The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: The Oakwood Chamber Players open their new “Vignettes” season with concerts on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon
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A CORRECTION: The Ear wants to apologize for and correct an error he made in yesterday’s blog post. The correct time and address for the all-Schubert concert by the Mosaic Chamber Players is on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. in the chapel of the First Congregational United Church of Christ, 1609 University Avenue, near Camp Randall Stadium.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Oakwood Chamber Players (below) will begin their 2018-2019 season series “Vignettes” with concerts on Saturday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 16, at 2 p.m.
The concerts will both be held at the Oakwood Center for Arts and Education, 6209 Mineral Point Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.
Tickets can be purchased with cash or personal checks at the door: $25 for general admission, $20 for seniors 62 and over; and $5 students. Visit www.oakwoodchamberplayers.com or call (608) 230-4316 for more information for individual and season tickets.
Once again, the group will explore largely new or unknown composers and neglected music.
Each program of the 2018-19 series will focus on how composers create specific themes to tell stories, and represent emotions, places or characteristics to enhance the listening experience.
Central to the program is poetry and narration paired with music that will feature Boston-based guest soprano Mary Mackenzie (below). She has been described by The New York Times as “a soprano of extraordinary agility and concentration,” and the Boston Globe as “sensational.”
Mackenzie is a passionate performer of contemporary vocal music, and has appeared with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston, Collage New Music, the Da Capo Chamber Players, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, and The Knights.
American composer Byron Adams (below) was commissioned by renowned American clarinetist Yehuda Weiner to set Nightingales, a poem by British Victorian poet Robert Bridges, as a memorial to his brother. The composer chose a quartet of soprano, clarinet, cello and piano to evoke the breathtaking beauty of the natural world that is overlaid with a sense of loss and longing.
By contrast, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Jennifer Higdon (below, in a photo by Candace DiCarlo) set four poems that have titles that reference roses by James Whitcomb Riley for the combination of flute, soprano and piano.
Bentley Roses was written as a surprise tribute for the retirement of her former music teacher, Judith Bentley. The settings are sunny and accessible, the music weaves around the words with swirling energy, coy interactions, and graceful interplay.
The yearning Vocalise by conductor, composer and pianist Andre Previn conveys emotion using the voice without words as a chamber instrument. The combination of soprano, cello and piano carries the shifting harmonies and sinuous melodic line through a series of subtle yet powerful transformations. (You can hear Previn’s beautiful “Vocalise,” with soprano Barbara Bonney and the the composer at the piano, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
A second piece by Previn (below) piece puts the cello and soprano in conversation with his setting of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Toni Morrison’s poem Stones.
American film composer and bassoonist Charles Fernandez (below) wrote Quatuor Parisienne (Parisian Quartet) for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon. It consists of three movements: a tongue-in-cheek march; a gracefully flowing reflection: and a farcical musical conversation with a dash of merriment.
Budapest-based clarinetist and composer Endre Szervanszky (below) wrote his Quintet No. 1 in 1953. Audiences will hear some characteristics similar to the writing of Kodaly and Bartok. It is a pleasing four-movement work that shows his strong understanding of each of the instruments, demanding both melodic expressiveness and technical panache.
The program concludes with poetry by British writer Roald Dahl, known for his darkly humorous children’s stories. Composer Martin Butler (below, in a photo by Katie Vandyck) incorporated The Pig, The Tummy Beast, and The Crocodile into his piece Dirty Beasts for narrator, piano and woodwind quintet. Butler mirrors the acerbic wit of the text with clever effects, closing out the program with some unexpected twists and turns.
Guest performers are soprano Mary Mackenzie, pianist Joseph Ross (below top) and oboist Laura Medisky (below bottom).
They join Oakwood Chamber Players members Marilyn Chohaney, flute; Nancy Mackenzie, clarinet; Amanda Szczys, bassoon; Anne Aley, horn; and Maggie Darby Townsend, cello.
