The Well-Tempered Ear
NPR names the Top 10 classical recordings of 2023
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By Jacob Stockinger
Every holiday season, The Ear used to post various lists of the top classical recordings of the year as a kind of gift guide for giving or receiving CDs.
Such lists can still be used that way — especially now that audiophiles have turned to vinyl LPs that are quite expensive as well as limited in choice.
But since so many of us now have streaming services, I view such lists more and a guide to exploring rather than purchasing.
For example I can listen to the first album in 12 years by Awadagin Pratt (below and in the YouTube video at the bottom). It is “Stillpoint” and it features six pieces commissioned by Pratt. By streaming I can decide if I like it without buying it – and getting stuck if I don’t, which is often the case with new music.
Indeed, I think one of the best and most economical gifts one can gift a classical music lover is a trial subscription to a streaming service. For what it is worth, I find Apple Music and Apple Music Classical to be extremely useful and comprehensive in their offerings, including countless out-of-print vintage and outstanding recordings.
But their are several others — including Spotify, Idaho, Presto Music and Qobuz.
Plus, my hunch is that the coming year will bring improvements in offerings and user-friendly listening to all of the streaming services.
In any case, here is the Top 10 list of new recordings from 2023 with numerous YouTube samples and helpful comparisons to other composers and styles of music. It has been compiled by the veteran critic and blogger Tom Huizenga (below) of National Public Radio (NPR):
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1218517774/the-10-best-classical-albums-of-2023
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Here are the coronation playlists for the very musical King Charles III
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By Jacob Stockinger
Will you watch and follow the coronation of King Charles III (the official royal logo is below)? It takes place this Saturday, May 6, 2023. Live coverage will begin airing at 5 a.m. EDT for most media outlets.
Here is some other information you might want to know to get the most out of the rarely held historic event and even to act as your own music and culture critic.
As Prince of Wales, Charles was an avid listener and a talented amateur musician who played the piano, guitar and cello (below in a photo by Getty Images).
Given that background, it is little wonder that the king has lined up many royal commissions for the coronation by composers and performers of new classical music:
https://www.royal.uk/coronation-music-commissions
And if you want to celebrate the coronation in a more pop music or rock music way — yes to The Beatles and Harry Styles but no to The Rolling Stones and Elton John — here is another playlist on Spotify by “DJ” King Charles (below):
Her is the official coronation website, with photos, bunting designs and even recipes to download:
https://coronation.gov.uk/toolkit/
Finally here is a half-hour preparatory YouTube video, an introduction from NBC:
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Classical music: FREE percussion, brass and wind concerts are featured this week at the UW-Madison
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By Jacob Stockinger
In the week before Spring Break, the Mead Witter School of music at the UW-Madison will feature FREE concerts of percussion, brass and wind music.
TUESDAY, MARCH 10
At 7:30 p.m. in the Collins Recital Hall of the new Hamel Music Center, 740 University Ave., the percussion department will give a FREE recital. No program is listed.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11
At 7:30 p.m. in Collins Recital Hall, guest percussionist-composer Mark Stone (below) will give a FREE solo recital of original compositions for mbira and gyil.
The program will include music for the newly invented array mbira, an American-made 120 key lamellaphone. Stone will also share music composed for the Dagara gyil, a xylophone from Ghana as well as mbira traditions of South Africa and Uganda.
Also on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall, the acclaimed Wisconsin Brass Quintet will give a FREE faculty recital.
The program is:
Johann Sebastian Bach – Contrapunctus IV from “Die Kunst Der Fuge” (The Art of Fugue). You can hear Canadian Brass perform it in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Andre Lafosse – “Suite Impromptu”
Werner Pirchner – “L’Homme au marteau dans la poche” (Man With a Hammer in His Pocket)
Rich Shemaria – “Pandora’s Magic Castle”
Per Nørgård – “Vision”
The 2019-2020 Wisconsin Brass Quintet (below) is: Jean Laurenz and Gilson Silva, trumpets; Daniel Grabois, horn; Mark Hetzler, trombone; and Tom Curry, tuba.
Please note: In spring 2020, Mark Hetzler will be on sabbatical. His replacement will be Will Porter (below), instructor of trombone at Eastern Illinois University . Read about Porter here
THURSDAY MARCH 12
At 7:30 p.m. in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall, the UW Wind Ensemble will give a FREE concert.
The ensemble will perform under the batons of director Scott Teeple (below) and guest conductor Ross Wolf.
