The Well-Tempered Ear
UW-Madison will forego in-person concerts through the fall and go virtual. The FREE online concerts start TONIGHT, Monday, Sept. 14, at 6-8:30 p.m. with a graduate student recital
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PLEASE NOTE: The following post has been updated with more information since it first appeared.
By Jacob Stockinger
In ordinary times, the yearlong schedule would be set and concerts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music would be already well underway.
But these are not ordinary times – as you can tell from the silence about the UW season that usually presents some 300 events.
It has taken time, but the music school has finally worked out the basic approach to concerts during the pandemic. It will allow worldwide listening.
Audiences will NOT be present for any Mead Witter School of Music concerts or recitals this fall. Instead, a live stream of faculty recitals and all required student recitals, many of them in the new Hamel Music Center (below), will be available.
The portal to the live streaming, along with a scheduling clock and time countdown, can be found at: youtube.com/meadwitterschoolofmusic
The concert season starts tonight at 6:30 to 8 p.m. The performer is graduate student flutist Heidi Keener (below), who is giving her recital for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree. The recital was postponed from March 23 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
On the school of music’s concert website you will find a biography and the program — just hover the computer’s cursor over the event: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/recital-heidi-keener-dma/.
The same information will also be on the YouTube website for the actual concert. Just click on MORE: https://youtu.be/gA6S3OXUKCc
Given so few calendar listings so far, clearly the format is still a work-in-progress.
For updated listings of other events, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/events/
The next events are slated for Oct. 2 with a student recital and another installment of the Pro Arte Quartet’s Beethoven cycle (below).
That other programs and dates are still missing is not surprising.
The entire UW-Madison from classes to sports, is in a state of flux about how to deal with the pandemic, with in-person classes paused through Sept. 25, and possibly longer.
Many questions about concerts remain as the process plays out.
All live-stream concerts will be free. But they will NOT be archived, so they will be taken down as soon as they end.
A donation link to the UW Foundation will be included to help cover the costs of the livestreaming and also other expenses.
Will choral concerts even take place, given that singing is especially risky because the singers can’t wear masks and social distancing is nearly impossible to provide with groups?
What about chamber music groups like the Pro Arte Quartet, the Wingra Wind Quintet and Wisconsin Brass Quintet? Many faculty members, who have to teach virtually and online right now, are no doubt concerned about the possible health risks of playing in groups.
And what about the excellent UW Symphony Orchestra, which The Ear considers a must-hear local orchestral ensemble? Those musicians too will have a hard time social distancing – unless individual safe performances at home or in a studio are edited and stitched together.
So far, though, we know that the University Opera will offer “I Wish It Were So,” an original revue of the American opera composer Marc Blitzstein on Oct. 23.
Here is a link to a story with more details about the production: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/08/07/classical-music-the-university-opera-announces-a-new-season-that-is-politically-and-socially-relevant-to-today-the-two-shows-are-a-virtual-revue-of-marc-blitzstein-and-a-live-operatic-version-of/
What do you think of the plans for the concert season?
Do you have any suggestions?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Are they warhorses or masterpieces? Do you agree with the Top 100 classical music pieces as selected by listeners of WQXR?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Are they warhorses?
Or are they simply great, surefire masterpieces of classical music that have meaning to many, many people even after repeated listening?
Can they be both?
Can one critic’s warhorse be another listener’s masterpiece?
Think about it and then decide for yourself.
Here is some help.
Every year, WQXR-FM, the famed classical music radio station in New York City, asks its listeners to nominate the Top 100 pieces of classical music. From the holidays through New Years’ Day, Jan. 1, the radio station then airs those pieces in a countdown format. (You can also check out and stream much of WQXR’s regular and special programming by going to: http://www.wqxr.org/#!/
At the top of this year’s list, not surprisingly, is Ludwig van Beethoven (below). Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are also well represented.
Here is a link to this year’s selections:
http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/wqxr-2016-classical-music-countdown/
Many, if not most or even all, of the titles will seem quite familiar.
But before you dismiss them as too easy or too popular or overperformed, The Ear reminds readers of what the famed American playwright Edward Albee, who died last year, once observed.
Albee said something to the effect: Great art should move you and make you feel different. If it doesn’t do that, then forget it. You’re wasting your time. Find art that does.
How many of these pieces would fit that criterion for you and how many would you also have named? For The Ear, an awful lot.
How many have you heard, live or on a recording?
