The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Trio Celeste makes its Madison debut this Sunday afternoon playing music by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and Piazzolla. They give a FREE master class on Saturday afternoon
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By Jacob Stockinger
This is a slow time of the year for classical music concerts, the winter intermission between fall and spring semesters. But The Ear received for the Salon Piano Series the following announcement to post:
“We caught this West Coast group on a rare Midwest tour. Trio Céleste (below) has firmly established itself as one of the most dynamic chamber music ensembles on the classical music scene today. They’ve wowed audiences worldwide with their “unfailingly stylish” (The Strad) and “flawless” (New York Concert Review) interpretations.
“The piano trio has firmly established itself as one of the most dynamic chamber music ensembles on the classical music scene today. This season’s highlights include recital debuts at the Chicago Cultural Center and New York’s Carnegie Hall, and the world premiere of Paul Dooley’s Concerto Grosso for Piano Trio and Strings.
“Winners of the prestigious Beverly Hills Auditions and the recipients of the 2017 Emerging Artist Award from Arts Orange County, the ensemble has performed hundreds of recitals worldwide.
“Their first album on the Navona label debuted at No. 5 on iTunes for “Best Seller New Release.” (You can see them recording the first album in the YouTube video at the bottom.)”
The program for Trio Celeste’s concert on this Sunday afternoon, Jan. 6, at 4 p.m. at Farley’s House of Pianos, 6522 Seybold Road, on the far west side of Madison near West Towne Mall, will include:
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Piano Trio in A minor, Op. 50 (1882)
Sergei Rachmaninoff – Trio élégiaque No. 1 in G minor (1892)
Astor Piazzolla – Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (1965-1970) (selections) arr. for piano trio by José Bragato
For more information, about the trio, go to: http://www.trioceleste.com
MASTER CLASS
On this Saturday, Jan. 5, at 4 p.m., Trio Céleste will teach a master class at Farley’s House of Pianos, where they will instruct students from Farley’s House of Pianos and the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO). This is a FREE event that the public is invited to observe.
The master class program will include portions of:
Joseph Haydn – String Quartet Op. 33, No. 3 “The Bird”
Klaus Badelt (arr. Larry Moore) – Theme from “Pirates of the Caribbean”
Ludwig van Beethoven – String Quartet Op. 18, No. 1
Edvard Grieg – String Quartet Op. 27, No. 1
The master classes for the 2018-19 season are supported by the law firm of Boardman & Clark LLP.
Tickets are $45 in advance (students $10) or $50 at the door. You can purchase tickets at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3499176
An artist’s reception will follow the concert.
For more information, go to https://salonpianoseries.org
Service fees may apply. Tickets also for sale at Farley’s House of Pianos. Student tickets can only be purchased online and are not available the day of the event.
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Classical music: Is Royal Wedding cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason the next Yo-Yo Ma?
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By Jacob Stockinger
If you watched the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and American Meghan Markle – who are now known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – you were probably impressed by many things.
Not the least of them was the performance by the young Afro-British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who performed three pieces: “After a Dream” by Gabriel Faure; “Ave Maria” by Franz Schubert; and “Sicilienne” (an ancient dance step) by Maria Theresia von Paradis.
The young player acquitted himself just fine, despite the pressure of the event, with its avid public interest in the United Kingdom and a worldwide TV viewership of 2 billion.
But that is to be expected. He is no ordinary teenage cellist. Now 19, he was named BBC Young Musician of the Year in 2016 — the first black musician of African background to be awarded the honor since it started in 1938. A native of Nottingham, even as he pursues a busy concert and recording schedule, he continues his studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
So it was with great anticipation that The Ear listened to “Inspiration,” Kanneh-Mason’s new recording from Decca Records, which is already a bestseller on Amazon.com and elsewhere, and has topped the U.S. pop charts. (There are also many performances by him on YouTube.)
Unfortunately, The Ear was disappointed by the mixed results.
The cellist’s playing is certainly impressive for its technique and tone. But in every piece, he is joined by the City of Birmingham Orchestra or its cello section. The collaboration works exceptionally well with the Cello Concerto No. 1 by Dmitri Shostakovich.
However, so many of the other works seem too orchestrated and overly arranged. So much of the music becomes thick and muddy, just too stringy. The Ear wanted to hear more of the young cellist and less of the backup band.
One also has to wonder if the recording benefits from being a mixed album with a program so full of crossovers, perhaps for commercial reasons and perhaps to reach a young audience. There is a klezmer piece, “Evening of the Roses” as well as a reggae piece, “No Woman, No Cry” by Bob Marley and the famous song “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen.
In addition, there are the familiar “The Swan” from “The Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint-Saens and two pieces by the inspiring cellist referred to in the title of the recording, Pablo (or Pau in Catalan) Casals (below).
A great humanist and champion of democracy who spent most of his career in exile from dictator Franco’s Spain, Casals used the solo “The Birds” as a signature encore. Played solo, it is a poignant piece — just as Yo-Yo Ma played it as an encore at the BBC Proms, which is also on YouTube). But here it simply loses its simplicity and seems overwhelmed.
Clearly, Sheku Kanneh-Mason is a musician of great accomplishment and even greater promise who couldn’t have wished for better publicity to launch a big career than he received from the royal wedding. He handles celebrity well and seems a star in the making, possibly even the next Yo-Yo Ma, who has also done his share of film scores and pop transcriptions
But when it comes to the recording studio, a smaller scale would be better. Sometimes less is more, and this is one of those times. (Listen to his beautiful solo playing and his comments in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
To take the full measure of his musicianship, The Ear is anxious to hear Kanneh-Mason in solo suites by Johann Sebastian Bach and concertos by Antonio Vivaldi; in sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms; in concertos by Antonin Dvorak and Edward Elgar; and in much more standard repertory that allows comparison and is less gimmicky.
Did you hear Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s live performance at the royal wedding? What did you think?
And if you have heard his latest recording, what do you think of that?
Do you think Sheku Kanne-Mason is the next Yo-Yo Ma?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Two FREE concerts at the UW-Madison this Friday evening offer Brahms fans music for piano, cello and clarinet.
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, which takes place from 12:15 to 1 p.m. at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, will feature Leslie Damaso, mezzo-soprano; Shannon Farley; Jason Kutz, piano; Beth Larson, violin and viola; Morgan Walsh, cello; Chris Allen, guitar; and Gregg Punswick, piano. The program includes music by George Philipp Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi, Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. No word on specific pieces, sorry.
By Jacob Stockinger
“Aimez-vous Brahms?” asked the famous French novelist Francoise Sagan in a title of a bestselling novel.
Well, yes, The Ear does indeed love the music of Johannes Brahms (below).
And if you too love Brahms, this week features two concerts that sound very promising and offer a big dose of Brahms.
Call it Brahms Day.
Or, more appropriately, Brahms Night.
Unfortunately or fortunately – depending on your point of view and your power of endurance — both concerts are on Friday evening and may even overlap, although The Ear hopes not.
It is a pretty heavy and intense dose of Brahms, especially of the beautifully introspective late or “autumnal” music he composed shortly before he died.
At 6:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall is a recital by doctoral student and collaborative pianist Satoko Hayami (below top), who will be joined by her fellow graduate students, clarinetist Kai-Ju Ho (below middle) and cellist Kyle Price (below bottom), in performing late music by Brahms.
The program includes the Sonata in E-flat for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 120, No. 2, which is often played on the viola, although it was originally composed for the clarinet; the Zigeunerlieder, Op. 103; and the Trio for Clarinet for Piano, Clarinet and Cello.
Then at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW-Madison cello professor Uri Vardi (below top) and guest pianist Uriel Tsachor (below bottom), from the University of Iowa, will perform BOTH cello sonatas by Brahms – The Ear loves them both — plus six art songs transcribed for cello and piano. (You can hear the haunting second movement of the last Cello Sonata, in F major, by Brahms played by cellist Jian Wang and pianist Emanuel Ax in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
Vardi is something of a specialist in Brahms and has just released a performance on the Delos record label of the three Piano Trios, which included Pro Arte Quartet violinist and UW-Madison violin professor David Parry.
So it all sounds very promising. And very Brahmsian.
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Classical music: Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and composer Franz Liszt work well together. Both are haunting creators. Here is a chance to hear how as you read.
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By Jacob Stockinger
As longtime readers of this blog know, The Ear is a loyal fan of the Japanese writer and novelist Haruki Murakami (below).
I have had a longstanding bet with friends that the prolific Murakami will win the Nobel Prize “this” year. But so far, a decade or more later, I am still waiting — as, I suspect, he is since he has won other major prizes.
So The Ear says: Let’s get on it, members of the Nobel Prize committee in Oslo. What are you waiting for?
Longtime fans also know that I am NOT a big fan of Franz Liszt (below). He wrote some great music that I like a lot. But he also wrote a lot of second-rate music that I don’t like a lot. What is good, I find, is very good; and the rest too often strikes me as melodramatic pieces full of self-exhibitionistic pyrotechnical keyboard tricks and gimmicks.
But recently the contemporary Japanese novelist got me to appreciate one piece by the 19th-century Romantic Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso.
The work is called “Le mal du pays,” or, roughly translated, “Homesickness,” and comes from the first of three books, and the first year of three, of Liszt’s generally subdued “Years of Pilgrimage: Book I — Switzerland.”
Not surprisingly it is featured, referred to and analyzed repeatedly in Murakami’s new novel the “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (below, published by Knopf), in which the meanings of home and belonging are explored in many different ways. The piano music is a kind of thematic summary of the plot, the setting and the characters.
The Liszt work, which runs about six or so minutes, is a curious piece, less showy than many and full of the kind of strangeness, disjointedness and mysteriousness that Murakami treasures and so effectively conveys in his writings.
The piano piece perfectly matches the novel, its plot and characters and tones, in the music’s eerie chromaticism, in its insistent repetition, in its austerity and lack of sensuality, even in its identification with what is empty or missing and its plain old weirdness.
The haunting music embodies the book and may have been inspired it in part. Not for nothing is Murakami known as The Japanese Kafka, and the Liszt music is worthy of that equivalency.
The two works of art deserve each other, as I am increasingly finding out, and work well together.
I am now about fourth-fifths of the way through the novel, which has been No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list for hardback fiction for several weeks. It certainly has me enchanted and under its spell.
Murakami often refers to Western culture, classical and pop, and especially to classical music and jazz. (He once ran a jazz bar in Tokyo.)
In other works such as “Kafka on the Shore,” Murakami even seems something of a connoisseur of Western classical music who has compared works and various recordings of them, by Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach and others. In fact, Murakami himself could be said to have spent his own years of pilgrimage journeying through Western culture as well as fiction writing.
This time Murakami, who has excellent taste and deep knowledge or familiarity, favors a performance by the late Russian pianist Lazar Berman (below).
Other fans of both Murakami and Liszt have set up a website where you can listen to a YouTube recording of Berman’s playing ‘Le mal du pays.” (You can also find quite a few other recordings of it, including one by Alfred Brendel (below), on YouTube, which is also featured in a secondary role in Murakami’s new novel.)
And I have also found a Hyperion recording by British pianist and MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant-winner Stephen Hough that I like a lot:
Here is a link to the Lazar Berman version, a second one that was set up by a Murakami fan:
Have fun listening and happy reading.
And please let us know what you think of the Liszt piece, Murakami’s newest novel and your favorite Murakami novel.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: Alfred Brendel, Années de pèlerinage, Arts, bestseller, books, Classical music, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, fiction, Franz Kafka, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, genius grant, Haruki Murakami, Homesickness, Hungrary, Jacob Stockinger, Japan, Japanese, Kafka on the Shore, Lazar Berman, List of Romantic-era composers, Liszt, MacArthur Foundation, Mal du Pays, Murakami, Music, New York Times, Nobel Prize, novel, Oslo, Piano, Romantic, Schubert, Stephen Hough, Switzerland, Years of Pilgrimage, YouTube
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