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Classical music: It’s clear to The Ear: It will be at least another full year before audiences in the U.S. can safely attend live concerts. What do you think?

August 11, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

All the signs point to the same conclusion: It will be at least the fall of 2021 before we can safely attend concerts again – if we are lucky.

These past two weeks, The Ear answered questionnaires sent out by the Madison Symphony Orchestra (below top), which has already canceled the season through January, and the Wisconsin Union Theater (below bottom is Shannon Hall).

If you read between the lines, both questionnaires seemed to suggest the same two things: that the entire 2020-21 concert season will be canceled or postponed; or else that it will feature virtual online performances — for ticket prices (perhaps called a “donation”) that have not yet been announced and may not be acceptable to a lot of any group’s core audience.

Perhaps you disagree. If so, The Ear would like to hear in the comment section what you think and why you think it.

Here is what The Ear, who has talked with other season subscribers and various musicians, has seen and heard.

The United States has now surpassed 5 million coronavirus infections and 163,000 Covid-19 deaths with no sign of slowing down and many signs of accelerating. One widely cited model now predicts 300,000 deaths by this Dec. 1.

Plus, too many Americans refuse to wear masks or to maintain social distancing or to shelter at home to help prevent the spread of the virus.

Add in that we will be fortunate if enough vaccines are found to be safe, efficient and approved for use by Jan 1.

Then – despite federal government’s “Warp Speed” development or fast-tracking of the search for vaccines — there is the time needed to manufacture enough of them.

Then it will take considerable time to distribute them equitably, which other countries and public health agencies around the world demand.

Then, if we hope to reach herd immunity, it will take time to convince enough people to get the vaccine, especially with the growing number of anti-vaxxers.

Then those who do get vaccinated will have to wait a month for the second shot that will be required.

Then we wait a few weeks to see if and how much the vaccine really works – if it is safe and prevents infection or at least lessens the damage of the disease if you do get infected.

Plus, it sees unreasonable to think all of these steps will go without a hitch. So maybe a few more weeks or even months should be added.

Add up the math, and the conclusion seems clear: Performing arts events, like sports and other large in-person gatherings, seem increasingly likely to be canceled or reconfigured for a full year.

Concerts are already taking place in China, and other countries in Asia and Europe seem likely to catch up soon. But music lovers in the U.S. will be lucky if they get to attend a live concert with 100 or 500 or 1,000 or 2,500 other people before the fall of 2021 – at least a full year away. Maybe more.

The Ear could well be wrong. Maybe you see a different conclusion, which we would all love to hear. Perhaps international readers will share estimates about when concerts will begin in their country.

One way or another, we will learn a lot more about how the new music season is being planned and changed in the next three weeks.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: Today is the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Here is disturbing music that sonically depicts the charred remains of the people and the city

August 6, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

Today is the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (below) and the dawn of the Atomic Age.

On this Sunday, it will be the same anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki (below).

Whether you agree or disagree with President Harry S Truman’s decision to use nuclear weapons to end World War II between Japan and the United States, the disturbing music at the bottom uses sound to help the listener picture the charred remains of the people and the devastated cities, seen below in a photo from The New York Times.

It is hard to imagine music being used more descriptively than in this disturbing and even terrifying piece that has received more than 2 million views on YouTube.

“Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” was composed by the celebrated Polish composer Krzysztof Pederecki (1933-2020, below), who died just over four months ago. Here is a link to more information about the composer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krzysztof_Penderecki

And here are some links to historical accounts of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing:

From cable TV channel CNN, here is an account of the two bombings in photos: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/04/world/gallery/hiroshima-nagasaki-atomic-bomb/index.html

Here, also from CNN, is an account of Tinian Island, the place where the bombings started: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/hiroshima-atomic-bomb-75th-anniversary-intl-hnk/index.html

Here is a comprehensive history about Hiroshima and its culture, both pre-bombing and post-bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima

There will be much more to see, hear and read today and this weekend on National Public Radio (NPR), on many TV news channels including the History Channel and on PBS (especially The Newshour), and in many newspapers as well as on the internet.

If you know of other noteworthy accounts, please leave the name with a link in the Comment section.

What do you think of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

And what do you think about the musical depiction?

