The Well-Tempered Ear

Starting TODAY, the First Unitarian Society of Madison offers three free, online mini-concerts at noon on Fridays to celebrate Women’s History Month

March 12, 2021
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear has received the following announcement to post about three free, online mini-concerts to celebrate Women’s History Month through the Friday Noon Musicales at the First Unitarian Society of Madison.

The concerts start today:

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

•   To celebrate Women’s History Month, the First Unitarian Society of Madison will present three Friday Noon Musicales during March. 

•   All three will be guest produced by Iva Ugrcic. 

•   Iva Ugrcic (below) is Founding Artistic Director of the Madison-based LunART Festival, which supports, inspires, promotes and celebrates women in the arts.  

•   Each program will feature highlights from past LunART Festival performances.

•   Each program will be approximately 45 minutes long.

DATES AND PROGRAMS

Each video will become available at noon on the indicated date, and will remain available for viewing in perpetuity.

This Friday, March 12 — Works by living composers Jocelyn Hagen, Salina Fisher and Missy Mazzoli (below top), as well as Romantic-era composer Clara Schumann (below bottom, Getty Images).  Specific titles are not named.

Performers include: Iva Ugrcic, flute; Matthew Onstad, trumpet; Tom Macaluso, trombone; Elena Ross and Todd Hammes, percussion; Kyle Johnson, Jason Kutz, Satoko Hayami and Yana Avedyan, piano; Beth Larson and Isabella Lippi, violin; Karl Lavine, cello (below); ARTemis Ensemble.

Friday, March 19 — Works by living composers Linda Kachelmeier, Elsa M’bala, Doina Rotaru (below top) and Eunike Tanzil, as well as Medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen (below bottom) and Romantic-era Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. Specific works are not named. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear flutist Iva Ugrcic play Doina Rotaru’s haunting “Japanese Garden.”)

Performers include: Iva Ugrcic, flute; Jose Ignacio Santos Aquino, clarinet; Midori Samson, bassoon; Breta Saganski and Dave Alcorn, percussion; Satoko Hayami (below), Jason Kutz and Eunike Tanzil, piano; ARTemis Ensemble

Friday, March 26 — Alexandra Olsavsky, Edna Alejandra Longoria, Kate Soper and Jenni Brandon as well as post-Romantic era American composer Amy Beach (below bottom). Specific pieces are not named. 

Performers include: ARTemis Ensemble; a string quartet with violinists Isabella Lippi and Laura Burns, violist Fabio Saggin, and cellist Mark Bridges (below); Jeff Takaki, bass; Vincent Fuh and Kyle Johnson, piano; Jennifer Lien, soprano; Iva Ugrcic, flute.

THREE OPTIONS FOR ATTENDING

•   Website — https://www.fusmadison.org/musicales

•   Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/fusmadison

•   YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/fusmadison > “Playlists” > “Music at FUS”

ABOUT THE “FRIDAY NOON MUSICALES” RECITAL SERIES

•   The Friday Noon Musicales at First Unitarian Society is a free noon-hour recital series offered as a gift to the community. 

•   Founded in 1971, 2020-2021 is the series’ 50th season. 

•   The series has featured some of the finest musicians in the Midwest, who flock to perform in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Landmark Auditorium.

•   The music performed is mostly classical, but folk, jazz and musical theater styles are presented on occasion.

•   During the pandemic, the Musicales have largely been on hiatus.

JUSTICE AND MUSIC INITIATIVE (JAM)

•   The Justice And Music Initiative (JAM) at the First Unitarian Society of Madison represents a commitment to more socially equitable and earth-friendly music practices. 

•   This commitment includes music performed on our campus, both for worship and non-worship events. 

•   To help achieve our goal, we recognize and celebrate recognition days and months with our musical selections, such as Hispanic Heritage Month (9/15–10/15), LGBT History Month (October); Native American Indian Heritage Month (November), Black History Month (February), Women’s History Month (March), and African-American Music Appreciation Month (prev. Black Music Month; June).


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Here are the Top 10 online concerts to stream in March, according to critics for the New York Times

March 2, 2021
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ALERT: The online live-streamed concert by the UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet — scheduled for this Friday night, March 5 — in the all-Beethoven cycle of string quartets has been canceled and postponed until next year. The Friday, April 9 installment of the Beethoven cycle will be held as Installment 7 instead of 8.  

By Jacob Stockinger

Classical music critics of The New York Times have once again picked their Top 10 online concerts for the month of March.

The Ear has found such lists helpful for watching and hearing, but also informative to read, if you don’t actually “attend” the concert.

If you have read these lists before, you will see that this one is typical.

