avant-garde | The Well-Tempered Ear

New York Times critics choose 10 online classical music concerts to stream in February, starting this Thursday

February 2, 2021
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By Jacob Stockinger

As they have done for previous months during the coronavirus pandemic, the classical music critics for The New York Times have named their top 10 choices of online concerts to stream in February, which is also Black History Month, starting this Thursday, Feb. 4.

Also predictably, they focus on new music – including a world premiere — new conductors and new composers, although “new” doesn’t necessarily mean young in this context.

For example, the conductor Fabio Luisi (below) is well known to fans of Richard Wagner and the Metropolitan Opera. But he is new to the degree that just last season he became the new conductor of Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its digital concert series.

Similarly, the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg (below top, in a photo by Saara Vuorjoki) and the American composer Caroline Shaw (below bottom, in a photo by Kait Moreno), who has won a Pulitzer Prize, have both developed reputations for reliable originality.

But chances are good that you have not yet heard of the young avant-garde cellist Mariel Roberts (below top) or the conductor Jonathon Heyward (below bottom).

Nor, The Ear suspects, have you probably heard the names and music of composers Angélica Negrón (below top), who uses found sounds and Tyshawn Sorey (below bottom). (You can sample Negrón’s unusual music in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

Of course, you will also find offerings by well-known figures such as the Berlin Philharmonic and its Kurt Weill festival; conductor Alan Gilbert; pianists Daniil Trifonov and Steven Osborne; violinist Leonidas Kavakos; and the JACK Quartet.

Tried-and-true composers are also featured, including music by Beethoven, Schnittke, Weber, Ravel and Prokofiev. But where are Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Handel? No one seems to like Baroque music.

Here is a link to the events with links and descriptions. All times are Eastern: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/arts/music/classical-music-streaming.html

Do you have other virtual and online concerts to suggest? Please leave details in the Comment sections.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: What happens when Shakespeare and Benjamin Britten meet Andy Warhol and The Factory? The University Opera explores a new spin on an old tale

November 12, 2019
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ALERT: At 7:30 p.m. this Thursday night, Nov. 14 — the night before it opens the opera production below — the UW-Madison Symphony Orchestra, under conductor Oriol Sans, will perform a FREE concert in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall of the new Hamel Music Center, 740 University Avenue, next to the Chazen Museum of Art. The program offers Darius Milhaud’s “The Creation of the World,” Maurice Ravel’s “Mother Goose Suite” and Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 “The Clock.”

By Jacob Stockinger

The Big Event in classical music this week in Madison is the production by the University Opera of Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

It is a chance to see what happens when Shakespeare (below top) meets Britten (below bottom) through the lens of the Pop art icon Andy Warhol.

The three-hour production – with student singers and the UW-Madison Symphony Orchestra under conductor Oriol Sans — will have three performances in Music Hall, at the foot of Bascom Hill: this Friday night, Nov. 15, at 7:30; Sunday afternoon, Nov. 17, at 2 p.m.; and Tuesday night, Nov. 19, at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $25 for the general public; $20 for seniors; and $10 for students.

For more information about the production and how to obtain tickets, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/university-opera-a-midsummer-nights-dream/2019-11-15/

For more information about the performers, the alternating student cast and a pre-performance panel discussion on Sunday, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/A-Midsummer-Nights-Dream-Media-release.pdf

And here are notes by director David Ronis (below, in a photo by Luke Delalio) about the concept behind this novel production:

“When the artistic team for A Midsummer Night’s Dream met last spring, none of us expected that we would set Britten’s opera at The Factory, Andy Warhol’s workspace-cum-playspace.

“For my part, I wanted to find a way to tell this wonderful story that would be novel, engaging, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

“I only had one wish: that we did a production that did not feature fairies sporting wings – a representation that, to me, just seemed old-fashioned and, frankly, tired.