The Ear wants to hear.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: The Wisconsin Chamber Choir will celebrate the Americas with two world premieres this Friday night

April 10, 2018
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Wisconsin Chamber Choir (below) will give two performances — one in Madison and one in Milwaukee — of the program “I Hear America Singing.”

The Madison program features two world premieres: Alleluia by Wayne Oquin and Shenandoah by Jae Lee. The Madison performance will also include a special guest ensemble: The University of Wisconsin–Whitewater Chamber Singers.

The local performance on this Friday, April 13, is at 7:30 p.m. in Grace Episcopal Church (below), 116 West Washington Ave., on the Capitol Square.

On next Saturday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m., the WCC will perform at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 914 East Knapp Street, Milwaukee.

The concert is a musical celebration of all the Americas — North and South — and all Americans.

Also, in recognition of Robert Gehrenbeck’s 10th anniversary as artistic director, the WCC presents the world premiere of Alleluia by New York composer and Juilliard School faculty member Wayne Oquin.

Inspired by Randall Thompson’s classic setting of the same one-word text, Oquin’s new version updates Thompson’s musical style in his own harmonic language, which has been compared to Morten Lauridsen’s.

An extremely versatile musician, Oquin (below) boasts recent commissions and performances by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony, the United States Air Force Band, the Houston Chamber Choir, and the King’s Singers.

At the Madison concert the WCC will be joined by the UW-Whitewater Chamber Singers performing their own world premiere, Shenandoah, by New York composer, organist and former jazz pianist Jae Lee (below).

The remainder of the program spans music of four centuries and multiple nationalities. Masterpieces of the U.S. choral repertoire — Samuel Barber’s Reincarnations and Charles Ives’s Psalm 67 — share billing with a diverse selection of works from throughout the hemisphere.

They include music by Mexican Baroque master Manuel de Samaya (below top); Argentinian tango composer Astor Piazzolla; African-American composers Bobby McFerrin, Hall Johnson, W. C. Handy, and Rosephanye Powell; and Native-American composer and longtime friend of the WCC, Brent Michael Davids (below bottom).

(You can hear a work that Robert Gehrenbeck commissioned for the UW-Whitewater Chamber Singers from Wayne Oquin in the YouTube video at the bottom, performed by the Houston Chamber Choir.)

The WCC’s award-winning organist, Mark Brampton Smith (below), will perform Samuel Barber’s virtuosic Wondrous Love: Variations On a Shape-Note Hymn on two amazing pipe organs: the 1987, 38-rank Casavant at Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, and the 2012, 51-rank Schantz at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Milwaukee.

Founded in 1998, the Wisconsin Chamber Choir has established a reputation for excellence in the performance of oratorios by Bach, Handel, Mozart and Brahms; a cappella works from various centuries; and world premieres.

Artistic director Robert Gehrenbeck (below), who directs choral activities at the UW-Whitewater, has been hailed by critics for his vibrant and emotionally compelling interpretations of a wide variety of choral masterworks.

Advance tickets for the April 13 performance in Madison are available for $20 ($10 for students) from www.wisconsinchamberchoir.org, via Brown Paper Tickets, or at Orange Tree Imports and Willy Street Coop (all three locations).

The April 21 performance in Milwaukee will be presented for a free-will offering.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: Longtime NPR host Robert Siegel brought his love of classical music to “All Things Considered.” Here are 10 interviews and some background to mark his recent retirement

January 8, 2018
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By Jacob Stockinger

If you are a fan of “All Things Considered” on National Public Radio – and The Ear certainly is – you probably already know not to listen for veteran host Robert Siegel (below) on this afternoon’s broadcast.

Or any other ATC broadcast in the future.

That is because last Friday afternoon Siegel had his last sign-off. He retired after spending 41 years with NPR – the first 10 as a reporter, including as a London correspondent, and the last 31 as a host of the prize-winning afternoon news and features magazine “All Things Considered,” which, by the way, was created by Jack Mitchell, who later came to teach Mass Communications at the UW-Madison.

There will be much to miss about Siegel. His qualities included a calming voice, a ready laugh, fairness and objectivity, a convivial studio presence and sharp but respectful interviewing skills.