It offers lots of links with background about the works and performers; concert times (Eastern); and how long the online version is accessible.

Many of the performers will not be familiar to you but others – such as pianist Mitsuko Uchida (below, in a photo by Hiroyuki Ito for the Times), who will perform an all-Schubert recital, will be very familiar.

But the critics once again emphasize new music and even several world premieres – including one by Richard Danielpour — and a path-breaking but only recently recorded live performance of the 1920 opera “Die Tote Stadt” (The Dead City) by long-neglected composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (below), who is best known for his Hollywood movie scores but who also wrote compelling classical concert hall music. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear soprano Renée Fleming sing “Marietta’s Song.’)

But some works that are more familiar by more standard composers – including Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Ravel and Copland – are also included.

The Times critics have also successfully tried to shine a spotlight on Black composers and Black performers, such as the clarinetist and music educator Anthony McGill (below top), who will perform a clarinet quintet by composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (below) and music in the setting of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

No purists, the critics also suggest famous oboe and clarinet works in transcriptions for the saxophone by composer-saxophonist Steven Banks (below).

Also featured is a mixed media performance of words and music coordinated by the award-winning Nigerian-American novelist, essayist and photographer Teju Cole (below), whose writings and photos are irresistible to The Ear.

Here is a link to the story in the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/arts/music/classical-music-streaming-concerts.html

Are there other online concerts in March – local, regional, national or international – that you recommend in addition to the events listed in the Times?

The Ear wants to hear.

 


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Classical music: Today is the Fourth of July. Here are two extended playlists of American masterpieces

July 4, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

Today is Independence Day – the Fourth of July holiday.

It is a good occasion to listen to classical music by American composers (below), which you can hear much of the day on Wisconsin Public Radio.

But here are two other extended playlists of American classical music:

Here, thanks to a California radio station, is a list with complete performances of some of the best American masterpieces, including the “New World” Symphony by Antonin Dvorak, the “Afro-American” Symphony by William Grant Still (below), “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin and “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” by Leonard Bernstein:

https://www.capradio.org/music/classical/2019/07/04/playlist-american-classical-music-for-your-fourth-of-july/

And thanks to Minnesota Public Radio, here are four hours of patriotic music for the holiday: https://www.classicalmpr.org/story/2018/06/29/celebrate-the-fourth-of-july-with-our-4hour-patriotic-classical-playlist

Finally, in the YouTube at the bottom is the “American” String Quartet by Antonin Dvorak (below), who summered in Spillville, Iowa. He loved hearing and tried to capture sounds of nature, including bird songs, traditional Black spirituals and music by Native Americans.

The Ear especially likes it because it is proof that just as Americans have been influenced by European composers, European composers, European composers have been influenced by American composers.

Do you have a special or favorite piece of classical music to help celebrate the Fourth of July?

What do you like about it?

Leave a comment with a YouTube link if possible?

The Ear wants to hear.

 


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Classical music: Famed radio station WQXR names the best 100 recordings of 2019. Listen to samples of them here

December 28, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

Did you get a gift card for the holidays?

Are you looking how to spend it by either purchasing CDs or subscribing to a streaming service?

Help and guidance are available.

Few names in the airing of classical music carry more prestige than the famed radio station WQXR in New York City.

To check out the radio station’s choice of the best recordings of 2019 is also to see where the worlds of recording and concertizing are heading.

Such trends include rediscovering neglected composers and championing new music as well as women composers, such as Clara Schumann, and composers of color, such as the American composer Florence Price (below), who has often been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio this past year.

But you will also find noteworthy recordings of such classics as Johann Sebastian Bach – and two of his rarely heard cousins instead of his sons – and well as outstanding recordings of symphonies and piano sonatas (below, the set by Igor Levit) for the upcoming Beethoven Year to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of the composer.

And you will also find names of outstanding performers you may not have heard of — such as the exceptional Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang (below), a Van Cliburn Competition gold medalist whom The Ear would like to see perform here.

Here is a link to 25 picks with commentaries– plus another 75 titles and samples, without commentary, to round out a Top 100.

Happy listening!

https://www.wqxr.org/story/best-classical-recordings-2019/


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Classical music: UW-Madison pianist Jessica Johnson celebrates International Women’s Day this Friday night with a FREE recital of all-female composers and a special keyboard for smaller hands

March 6, 2019
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features Ukrainian pianist Yana Avedyan in solo works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Prokofiev and Franz Liszt. The program will include music from her upcoming appearance at Carnegie Hall. The musicale runs from 12:15 to 1 p.m.

By Jacob Stockinger

March is Women’s History Month, and this Friday is International Women’s Day.