How many do you look forward to hearing again – on the assumption that repeated listening brings repeated pleasure and deeper appreciation and understanding?
It is also useful to remember what the great and, at the same time, popular pianist-composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (below) once said: “Classical music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for classical music.”
So much music!
So little time!
Enjoy the list and the music, and leave your thoughts about these selections or about what is missing in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: Arts, Bach, Baroque, Beethoven, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, Christmas, Classical music, Compact Disc, concerto, countdown, Early music, Edward Albee, Franz Schubert, George Frideric Handel, Holidays, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Mozart, Music, New Year's, New York City, opera, Orchestra, Piano, playwright, programming, Rachmaninoff, Rachmaninov, Radio, Sonata, stream, symphony, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, Viola, Violin, vocal music, warhorse, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, WQXR-FM
Classical music: What’s the best classical music of the past 100 years? Take part in the contemporary music poll by radio station Q2 Music -– and help determine the Top 100 musicians and compositions of the past 100 years. Then tune in starting Dec. 27 to hear the results. Plus, this afternoon’s Christmas concert by the Madison Symphony Orchestra is SOLD OUT.
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ALERT: This just in: This afternoon’s performance at 2:30 p.m. in Overture Hall of the Madison Symphony Orchestra‘s Christmas concert, with guest soloist and local groups under the baton of John DeMain (below, in a photo by Bob Rashid) is virtually SOLD OUT. But you can call the Overture Center Box Office (608-258-4141) to determine any availability.
By Jacob Stockinger
Sure, you look at the entirety of classical music history and you can name your favorite composers and favorite works: Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Ninth Symphony, right?
But there are surprises awaiting you, if you restrict the choices to the past century.
Looking over the past 100 years — starting Jan, 1, 1914 — who would have guessed, for example, that: Music for 18 Musicians (at bottom, in a complete performance in a YouTube video by the acclaimed and Grammy Award-winning new music group eighth blackbird) by contemporary minimalist composer Steve Reich (below, in a photo by Wonge Bergmann) would pull out ahead of George Gershwin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Bela Bartok, Charles Ives, Alban Berg and all others in last year’s Q2 Music poll?
The Q2 Music poll is done by WQXR in New York City, a radio station that is a member station of NPR, or National Public Radio.
Anyway, the terrific classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” recently posted a story about the Q2 Music poll.
It included an entry form that will allow readers to pick up to FIVE works and composers as they participate in this year’s poll that dates back to Jan. 1, 1915.
Voting closes on Dec. 20, 2014.
Then, starting on Saturday, Dec. 27, as a way to close out the old year and ring in the new, a marathon countdown will begin and all the works will be played in reverse order of the survey results.
No word if it will be webcast, but The Ear suspects you can easily tune into Q2 Music by going to the website for WQXR.
Here is a link to the NPR story by Anastasia Tsioulcas and to the poll entry form.
And here is a link to WQXR where you can find a way to listen (at the top of the page), to sign up for the Q2 Music Newsletter and also see the results of the Q2 polls for 2011, 2012 and 2013 as well as the upcoming 2014. It makes for some interesting reading and listening.
http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/q2-musics-2014-new-music-countdown/
And here is a link to a Dec. 2 concert, now archived at NPR, in which some of the best new recordings and music from 2014 was performed:
http://www.npr.org/e2014/11/26/366570255/celebrate-some-of-the-years-best-new-releases-with-q2
As for the Q2 Music poll, The Ear hopes someone chooses – make that that many people choose – the gorgeous Violin Concerto by the American composer Samuel Barber, who was less hot and controversial but much more gifted as a composer.
But whatever happens, have fun choosing and voting.
Don’t forget to use the COMMENTS section to tell The Ear and his readers what works you entered.
And don’t forget to fill in your date book for some happy listening to new music.
Tags: Alban Berg, Arts, Bach, Barber, Béla Bartók, Beautiful music, Beethoven, blog, cadence, Chamber music, Charles Ives, Christmas, Classical music, Compact Disc, concerto, contemporary music, countdown, Deceptive Cadence, Dmitri Shostakovich, eighth blackbird, Fifth Symphony, George Gershwin, Grammy, Grammy Award, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, minimalism, minimalist, Music, New Music, New Year, New York, New York City, Ninth Symhony, NPR, opera, Orchestra, Overture Center, Piano, poll, Q2, Q2 music, Radio, Samuel Barber, Steve Reich, survey, symphony, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Violin, Violin concerto, vocal music, Wisconsin, WQXR-FM, YouTube
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