“As we worked on the concept, we found that The Factory setting allowed us to see the show in a new, compelling light and truly evoked its spirit and themes. The elements of this “translation” easily and happily fell into place and now, six months later, here we are!

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream tells the intersecting stories of three groups of characters – Fairies, Lovers and Rustics – and its traditional locale is that of a forest, the domain of Oberon, the Fairy King. (You can hear the Act 1 “Welcome, Wanderer” duet with Puck and Oberon, played by countertenor David Daniels, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

“In our production, the proverbial forest becomes The Factory, where our Oberon, inspired by Andy Warhol (below, in a photo from the Andy Warhol Museum), rules the roost. He oversees his world – his art, his business, and “his people.” He is part participant in his own story, as he plots to get even with Tytania, his queen and with whom he is at odds; and part voyeur-meddler, as he attempts to engineer the realignment of affections among the Lovers.

“Tytania, in our production, is loosely modeled on Warhol’s muse, Edie Sedgwick (below top), and Puck resembles Ondine (below bottom), one of the Warhol Superstars.

The Fairies become young women in the fashion or entertainment industries, regulars at The Factory; the Lovers, people who are employed there; and the Rustics, or “Rude Mechanicals,” blue-collar workers by day, who come together after hours to form an avant-garde theater troupe seeking their 15 minutes of fame.

“For all these people, The Factory (below, in a photo by Nat Finkelstein) is the center of the universe. They all gravitate there and finally assemble for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta – in this setting, a rich art collector and his trophy girlfriend.

“Magic is an important element in Midsummer. In the realm of the fairies, Oberon makes frequent use of magical herbs and potions to achieve his objectives. In the celebrity art world of mid-1960s New York City, those translate into recreational drugs.

“The people who work in and gather at The Factory are also are involved in what could be called a type of magic – making art and surrounding themselves in it. They take photographs, create silk screen images, hang and arrange Pop art, and party at The Factory.

“Not only does this world of creative magic provide us with a beautiful way to tell the story of Midsummer, but it also becomes a metaphor for the “theatrical magic” created by Shakespeare and Britten, and integral to every production.

“We hope you enjoy taking this journey with us, seeing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in perhaps a new way that will entertain and delight your senses and, perhaps, challenge your brain a bit.”

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: ECM Records finally streams its entire catalogue of award-winning artists and recordings

November 18, 2017
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By Jacob Stockinger

The critically acclaimed and award-winning independent label ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) was founded in Munich, Germany, in 1969 by the Grammy-winning producer Manfred Eicher (below).

Known for its penchant for the contemporary and even avant-garde, Eicher’s label was nonetheless a conservative hold-out when it came to the newer technology of digital streaming.

The old technology has its points besides superior sound quality. When you got an ECM CD, you usually also got one of their terrific black-and-white photographs, often a square-format landscape, as a cover. (ECM even published a book of its photographic covers.)

But as of this past Friday, ECM finally gave into the inevitable and streamed its entire catalogue. Its rationale was that it was more important for its music and musicians to be heard than to remain loyal to certain platforms.

ECM also cited the pressure from unauthorized uploads to YouTube and bootleg versions of its recordings as the reason for the decision.

So as of yesterday, ECM, which has won many awards for individual titles and artists, will be available on Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, Deezer, Tidal and other streaming services.

ECM is known for its popular and critically acclaimed jazz artists including pianist Keith Jarrett (below, of “The Köln Concert” or The Cologne Concert) and saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble (“Officium”). But it also included classical chamber music groups such as the Keller Quartet, the Trio Medieval, the Danish Quartet and others.

ECM is also known for championing contemporary classical composers (Arvo Pärt, below, who is the most performed contemporary composer, as well as Tigur Mansurian, Lera Auerbach, Gyorgy Kurtag and Valentin Silvestrov among others) and some outstanding crossover classical musicians, including Jarrett, a jazz great who has also recorded Bach, Handel and Shostakovich on both piano and harpsichord.