This is the first of five concerts in the Oakwood Chamber Players’ 2018-19 season series entitled Vignettes. Remaining concerts will take place on Nov. 24 and 25; Jan. 12 and 13; March 2 and 3; and May 18 and 19. For more information about the Oakwood Chamber Players and their new season, go to: https://www.oakwoodchamberplayers.com
The Oakwood Chamber Players are a group of Madison-area professional musicians who play with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and have rehearsed and performed at Oakwood Village for over 30 years.
The Oakwood Chamber Players are a professional music ensemble proudly supported by Oakwood Lutheran Senior Ministries and the Oakwood Foundation.
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Classical music: The Lydian String Quartet of Boston returns this Thursday night to the Token Creek Festival to perform two contemporary works and a quartet by Felix Mendelssohn. On Sunday, they will perform Baroque works.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear’s friends at the Token Creek Festival write:
The Token Creek Festival is pleased to announce the return to Madison of the Lydian String Quartet from Boston on this Thursday night, Aug. 27, at 8 p.m. The Lydians last appeared at Token Creek in 1999, for a pair of outstanding concerts with the soprano Benita Valente.
The Lydian’s recital features two string quartets by two contemporary composers whose work they have championed for many years — Lee Hyla and John Harbison — along with the Mendelssohn Quartet in E flat, Op. 12 (1829).
The Lydian Quartet (below) has performed a large number of new pieces. Their Token Creek program includes two that were composed within a four-year span, but which speak two very different American musical languages.
Both Hyla’s Quartet No. 3 (1989), commissioned by Chamber Music America, and Harbison’s Quartet No. 3 (1993), commissioned by Brandeis University, are single-movement works.
The work by Lee Hyla (below, in a photo by Mark Wilson for The Boston Globe) begins consonantly and reflectively, with a ravishingly beautiful homophonic passage that haunts much of the subsequent music. (You can hear the haunting Hyla work played by the Lydian Quartet in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
The work traverses a wide terrain and gradually branches out into a discourse that is hardly inferable from its opening strains, and that ultimately leads to a major climax and a quiet, inevitable conclusion.
The quartet by John Harbison (below) is hymnodic, rarely contrapuntal, and sustains its central musical declaration throughout, with the exception of two “out of the blue,” unexplained interludes.
The BBC Music Magazine called the piece “a fascinating, alluring, and moving musical argument,” and the Boston Globe considers it “one of Harbison’s finest works, an important addition to the repertory for the string quartet. . . The moods are volatile and wide‑ranging ‑ intimate, public, ferocious, suave, passionate, masked, fleeting and sustained.”
The string quartets by Felix Mendelssohn (below) are among his finest and most striking compositions. They reconcile classical models with romantic passion.
Mendelssohn’s admiration of Ludwig van Beethoven shines brightly in this work. It is lovely music throughout, ebullient and euphonious, and its third movement, the Canzonetta, is probably the single best-known chamber music movement in Mendelssohn’s output.
In addition to their own recital, the Lydians will also appear on the closing concerts of the Token Creek Festival (Saturday, Aug. 29, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 30, at 4 p.m.). They will anchor a program of Baroque concerti (with some related smaller chamber pieces), including the irrepressible Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 by Johann Sebastian Bach as well as works by George Frideric Handel and Arcangelo Corelli.
Tickets are $30 ($10 for students) for all performances.
Tickets can be bought by using the order form at the Token Creek website www.tokencreekfestival.org, by phone at 608-241-2525, by email at info@tokencreekfestival.org, or by U.S. mail at P.O. Box 5201, Madison WI, 53705.
Performances take place at the Festival Barn, on Highway 19 near the hamlet of Token Creek (10 minutes north of Madison) with ample parking available. The venue, indoors and air-conditioned, is invitingly small—early reservations are recommended.
More information about the Token Creek Festival and all events can be found at the website, http://www.tokencreekfestival.org or by calling 608-241-2525.