To mark the latter occasion, Jessica Johnson, who teaches piano and piano pedagogy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, where she has won an award for distinguished teaching, will perform a program of all-women composers.

The FREE recital is this Friday night, March 8, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall. Johnson (below, in a photo by M.P. King for The Wisconsin State Journal) will perform works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, pairing works with interesting connections.

Here is what Johnson has to say about the program:

Dreaming, Op. 15, No. 3, by Amy Beach (below top) and The Currents by Sarah Kirkland Snider (below bottom) both feature beautiful lyricism and long-line phrases inspired by poetry.

“2019 is the bicentennial celebration of Clara Schumann’s birth, so I wanted to honor her and her tremendous legacy. Her Romance, Op. 11, No. 1, was composed in 1839 in the midst of the difficult year when Clara (below) was separated from her beloved Robert. (You can hear the Romance in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

“Bolts of Loving Thunder by Missy Mazola (below) was written in 2013 for pianist Emanuel Ax as a piece that would appear on a program of works by Brahms. Mazzoli alludes to the romantic, stormy side of “pre-beard” Brahms, with exuberant floating melodies, hand crossings and dense layers of chords.

“Troubled Water (1967) by Margaret Bonds (below) is based on the spiritual “Wade in the Water,” with hints of blues, jazz and gospel traditions throughout.

“Azuretta (2000) by Chicago-based composer, Regina Harris Baiocchi (below) describes Azuretta as a musical reaction to a debilitating stroke Dr. Hale Smith, her former composition teacher, suffered in 2000. The work honors his incredible legacy by mixing classical and jazz idioms.

“Germaine Tailleferre (below), the only female member of Les Six, the group of early 20th-century French composers, wrote her beautiful Reverie in 1964 as an homage to Debussy’s “Homage à Rameau” from Images, Book I.

“Preludes (2002) by Elena Ruehr (below) draw inspiration from Debussy’s Preludes, mimimalism and Romantic piano music.

“Also, as an advocate for the adoption of the Donison-Steinbuhler Standard — which offers alternatively sized piano keyboards for small-handed pianists  — I will perform on the Steinbuhler DS 5.5 ™ (“7/8”) piano keyboard.

“By performing on a keyboard that better fits my hands — studies suggest that the conventional keyboard is too large for 87% of women — and featuring works by female composers who are typically underrepresented in concert programming, I hope to bring awareness to gender biases that still exist in classical music.

“For more information about both me and the smaller keyboard, go to the following story by Gayle Worland in The Wisconsin State Journal:

https://madison.com/wsj/entertainment/music/a-smaller-piano-for-bigger-artistry/article_38b80090-be0f-5050-9862-32c3c36c6930.html


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Classical music: Do you hear “On, Wisconsin” in this piece of classical music? Do you know of others?

September 8, 2018
6 Comments

ALERT: In the era of #MeToo and #Time’sUp, it is hard to think of a better and more appropriate program than the FREE all-female concert at the UW on Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. in Mills Hall.

That’s when the acclaimed UW faculty violinist Soh-Hyun Park Altino (below) and guest pianist Jeannie Yu will perform works by Amy Beach, Cecile Chaminade, Rebecca Clarke and Lili Boulanger. Sorry, but The Ear can find no mention of specific works on the program.

For more background and biographical information about the performers, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/faculty-recital-soh-hyun-altino-violin/

By Jacob Stockinger

There he was.

On an ordinary afternoon, The Ear was just sitting at home listening to Wisconsin Public Radio.

On came the rarely heard Sonata for Clarinet by the French composer Camille Saint-Saens (below). It is a late work, Op. 167, written in 1921 and rarely performed.

And right away: BAM!!!

The neglected work sounded familiar.

That’s because the opening theme sure sounds like the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s fight song “On, Wisconsin!” which, with modified lyrics, is also the official state song of Wisconsin.

You can hear the familiar tune in the unfamiliar work’s first movement in the YouTube video at the bottom.

Is its appearance by accident or chance?

Is it a deliberate borrowing?

Today seems like an ideal day for asking the question, listening to the music and then deciding because it is a football Saturday. (The New Mexico Lobos and the Wisconsin Badgers will fight it out starting at 11 a.m. in Camp Randall Stadium (below, in a photo by Jeff Miller for the UW-Madison). It will be televised on BTN or the Big Ten Network).

Maybe history can help answer the question.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for “On, Wisconsin” with the history and lyrics of the song that was composed in 1909 — 11 years before the Saint-Saens clarinet sonata.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On,_Wisconsin!

The Ear could swear he has heard the same theme in other classical works, maybe even one by Mozart. But he can’t recall the name of that work or others.

Can you?

If you can, please leave the name of the composer and work, with a link to a YouTube video if possible, in the cOMMENT section.

The Ear wants to hear.


Classical music: This weekend kicks off the 27th annual summer season of Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society concerts with the theme of musical works as toys to be “played” with for serious fun

June 7, 2018
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By Jacob Stockinger

Four performances on this coming Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday afternoon and Sunday night will open the 27th annual summer concert series of the critically acclaimed but always informal and light-hearted Madison-based Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society (below and in the YouTube video at the bottom).

There will be six programs in 12 concerts performed in three venues over the next three weekends.

The venues are: The Playhouse in the Overture Center (below top) at 7:30 p.m.; the Stoughton Opera House (below middle) at 7:30 p.m.; and the Hillside Theater (below bottom) at Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright compound in Spring Green, at 2:30 and 6:30 p.m.

Ticket prices are $43, or $48 if you want a prime seat at the Overture Center. For more information, go to: http://bachdancing.org/tickets/season-tickets/

This opening weekend features a lot of flute music and a lot of string music plus some unusual arrangements or transcription and music by unknown women composers.

As usual, BDDS has lined up a series of impressive local talent as well as favorite guest performers, including the critically acclaimed soprano Emily Birsan (below top) and bass-baritone Timothy Jones (below bottom).

Also on the schedule is a Madison-based hip-hop dancer and choreographer, Blake Washington (below), for two pieces during the second weekend: Igor Stravinsky’s “The Soldier’s Tale” and Francis Poulenc’s “The Masked Ball.” In addition, four players from the BDDS Dynamite Factory – the apprentice school of BDDS for emerging performers – will take part.

Again, as always, there is a unifying theme to the season. This year it is “Toy Stories,” playing off the idea of “playing” pieces of chamber music.

Here is a background and overview story that appeared this week in The Wisconsin State Journal: http://host.madison.com/wsj/entertainment/music/bach-dancing-and-dynamite-gets-playful-with-toy-stories/article_918d38c4-1eba-5196-822e-2b2616eddb75.html

Here is an explanation from UW-Madison graduate and San Francisco-based teacher and pianist Jeffrey Sykes (below left), who co-founded, co-directs and performs in the series with retired UW-Madison and Madison Symphony Orchestra principal flutist Stephanie Jutt (below right):

“When we were kids, we would ride our hobby horses around the back yard pretending to be knights on a quest. We’d race our Slinkies down the stairs, cheering their contorted yet gymnastic moves. We made crazy cyborgs with our Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads. The cyborgs would fight for world domination, and then they’d sit down to tea with our dolls. We cuddled our stuffed animals as we prepared for bed, confessing our deepest dreams and aspirations to them. How easily those toys sparked our imaginations and transported us to fantastic realms!

“I’m a grownup now, sort of, and while I might get a short-lived bang out of newfangled tech toys, I’ve mostly left behind the dolls, bears and rubber ducks (below) of my childhood. The “toys” that really light my fire are incredible pieces of chamber music that have their own personalities; that delight me, surprise me, cry with me, and laugh with me.

CHAMBER

“Performing chamber music is called “playing” for a good reason. Ask any artist who joins BDDS for our festival: chamber music is a magical way to recapture the spirit of imaginative play that came to us so easily as kids.

“We cherish favorite old toys — the great chamber works of Bach, Mozart, and Brahms, for example. Yet we can also delight in the new toys that come our way — the music of Gabriela Lena Frank (below top), Paul Wiancko (below middle) and Kevin Puts (below bottom).

“Whether these new playthings become favorite old friends, who’s to say? One thing’s for sure, we’ll never know unless we play with them.

“BDDS’s 27th season theme is TOY STORIES, and co-artistic director Stephanie Jutt and I have organized each of our programs around a quirky take on iconic toys.

“To celebrate the festival’s age, we’ve also scattered various “27s” across our programs. In the spirit of imaginative play, rather than spell ing everything out, here are some clues to what you’ll hear this June.

TEDDY TALKS. Just change the motto “ideas worth spreading” to “music worth hearing” and you have our modus operandi. In this case, we have all sorts of Teddies talking to us through their music: I wonder what they’ll say.

AMERICAN GIRLS. Proud and multi-ethnic, they have been coming on strong as composers for a hundred years, and here’s the proof!

PLAY DO(H). C Major is the most malleable of keys.

GI JOE. War is no game, but it has inspired some seriously imaginative music.

RUBBER DUCKY, YOU’RE THE ONE. Sesame Street’s beloved Ernie adored his bath toy: see who else jumps into the tub.

TRANSFORMERS. I’m amazed how a couple of twists and turns can transform a few unassuming blocks into something breathtakingly complex.