The Ear especially likes violist Kim Kashkashian and Harvard pianist Robert Levin (a frequent performer at the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival) in sonatas of Brahms. He is also fond of Alexei Lubimov in various piano recitals as well as the many recordings of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Janacek and Robert Schumann by the superb pianist Andras Schiff (below). In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear Schiff in a live performance of the Gigue from Bach’s Keyboard Partita No. 3.)

And there are many, many more artists and recordings worth your attention. Here is a link to an extensive sampler on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/ECMRecordsChannel

Who are your favorite ECM artists?

What are your favorite ECM recordings?

What ECM downloads do you recommend?

The Ear wants to hear.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music education: The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra ends as it began — with an impressive display of young talent in both classic and contemporary music

August 23, 2016
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By Jacob Stockinger

Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who for 12 years hosted an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT-FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.

By John W. Barker

On Friday evening, the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO, below in a photo by John W. Barker) gave, in the Atrium Auditorium at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, the concert that concluded its sixth season.

Founded in 2011, it has been a remarkable venture that has given student musicians of high-school level the chance to enjoy full-scale orchestral experience.

But the group’s founder and director, the versatile and multi-talented Madison native Mikko Rankin Utevsky (below), is apparently irreplaceable in this effort; and he has found that he must move on in his career. So, this latest and 10th concert was also the orchestra’s last.

To mark the occasion, Utevsky, who just graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, is an enthusiastic champion of new music, and the orchestra commissioned a new composition, which then received its world premiere on Friday night.

The composer is the 25-year-old, Minneapolis-based avant-garde musician Ben Davis (below) who created a work with the not very helpful title of “is a is a is b is.” (I’m not making that up!) It is scored for a full ensemble of strings, winds and percussion plus an electronic screeching machine.

It is, in truth, not a piece of music at all, but a 20-minute experiment in the kinds of unusual — and not particularly pleasant — sounds that a group of orchestral players can make with their instruments. There are passages of repeated unison notes (the same one over and over) at goodly volume. And the last three minutes or so is an unaccompanied solo for the screeching machine on a single, piercing tone.

Whether this made a worthy valedictory salute to MAYCO’s audience and supporters is, I suppose, a matter of taste.

Fortunately, this new work was cushioned on either side by much more familiar material.

Opening the program was the beloved Overture to the opera The Barber of Seville by Gioachino Rossini. This was brought off with full-steam-ahead momentum by the players under Utevsky’s enthusiastic leadership.

And then, to conclude, came the same work that Utevsky included in the very first MAYCO program: Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

The players were clearly quite fired up at the chance to tackle this score and did themselves genuine credit. Utevsky provided fast and forceful leadership that stressed the dramatic power of this music—which was, in its day, as surprising and shocking as a lot of “new” music today, we must remember.

The audience shared with the performers a rousing experience.

Among his other functions, Utevsky also wrote admirably illuminating program notes for the Rossini and Beethoven works—contrasting with those contributed by Davis, which were as nose-thumbing as his composition.

It is sad to think that MAYCO is now a thing of the past. What a wonderful idea it has been, something that testifies to the remarkable quantity and quality of young musical talent here.

If his orchestra is now gone, we must certainly keep our eyes and ears open for what the gifted Utevsky moves on to next.

Classical music: A FREE musical tribute to the French avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez is this Friday night at 8 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall. Plus, Saturday brings the Winterfest concerts by the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO)

March 16, 2016
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ALERT: This Saturday will see the annual Winterfest concerts by the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Some 400 student musicians will take part. The special guest is bassoonist Nancy Goeres (below), an alumna of WYSO from 1966 to 1970, who now performs professionally with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Music by Johann Stamitz, Francois Joseph Gossec, Franz Joseph Haydn, Jean Sibelius, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Emmanuel Chabrier, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Witold Lutoslawski and Duke Ellington will be performed, Here is a link to the lists of impressive programs and performers:

http://www.wysomusic.org/dianne-endres-ballweg-winterfest-concert-series/

By Jacob Stockinger

UW-Madison faculty members bassoonist Marc Vallon and saxophonist-composer Les Thimmig will lead a FREE musical tribute to the French avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez (below) this Friday night a 8 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall.