Tags: Arts, Bach, Baroque, Beethoven, Boston, Boston Globe, Brandenburg Concerto, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, concerto, Corelli, Early music, Felix Mendelssohn, George Frideric Handel, Handel, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Harbison, Lee Hyla, Ludwig van Beethoven, Lydian Quartet, Music, String quartet, Token Creek Festival, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, YouTube
Classical music: Gramophone magazine names its Best of 2014 Classical Recordings. Here it is, along with several other major compilations.
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By Jacob Stockinger
This post wraps up the holiday gift-giving season for this year.
Over the past month or so, I have offered several major roundups of the Best of 2014 classical music recordings.
The posts have included a Top 10 list from NPR or National Public Radio:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2014/12/11/370067981/best-classical-albums-of-2014
A list from the critics at The New York Times:
A list — really, two lists — from the prize-winning critic Alex Ross (below), who writes for The New Yorker Magazine:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/ten-notable-performances-recordings-2014
A link from critic Jeremy Eichler at the Boston Globe:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2014/12/13/the-best-albums/6q7Tin4lPvj5RmqfCCSTFP/story.html
And a list of the classical nominations for the 57th annual Grammy Awards:
Now, as the year ends, here comes the annual compilation by the venerable Gramophone magazine out of Great Britain. Top honors go to Riccardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for their cycle of orchestral works, symphonies and overtures and more, by Johannes Brahms on the Decca label.
But there is a lot more to look at and listen to, and, predictably, a lot of choices with ties to United Kingdom.
Anyway, if you still need to give a gift or maybe to redeem a gift card or spend cash you received, here is the story along with the direct link to the FREE digital magazine issue (below):
http://www.exacteditions.com/read/gramophone/recordings-of-the-year-2014-41178
Tags: Alan Gilbert (conductor), Alex Ross, Arts, Bach, Baroque, Beethoven, Boston Globe, cash, Chamber music, Christmas, Classical music, Compact Disc, Decca, Early music, Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Puccini, gift card, gifts, Grammy Award, Gramophone, Great Britain, Holiday, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison Opera, magazine, Mozart, Music, New York City, New York Times, NPR, opera, Orchestra, Overture, Piano, Riccardo Chailly, The New York Times, The New Yorker, United Kingdom, Violin, vocal music, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: Baroque cellist Steuart Pincombe brings “Bach and Beer” to Next Door Brewing this Tuesday night as part of the acclaimed “Music in Familiar Spaces’ project — and you get to choose your own admission price
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By Jacob Stockinger
This Tuesday night, Baroque cellist Steuart Pincombe, who just performed Vivaldi and Bach twice this past weekend with the Madison Bach Musicians, will present his program of three Bach solo cello suites paired with three brews.
The music starts at 7 p.m. on Madison’s east side at the Next Door Brewing (below), 2439 Atwood Avenue, on this Tuesday, Sept. 26.
Pincombe’s performance of this program was named by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as one of 2014’s top 10 classical music concerts and was recently featured in the Boston Globe and Seattle Times.
The concert runs from 7 to 9 p.m.
While sipping on their favorite brews, audience members will discover the connections between the art of brewing and the art of playing the music of Bach. (Pincombe explains the format in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Just as many brewers follow a recipe that was used hundreds of years ago, Steuart’s approach to playing Bach also looks back on old “recipes” and methods of playing.
The program of Solo Cello Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach (below) will be interlaced with short explanations of Steuart’s historical, interpretive approach along with comments from the brewery on the historical brewing method of each beer.
Each of the three suites will be paired with one of Next Door’s own brews. Concert-goers wanting to enjoy dinner at Next Door Brewery should arrive early, as there will be limited table seating during the concert.
The concert is part of Music in Familiar Spaces, a project that is bringing the highest level of classical music performance to homes, churches, cafés, bars or any place where community already exists.
One of the aims of the Music in Familiar Spaces project is to make classical music accessible to a wide and varied audience. This is accomplished not only by performing in familiar, comfortable and untraditional spaces, but by designing programs that invite the audience to experience the music in a new and engaging way.
The audience is also asked to name-their-own-ticket-price for the concert, paying what they can afford and what they deem the concert is worth (beer is sold separately).
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