“Join us June 8-24 for TOY STORIES in Madison, Stoughton, and Spring Green. We’ll play together with some irresistible toys and have ourselves some serious fun.

“With a bang!”

For the schedule of performances, with times and places, go to: http://bachdancing.org

For the full programs, including the many new or neglected composers and works to be performed, go to: http://bachdancing.org/concerts/festival-concerts/

For a complete list of performing and helping personnel, go to:

http://bachdancing.org/concerts/cast-crew/

And for a complete and impressive list of BDDS repertoire throughout the years, listed in alphabetical order by the composer’s last name, go to:

http://bachdancing.org/about/repertoire-through-the-seasons/


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Classical music: Amy Beach turns 150. Read about the woman and her music

September 7, 2017
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By Jacob Stockinger

Amy Beach (1867-1944, below) was a pioneering American composer who fought against sexism in her lifetime and who benefitted greatly from the rediscovery of women artists during the feminist revival of the 1970s and 1980s.

But here is a link to the most comprehensive story The Ear has yet read about Beach and her music, which is still neglected and not getting the attention it deserves, especially the larger and more ambitious works. (You can find many on YouTube and other streaming services.)

The story marked the 150th anniversary of her birth and appeared last Sunday in The New York Times.

Here is a link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/arts/music/amy-beach-women-american-composer.html

And here, introduced and played by Rachel Barton Pine in a YouTube video, is one of her last and more minor works: a lovely Romance for violin and piano. It remains one of The Ear’s favorites.


Classical music: Can arias from Baroque operas address current chaos and concerns? Singer Joyce DiDonato thinks so. Plus, a FREE concert of music by Dvorak, Debussy, Frank Bridge and Amy Beach is at noon on Friday

November 29, 2016
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features Shannon Farley, viola, with Chris Allen, guitar; Leah King and Jason Kutz, piano; Elspeth Stalter Clouse and Ela Mowinski, violin; Leslie Damaso, mezzo-soprano; and Morgan Walsh, cello. They will perform the Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, by Antonin Dvorak; Three Songs for Mezzo-soprano, viola and piano by Frank Bridge; “Beau Soir” (Beautiful Evening)  for guitar and viola by Claude Debussy; and a Romance for violin by Amy Beach as arranged for viola and piano. The concert runs from 12:15 to 1 p.m.

By Jacob Stockinger

Can the past help us understand and weather the present time with its conflicts and chaos?

Mezzo-soprano and Grammy Award winner Joyce DiDonato (below) thinks so.

joyce-didonato

In fact her latest album, for the Erato-Warner label, of arias from Baroque operas from the 17th and 18th centuries is dedicated to that proposition. The album’s title is “In War and Peace: Harmony Through Music” (below).

It includes arias from opera by George Frideric Handel (one of which you can hear in the YouTube video at the bottom), Henry Purcell, Niccolo Jommelli, Leonardo Leo and Claudio Monteverdi, and it features two world premiere recordings as well as familiar works.

joyce-didonato-cd-cover-in-war-and-piece

The singer talks about her concept album in an interview with Ari Shapiro of “All Things Considered” on National Public Radio (NPR).

She boils much of her viewpoint down to one question: In the widest of chaos, how can you find peace?

Sure seems timely, given foreign wars and domestic political strife.

Here is a link with the interview and some fetching music:

http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2016/11/04/500515350/joyce-didonato-on-why-art-matters-in-the-midst-of-chaos

Listen to it.

See what you think.

Then let the rest of us know what you think, and whether you agree or disagree, and whether you have other works that come to mind.

The Ear wants to hear.


Classical music: These women composers should be household names

March 26, 2016
2 Comments

By Jacob Stockinger

It may be known more for basketball, for March Madness and the Big Dance.

But March is also Women’s History Month.

Before it ends, The Ear wanted to share a terrific story about women composers that appeared in the Smithsonian Magazine.

It discusses women composers who should be household names like Johann Sebastian Bach or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

barbara strozzi

Who are they?

schumannclara

Can you guess their names and match them to the photos?

elizabeth maconchy

Have you heard their works?

Amy Beach BW 1

Read the story and see for yourself.

Here is a link:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/these-women-composers-should-be-household-names-bach-or-mozart-180958464/?no-ist

And at bottom is a YouTube video with a beautiful and tuneful example of one woman composer as well as background about a great but unknown female American violinist, who is championed by the Chicago violinist Rachel Barton Pine (below), who herself has performed several times with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.

Rachel Barton Pine

And leave what you think about a specific composer or women in music in general in the COMMENT section.

The Ear wants to hear.


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