The Well-Tempered Ear

The eighth annual UW Schubertiade is this Sunday afternoon. It features a FREE online retrospective of the past seven years plus a new four-hand piano performance

January 29, 2021
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By Jacob Stockinger

The University of Wisconsin has posted the following announcement:

For the eighth consecutive year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music will present its annual Schubertiade — a special concert celebrating the music of Franz Schubert (below).

Traditionally these concerts have been held around the composer’s birthday. This year’s concert will in fact occur on his birthday — this Sunday, Jan. 31, at 3-4:30 p.m. CST. The pre-recorded premiere is at: https://youtu.be/7sshhKiFPAg

You can also use the link to prepare for the concert before or during the concert. You will find the program with song titles, the original German texts and English translation, and biographies of the performers by simply clicking on “SHOW MORE” on the YouTube website and follow the links to PDFs.

BECAUSE THERE ARE NO COPYRIGHT ISSUES, ACCORDING TO UW OFFICIALS, THE POST SHOULD BE UP AND AVAILABLE INDEFINITELY AFTER ITS PREMIERE.

As in past years, founders and performers Martha Fischer (below left), professor of piano and head of the collaborative piano program at UW-Madison, and her husband Bill Lutes (below right), an independent piano teacher, and UW emeritus artist-in-residence, will host the program.

These concerts have been presented in the sprit of the first Schubertiades (below, in a painting by Julius Schmid) that took place during the composer’s lifetime (1797-1828) in the homes of his friends and fellow artists, poets and fans.

These were social as well as musical occasions with Schubert himself presiding at the piano, giving his audience a chance to hear his latest songs, piano duets and chamber music, as well as pieces that had already become favorites.

This year’s Schubertiade will be different in response to the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. It will be an online look back — or Rückblick — at past concerts, with songs chosen from performances that have been preserved in the audio and video archive.

The featured performers will include faculty members, students and alumni from the Mead Witter School of Music, along with special guests.

In addition, pianists Fischer and Lutes will give a “new” performance recorded for this occasion of the great Fantasie in F minor for piano duet. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear that work, performed by Dutch brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen and recorded live in Seoul, South Korea.)

The songs have been chosen to reflect themes that were not only relevant to Schubert and his circle, but also to all of us in the midst of this challenging time: hope for a brighter future; the need for connection with others; remembrance of happier times; and the consolation to be found in nature.

Schubert left a vast and precious legacy of beauty — an enormous output of music that he composed in his short lifetime.

In a sense, each time his music is performed and heard, it is a journey from the past to our own time, the sounds speaking to us today as vividly and consolingly as they did when they were created 200 years ago.

Performers

Martha Fischer and Bill Lutes, pianists

Alumni:

Jamie-Rose Guarrine, soprano (below, in a photo by Peter Konerko)
Emily Birsan, soprano
Michael Roemer, baritone
Jennifer D’Agostino, soprano
Daniel O’Dea, tenor
Wesley Dunnagan, tenor
Sarah Brailey (alumna and current DMA student)
Sara Guttenberg

Guests:

Marie McManama, soprano
Cheryl Bensman-Rowe, mezzo-soprano

Faculty:

Mimmi Fulmer, soprano
Paul Rowe, baritone (below)
Julia Rottmayer, soprano

Staff

David Alcorn, videographer, editor, etc.
Katrin Talbot, images for audio only tracks

 


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Classical music: UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet resumes its FREE Beethoven cycle virtual and online this Friday night with two other programs this semester

September 29, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet (below, performing the first all-Beethoven program in Collins Recital Hall) will resume its complete cycle of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets online and virtually this coming Friday night.

This third concert is free, and as you might have read in previous reviews, The Ear found the first two to be outstanding performances that also mixed works from early, middle and late periods.

The cycle is being undertaken to mark the Beethoven Year, which culminates this December with the 250th anniversary of the birth of the composer (below).

Cellist Parry Karp (below) – the longest-standing member of the quartet and the person who often speaks for the quartet – sent the following note for posting:

“I thought I should bring the public up to date with the Pro Arte Quartet’s Beethoven cycle. Obviously things have had to change because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Before the pandemic, we were doing three quartets per concert. Since we now need to give the performances virtually and online, we have decided to perform two quartets per concert. Sitting at a computer for two hours at a time seemed a bit too much!

“We will be continuing the Beethoven cycle starting this Friday, Oct. 2, at 7:30 p.m. CDT. The program will consist of the early String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18 No. 5; and the late String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132, with the famous “Sacred Hymn of Thanksgiving” (heard played by the Alban Berg Quartet in the YouTube video at the bottom).

The link to watch that concert is at: https://youtu.be/Mf-Mpt3EyNk

“Charles Dill (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot), professor of musicology at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, will give a short lecture about each quartet before the Pro Arte Quartet performs.

“Although the concerts will be taking place in the bigger Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall in the new Hamel Music Center, the hall will be closed to the public for reasons of safety and public health.

“We will be playing with masks and with more separation or social distance from each other, which is a challenge and takes some adjusting to. It will also be odd to perform without a live audience.

“Unfortunately, because of copyright questions and royalties from the music editions we are using, the online concerts will not be archived for later viewing

“The other two concerts in the Pro Arte Quartet’s Beethoven cycle this semester will be on Friday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. CDT and Friday, Nov. 20, at 7:30 p.m. CST.

“We plan to complete the Beethoven cycle during the spring semester of 2021.

The programs for this semester are listed below.”

SEMESTER I SCHEDULE

Beethoven String Quartet Cycle will be performed by the Pro Arte Quartet with pre-performance lectures of the quartets by Professor Charles Dill

Pro Arte Quartet members (below in photo by Rick Langer) are: violinists David Perry and Suzanne Beia; violist Sally Chisholm; and cellist Parry Karp.

For history and background about the Pro Arte Quartet, which is the oldest active string quartet in the history of music, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/pro-arte-quartet/.

PROGRAM 3

This Friday, Oct. 2, 2020 at 7:30 p.m. CDT in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall.

String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18 No. 5 (1798-1800); and String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 (1825)

PROGRAM 4: Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, at 7:30 p.m. CDT in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall

String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18 No. 4 (1798-1800); and the String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 127 (1825)

PROGRAM 5: Friday, Nov. 20, 2020 at 7:30 p.m. CST in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall

String Quartet in D Major, Op. 18 No. 3 (1798-1800); String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59 No. 2 (1806)

 


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