The program is:
Frank Ticheli: “Apollo Unleashed” from Symphony No. 2
Ching–chu Hu: In Memory Of…*
With special guest The Hunt Quartet
*World Premiere Performance/UW Band Commissioning Member
Morten Larudisen/Reynolds: “Contre Qui, Rose”
Beverly Taylor, guest conductor.
Jodie Blackshaw: Symphony, “Leunig’s Prayer Book”*
*Wisconsin Premiere
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Classical music: The gala opening this weekend of the UW-Madison’s new Hamel Music Center is SOLD OUT. What do you think of the building, the music and the event? Plus, veteran music critic John W. Barker has died
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ALERT: Word arrived late last night that the respected longtime music critic John W. Barker, a retired UW-Madison professor of medieval history, died Thursday morning. He wrote locally for Isthmus, The Capital Times and this blog. Details will be shared when they are known.
By Jacob Stockinger
This weekend, Oct. 25-27, marks the official gala opening of the new Hamel Music Center (below, in a photo by Bryce Richter for University Communications) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music. It is located at 740 University Ave., next to the new wing of the Chazen Museum of Art, which has a special exhibit relating to the new music center.
The impressive $58-million structure, which has taken many years to fund (completely privately) and then to build, will celebrate its opening tonight, Saturday night (while the 14th annual Halloween FreakFest on State Street is happening) and Sunday afternoon.
The performers will include distinguished alumni, faculty members and students.
Here is a link to an overall schedule as published on the School of Music’s home website: https://www.music.wisc.edu/hamel-music-center-opening-schedule/
Thanks to an astute reader who found what The Ear couldn’t find, here is a complete schedule — long, varied and impressive — of works and performers: https://www.music.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/20191025-Hamel-Music-Center-Opening-Weekend.pdf
And here is a link to the official UW-Madison press release with more background and details about the building: https://news.wisc.edu/mead-witter-school-of-musics-hamel-music-center-opening-this-fall/
UW-Madison composer Laura Schwendinger (below) has been commissioned to write a Fanfare that will receive its world premiere tonight.
The opening promises to be a success, complete with receptions at the end of each performance.
In fact, the public has signed on enough that the FREE tickets to all events are SOLD OUT, according to the School of Music’s home website.
Taste is personal and varies, and The Ear has heard mixed reviews of the new building. (For the special occasion, you can hear “The Consecration of the House” Overture by Beethoven, performed by the La Scala opera house orchestra in Milan under Riccardo Muti, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Basically, people seem to agree that the acoustics are much improved over Mills Hall and Morphy Recital Hall in the old Humanities Building.
But public opinion seems more divided over other aspects, from the overall external architecture and interior design to the smaller size of the big hall, the seats and seating layout, and the restrooms.
So if you go – or have already gone – let the rest of us know what you think about those various aspects of the new building and about the various performers and programs.
As a warm-up preview, here are photos of the main halls or spaces, all taken by Bryce Richter for University Communications:
Here is the 660-seat Mead Witter Concert Hall:
Here is the 300-seat Collins Recital Hall:
And here is the Lee/Kaufman Rehearsal Hall:
But what do you say? You be the critic.
The Ear and others hope to see COMMENTS from listeners and especially performers. What is it like to perform there? Or to sit and listen?
What does the public think of the new building and concert halls? Are you satisfied? What do you like and what don’t you like?
Should some things have been done – or not done – in your opinion?
Does the building and do the concert halls live up to the expectations and hype?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The Madison Symphony Orchestra opens its new season with a strong and memorable concert that had something for everyone — with no outside help from a guest artist
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ALERT: On this Saturday, Oct. 5, from 4 to 5 p.m., cellist Amit Peled will teach a master class at Farley’s House of Pianos, 6522 Seybold Road, near West Towne Mall, where he will instruct local students. This is a FREE event that the public is invited to observe, and is part of the two concerts by Peled and pianist Daniel del Pino. For more information, go to:
By Jacob Stockinger
Many orchestras, including the Madison Symphony Orchestra (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers), often use the opening concert of a new season as a chance to lure audiences by wowing them with some big-name guest soloist.
But last weekend maestro John DeMain (below, in a photo by Greg Anderson) once again preferred to show off his own ensemble. And it worked, making for a memorable concert.
The MSO opener had something for everyone, and what you saw as the highlight probably depended more on your personal taste or preference than on the overall impressively tight playing and singing of the MSO, its principals and its chorus.
