The Well-Tempered Ear
The Madison Bach Musicians will open its new season with a virtual online concert of Haydn and Mozart this Saturday night and Sunday afternoon
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement, about a promising contrast-and-compare concert, from the Madison Bach Musicians:
The Madison Bach Musicians (MBM) will start its 17th season this Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, Oct. 3 and 4, with a virtual chamber music concert and livestream event featuring the irrepressibly joyous, witty and poised music of Classical-era masters Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).
The performances features period instruments and historically informed performance practices.
See details near the bottom about the schedules and how to buy tickets.
Performers are violinist Kangwon Kim and cellist James Waldo (on gut-strung period instruments), fortepianist Trevor Stephenson, and soprano soloist Morgan Balfour — winner of the 2019 Handel Aria Competition. (Below top is Kangwon Kim; below middle is James Waldo; and below bottom is Morgan Balfour.)
The broadcast will begin with a 30-minute pre-concert lecture by MBM artistic director Trevor Stephenson (below, in a photo by Kent Sweitzer) illuminating the program’s repertoire, the lives of Haydn and Mozart, and the aesthetic aims of the period instruments.
While most of the pieces on the program are buoyant and full of celebration, the concert will begin with a pensive and melancholy work commensurate with our current pandemic times.
Mozart composed the Sonata in E minor for violin and fortepiano in 1778 at the age of 22 while on tour in Paris. His mother, who was with him on the tour, became suddenly ill and died unexpectedly. This sonata is the only piece of instrumental music Mozart ever composed in the key of E minor, and its blend of gravitas, sparseness and tenderness is heartbreakingly poignant.
Mozart’s Piano Trio in G major, composed in 1788, shows him at his sunniest and most affable, with one brilliant and catchy tune after another suspended effortlessly — at least in Mozart’s hands! ― within the balance of Classical form.
The program’s first half ends with five of Mozart’s songs. Mozart truly loved the soprano voice, and he lavished some of his greatest writing upon it. The set includes perhaps his best-known song, Das Veilchen (The Violet)―which is also, oddly enough, Mozart’s only setting of a text by the German poet Goethe.
The second half of the concert is devoted to the music of Mozart’s near contemporary, Joseph Haydn, who was just 24 years older than Mozart.
Though the two composers came from very different musical and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Haydn (below) was lower working class, rural, and musical but not professionally trained.
Mozart (below) was urban, solid middle class, musically trained, sophisticated, and ambitious.
Both managed to carve out successful careers in the fertile musical culture of Vienna and its environs. They certainly knew each other and even made music together on occasion, playing in string quartets — with Haydn on violin and Mozart on viola.
Haydn composed two sets of English Canzonettas (songs) during his visits to England during the early 1790s.
The Mermaid, with its flirtatious beckoning, stretches the confines of the parlor setting (where this music was most likely performed) and suggests a cabaret environment. Fidelity, on the other hand, stays within the parlor style, emphasizing how the bond of devotion can overcome physical separation. Haydn brilliantly interweaves stormy, naturalistic episodes with declarations of unbending loyalty.
The concert will close with Haydn’s mercurial Piano Trio No. 27 in C major. Also composed during his London visits in the 1790s, this trio is the first of a set of three dedicated to the London-based virtuoso pianist Therese Bartolozzi. The Presto finale―with its unbridled high spirits―is a supreme example of Classical Era cheeky, theatrically conceived wit. (You can hear the finale in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
SCHEDULE AND TICKETS
As a result of public health guidelines in response to Covid-19 that do not allow for an in-person audience, we will livestream our concert from Grace Episcopal Church, downtown on Capitol Square, on Saturday evening for at-home viewing. (Below are Trevor Stephenson and Kangwon Kim rehearsing in masks at Stephenson’s home.)
The event will begin with a pre-concert talk by Trevor Stephenson at 7:30 p.m., and after the 8 p.m. concert, the musicians will remain on stage to answer questions submitted by our audience.
