The Well-Tempered Ear
Here’s music to mark Mother’s Day
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By Jacob Stockinger
This Sunday is Mother’s Day 2024.
The holiday celebrating mothers, grandmothers and women whose are like mothers to us is celebrated around the world in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Mothers have long provided inspiration to composers, performers and listeners.
The Ear’s mom loved to hear him practice and play Chopin’s Waltz in E minor and Rachmaninoff’s popular Prelude in C-sharp minor (played by the composer in the YouTube video at the bottom), which dropped out of fashion for many years but now seems back in favor, especially as an encore.
Mom was proud of her pianist son and once even let the telephone sit near the piano when I was playing the Rachmaninoff for someone who had called her long-distance and wanted to hear more of what was until then just background noise to her conversation.
Anyway, here is one of the best pieces I have seen for you to read and listen to as you celebrate Mother’s Day. Some of the music is sure to be very familiar, other music less so.
Here are 20 pieces, with brief introductions and translations, about mothers from the website Interlude in Hong Kong:
Here’s to you, Mom.
Do you have a piece to dedicate to your mom?
Did your mother have a favorite piece she liked to hear?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The Madison-based Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society gets its 24th three-week summer season underway this coming weekend. This year’s theme is “Guilty as Charged.” Here is part 1 of 2 with background and Week 1.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Our friends at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society – which The Ear named Musicians of the Year two years ago – will begin its new summer season this coming weekend.
The season features six concert programs performed over three weekends in three different venues and cities.
Here is the first part of two postings based on the BDDS press release. Part 2 will run tomorrow:
BACH DANCING AND DYNAMITE SOCIETY (BDDS) PRESENTS ITS 24TH ANNUAL SUMMER CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL — GUILTY AS CHARGED — JUNE 12–28, 2015.
This festival features 12 concerts over three weekends. Each weekend offers two different programs. Concerts will be performed in The Playhouse at Overture Center in Madison, the Stoughton Opera House, and the Hillside Theater at Taliesin in Spring Green.
Combining the best local musicians and top-notch artists from around the country, a varied repertoire and delightful surprises, BDDS presents chamber music as “serious fun” infused with high energy and lots of audience appeal, and makes this art form accessible to diverse audiences. Led by artistic directors and performers (below) Stephanie Jutt, flute, and Jeffrey Sykes, piano, 20 guest artists will perform in the festival.
So, what is the meaning of this year’s theme?
Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society is clearly a criminal enterprise. After all, we are named after the only major composer to ever spend a significant amount of time in jail, Johann Sebastian Bach.
Our crime at BDDS?
We’ve destroyed the stuffy, starched-collar atmosphere of traditional chamber music concerts and replaced it with a seriously fun vibe. We’ve broken down the barriers that separate audience and performer, making our concerts into riotously interactive events. Rather than leading audiences through a museum, we invite audiences to trespass into the creative and re-creative process right in the concert hall.
We own up to our crimes, and we proudly proclaim that we are GUILTY AS CHARGED.
GUILTY AS CHARGED features six programs, each performed multiple times and in multiple venues, and each named after some “crime.”
In “Stolen Moments” we feature music that has been stolen in some fashion: stolen from another composer, stolen from oneself, stolen from a completely different land and culture.
Felix Mendelssohn stole a chorale tune from Johann Sebastian Bach as the basis of the slow movement of his second cello sonata (heard at bottom in a YouTube video with cellist Lynn Harrell and pianist James Levine).
Franz Joseph Haydn stole from himself to create his flute divertimentos; Ludwig van Beethoven stole Irish and Scottish folksong texts and tunes as the basis for his songs with piano trio accompaniment.
“Stolen Moments” will be performed at The Playhouse in the Overture Center for the Arts, on Friday, June 12, at 7:30 p.m., and in the Hillside Theater at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin compound in Spring Green, on Sunday, June 14, at 2:30 p.m.
“Rob the Cradle” features the music or poetry of artists who died tragically young, robbing the world of their creative talents.
The Flute Sonata by Dick Kattenburg, a light-hearted and joyous work, was written at the age of 18 shortly before he died in a Nazi concentration camp.
The powerful “Romances on Poems of Alexander Blok” by Dmitri Shostakovich feature the luminous poetry of the man many considered Russia’s finest poet, a man whose life was cut short by the conditions of early Soviet years.
Both programs feature the talents of two great singers—bass-baritone Timothy Jones (below top) and soprano Emily Birsan (below bottom) — familiar to BDDS audiences as the voices of Robert and Clara Schumann from our 2013 season.
“Rob the Cradle” will be performed in The Playhouse of the Overture Center for the Arts, on Saturday, June 13, at 7:30 p.m., and at the Hillside Theater at Taliesin in Spring Green, on Sunday, June 14, at 6:30 p.m.
For the fourth year, BDDS will also perform one free family concert, “What’s So Great About Bach?” an interactive event that will be great for all ages. Together with the audience, BDDS will explore interwoven layers of melody. Everyone will be up on their feet helping to compose for the musicians on stage.
This event takes place 11–11:45 a.m. on this Saturday, June 13, in The Playhouse of the Overture Center. This is a performance for families with children of all ages and seating will be first come first served.
CUNA Mutual Group, Pat Powers and Thomas Wolfe, and Overture Center generously underwrite this performance.
BDDS Locations are: the Stoughton Opera House (381 E. Main Street, below top); the Overture Center in Madison (201 State Street); and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Hillside Theater (below bottom, County Highway 23 in Spring Green).
Single general admission tickets are $40. Student tickets are always $5.
Various ticket packages are also available, starting at a series of three for $114. First-time subscriptions are half off.
For tickets and information visit www.bachdancinganddynamite.org or call (608) 255-9866.
Single tickets for Overture Center concerts can also be purchased at the Overture Center for the Arts box office, (608) 258-4141, or at overturecenter.com additional fees apply).
Hillside Theater tickets can be purchased from the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center on County Highway C, (608) 588-7900. Tickets are available at the door at all locations.
TOMORROW: PART 2 WITH WEEKS 2 AND 3
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