One of the things that The Ear hopes will survive Siegel’s departure is the much-needed public attention he brought to classical music, which he loved and which the other media today so often ignore.

The mark his retirement, NPR classical music blogger Tom Huizenga compiled a list of 10 important interviews that Siegel conducted over the years. Then he put links to those interviews on an NPR blog.

Huizenga also got Siegel to open up about the formative influences that sparked his love for classical music. They included his young love for the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 73, by Ludwig van Beethoven — the so-called “Emperor” Concerto, which you can hear played by Alfred Brendel in the YouTube video at the bottom.

Siegel went on to cover big stars like superstar soprano Renee Fleming; medium stars like violinist Gil Shaham (below), who performs with the Madison Symphony Orchestra this month; and smaller and new stars like the iconoclast harpsichord virtuoso Mahan Esfahani.

He also covered a U.S. Army rifleman who performed a violin recital for Churchill and Truman, and the role that music by Beethoven played in Communist China.

And there are many, many more, for which classical music and we listeners owe a debt to Siegel.

Check it out and enjoy! Here is a link to that posting on the Deceptive Cadence blog:

https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2018/01/05/575906745/10-interviews-celebrating-robert-siegels-love-for-classical-music

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Classical music: Accusations of sexual harassment, discrimination and abuse expand to classical music, and former Metropolitan Opera maestro James Levine has been suspended. On Tuesday night, a percussion concert spotlights UW composer Laura Schwendinger

December 4, 2017
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ALERT: At 7:30 p.m. this Tuesday night in Mills Hall, the UW Western Percussion Ensemble, under director Anthony Di Sanza, will perform a FREE concert. It will focus on a new work by the award-winning UW composer Laura Schwendinger along with other modern classics and new works. For more information about the group and the program, go to: http://www.music.wisc.edu/event/western-percussion-ensemble-4/

By Jacob Stockinger

It started in Hollywood, quickly spread to politics and Washington, D.C., as well as to journalism and to radio and television.

Now accusations of sexual harassment, sexual abuse and sexual discrimination are focusing on classical music.

Perhaps the most visible case so far is one that focuses on James Levine (below), the former longtime artistic director and conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, who just this past weekend conducted a live broadcast performance of the Requiem by Verdi, which was dedicated to the recently deceased Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.

Levine is accused of abusing an underage teenager while he was at the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, and the Met says it will investigate that allegation.

Through Google, you can find many reports about the situation.

Here is a link to a comprehensive story in The Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/metropolitan-opera-to-investigate-james-levine-over-sexual-abuse-allegations/2017/12/03/e8820982-d842-11e7-a841-2066faf731ef_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_met-misconduct-805am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.3abb56afabc3

UPDATE: Amid more allegations of sexual abuse, James Levine, 74, has been suspended by the Metropolitan Opera. Here’s a link to a detailed story in The New York Times:

But Levine is not likely to be alone.

According to a new study in the United Kingdom, it now looks that many more individuals and groups will be involved since sexual harassment and sexual discrimination were found to be “rampant.”

Here is a link to the story in The Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sexual-harassment-classic-music-incorporate-society-of-musicians-west-end-bbc-radio-3-a8088591.html

What do you think about the many current scandals and wave of allegations as they pertain to classical music or to your own experience in the field of music, either performance or education?

The Ear wants to hear.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: Did anyone else hear Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony and think of Donald Trump’s America as well as Stalin’s Russia?

November 21, 2016
15 Comments

By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear has to agree with a knowledgeable friend.

If you heard the Madison Symphony Orchestra, under music director John DeMain, perform the famous Symphony No. 5 in D minor — the same key as Beethoven’s Ninth — by Dmitri Shostakovich almost two weeks ago, you heard a performance that rivals or surpasses any other one, live or recorded, you’ve probably heard.

The performance was nothing short of stunning. And it was especially moving, given its timing in coming right after the presidential election in which Republicans Donald Trump and Mike Pence won an upset surprise victory over Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine.