On Sunday, starting at 3 p.m. we will rebroadcast the Saturday evening recording and follow that with a live question-and-answer session with our musicians from their homes.
After purchasing tickets for $15 per household, you will be sent a link to access the performance. The recorded lecture and video will be available for up to 72 hours after they take place.
To purchase tickets, go to: https://madisonbachmusicians.org/oct-3-4-haydn-mozart/ or to: https://madison-bach-musicians.square.site/product/haydn-mozart-oct-3-4-livestream/54?cs=true
For information about the Madison Bach Musicians’ full season, go to: https://madisonbachmusicians.org/season-overview/
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Classical music: This Friday night, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra will make a LIVE RECORDING of the encore performance of the two-piano concerto it commissioned and premiered two years ago
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By Jacob Stockinger
Want to be part of a live concert recording?
At first look, it seems like a typical — and in one way even repetitive – concert by the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (below).
But this particular concert — which is this Friday night, March 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the Capitol Theater of the Overture Center – is anything but usual.
In fact, it promises to be unique and historic.
That is because the encore performance of the two-piano concerto “Double Rainbow” –- commissioned by the WCO and composed by Thomas Cabaniss for wife-and-husband pianists Jessica Chow Shinn (a Madison native) and Michael Shinn (below) — will be recorded live.
Also on the program is a string orchestra transcription of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night,” an entrancing work that is an emotionally intense, late Romantic work that precedes Schoenberg’s 12-tone or atonal period; and the Symphony No. 58 in F Major by Franz Joseph Haydn.
For more information and tickets ($12-$80), go to:
https://wisconsinchamberorchestra.org/performances/masterworks-iii-4/
The same pianists, who are on the faculty of the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, gave the world premiere of the work under the baton of WCO music director and conductor Andrew Sewell two years ago. (The two pianists will be interviewed by Norman Gilliland at noon on this Friday during “The Midday” show on Wisconsin Public Radio.)
It proved an accessible work that clearly pleased the audience. (In 2018, Sewell also programmed the concerto for the San Luis Obispo Symphony, which he directs in California.)
“I like tunes,” said Cabaniss (below) – who will attend the performance this Friday night – when he talked to The Ear in an email Q&A from 2017 on the occasion of the world premiere.
Here is a link to that interview, which also has background information about Cabaniss and the inspiration for the concerto:
Then Sewell heard the same pianists play another piece by Cabaniss – “Tiny Bits of Outrageous Love” for two pianos with no orchestra or other accompaniment.
“Andrew heard them and thought the piece would be a great pairing with ‘Double Rainbow’ for a recording,” says Alan Fish, who is the interim executive director of the WCO.
A release date has not yet been set for the recording. The goal is to issue a recording in the near future, adds Fish, both in a CD format and a downloadable format. More details will be known once the Shinns have recorded “Tiny Bits,” Fish adds.
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Classical music: UW-Madison pianist Jessica Johnson celebrates International Women’s Day this Friday night with a FREE recital of all-female composers and a special keyboard for smaller hands
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features Ukrainian pianist Yana Avedyan in solo works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Sergei Prokofiev and Franz Liszt. The program will include music from her upcoming appearance at Carnegie Hall. The musicale runs from 12:15 to 1 p.m.
By Jacob Stockinger
March is Women’s History Month, and this Friday is International Women’s Day.
To mark the latter occasion, Jessica Johnson, who teaches piano and piano pedagogy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, where she has won an award for distinguished teaching, will perform a program of all-women composers.
The FREE recital is this Friday night, March 8, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall. Johnson (below, in a photo by M.P. King for The Wisconsin State Journal) will perform works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, pairing works with interesting connections.
Here is what Johnson has to say about the program:
“Dreaming, Op. 15, No. 3, by Amy Beach (below top) and The Currents by Sarah Kirkland Snider (below bottom) both feature beautiful lyricism and long-line phrases inspired by poetry.