Boulez, who frequently conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and served as music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, died recently.

Here is a link with more background about Boulez, including an essay by UW professor Marc Vallon (below, in a photo by James Gill), who worked with Boulez:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/?s=boulez

Called “Le Domaine Musical,” the event will also feature other UW-Madison faculty members and student musicians.

They include violist Sally Chisholm, violinist Soh-Hyun Park Altino, flutist Stephanie Jutt, organist/keyboardist, John Chappell Stowe, hornist Daniel Grabois, pianist Christopher Taylor as well as cellist Martha Vallon, Micah Behr, Thalia Coombs, Ivana Ugrcic, Joanna Schulz, Dave Alcorn, Kai-Ju Ho, Sarah Richardson, Michel Shestak, Rosalie Gilbert and the Hunt String Quartet (Paran Amirinazari, Clayton Tillotson, Blakeley Menghini and Andrew Briggs)

Music will include the following composers: Pierre Boulez, Anton Webern, Claude Debussy and Johann Sebastian Bach

Here is the complete program:

Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) – Dérive 1 for 6 instruments (1984) — Heard in a YouTube video at the bottom as performed by the same group, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, that Boulez founded and led for many years in Paris.

Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) – Notations for piano (1946)

Anton Webern (1883-1945) Six Bagatelles for string quartet, Op. 9

Anton Webern (1883-1945) – Drei Gesänge (Three Songs) aus “Viae inviae” von Hildegard Jone, Op. 23

Claude Debussy (1962-1918) – Three Poems of Stéphane Mallarmé

Claude Debussy (1962-1918) Sonate for flute, viola and harp (1904). Pastorale: Lento, dolce rubato; Interlude: Tempo di Minuetto; Finale. Allegro moderato ma risoluto

Short Webern style intermission

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 (no marking) –Adagio ma non tanto- Allegro

Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) Mémoriale (…explosante fixe… Originel) for solo flute and eight instruments (1985)

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Classical music: Performers and presenters should list individual pieces as well as composers. Plus, a FREE concert of saxophone music is this Friday at noon.

March 10, 2016
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, to be held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features Peter and Joseph Ross playing original music for saxophone and piano.

By Jacob Stockinger

This Friday night at 8 p.m. in the Capitol Theater, the Ahn-Core-Ahn Piano Trio (below) returns to Madison to play ….

Well, The Ear just doesn’t know what they will play.

Not the specific works.

Not even the composers.

He can’t find a hint of a program anywhere on the Overture Center website. Just a link for blindly purchasing tickets for $30-$40.

Is The Ear — who is more interested is helping to correct the situation than in scolding — missing something?

Check it out for yourself:

http://www.overturecenter.org/events/ahn-core-ahn-trio

That kind of omission has long been an annoyance for The Ear. It does a disservice to potential audiences and to the performers.

His friend The Curmudgeon agrees.

The Curmudgeon asks: How do you know whether to attend a concert or not when either no program is listed or some kind of generic program saying works by, say, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven and Benjamin Britten?

Why do press releases and concert listings so often refuse to list specific pieces?

Do they think the name of an individual or group performer is enough to sell tickets?

The Ahn Trio — with its cute proper-name pun Ahn-Core (“encore”) — is hardly alone.

Same goes for the program for the Intergenerational Choir (below) of the Madison Youth Choirs and the Capitol Lakes Retirement Community for this coming Saturday night. All The Ear knows is that it features music by William Billings, Henry Purcell and Bob Dylan as well as some traditional Irish tunes.

The Ear loves piano trios.

