Then at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, the UW Wind Ensemble (below top), conducted by Scott Teeple (below bottom), will perform a FREE concert of works by Jim Territo, William Schuman, Charles Ives, Percy Grainger and Paul Hindemith.
The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: This Friday night, the UW Symphony Orchestra depicts visual art in sound. Plus, two all-student string orchestras perform Saturday afternoon and the UW Wind Ensemble performs Saturday night
April 25, 2019
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CORRECTION: The concert by Sonata à Quattro TONIGHT at Oakwood Village West is at 7 p.m. — NOT 8 p.m. as mistakenly stated in Tuesday’s blog posting.
By Jacob Stockinger
This weekend, two student orchestras will give FREE concerts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music.
On Friday night, April 26, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, the UW Symphony Orchestra (below top) under conductor Chad Hutchinson (below bottom), who has won prizes and acclaim for his programming, will give a FREE “gallery tour” concert exploring how visual art is depicted in sound.
The program opens with “Finding Rothko” (2006), by American composer Adam Schoenberg (below).
The musical work depicts four Abstract Expressionist paintings by the Russian-American master Mark Rothko (below top, above his 1956 painting in Orange. You can hear the “Orange” section of the musical work in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
To read the composer’s notes, go to: https://adamschoenberg.com/works/finding-rothko/
To find out more about the composer, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Schoenberg
The concert concludes with the dramatic, dark and moody “Pictures at an Exhibition” — in the classic orchestration by Maurice Ravel – by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (below).
The musical work is a set of vignettes evoking drawings and watercolors by Viktor Hartmann (below top), including the famous ending with “The Great Gate of Kiev” (below bottom).
SATURDAY
On Saturday afternoon, April 27, at 2 p.m. in Mills Hall, the All-University Strings (below, in a photo by Jeff Miller for University Communications) – made up of non-music majors – will perform a FREE concert.
All-University Strings is comprised of two non-major string orchestras — named Orchestra One and Orchestra Two – that are open to all interested string players who are not music majors. Director Pedro Oviedo will conduct.
No word on the program, which is unfortunate. The Ear suspects that if the public knew the program, the concert might draw a bigger audience.
Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: Award-winning pianist Stephen Hough is an accomplished polymath or Renaissance man who also blogs and paints. His personal history is fascinating. So are the sharp stylistic differences he demonstrates in different art forms.
August 4, 2013
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By Jacob Stockinger
Longtime readers of this blog know my admiration for the British pianist Stephen Hough (below).
Hough, who won the prestigious Naumberg Competition while at the Juilliard School, plays the piano superbly well and has a large shelf full of international awards for his recordings on the Hyperion label. He especially likes to explore less well-known repertoire.
He is a terrific teacher and coach, as I have witnessed firsthand in a masterful master class (below) in Madison.
But in addition to his career as a concert pianist, the supremely talented Hough — who is an astonishingly accomplished polymath or Renaissance man — also writes a regular and highly informative and entertaining blog for the Telegraph newspaper in the United Kingdom. He touches on everything from, of course, the piano (especially historic pianists and performances) to theology (an openly gay man he converted to Roman Catholicism at 19) and fashion (especially his fondness for hats). One of his best entries for me was about the role of hitting wrong notes:
Here is a link to his website:
http://stephenhough.com/index.php
Here is a link to his marvelous blog:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/author/stephenhough/
What most people – and I include myself – – most admire about Hough’s playing is its clarity, its sense of measure and proportion.
As he himself says, he is not much given to “hairy-chested” interpretations of big, intense Russian music like Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. His recent award-winning recording of the complete Chopin waltzes shows his ability to find new and convincing things to say about familiar works and he says them clearly as well as gracefully and elegantly. (Just listen to the YouTube video at the bottom.)
He discusses his approach in a fine interview and profile that appeared in The New York Times just before a Carnegie Hall recital this past spring in which is also played his latest big work, his own Sonata “Notturno luminoso.”
And here is a review in the Times of that recital:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/arts/music/stephen-hough-at-carnegie-hall.html?_r=0
But the real surprise for me came when I about and saw his style of painting. He paints in oils, and he exhibits and sells his art.
But unlike his music-making, his painting of this MacArthur “genius award” winner seems almost violently Abstract Expressionist.
Here are a couple of examples:
But of course ultimately it is piano playing that keeps Hough – who resides in the UK, New York and Australia – in the public eye. Listen to this Chopin waltz and you can understand why.
Posted in Classical music
Tags: Abstract Expressionism, Carnegie Hall, Daily Telegraph, fashion, Frédéric Chopin, gay, hats, Hough, Juilliard School, New York City, New York Times, Proms, Rachmaninov, Renaissance man, Roman Catholicism, Russian music, Stephen Hough, Tchaikovksy, The Juilliard School, The New York Times, theology, wrong notes, YouTube
Tags: Abstract Expressionism, Carnegie Hall, Daily Telegraph, fashion, Frédéric Chopin, gay, hats, Hough, Juilliard School, New York City, New York Times, Proms, Rachmaninov, Renaissance man, Roman Catholicism, Russian music, Stephen Hough, Tchaikovksy, The Juilliard School, The New York Times, theology, wrong notes, YouTube
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