“2019 is the bicentennial celebration of Clara Schumann’s birth, so I wanted to honor her and her tremendous legacy. Her Romance, Op. 11, No. 1, was composed in 1839 in the midst of the difficult year when Clara (below) was separated from her beloved Robert. (You can hear the Romance in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
“Bolts of Loving Thunder by Missy Mazola (below) was written in 2013 for pianist Emanuel Ax as a piece that would appear on a program of works by Brahms. Mazzoli alludes to the romantic, stormy side of “pre-beard” Brahms, with exuberant floating melodies, hand crossings and dense layers of chords.
“Troubled Water (1967) by Margaret Bonds (below) is based on the spiritual “Wade in the Water,” with hints of blues, jazz and gospel traditions throughout.
“Azuretta (2000) by Chicago-based composer, Regina Harris Baiocchi (below) describes Azuretta as a musical reaction to a debilitating stroke Dr. Hale Smith, her former composition teacher, suffered in 2000. The work honors his incredible legacy by mixing classical and jazz idioms.
“Germaine Tailleferre (below), the only female member of Les Six, the group of early 20th-century French composers, wrote her beautiful Reverie in 1964 as an homage to Debussy’s “Homage à Rameau” from Images, Book I.
“Preludes (2002) by Elena Ruehr (below) draw inspiration from Debussy’s Preludes, mimimalism and Romantic piano music.
“Also, as an advocate for the adoption of the Donison-Steinbuhler Standard — which offers alternatively sized piano keyboards for small-handed pianists — I will perform on the Steinbuhler DS 5.5 ™ (“7/8”) piano keyboard.
“By performing on a keyboard that better fits my hands — studies suggest that the conventional keyboard is too large for 87% of women — and featuring works by female composers who are typically underrepresented in concert programming, I hope to bring awareness to gender biases that still exist in classical music.
“For more information about both me and the smaller keyboard, go to the following story by Gayle Worland in The Wisconsin State Journal:
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Classical music: UW choral groups and a jazz quintet join forces Saturday night for a FREE concert of world premieres to honor the bicycle
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By Jacob Stockinger
Here is an announcement from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music:
A FREE concert — called ”Free Wheeling: A Tribute to the Bicycle” – takes place this Saturday night at 7 p.m. in Mills Hall.
The UW Madrigal Singers (below) and Chorale, under the direction of Bruce Gladstone, will join forces with a jazz group.
The concert opens with five world premieres, written specifically for this concert.
“I was surprised, given the bicycle’s popularity, that there weren’t many choral works about bikes,” noted Gladstone (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot). “It seems to be more the domain of the solo popular ballad or rock bands. There are loads of poems about bikes though, so I just commissioned new works from composers I know.”
There are two works from John Stevens (below), veteran composer and UW-Madison emeritus professor. “Toasting Song” is a rollicking number about the pleasures of both cycling and wine. “A Bicycler’s Song” takes a poem in praise of bicycles and cycling and sets it in a vocal jazz idiom reminiscent of the Manhattan Transfer.
UW-Madison alumus and former Madrigal Singer Scott Gendel (below) also provided two new works for this event. “She Waits for Me” is a lush ballad that celebrates the joys of love and loyalty, while “Little Things” offers us a cautionary tale of a cyclist’s visit to church one Sunday morning.
Carl Buttke, a current graduate student, composed the fifth new work for this concert, a picturesque tale of a memorable day spent in the Austrian Alps, “Cycling the Rosental.”
The program will also include a fast and fun work for women’s voices, “The Bike Let Loose,” by composer Edie Hill.
This concert occurs at the end of the School of Music’s Jazz Week by design, since the major work in the concert is scored for massed choirs and jazz quintet.
The singers are joined by the UW’s Blue Note Ensemble (below top), directed by UW professor Johannes Wallmann (below middle), for a performance of “Song Cycle” by Alexander L’Estrange (below bottom and in the YouTube video at the bottom).
