The Well-Tempered Ear
Longtime friends organist Greg Zelek and Madison native and award-winning trumpeter Ansel Norris team up for a FREE live-streamed concert this Tuesday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
Two longtime friends and fellow musicians will team up this Tuesday night, April 27, to close this season’s organ concert series, sponsored in the Overture Center by the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
It will be live-streamed online because of the pandemic restrictions on attendance.
The concert features the critically acclaimed MSO organist Greg Zelek (below left) and Ansel Norris (below right), an award-winning trumpeter who is a native of Madison.
The program includes works by Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn and Samuel Barber among others.
The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. CDT. It is FREE but you must register. The concert will be available to registered listeners for unlimited access through May 31.
Here is a link to the MSO website where you can register. It also has more information about the program and biographies of the two performers: https://madisonsymphony.org/event/norris-zelek-2021-streamed/
Here is more background. It appeared in the latest issue of the email newsletter of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO), of which Norris was a member for many years:
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Ansel Norris and Greg Zelek first met in 2010 as high school seniors who had both been selected as finalists in the YoungARTS Awards. The YoungARTS Award is a big competition with just a small percentage of students selected for the $10,000 prize from the thousands of high school applicants. In classical music that year, 12 students became finalists and assembled in Miami for a week of master classes with internationally recognized arts leaders. “You know, there really is a synergy with trumpet and organ. The sounds are produced in a similar way and the way the sounds blend together is really special. Even then, I imagined a concert together.” Ten years later, the two friends were dreaming up this concert when Greg was in Miami in February, 2020. And then the world shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Norris has distinguished himself as a solo, orchestral and chamber musician. As Greg Zelek (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) writes: “Concerti of Bach and Haydn will bookend this program filled with music that is both written and arranged for this electrifying pairing of instruments. Mr. Norris’ remarkable technique and soaring lyricism will be on full display while our Mighty Klais both supports and shimmers in this exhilarating performance you won’t want to miss!” Register here for Tuesday’s concert!
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Classical music: Con Vivo will perform a “Winter Warmth” chamber music concert this Sunday afternoon. Plus, a FREE viola da gamba concert is Friday at noon
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features the viola da gamba duo ViolMedium in “Façades and Duplicities,” a multi-dimensional exploration of the rich harmonic, timbral and dramatic potentials offered by violas da gamba.
The viol is the medium through which gambists Eric Miller of Madison and Phillip Serna of Chicago bridge contemporary and historically informed performance. They use experimental and innovative programming as exemplified in masterworks by Carl Friedrich Abel, Bela Bartok, Gottfried Finger, Marin Marais, Christoph Schaffrath and others.
The concert runs from 12:15 to 1 p.m. Food and beverages are allowed.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Madison-based chamber music group Con Vivo (below) will perform a “Winter Warmth” program of chamber music this coming Sunday afternoon, Feb. 3.
The concert will include the Finale from Symphony No. 6 for organ by Charles Marie Widor; the Quartet for oboe and strings by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; and the Piano Quintet for piano, clarinet and strings, Op. 42, by Czech composer Zdenek Fibich.
The concert takes place this Sunday afternoon, Feb. 3, at 2:30 p.m. in the First Congregational United Church of Christ, 1609 University Ave. across from Camp Randall Stadium.
Tickets can be purchased at the door. Admission is $18 for adults, $15 for seniors and students.
Audience members are invited to join the musicians after the concert for a free reception to discuss the concert.
New to this concert is that Con Vivo will perform in two different spaces. The first half of the concert will be in the sanctuary, and the second half in the chapel at the First Congregational Church. This will provide the audience with different experiences for hearing the chamber music.
In remarking about the concert, Con Vivo’s artistic director Robert Taylor said, “We continue our 17th season with music evocative of warm winter thoughts during these cold, dark winter days that we often have.
“The wonderful lush strains of Charles Marie Widor’s organ music are contrasted by the bright cheerful music of Mozart in his oboe quartet. (You can hear the opening movement of Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in the YouTube video at the bottom.) The afternoon is capped off by the rarely played Piano Quintet by Fibich (below). What better way to spend a cold winter afternoon?”
Con Vivo is a professional chamber music ensemble comprised of Madison area musicians assembled from the ranks of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and various other performing groups familiar to Madison audiences.
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Classical music: This afternoon’s Schubertiade concert at the UW-Madison will be STREAMED LIVE because of the cold weather
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post from co-founders, co-directors and performers Bill Lutes and Martha Fischer, and from other performers on today’s Schubertiade concert at the UW-Madison:
We are very much looking forward to welcoming you to our sixth annual Schubertiade in Mills Hall this afternoon – Sunday, Jan 27 — at 3 p.m.
It has been such a joy for all of us to prepare this music — all from the last year of Schubert’s life — to share with you, and to once again celebrate the genius of Schubert in your company.
For more information about today’s Schubertiade, including the pre-concert lecture, all performers and the complete program, go to:
Because of tomorrow’s forecast for very low temperatures, we are happy to share the news that the concert will be LIVE-STREAMED on the Internet. If you are unable to get to the concert in person, we hope you will join us online.
