and sing an encore aria.

In recent years, since 1942, there have been only three. There was Luciano Pavarotti and Juan Diego Florez, who astonished the audience by repeating the nine high C’s in Gaetano Donizetti’s “La Fille du regiment” (The Daughter of the Regiment).

But just recently there was a third.

His name is Mexican tenor Javier Camarena (below in a photo by Marty Sohl for The Met). He was singing in Don Pasquale,” also by Donizetti, one of the masters of the show-offy and impressively embellished “bel canto” or “beautiful singing” style.

Camarena wowed the crowd with a high D-flat, a half-step higher than the high C that his predecessors sang.

Here is a story, with an interview, on NPR or National Public Radio, that gets you excited about the man and the event just by reading about them:

http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2016/03/28/471842692/the-show-stopping-singing-of-javier-camarena

And here in a YouTube video is the aria he sang —  and then sang again: