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: 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
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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:
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:
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: Is Rameau the French Bach? UW-Madison faculty players and Baroque scholar Charles Dill will explore Rameau throughout this season. The first two FREE events are this Thursday and Friday nights.
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By Jacob Stockinger
For some musicologists and audiences, the French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (below) is wholly misunderstood, under-performed and underappreciated. Some even see him as the French counterpart to Johann Sebastian Bach.
But a year-long project by the University of Wisconsin School of Music aims to correct that lack of knowledge and appreciation.
That effort starts with two FREE concerts this week.
Here is a link to a Q&A about Rameau done with UW-Madison musicologist Charles Dill for the UW-Madison School of Music blog:
http://www.music.wisc.edu/2014/10/16/rameau-dill/
THURSDAY
On Thursday night, Nov. 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 180 of Science Hall, at the intersection of Langdon Streets and North Park Street, the FREE program “Rameau and Musical Expression” will take place. The subject is the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. The 250th anniversary of his death is being marked this year around the world.
Music of the mid-18th century can strike modern audiences as stilted or dispassionate, but composers of the time, like society at large, thought about the passions a great deal — how to describe them, what their physical properties were, and how to depict them on stage for the benefit of audiences.
David Ronis (below top, in a photo by Luke Delalio), a stage director who has specialized in Baroque staging practices, and Anne Vila (below bottom), a scholar specializing in 18th-century theories of the emotions, will discuss passion in the thought of Rameau’s contemporaries, suggesting cues for listening to Rameau’s music. The evening will include a performance of cantata Les Amants trahis by Paul Rowe, Chelsie Propst, John Chappell Stowe and Eric Miller.
FRIDAY
Then on this Friday might, Nov. 14, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW-Madison bassoonist and native Frenchman Marc Vallon (below, in a photo by James Gill) will present a FREE all-French program that highlights his own works and arrangements as well as the music of Jean-Phillippe Rameau in one of his most well-known works, “Les Indes Galantes.”
![Marc Vallon 2011 James Gill (baroque & modern)[2]](https://welltempered.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/marc-vallon-2011-james-gill-baroque-modern2.jpg)
Vallon will be joined by other performers and period instruments will be used in historically informed performances.
Here is the program:
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Pièce en forme de Habanera for bassoon and piano
Marc Vallon (b.1955) Serbian Songs for viola and bassoon – Tuzbalica-Harvest Song-Trezkavica
Marc Vallon Ami for Baroque flute
Jules Massenet (1842-1912) (arr. M. Vallon) La Lettre
Georges Bizet (1838-1875) (arr. M. Vallon)
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) L’Invitation au Voyage
INTERMISSION
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), Les Indes Galantes, a 45-minute version. Ouverture; Menuets 1 & 2; Musette en Rondeau; Air; L’Amour “Ranimez vos Flambeaux”; Ritournelle, “Le Turc Généreux,”; Air, “Osman Il faut que l’amour s’envole”; Récit et Orage; Choeur des Matelots; Emilie; Rigaudons; Air pour les esclaves Africains; Tambourins; “Les Incas du Pérou,” Scène 1; Air “Le calumet de la Paix”; Air et Choeur “Traversez les plus vastes mers.”
(At the bottom is a concluding movement from “Les Indes Gallantes” in a popular YouTube video that more than one million hits. It is performed by Marc Minkowski directing Les Musicians du Louvre.)
Marc Vallon has split his impressive performing career between the modern and baroque bassoons. In addition to appearances with many of Paris’ orchestras and celebrated contemporary ensembles, Vallon has played baroque bassoon with leading early music ensembles such as La Chapelle Royale, Les Arts Florissants, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Tafelmusik. In this recital, Marc Vallon will bring his skill on both instruments and thorough knowledge of and feeling for baroque music to works by Jean-Philippe Rameau and J.S. Bach, two great masters of the late baroque period.
Other participants include: Thomas Kasdorf, piano; Sally Chisholm, viola; Nathan Giglierano, Ilana Schroeder, Gene Purdue, baroque violins; Micah Behr, baroque viola; Martha Vallon, Andrew Briggs, baroque cellos; Jeanne Swack and Mili Chang, baroque flute; Konstantinos Tiliakos, baroque oboe; Brian Ellingboe, baroque bassoon; John Chappell Stowe, harpsichord.
Mesdames singers: Elizabeth Hagedorn, Chelsie Propst, Christina Kay.
Messieurs singers: Paul Rowe, Dennis Gotkowski, Antonio De Souza.
There will also be an Introduction to the second half by UW-Madison School of Music musicologist Charles Dill (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot), who has been speaking about Rameau in the U.S. and France.
This concert is part of the school’s year-long retrospective of the work of Rameau. Click here for more information.
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