So when he looked at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music to see what the Perlman Piano Trio (below) will play at its FREE concert on Saturday, April 9 at 3:30 p.m., nothing – not even composers — was listed.

Yet one suspects that the trio is already rehearsing the program, which has been set for a long time. (Below, in a photo by Katherine Esposito, is the current Perlman Piano Trio, made up, from left, of violinist Adam Dorn, pianist SeungWha Baek and cellist Micah Cheng.)

It is also true for this month and in coming weeks.

The UW Symphony Strings, which performs a FREE concert on Thursday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m in Mills Hall, lists neither composers nor pieces on the website calendar for the UW-Madison School of Music.

The same goes for the interesting FREE homage concert to the late French avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez (below), on Friday, March 18, at 8 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall. It has a great faculty lineup, including the gifted UW-Madison bassoonist Marc Vallon, who worked with Boulez. And what is the music? Works by Boulez, Anton Webern, Johann Sebastian Bach and Claude Debussy. Well, that certainly narrows it down.

The examples I cite are not rare.

It happens often and with many groups and individuals, and it looks very unprofessional and proves very unhelpful to potential audiences. You know, the same customers who are supposed to be always right.

To be fair, many major performers and presenters – including the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Madison Opera, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, the Wisconsin Union Theater, the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the Madison Early Music Festival, the Willy Street Chamber Players, the Ancora String Quartet, the First Unitarian Society of Madison, the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble and the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival among others — generally do list specific works as well as composers.

But when it comes to the ones who do not, it is all very frustrating.

Do such omissions result from laziness or neglect? Or perhaps making wrong assumptions?

Why would they refuse to share their specific program with publicists and the public? Individual works, as well as composers, bring audiences to concerts—or keep them away.

Is The Ear – or The Curmudgeon – alone in thinking this way?

Are you also frustrated when performers and presenters leave out specific programs or make them hard to find?

Do you, as readers and concertgoers, like to see individual pieces as well as composers listed for an upcoming concert program?

Does knowing the individual works to be performed help you decide whether or not to attend a concert?

Leave your opinion in the COMMENT section.

The Ear wants to hear.

Posted in Classical music
Tags: Ancora String Quarrtet, Arts, avant-garde, Bach, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, Baroque, Bassoon, Beethoven, Benjamin Britten, Boulez, calendar, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, Classical music, composer, concerto, conductor, Debussy, Early music, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Madison Opera, Madison Symphony Orchestra, modern, Mozart, Music, New Music, Orchestra, Overture Center, Piano, Saxophone, strings, Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW Symphony Strings, Viola, Violin, vocal music, web site, Webern, Willy Street Chamber Players, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Wisconsin Union Theater, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Classical music: UW-Madison Professor Marc Vallon offers a personal appreciation of the pioneering French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez who has died at 90. Plus, this Sunday afternoon Wisconsin Public Radio starts a 13-week series of concerts by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

January 9, 2016
2 Comments

ALERT: This Sunday at 2 p.m., Wisconsin Public Radio (WERN-FM 88.7 in the Madison area) will start a new weekly two-hour broadcast series. It features 13 weeks of live recorded concerts given by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. This Sunday’s music, conducted by MSO music director Edo de Waart, includes three outstanding works: the Four Sea Interludes from the opera “Peter Grimes” by Benjamin Britten; the beautiful Cello Concerto by Sir Edward Elgar with soloist Alisa Weilerstein; and the lyrical Symphony No. 8 in G Major by Antonin Dvorak.

For more information about the series and performers, visit:

http://www.wpr.org/programs/milwaukee-symphony-orchestra

By Jacob Stockinger

This past Tuesday, avant-garde French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez (below) died at his home in Baden Baden, Germany. He was 90. No cause of death was given.

Just last year saw celebrations of Boulez, on the occasion of his 90th birthday, around the world.

That included one here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music by bassoonist and Professor Marc Vallon (below, in a photo by James Gill) who studied and worked with Boulez and the famous Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris.

