The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Oakwood Chamber Players perform “Looking Within: Can We See Within Ourselves Those Who Have Gone Before?” this coming Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Plus, a FREE concert of French music is Friday at noon

ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features the Ann Arbor Ensemble. The group consists of Berlinda Lopez, flute; Marie Pauls, viola; and Stacy Feher-Regehr, piano. The all-French program includes the Trio Sonata by Claude Debussy and the Trio No. 2 in A minor, Op. 34, by Cecile Chaminade.

By Jacob Stockinger

The Oakwood Chamber Players (below) continue their 2016-2017 season with a concert titled Looking Within on this coming Saturday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 22, at 2 p.m.

The concerts will both be held at the Oakwood Center for Arts and Education, 6209 Mineral Point Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne.

Tickets can be purchased with cash or personal checks at the door: $20 for general admission, $15 for seniors and $5 for students. Visit www.oakwoodchamberplayers.com for more information.

Here are notes to the eclectic and unusually noteworthy program:

In 2011, American composer Byron Adams (below top) wrote a piece to honor the notable Czech-American composer Karel Husa (below bottom), who was also his composition teacher at Cornell University. The Serenade (Homage de Husa) not only illuminates Husa’s Czech heritage through musical references but also captures the essence of his positive influence in a piece that shows musical charm and wit. With the death of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Husa this past December, the intended tribute is particularly appropriate.

The Notturno (Nocturne) by Arnold Schoenberg (below) is a sweetly atmospheric, late Romantic work for harp and strings. After premiering in 1896 to an appreciative audience, this lovely piece of music was lost for decades and not rediscovered until 2001.

Originally written by French composer Maurice Ravel (below) in 1914, Kaddisch was set as a song using Aramaic text from the Jewish prayer book. The Oakwood Chamber Players will perform an evocative arrangement by David Bruce for a mixed ensemble of strings, winds, harp and English horn.

Music by British composer Gabriel Jackson (below, in a photo by Joel Garthwaite) is written with directness and clarity. In the Mendips, written in 2014, depicts the natural beauty of limestone hills in Somerset, England. The influence of generations of British composers, such as Vaughan Williams who was also inspired by pastoral beauty, is deftly woven into this piece for flute, clarinet, string trio, and harp.

Composer Frances Poulenc (below) was surrounded by the impressionist influence of his fellow French contemporaries Debussy and Ravel.

However, known for humor in how he approached his compositions, his creativity is resoundingly experienced in the high-energy Sextet for piano and woodwind quintet.

The listener will experience quicksilver shifts from the zesty vivace opening to glimpses of introspection to a dazzling high velocity finale. (You can hear the opening of the Sextet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

The Oakwood Chamber Players are joined by guests Geri Hamilton and Maureen McCarty, violins; Brad Townsend, string bass; Aaron Hill, oboe and English horn; and Mary Ann Harr, harp (below).

This is the third of five concerts in the Oakwood Chamber Players’ 2016-2017 season series entitled Perspective. Remaining concerts will take place on March 18 and 19, and May 13 and 14.

The Oakwood Chamber Players are a group of Madison-area professional musicians who have rehearsed and performed at Oakwood Village for over 30 years.

The Oakwood Chamber Players are a professional music ensemble proudly supported by Oakwood Lutheran Senior Ministries and the Oakwood Foundation