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By Jacob Stockinger
As they have done for previous months during the coronavirus pandemic, the classical music critics for The New York Times have named their top 10 choices of online concerts to stream in February, which is also Black History Month, starting this Thursday, Feb. 4.
Also predictably, they focus on new music – including a world premiere — new conductors and new composers, although “new” doesn’t necessarily mean young in this context.
For example, the conductor Fabio Luisi (below) is well known to fans of Richard Wagner and the Metropolitan Opera. But he is new to the degree that just last season he became the new conductor of Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its digital concert series.
Similarly, the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg (below top, in a photo by Saara Vuorjoki) and the American composer Caroline Shaw (below bottom, in a photo by Kait Moreno), who has won a Pulitzer Prize, have both developed reputations for reliable originality.
But chances are good that you have not yet heard of the young avant-garde cellist Mariel Roberts (below top) or the conductor Jonathon Heyward (below bottom).
Nor, The Ear suspects, have you probably heard the names and music of composers Angélica Negrón (below top), who uses found sounds and Tyshawn Sorey (below bottom). (You can sample Negrón’s unusual music in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Of course, you will also find offerings by well-known figures such as the Berlin Philharmonic and its Kurt Weill festival; conductor Alan Gilbert; pianists Daniil Trifonov and Steven Osborne; violinist Leonidas Kavakos; and the JACK Quartet.
Tried-and-true composers are also featured, including music by Beethoven, Schnittke, Weber, Ravel and Prokofiev. But where are Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Handel? No one seems to like Baroque music.
PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
This Thursday night, Dec. 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. CST, University of Wisconsin-Madison virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor (below) will close the celebration of the Beethoven Year, marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, at the Library of Congress. After the concert’s premiere, it will stay posted online.
For the past several years, Taylor has been performing the solo piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt of Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies both in Russia and at the UW-Madison.
Here is more from the website of the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music:
“It takes extraordinary skill as an orchestrator to condense an entire symphony by Beethoven (below top) into a version for a solo instrument, but that is just what Franz Liszt (below bottom) accomplished in his piano transcriptions. (You can hear a sample, along with a visual representation, of the Fifth Symphony transcription in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
“Hear virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor perform three of these transcendent symphony transcriptions, works he describes as a “new perspective on something familiar.” (The Ear, who has heard Taylor’s impressive performances of almost all nine symphonies, finds that comparing the two versions is like looking at the same photograph in color and then black-and-white. Color emphasizes details while black-and-white emphasizes structure. You hear new things by comparing the two.)
The performance was pre-recorded in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall of the Hamel Music Center.
Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.
He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks.
Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace.
Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia and the Caribbean.
At home in the U.S. he has appeared with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, the Madison Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony. As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues.
In chamber music settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets.
His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel.
Throughout his career, Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects. Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt; performances and lectures on the complete etudes of Gyorgy Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano (below) in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.
Numerous awards have confirmed Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.
Taylor lives in Middleton, Wis., with his wife and two daughters. He is a Steinway artist.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Classical music critics for The New York Times have again listed their picks of virtual and online concerts that will be streamed during the month of November, starting this Sunday, Nov. 1, and running right through Nov. 30. In September, they did the same for the month of October.
The list of 10 highlights includes chamber music, orchestral music and operas as well as lots of new music, world premieres of commissions and even the Cliburn International Piano Competition, now known simply as The Cliburn.
Most of the events are posted and available for quite a while.
Note that all times are Eastern and that on this Sunday, Nov. 1, daylight saving ends.
As the critics point out, the list may be especially helpful and enjoyable now that the weather is turning colder, people are isolating at home during the nationwide spikes in coronavirus cases, and concert halls remain closed to the public.
Well-known institutions such as The Metropolitan Opera (below) and the Los Angeles Opera are featured. (You can sample an earlier Met production of Philip Glass’ “Satyagraha” – about the early life of Gandhi — in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
So are symphony orchestras from Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco and Cincinnati.
And pianist Igor Levit (below top), who this past year released the highly praised, award-winning complete cycle of 32 piano sonatas by Beethoven and who was named Artist of the Year by Gramophone magazine, is also featured, as is the outstanding Chicago-based violinist Jennifer Koh (below bottom, in a photo by the Los Angeles Times).
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ALERT: Tonight’s concert by the choral group Roomful of Teeth for the Wisconsin Union Theater at the UW-Madison’s Hamel Music Center has been canceled and postponed indefinitely.
By Jacob Stockinger
Increasingly the coronavirus pandemic seems surging out of control. So it comes as no surprise that also more and more concerts of classical music are taking place virtually and online.
