Classical music: UW-Madison piano students will perform a FREE concert of all 24 preludes by Debussy on Saturday night. On Sunday night, the Willy Street Chamber Players perform their summer preview concert

By Jacob Stockinger

This is a busy weekend, especially if you are a fan of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. But two more events deserve notice:

SATURDAY

This year is the centennial of the death of the pioneering French composer Claude Debussy (below). The event will be celebrated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music all day this Saturday.

That’s when the annual “Keyboard Day” will take place, with a focus on French music and general matters of technique and interpretation. It is called “Debussy and the French Style” and covers everything from the French baroque keyboard masters to modern music, including how to use songs and poetry as keys to a composer’s mind.

All events are FREE and OPEN to the public.

But the really appealing part for many promises to be a concert at 7 p.m. in Mills Hall. That’s when UW students, both undergraduate and graduate, perform the complete 24 preludes by Debussy, which are landmark works of the piano repertoire. (You can hear Lang Lang play the famous and popular “Girl with the Flaxen Hair” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

It should be very memorable. The Ear remembers enjoying a similar event when students played all the mazurkas by Chopin and all the sonatas by Mozart.

Here is a link to the outstanding schedule of the events, workshops and master classes by faculty members, invited high school students and guest pianist Marina Lomazov (below), that start in the morning at 9 a.m. in Mills Hall:

https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/keyboard-day-with-marina-lomazov-and-mead-witter-faculty/

SUNDAY

On Sunday night, the critically acclaimed Willy Street Chamber Players (below) will give their usual preview concert – a sampler of sorts — of their upcoming summer season.

The concert will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in A Place to Be (below), a cozy and intimately exotic venue,  at 911 Williamson Street on Madison’s near east side.

The program is To Be Announced, but the Willys have a great knack for combining older classics with new music.

Tickets are $20.

For information about the group and the concert, and to obtain tickets, go to:

http://www.willystreetchamberplayers.org/calendar.html

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Posted in Classical music
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