The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Starting this Sunday night, the next month is busy for the UW-Madison’s acclaimed Pro Arte Quartet with FREE concerts of music by Mozart, Brahms and Schubert

By Jacob Stockinger

The opening concert of the new season of the Pro Arte Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer) is this coming Sunday night, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall.

The Pro Arte Quartet will give an all-Mozart program, featuring Alicia Lee (below), the new clarinet professor at the UW-Madison. The works to be performed are the G Major “Haydn” String Quartet, K. 387, called the “Spring” Quartet, and the famed late Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581. (You can hear the sublime slow movement of the Clarinet Quintet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

Here is a link to biographies of new faculty members at the UW-Madison School of Music, including that of Lee:

http://www.music.wisc.edu/2017/06/20/new-faculty-hires-at-the-school-of-music/

In early October, the internationally celebrated violist Nobuko Imai (below) returns to the UW-Madison campus, on her way from Europe to a concert in Minneapolis.

Her master class on viola and chamber music will be on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 7:30 p.m. Morphy Recital Hall. It is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

The following day, Thursday, Oct. 5, at NOON in Mills Hall, Imai  will perform a FREE public concert with members of the Pro Arte Quartet and guest cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau (below).

The program is a single work, a masterpiece: the Brahms G Major Viola Quintet, Op. 111. It is legendary for the first viola part, according to a member of the quartet, and Imai would herself be legendary in this role.

Cellist Fonteneau is a member of the San Francisco Trio, and is familiar to Madison audiences through his many acclaimed appearances with the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society.

Adds Pro Arte violist Sally Chisholm: “This particular concert is another gesture to all the long-time supporters of the Pro Arte and the Madison community who remain part of our legacy.”

The Pro Arte’s second concert, also FREE and open to the public, is Saturday night, Oct. 28, in Mills Hall. It is will be all Schubert – the flute and piano theme and variations, and the Schubert Octet, featuring members of both the Wingra Wind Quintet and the Pro Arte Quartet.

Says Chisholm: “The Schubert Octet has been much discussed up and down the fourth floor of the School of Music for several years, and suddenly, we said “Let’s do it!”

“We checked calendars, and the Wingra was free to join us on Oct. 28. Whether this is a first performance of the Schubert, or one of many, the feeling is always that we never have the chance to perform it often enough. We hope it brings us all together with hope and joy.”

The Pro Arte Quartet’s longtime cellist Parry Karp continues to teach and coach chamber musicians, but he has been sidelined by a finger injury and will not yet be back to perform these concerts. He is scheduled to return to performing in November, according to Chisholm.