Professor Vallon generously agreed to write a personal reminiscence and appreciation of Pierre Boulez for The Ear.

Here it is:

By Marc Vallon

I had the privilege to work with Pierre Boulez in the early 1980s, a couple of years after he founded the Ensemble Intercontemporain (below) in Paris, the first-ever fully salaried ensemble devoted to contemporary music.

Boulez was a very demanding conductor (below) and everyone would come to the rehearsals very prepared. If you were not, you would likely take the sting of his sarcastic humor.

I remember a situation when the flutist kept fumbling on a tricky passage in Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony for Wind Instruments. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, he made the mistake of saying, “I don’t understand, it worked perfectly at home,” to which Boulez replied, “Well then, perhaps we should play the concert in your living room.”

Conductor and composer Pierre Boulez from France conducts the Lucerne Festival Acadamy Orchestra during a concert at the Lucerne Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2006. (AP Photo/Keystone, Sigi Tischler)

Conductor and composer Pierre Boulez from France conducts the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra during a concert at the Lucerne Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, Thursday, Sept. 14, 2006. (AP Photo/Keystone, Sigi Tischler)

I was involved in the first performance of the work often considered as Boulez’s masterpiece, Répons for orchestra and live electronics (heard at bottom in a YouTube video). It was a fascinating window into Boulez’s compositional process.

During the two-week rehearsal period, the parts would be collected after each session and would come back on our music stands the next day with numerous additions of grace notes and changed rhythms and dynamics. The longer we worked, the more intricate and multi-layered the piece became.

This is not surprising if one remembers Boulez’s definition of good music: It is complex and can be looked at from so many different angles that it ultimately resists full analysis.

Another important contribution that Boulez brought to the French musical scene, and the artistic world in general, was the often explosive radicalism of his ideas.

From “Schoenberg is dead” to “We have to blow up the opera houses,” who else would proclaim the end of serialism or attack the conservatism of established opera houses in such provocative terms?

Boulez’s public aversion to any artistic conservatism was, in the 1970s, a much-needed antidote to an international musical scene that was often too easily tempted to fill concert halls by programming symphonies by Tchaikovsky again and again.

It is still needed today. “Boulez est mort,” but his fight for the endless renewing of musical creation should go on.

For more obituaries and appreciations of Pierre Boulez, who served as music director of the New York Philharmonic and was a major guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, here are four sources:

The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/pierre-boulez-french-composer-dies-90.html?_r=0

National Public Radio or NPR:

http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2016/01/06/462176284/french-composer-pierre-boulez-dies-at-90

ABC-TV NEWS:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/pierre-boulez-leading-figure-classical-music-dies-90-36121322

And here is a terrific and insightful personal appreciation of Pierre Boulez, with a link to current issues and events in classical music, by Anthony Tommasini, the senior classical music critic for The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/arts/music/recalling-pierre-boulez-a-conductor-composer-with-an-ear-to-the-alternative.html?_r=0

Posted in Classical music
Tags: 12-tone, Alisa Weilerstein, Anthony Tommasini, Arnold Schoenberg, Art, Arts, Associated Press, atonal, avant-garde, Bassoon, Benjamin Britten, Cello, Chamber music, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Classical music, composer, concerto, Conducting, conductor, conservatism, Dvorak, Elgar, Ensemble InterContemporain, Humor, Jacob Stockinger, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Marc Vallon, Milwaukee, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, modernism, modernist, Music, Music director, New Music, New York Philharmonic, New York Times, NPR, opera, Opera house, Paris, Peter Grimes, Pierre Boulez, Schoenberg, Sea Interludes, serial music, serialism, Stravinsky, symphony, Tchaikovsky, The New York Times, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, WERN-FM 88.7, winds, wisconsin public radio, YouTube

Classical music: A major reassessment of Rachmaninoff is under way. Plus, French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez has died at 90 and the Unitarian Society’s FREE Friday Noon Musicales start again this week

January 7, 2016
4 Comments

ALERT: The influential and controversial French avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez had died at 90. The Ear will feature more about him this weekend. Stay tuned.