So here is what The Ear wants to know:

Was The Ear the only one who found himself thinking that the symphony proved an especially fitting, perhaps perfect, choice even though it was programmed a year ago? (You can hear the moving third movement, a lament with such pathos that people cried at its premiere, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

Was The Ear the only one who identified with Shostakovich, who felt an even deeper empathy with the oppressed composer (below), who, fearing with good reason the dictator Joseph Stalin and his reign of Terror in the USSR, always kept a small suitcase packed with pajamas and a toothbrush by the front door in case the KGB secret police came knocking at 3 a.m., the usual arrest hour?

The symphony is dark music for dark times. And The Ear hopes he wrong when he fears that America is headed for some dark times of its own, times when various people and members of our society will live in constant fear and dread of what they might suffer?

This is not to suggest that President-elect Donald Trump can be equated to the murderous Joseph Stalin (below), or the United States in 2016 to the Soviet Union in the 1930s.

But it is to suggest that some comparisons — if not equations — might be in order.

It is to suggest there will be a constant and unsettling anxiety in the US created by a new ruling order that seems based on insults and intolerance, that excludes and condemns what it doesn’t approve of, that seeks to suppress or destroy opposition?

Like Latino and Syrian immigrants.

Like Muslims, Jews and other non-Christians.

Like African-Americans, Native Americans and other non-whites.

Like poor people.

Like liberals and progressives, dissenters and protesters .

Like LGBT people.

Like women and women’s health advocates and organizations that favor reproductive rights.

The list could go on and on.

But you get the idea.

If either as a musician or an audience member you agree – or disagree – leave a COMMENT.

The Ear wants to hear.

Posted in Classical music
Tags: -elect, 2016, African American, Americans, Arts, Beethoven, Beethoven's Ninth, black, Christian, Classical music, Compact Disc, dissent, dissenters, Donald Trump, Election Day (United States), Elections in the United States, immigrants, Islam, Jacob Stockinger, Jew, Jewish, John DeMain, Judaism, KGB, Latino, LGBT, liberal, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Mike Pence, Music, Muslim, Native American, non-white, Orchestra, Overture Center, people of color, poor, poverty, President of the United States, progressive, protest, protester, protesters, reproductive rights, Shostakovich, Stalin, symphony, Symphony No. 5, Syria, Syrian, terror, United States, United States presidential election, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, white, Wisconsin, women, YouTube

Classical music: On Veterans Day, what is the best music to honor fallen soldiers? The Ear chooses Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin.” Plus, a FREE concert of music for flute and percussion will be held on Friday at noon

November 11, 2015
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features flutist Ivano Ugrcic and percussionist David Alcorn in music by Gareth Farr, Marius Constant, Christos Hatzis and Nebojsa Macura.

By Jacob Stockinger

Today is Veterans Day.

It has become a day to honor all members, living and dead, of the U.S. armed forces and their service.

That’s just fine with The Ear.

But the holiday started as Armistice Day to honor the end of World War I, which occurred at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

And since the modern world we know is in large effect the result of the outcomes of World War I, The Ear likes going back to the origins.

If you accept that premise -– and of course you don’t have to — it allows us to listen to what is probably the best piece of classical music ever written to honor fallen soldiers. That piece is Maurice Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin.”

The title refers to the formal structures that harken back to the underperformed and under-appreciated French Baroque composer Francois Couperin.

Each of the six movements takes a special form and each one is dedicated to a friend of Ravel who was killed in World War I. (Ravel, below, tried to enlist to fight, but was too old.)

Funny, the more I listen, the more the two 20th-century composers who matter most to me are not Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, but Maurice Ravel and Bela Bartok.

But elaborating on why is another topic for another post.

Anyway, Ravel, who was one of the greatest orchestrators of all time, orchestrated “Le Tombeau de Couperin” (literally, the tomb of Couperin – “le tombeau” being the word used for an homage to honor the dead that was also used by the French poets to honor other writers or members of the royal family, including Francois Villon, Joachim du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé.)

But The Ear prefers the original piano version, which is very difficult to play. It has color but also a certain clarity and austerity that fit the purpose of the music. He thinks you hear the distinctive dance rhythms better and more sharply, and the sections with tolling bells sounds much more, well, bell-like.

Here, dedicated to all veterans but especially to World War I and what that history-changing meat-grinder of a conflict brought us, is a YouTube video of Canadian pianist Louis Lortie playing Maurice Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin”:

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