It seemed clear that, for most listeners the MSO’s young organist Greg Zelek (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) filled the role of the impressive imported star or guest artist.
The virtuosic Zelek is simply so good that he managed to turn a second-rate piece by Samuel Barber into a first-rate crowd-pleaser that brought huge applause and a long standing ovation, then an encore and another standing ovation.
As music, the concerto-like “Toccata Festiva” (1960) is simply not on par with Barber’s Violin Concerto or his Adagio for Strings or his Overture to “The School for Scandal.” It is 15 minutes of mostly loud and bombastic music meant to show off the new organ that it was commissioned for.
The King of Instruments seems to invite such bragging. And the boyish, vest-clad Zelek milked the score by Barber (below) for all it was worth, including an astounding three-minute cadenza played only with the feet. It’s hard to argue with such dramatic success.
If you preferred more serious fare, there was the Symphony No. 7 in D minor by Antonin Dvorak (below). Last spring, DeMain announced his fondness for Dvorak – in the spring the MSO will perform his Requiem.
DeMain’s feeling for Dvorak showed in a convincing and engaging performance of this darker, non-programmatic Brahmsian work that goes beyond the Czech folk dances, folk song-like melodies and nature mimicry of Dvorak’s other major symphonies and chamber music.
If you wanted exciting Romanticism, it would be hard to beat Wagner’s rhythmic strings soaring in the Overture to the opera “Tannhauser” by Richard Wagner (below). And that flowed into Wagner’s sensual “Venusberg” music that featured the MSO chorus singing offstage.
But The Ear thinks that the best measure of musicianship – orchestral, instrumental or vocal — is not how loudly they can play or sing, but how softly.
For that reason, he found the standout work at the concert to be “Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun” by Claude Debussy (below). The balance among various sections proved ideal at expressing subtlety. You could hear everything combining to make a distinctive and atmospheric tonal color.
For example, it is hard to imagine more sensual playing of the opening theme than how principal flutist Stephanie Jutt (below) did it. The performance and interpretation projected the exact kind of impressionistic seductiveness that the composer meant for it to have. For sheer beauty of sound, it took the top spot. (You can see a graphic depiction of Debussy’s score in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Still, there seemed to be more than the usual number of empty seats. Was it the rainy weather? The football weekend? Or do people still miss the thrill of hearing a well-known guest artist opening the season?
What do you think?
What was your favorite piece on the opening MSO program? And why?
The Ear wants to hear.
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: What composer or piece of music would you like to hear once the coronavirus is contained and concert halls open again?
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By Jacob Stockinger
The news can be confusing and even contradictory about some specifics, but the general direction of reports and statistics about the coronavirus pandemic and deaths from COVID-19 is clear.
It is going to be a long haul until we safely get to go hear live music in large crowds again, just as The Ear talked about earlier this week. (Below is a photo of conductor John DeMain and the Madison Symphony Orchestra in Overture Hall.)
Here is a link to that post: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/08/11/classical-music-its-clear-to-the-ear-it-will-be-at-least-another-full-year-before-music-lovers-in-the-u-s-can-safely-attend-live-concerts-what-do-you-think/
When performers finally get to play, and the concert halls finally get to open, and audiences finally get to listen in person, here is what The Ear wants to know:
What composer would you like hear?
Maybe Beethoven (below) because so much of the Beethoven Year – marking the composer’s 250th birthday this coming December – has been canceled or postponed?
Maybe Johann Sebastian Bach (below) because he just seems so basic, varied and universal?
And what specific piece of music would you like to hear?
Perhaps Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony “Choral” with its “Ode to Joy”? Or maybe the “Eroica” Symphony? Or one of the string quartets?
Perhaps the “St. Mathew Passion” or the Mass in B Minor? Maybe one or more of the cantatas?
Should the music pay homage to the suffering, loss and death – perhaps with Mozart’s “Requiem”? Or Brahms’ “A German Requiem”? Or Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony?
Or should the music be upbeat and joyous, like Dvorak’s “Carnival Overture” (below in the YouTube video)? Or some glittering and whirling waltzes by the Strauss family?
Is there an opera that seems especially relevant?
Would you prefer instrumental, choral or vocal music?
And what period, era or style would you prefer?
It will be great to be reacquainted with old and familiar friends. But it would also seem an ideal time to commission and perform new music.
Leave your suggestions in the Comment section with, if possible, a link to a YouTube performance to help us decide.
The Ear wants to hear.
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