There are many ways to choose among local, regional, national and international concerts.
But one good guide was published this last week and featured the choice of must-hear classical concerts by critics for The New York Times.
It is an interesting and varied selection, and includes times, links and brief descriptions.
It features concerts that emphasize Black composers such as Florence Price (below top) and women composers. It covers many genres from a solo piano recital by Jeremy Denk (below bottom) – who is supposed to perform here on Dec. 11 at the Wisconsin Union Theater – to chamber music, vocal music, orchestral concerts and operas.
Curiously, there is quite bit of new music but little early music, either Renaissance or Baroque. Perhaps more will appear around the holiday times, when that music is part of the traditional holiday celebrations.
You will find contemporary composers but also lots of certified, tried-and-true classics and masterworks.
Some are one-day only events but many run from a week through a month.
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There are many ways to remember and honor the dead and the injured in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and Shanksvillle, Pennsylvania. And in past years, The Ear has offered many different ones.
There are the well-known requiems by Mozart, Brahms, Verdi and Faure; passions by Bach; and other works.
There are also the pieces especially composed for the commemoration, including “On the Transmigration of Souls,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning work by John Adams that incorporates police tapes and phone calls, and Steve Reich’s “WTC 9/11.”
But this year there is the coronavirus to deal with and complicate the commemorations.
Here is a story from NBC News about how the official commemorations, both real and virtual, will be affected by the pandemic.
And somehow in such circumstances, it feels like back to basic is a good approach.
So here, in the YouTube video at the bottom, is the most universal piece of mourning that The Ear knows: American composer Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” as played by Leonard Slatkin conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
It serves to mark 9/11 but perhaps also the more than 190,000 American deaths so far from the Covid-19 pandemic.
You can find other versions and other pieces on YouTube:
What piece would you want to hear to mark this sad and solemn occasion?
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By Jacob Stockinger
The UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music has a new flute professor who follows Timothy Hagen in taking the place of retired longtime predecessor Stephanie Jutt, who continues to perform locally with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society..
He is Conor Nelson (below) and he starts later this month at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music.
Here is the biography — impressive for both his performing and his teaching –that the university released:
“Praised for his “long-breathed phrases and luscious tone” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Canadian flutist Conor Nelson is established as a leading flutist and pedagogue of his generation.
“Since his New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, he has frequently appeared as soloist and recitalist throughout the United States and abroad.
“Solo engagements include concertos with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Flint Symphony, and numerous other orchestras.
“In addition to being the only wind player to win the Grand Prize at the WAMSO (Minnesota Orchestra) Young Artist Competition, he won first prize at the William C. Byrd Young Artist Competition. He also received top prizes at the New York Flute Club Young Artist Competition, the Haynes International Flute Competition as well as the Fischoff, Coleman and Yellow Springs chamber music competitions.(Editor’s note: In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear Conor Nelson perform the second and third movements of the Flute Sonata by French composer Francis Poulenc.)
“With percussionist Ayano Kataoka (below left, with Nelson), he performed at Merkin Concert Hall, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Hall and Izumi Hall. A recital at the Tokyo Opera City Hall received numerous broadcasts on NHK Television. Their CD entitled, “Breaking Training” was released on New Focus Recordings (NYC). His second CD, “Nataraja,” with pianist Thomas Rosenkranz, is also available on New Focus.
“He has collaborated with pianist Claude Frank on the Schneider concert series in New York City and appeared at numerous chamber music festivals across the country including the OK Mozart, Bennington, Skaneateles, Yellow Barn, Cooperstown, Salt Bay, Look and Listen (NYC), Norfolk (Yale), Green Mountain, Chesapeake, and the Chamber Music Quad Cities series.
“He is the Principal Flutist of the New Orchestra of Washington in Washington, D.C., and has performed with the Detroit, Toledo and Tulsa Symphony Orchestras. He also performed as guest principal with A Far Cry, Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco, and the Conceirtos de la Villa de Santo Domingo.
“A respected pedagogue, Dr. Nelson has given master classes at over 100 colleges, universities and conservatories.
“Prior to his appointment at UW-Madison, he served as the flute professor at Bowling Green State University for nine years and as the Assistant Professor of Flute at Oklahoma State University from 2007-2011.
“His recent residencies include Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea; the Sichuan Conservatory in Chengdu, China; the Conservatorio de Musica de Puerto Rico; and the Associacao Brasileira de Flautistas in Sao Paulo.
