The Well-Tempered Ear
The New York Times names the top 25 classical recordings of 2020 and includes sample tracks
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By Jacob Stockinger
What did the holidays bring you?
Did Hanukkah, Christmas or Kwanzaa bring you a gift card?
A subscription to a streaming service?
Maybe some cash?
Or maybe you just want to hear some new music or new musicians or new interpretations of old classics?
Every year, the music critics of The New York Times list their top 25 recordings of the past year. Plus at the end of the story, the newspaper offers a sample track from each recording to give you even more guidance.
This year is no exception (below).
In fact, the listing might be even more welcome this year, given the coronavirus pandemic with the lack of live concerts and the isolation and self-quarantine that have ensued.
The Ear hasn’t heard all of the picks or even the majority of them. But the ones he has heard are indeed outstanding. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear a sample of the outstanding Rameau-Debussy recital by the acclaimed Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafssen, who scored major successes with recent albums of Philip Glass and Johann Sebastian Bach.)
Here is a link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/arts/music/best-classical-music.html
Of course not all critics agree.
The Ear has already listed the nominations for the Grammy Awards (a link is below), and more critics’ picks will be featured in coming days.
You should also notice that a recording of Ethel Smyth’s “The Prison” — featuring soprano Sarah Brailey (below), a graduate student at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music and a co-founder of Just Bach — is on the Times’ list as well as on the list of Grammy nominations.
What new recordings – or even old recordings — would you recommend?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The piano played an important role in the life of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, whose democracy party just triumphed over the military in the election held this past week in Myanmar, or Burma.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Often we lose a sense of the importance of music to non-musicians and to life outside the concert hall and conservatory or school of music.
Which is a reminder why supporting this weekend’s concerts by the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras has social and educational as well as artistic meaning. Here is a link to the WYSO schedules and programs;
But this past week the world also received a vivid and dramatic reminder of just how important music can be in the life of the non-musical world.
It has to do with the landslide victory of the National League for Democracy in Myanmar, formerly called Burma. That is the party led by the democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi (below) – or The Lady, as her compatriots and supporters simply refer to her.
During her 20 years of house arrest by the military, the piano helped her keep her sanity and her resolve.
And hearing her play the piano also reassured her neighbors outside her home in Yangon (Rangoon) about her emotional and mental health.
Exercise, study and playing the piano (below) all proved key during the 20 years of house arrest imposed by the military on the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
It is also worth noting that to honor her, on its 50th anniversary, the famous Leeds international Piano Competition in Great Britain in the United Kingdom renamed its top Gold Medal in her honor.
Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan even wrote and performed a special song, “Unplayed Piano,” for Suu Kyi in honor of her 60th birthday in 2005. You can hear it in there Youtube video at the bottom.
Here is an overview:
http://theappendix.net/issues/2013/7/solitude-and-sandaya-the-strange-history-of-pianos-in-burma
And here is another story with more specific details, including her favorite composers – Bach, Telemann, Mozart, Clementi, Pachelbel and Bartok — and how piano tuners, when finally allowed by the military to repair her piano, dealt with the forcefulness with which she sometimes played as well as with the effects of the hot and humid climate:
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/15/world/la-fg-myanmar-piano-tuner-20121116
Tags: Arts, Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi, Bach, Baroque, Bartok, Burma, Classical music, Clementi, democracy, Election, General election, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, Madison, Mozart, Music, Myanmar, National League for Democracy, Nobel Peace Prize, Pachelbel, Piano, Rangoon, Telemann, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Yangon, YouTube
Classical music: Michael Keller and Martha Thomas will perform a FREE recital of music for piano-four hands this Sunday afternoon.
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By Jacob Stockinger
On this coming Sunday, Sept. 27, at 3 p.m. pianists Michael Keller and Martha Thomas (below) will be presenting a FREE piano, four-hand program at Christ Presbyterian Church, 944 East Gorham Street, in downtown Madison.
Martha Thomas is faculty member of the University of Georgia Hodgson School of Music.
Michael Keller is a retired professor of piano at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point who is now based in Madison.
The program includes music by Johann Sebastian Bach (“Sheep May Safely Graze”); Muzio Clementi (Sonata No. 1); Franz Schubert (Rondo in A Major); Johannes Brahms (Waltzes, Op. 39) and the “Gazebo Dances” by the contemporary American composer John Corigliano. (You can hear the Overture to the “Gazebo Dances” in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
The program is FREE and open to the public.
Both pianists were students of the late Howard Karp at the UW-Madison School of Music. When they reunited at his memorial last fall, they planned this program.
Tags: Arts, Bach, Baroque, Chamber music, Classical music, Clementi, four-hands, Franz Schubert, Gazebo Dances, Georgia, Howard Karp, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, John Corigliano, Music, Overture, Piano, rondo, Sheep May Safely Graze, Stevens Point, University of Georgia, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, UW-Stevens Point, Waltz, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: Starting off the New Year, can you identify the opening of certain works of music? Here is an NPR puzzler to open 2015.
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By Jacob Stockinger
What is a good way to start off the New Year musically?
There are always the New Year’s Day celebrations from Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic. They get broadcast on PBS and also National Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Radio.
Here is a link to a preview of this year’s celebrations:
But this year sees another way, an intriguing and original way, to mark the new year: A quiz about how great works of classical music begin and whether you can recognize them right away.
So here is The New Year Puzzler from the Deceptive Cadence blog on NPR.
Go ahead.
Take it and see how well you do.
The Ear wants to hear.
And below is a popular YouTube video, with 2.5 million hits, of one of my favorite and most inspired and dramatic openings that should be immediately recognizable:
Tags: Alban Berg, Arts, Baroque, Beethoven, Brahms, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Chamber music, Classical era, Classical music, Clementi, concerto, Dvorak, Early music, Emerson Quartet, George Solti, Grieg, Haydn, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Krystian Zimerman, Leif Ove Andsnes, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Marc-André Hamelin, Martha Argerich, Metropolitan Opera, Mozart, Music, Musikverein, NPR, opera, Orchestra, PBS, Piano, Prokofiev, Public broadcasting, Rachmaninoff, Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Saint-Saens, Schubert, Schumann, Shostakovich, Sibelius, String quartet, symphony, Tchaikovsky, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Vienna, Vienna New Year's Concert, Vienna Philharmonic, Vivaldi, YouTube
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