The Well-Tempered Ear
Library of Congress streams UW pianist Christopher Taylor’s online Liszt-Beethoven symphony recital for free this Thursday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
This Thursday night, Dec. 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. CST, University of Wisconsin-Madison virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor (below) will close the celebration of the Beethoven Year, marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, at the Library of Congress. After the concert’s premiere, it will stay posted online.
For the past several years, Taylor has been performing the solo piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt of Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies both in Russia and at the UW-Madison.
Here is more from the website of the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music:
“It takes extraordinary skill as an orchestrator to condense an entire symphony by Beethoven (below top) into a version for a solo instrument, but that is just what Franz Liszt (below bottom) accomplished in his piano transcriptions. (You can hear a sample, along with a visual representation, of the Fifth Symphony transcription in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
“Hear virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor perform three of these transcendent symphony transcriptions, works he describes as a “new perspective on something familiar.” (The Ear, who has heard Taylor’s impressive performances of almost all nine symphonies, finds that comparing the two versions is like looking at the same photograph in color and then black-and-white. Color emphasizes details while black-and-white emphasizes structure. You hear new things by comparing the two.)
The performance was pre-recorded in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall of the Hamel Music Center.
The program is:
BEETHOVEN/LISZT
Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
You can find more details at: https://loc.gov/concerts/christopher-taylor.html
You can Register on Eventbrite
Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.
He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks.
Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace.
Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia and the Caribbean.
At home in the U.S. he has appeared with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, the Madison Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony. As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues.
In chamber music settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets.
His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel.
Throughout his career, Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects. Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt; performances and lectures on the complete etudes of Gyorgy Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano (below) in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.
Numerous awards have confirmed Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.
Taylor lives in Middleton, Wis., with his wife and two daughters. He is a Steinway artist.
For more biographical information — including his piano teachers and his education as well as his interest in mathematics and engineering — go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/christopher-taylor-concerts-from-the-library-of-congress/
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Classical music: Thursday night, the Middleton Community Orchestra closes its season with duo-pianists in music by Mozart and Saint-Saens, and the latter’s “Organ” Symphony. Wednesday is the last Just Bach concert of the season
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ALERT: This Wednesday, May 29, at 1 p.m. in Luther Memorial Church, 1021 University Avenue, is the last FREE Just Bach concert of the season. The one-hour early music program includes: the cantata “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen” (Praise Ye God in All Lands), BWV 51; Duetto II in F Major, BWV 803; and the cantata “Wachet! Betet! Betet! Wachet!” (Watch! Pray! Pray! Watch!), BWV 70. For more information, go online to the home website: https://justbach.org
By Jacob Stockinger
This Thursday night, May 30, the largely amateur but critically acclaimed Middleton Community Orchestra (below, in a photo by Brian Rupert) will close its ninth season with a special family-friendly concert.
The concert, under the baton of conductor Steve Kurr (below), takes place at 7:30 p.m. in the Middleton Performing Arts Center that is attached to Middleton High School, 2100 Bristol Street.
Guest artists are University of Wisconsin-Madison students and duo-pianists Satoko Hayami (below top) and Thomas Kasdorf (below bottom). They will perform the witty and entertaining “Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint-Saens and then the Concerto for Two Pianos, K. 365, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Wisconsin Public Radio host Norman Gilliland (below) will be the narrator in “The Carnival of the Animals.” (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the opening Introduction and Royal March of the Lion, with the late Sir Roger Moore — aka James Bond or 007 — as the narrator plus an all-star cast of musicians and some very cool animal videos in back-and-white.)
The concert concludes with the always impressive, ambitious and popular Symphony No. 3 — the famous “Organ” Symphony – by Saint-Saens (below, seated at the piano in 1900).
Adds MCO co-founder Mindy Taranto: “We are really excited to share a special concert with the community as we celebrate the end of MCO’s ninth season.
“It took a village to make this concert possible. Farley’s House of Pianos is donating the use of an 1890 Steinway to match the Steinway at the hall. WPR radio host Norman Gilliland is generously volunteering to narrate the ‘Carnival of the Animals’ and Full Compass is offering us a discount on the sound equipment we need to play the “Organ” Symphony. Our very own recording engineer, Alex Ford, is playing the organ.
“Please bring your kids and share this information to invite all students free of charge to hear this concert.”
Admission is $15 for adults; all students get in for free. Tickets are available at the Willy Street Coop West and at the door. The box office opens at 6:30 p.m. and the auditorium opens at 7 p.m.
As usual, after the concert there will be a free meet-and-greet reception for musicians and the public.
For more information about this concert, and about how to join or support the Middleton Community Orchestra, call 608 212-8690 or go online to: http://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
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Classical music: ECM Records finally streams its entire catalogue of award-winning artists and recordings
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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.
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