ALERT: The FREE Friday Noon Musicales at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed First Unitarian Society of Madison‘s Meeting House, 900 University Bay Drive, start up again this Friday after a break for the holidays. The concert takes place from 12:15 to 1 p.m. and features bassoonist Juliana Mesa-Jarmillo and pianist Rayna Slavova in music by Gustav Schreck, Eugene Bordeau, Gabriel Pierne and Antonio Torriani.

By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear can remember when Sergei Rachmaninoff (below, 1873-1943) was treated as something of a joke by serious classical musicians – especially by the 12-toners and atonalists, who were more into R&D music (research and development) than into offering pleasure and emotional connection.

The academic musicians, and some prominent music critics too, thought that the Russian composer’s music was too Romantic — meaning too accessible, too shallow and even cheap. They just didn’t consider Rachmaninoff a major 20th-century composer or artist.

But time is proving them wrong.

And how!!!

Surely The Rachmaninoff Deniers would like such popularity, durability and enthusiasm for their own music.

Haha.

Not likely.

Because Rachmaninoff had real genius linked to real heart.

So surely The Ear is not the only listener who finds so much of Rachmaninoff’s music -– especially his preludes, concertos, etudes and variations — irresistible and even moving.

Last fall saw Rachmaninoff’s appealing final work, the Symphonic Dances, performed by both the Madison Symphony Orchestra, under John DeMain, and the UW-Madison Symphony Orchestra, under James Smith.

And pianist Joyce Yang played the momentous Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor at her recital in the Wisconsin Union Theater.

This year’s Grammy nominations also include a whole CD of Rachmaninoff’s solo and concerto variations, including the wonderful tuneful and ingenious Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Last year also saw “Preludes,” (below, in a photo by Tina Fineberg for The New York Times) ) a successful play about the young Rachmaninoff — or Rachmaninov — climbing out of a deep depression with the help of therapist and hypnotist Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who helped him compose again and become world-famous with his Piano Concerto No. 2.

Just this fall and winter, the New York Philharmonic with music director and conductor Alan Gilbert and pianist Daniil Trifonov (below), performed a retrospective featuring the complete cycle of Rachmaninoff piano concertos.

And here are some very perceptive and respectful remarks by conductor Marin Alsop (below) about Rachmaninoff’s life and work and about the less frequently played Symphony No. 3 in A minor that she will discuss and conduct.

It comes from an interview with Scott Simon on Weekend Edition for NPR or National Public Radio. The Ear found her remarks about Rachmaninoff’s life in Beverly Hills and his effect on other exiled European musicians working in Hollywood to be especially perceptive.

Indeed, you may recall that Rachmaninoff was offered a lucrative chance to write a movie score and refused. So the moviemakers hired the British composer Richard Addinsell to write a piece that sounded like Rachmaninoff. The result was the Warsaw Concerto and the result does indeed sound a lot like Rachmaninoff.

Alsop, you may recall, was a student of Leonard Bernstein and is now the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra in Brazil.

Here is a link to the NPR story, which has audio samples of the Symphony No. 3, that also features a written essay by Marin Alsop about Rachmaninoff:

http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/12/28/461281186/rachmaninoff-an-american-without-assimilation

I like a Rachmaninoff tune. How about you?