The work was written in 2014 for the grand start of the Tour de France in York, England. Comprised of 10 movements, the work looks at the invention of the bicycle, the social changes that it wrought, and the joys that cycling offers to all.
It’s a charming and witty trip that is fun for the whole family, even giving the audience an opportunity to sing along.
The concert is free and all are encouraged to wear their favorite biking togs and join in the fun!
Tags: #AlexanderL'Estrange, #AustrianAlps, #BicycleRiding, #BlueNote, #BruceGladstone, #CarlButtke, #EdieHill, #FamilyEntertainment, #FreeWheeling, #GreatBritain, #JazzMusic, #JazzQuintet, #JazzWeek, #JohnStevens, #MadrigalSingers, #ManhattanTransfer, #MeadWitterSchoolofMusic, #RockBand, #SaturdayNight, #ScottGendel, #SocialChange, #SongCycle, #TourdeFrance, #TromboneMusic, #TrumpetMusic, #UnitedKingdom, #UniversityofWisconsin, #UniversityofWisconsin-Madison, #Women'sVoices, #WorldPremiere, #YorkEngland, announcement, Arts, ballad, bicycle, Chamber music, charming, choral music, church, Classical music, commission, composed, composer, cycling, day, England, Family, free, fun, honor, invention, Jacob Stockinger, Jazz, Joy, Love, loyalty, Madison, memorable, Music, Piano, poem, popular, popularity, quintet, rock band, Rosental, Saxophone, social change, tribute, trip, Trombone, Trumpet, UK, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Veteran, vocal music, week, Wine, Wisconsin, witty, women, world, written, YouTube
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: Here are the world premieres of the last three pieces of “pandemic music” commissioned by the U.S. Library of Congress
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By Jacob Stockinger
The ambitious project has now ended.
Two weeks ago was when the world premieres of the 10 short pieces — written for the U.S. Library of Congress’ “Boccaccio Project” — started going public and began being posted on the social media sites Twitter and Facebook as well as on YouTube and the internet.
Last week saw the last five compositions and the end of the project.
This blog has already posted the first seven compositions and performances.
Today you can hear the last three.
The project, funded by the federal government, is a way to capture some of the unique culture brought about by the coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19. Below are photos with links to the performances.
The eighth piece is “Lobelia,” a work for solo cello composed by Ashkan Behzadi (below top) and performed by Mariel Roberts of the Wet Ink Ensemble (below bottom, in a photo by Gannushkin).
https://www.loc.gov/concerts/boccaccio-project/behzadi-roberts.html
The ninth piece is “A Shared Solitary” for solo violin and electronics by composer Niloufar Nourbakhsh (below top) and performed by Jannina Norpoth (below bottom, in a photo by Laura Ise) of the PUBLIQuartet.
https://www.loc.gov/concerts/boccaccio-project/nourbakhsh-norpoth.html
The 10th and final piece is “Have and Hold” for solo singing flutist and electronics composed by Allison Loggins-Hull (below top, in a photo by Rafael Rios) and performed by Nathalie Joachim (below bottom, in a photo by Erin Patrice O-Brien), both of the group Flutronix.
https://www.loc.gov/concerts/boccaccio-project/loggins-hull-joachim.html
On the same page as the performance you can read what the composer and sometimes the performer have to say about the new work and what it strives to mean or express.
You can use links to go to the past performances and premieres, to all 10 commissions.
You can also follow links on the bottom of the page to see more information about both the composer and the performer, and to general background of the project.
If you would like some more background, along with some commentary and questions from The Ear, go to https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/06/13/classical-music-the-library-of-congress-has-commissioned-new-music-about-the-coronavirus-pandemic-you-can-listen-to-the-premieres-from-this-monday-june-15-through-june-28/
What do you think of the individual pieces?
Do you have one or more favorites?
What do you think of the project?
How successful is it?
Will you like to hear more by composers of the commissioned music?
The Ear wants to hear.
Share this:
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