While it is always wonderful to have you with us in the hall to share the special feeling of community and love of this great music — not to mention hearing your voice joining us in our traditional audience sing-along of “An die Musik”! (see the YouTube video at the bottom) — we understand if the frigid weather makes going out an unadvisable option. So we would still like to know that you have the opportunity to tune in and be with us via the wonder of technology.
Use this link and you will be able to watch the live stream of the concert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA9n6wHCdDI
Best wishes — and stay warm!
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Classical music: Today is the winter solstice. What music best captures or celebrates winter?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is the Winter Solstice.
Winter arrives at 10:28 a.m. Central Standard Time.
That means we are turning the corner. Starting today, nights will get shorter and days will get longer.
But there is still plenty of the year’s most blustery and bone-chilling weather ahead of us.
Lots of classical music celebrates winter.
Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” is a popular choice.
So is the “Winter Dreams” symphony by Tchaikovsky.
Here are links to two compilations of winter music, lasting for a total of more than two hours, on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNMIgZAx2gQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2jAweLVLRk
But no music is more wintry than the celebrated song cycle “Winterreise” or “Winter Journey” by Franz Schubert (below).
Every year, The Ear uses the solstice and the coming of winter to listen once again to this deeply moving and surprisingly modern song cycle.
Many excellent recordings exist. Famed German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (below left, with pianist Gerald Moore) made multiple recordings over many years.
In recent years Matthias Goerner, Thomas Quasthoff, Mark Padmore, Jonas Kaufmann and many others have already made acclaimed recordings, always with distinguished pianists including Gerald Moore, Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Daniel Barenboim and Paul Lewis.
Yet I always find the most satisfying version to be the one made by English tenor Ian Bostridge with Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andnes.
Bostridge’s tenor voice lends a lightness that has a certain clarity and almost speech-like quality to it.
And Bostridge, who wrote the excellent book “Schubert Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession” – a song-by-song analysis of the cycle — knows the texts and contexts of the songs inside and out. His are well-informed and thoroughly thought-out interpretations.
The whole cycle takes about 70 minutes to listen to.
This year The Ear might do one of the 24 songs in the cycle each day and then the entire cycle in one sitting at the end.
The different approach might yield some new insights and new pleasure.
Anyway, choose your own artists and your own way of listening.
But it is a great and timely choice.
Here is “Good Night,” the first song of “Winterreise”:
And here is “The Organ Grinder,” the last song and a favorite of writer Samuel Beckett who found a shared sensibility in the lean austerity of the music of the music and the text:
What winter music would you listen to or recommend to mark the solstice and the coming of winter?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: What is the best music to listen to in sub-zero cold weather?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Well, I know three of the pieces I will NOT be listening to this week: the “Alpine” Symphony by Richard Strauss, the “Sinfonia Antarctica” by Ralph Vaughan Williams and the “Winter Wind” etude by Chopin.
BRRRRRRRR.
This week, we in the Upper Midwest are getting a typical January blast from the Arctic. The low temp last night was -11 degree F. As I am writing, the temperature has risen all the way to -8.
It will get above zero today. Briefly.
But then another winter Arctic front moves in and we again drop done below zero again with absolute temps down to -20 and wind chills down to -50 or more. On Wednesday, the daytime high will be -3.
So it seems The Ear will be logging quite a lot of indoor time since no warm up is in store until the weekend.
Hence The Ear’s Question of the Week: When the weather is this dangerously cold and you end up pretty much housebound, what is the music you like to listen to?
Sometimes I want to explore a new piece or a new composer.
But often, feeling deprived of normal activities, I want the comfort of listening to something familiar and maybe a little passionate and Romantic, which translates into “heated.” For one example, look below at the YouTube video of pianist Arthur Rubinstein playing the Ballade No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 52, by Chopin.
Of course, one could choose works on a grander scale such as symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven or Gustav Mahler, concertos by Robert Schumann or Peter Tchaikovsky, oratorios by George Frideric Handel, masses and requiems, and of course operas by Verdi and Puccini.
Or perhaps, like me, you favor a more intimate but collaborative rather than solo genre -– perhaps a string quartet or the piano trio, one of my favorites. I find the music of Franz Schubert so friendly and empathetic.
There is also some about the music of the Baroque and Classical eras that seems light, rational, clear-headed and reassuring. Something like Comfort Food for the Ears.
So perhaps I will put on some music by Johann Sebastian Bach or some of my favorite chamber music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A week like this could also be a good start on listening to a series, something like all the symphonies or string quartets of Franz Joseph Haydn or all the piano concertos of Mozart.
Another good choice would be to set out to explore the 550 sunny Italian-Spanish keyboard sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.
Maybe it is an instrument that provides a respite from the cold — perhaps the guitar.
Anyway: Don’t be shy. Help us get through this bitter cold snap. Please use the Comment section to let The Ear and other readers know what you are listening to in weather like this -– or what you think you would listen to. Or what we should listen to. Include a link to a YouTube performance, if you can.
The Ear wants to hear.
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The Well-Tempered Ear 