So here is a YouTube performance, made in 1920, of Rachmaninoff himself playing my favorite Rachmaninoff piece — the wistful Prelude in G Major, Op 32, No. 5:

Posted in Classical music
Tags: Alan Gilbert, Arts, avant-garde, Baltimore, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Beverly Hills, Brazil, Chamber music, Classical music, Compact Disc, composer, concerto, conductor, Daniil Trifonov, depression, etude, France, French music, Grammy, Hollywood, hypnosis, Jacob Stockinger, John DeMain, Joyce Yang, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Music, National Public Radio, New York City, New York Philharmonic, New York Times, NPR, Orchestra, Piano, Pierre Boulez, play, Prelude, Rachmaninoff, Rachmaninov, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Sao Paolo, Scott Simon, Sonata, symphony, The New York Times, theme and variations, therapist, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, variations, Weekend Edition, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Union Theater, YouTube

Classical music: The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) gives an impressive display of how it continues to grow and develop.

June 24, 2015
7 Comments

By Jacob Stockinger

Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker, who also took performance photos. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who for 12 years hosted an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.

By John W. Barker

On Saturday night, in Mills Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, Mikko Rankin Utevsky led his Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) in the first of this year’s two summer concerts. More than ever, it showed Utevsky in new degrees of bravery and enterprise.

The program was organized around the idea of the Baroque concerto grosso, in various later transformations.

To begin, there was one of the “Morning, Noon, and Night” trilogy of Haydn’s symphonies, No. 6 in D, Le Matin. Haydn used the first of his symphonies composed for his new Esterhazy employer to show off the solo skills of his players.

The young MAYCO counterparts did themselves proud in both ensemble and solo playing, with particular flair displayed by first violinist Valerie Clare Sanders (below) in her virtuosic solos. And Utevsky’s care in have his string players totally avoid vibrato gave a good demonstration of 18th-century instrumental sound.

The second work, by recent UW-Madison School of Music graduate in composition, Jonathan Posthuma (below), more explicitly recreated the old configuration in his Concerto Grosso No. 1 in E minor.

It presents indeed the proper concertino of two violins and cello, against a ripieno string orchestra. In place of the traditional continuo, however, Posthuma brought in four percussionists and a pianist. The percussionists are members of the local ensemble Clocks in Motion (below), currently making a name for itself as an avant-garde group.

The idea was fascinating, but in two of the three movements the results were confusing. In the first, the string orchestra was overwhelmed by floods of color worthy of a Busby Berkeley Hollywood spectacular, while the second movement was a long procession of pops and moans. All color and hardly any real musical ideas.

The third movement, on the other hand, was a lusty fugue, given forth at first by only the strings, with the percussionists then integrated into a quite well-balanced texture. This is stated as the first in what will be a full set of 12 concertos, to make up a typical Baroque dozen.

It will be interesting to see how such a project unfolds. But one must credit Utevsky (below) for giving this first venture its world premiere performance.

Another premiere followed the intermission. Utevsky was able to secure from the contemporary British composer Cecilia McDowall (below) the rights to the first American performance of her piece for chamber orchestra, Rain, Steam, and Speed, inspired by J.M.W. Turner’s powerful painting of the same title, with its subtitle of The Great Western Railway.

Less literally conceived than Arthur Honegger’s famous railroad evocation, Pacific 231, this piece is an effort to suggest the kaleidoscopic contents of the painting, in what might be called a British neo-Impressionist style. A challenging work for the orchestra, which they brought off very effectively.

Finally came not a concerto grosso, but a Romantic solo concerto, the one for Cello and Orchestra by Robert Schumann. Not as often heard as it should be, it is a handsome and enjoyable work.

The soloist was Parry Karp (below), of the UW-Madison School of Music faculty, of the Pro Arte Quartet, and of so much else. He approached the piece not in bravura pretentiousness but with a kind of affectionate warmth that suited it admirably, while also allowing Utevsky the chance to give his players experience in collegial ensemble interaction with a soloist.

What these gifted young players of high school and college ages are able to do is really amazing. Utevsky grows better and better in giving them — and himself — marvellous training opportunity. Watch for the second concert, with music by Ernest Bloch, George Frideric Handel and Haydn (the famed “Surprise” Symphony) with piano soloist Jason Kutz, at 7:30 pm. on Friday, August 21, location to be announced.

You can find more information here: http://www.mayco.org

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