“He is also a regular guest of the Texas Summer Flute Symposium and has been the featured guest artist for 11 flute associations across the country. His former students can be found performing in orchestras, as well as teaching at colleges, universities and public schools nationwide. They have also amassed over 60 prizes in young artist competitions, concerto competitions and flute association competitions.
“Nelson received degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, Yale University and Stony Brook University where he was the winner of the school-wide concerto competitions at all three institutions. He is also a recipient of the Thomas Nyfenger Prize, the Samuel Baron Prize and the Presser Award.
“His principal teachers include Carol Wincenc, Ransom Wilson, Linda Chesis, Susan Hoeppner and Amy Hamilton. Nelson is a Powell Flutes artist and is the Assistant Professor of Flute at UW-Madison where he performs with the Wingra Wind Quintet.”
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By Jacob Stockinger
What was the musical relationship between Paris and Moscow, especially after the Russian Revolution?
You can find out, and hear examples, this Saturday night, Dec. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in Shannon Hall (below) at the Wisconsin Union Theater.
Pianist Lise de la Salle and cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca (below right and left, respectively) will explore the musical relationship between Moscow and Paris through works by Gabriel Fauré (you can hear them play his Elegy in the YouTube video at the bottom), Camille Saint-Saëns, Jules Massenet, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It is the subject of their latest recording from Sony Classical.
Lise de la Salle made her debut at age 13 in a performance at the Louvre. According to Le Monde, she “possesses a youthful single-minded spirit and the courage of conviction seldom expected of such a young artist.”
Now 29, de la Salle has established a reputation as one of today’s most exciting young artists and as a musician of uncommon sensibility and maturity. Her playing inspired a Washington Post critic to write, “For much of the concert, the audience had to remember to breathe … the exhilaration didn’t let up for a second until her hands came off the keyboard.”
She specializes in Russian composers and has played with symphony orchestras in London, Paris, Munich, Tokyo, Baltimore, Detroit and Quebec. Says Bryce Morrison of Gramophone magazine,“Lise de la Salle is a talent in a million.”
In just a few years, through his international concert appearances, the young cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca already ranks among the masters of the cello. He has performed in concert halls such as the Louvre, the Philharmonie of Berlin, the 92nd Street Y in New York City, and Izumi Hall in Osaka, among others.
La Marca has appeared as a soloist with many leading orchestras and is also highly sought after in chamber music. He plays a unique golden period Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume cello (1856) and the Vocation Foundation has provided him a rare Jacob Eury cello bow (1825). An exclusive Sony Classical artist, La Marca has already released three albums unanimously praised by international press and international critics.
Before the performance, enjoy a lecture by Kyle Johnson (below) at 6 p.m. Check Today in the Union for room location. Johnson is a pianist who recently received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the UW-Madison.
His performing experience ranges from solo and festival appearances throughout the U.S. and U.K., co-founding the Madison-based contemporary ensemble Sound Out Loud, and as a performance fellow in the Longitude Contemporary Ensemble in Boston, Mass.
His research interests strongly correlate with his interest in 20th-century piano repertoire, of which he produces a podcast series around (Art Music Perspectives). For more information, visit www.kyledjohnson.com.
This performance is presented by the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Performing Arts Committee. This project was supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts. WORT-FM 89.9 is the media sponsor.
New York Times critics choose 10 online classical music concerts to stream in February, starting this Thursday
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PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
As they have done for previous months during the coronavirus pandemic, the classical music critics for The New York Times have named their top 10 choices of online concerts to stream in February, which is also Black History Month, starting this Thursday, Feb. 4.
Also predictably, they focus on new music – including a world premiere — new conductors and new composers, although “new” doesn’t necessarily mean young in this context.
For example, the conductor Fabio Luisi (below) is well known to fans of Richard Wagner and the Metropolitan Opera. But he is new to the degree that just last season he became the new conductor of Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its digital concert series.
Similarly, the Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg (below top, in a photo by Saara Vuorjoki) and the American composer Caroline Shaw (below bottom, in a photo by Kait Moreno), who has won a Pulitzer Prize, have both developed reputations for reliable originality.
But chances are good that you have not yet heard of the young avant-garde cellist Mariel Roberts (below top) or the conductor Jonathon Heyward (below bottom).
Nor, The Ear suspects, have you probably heard the names and music of composers Angélica Negrón (below top), who uses found sounds and Tyshawn Sorey (below bottom). (You can sample Negrón’s unusual music in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Of course, you will also find offerings by well-known figures such as the Berlin Philharmonic and its Kurt Weill festival; conductor Alan Gilbert; pianists Daniil Trifonov and Steven Osborne; violinist Leonidas Kavakos; and the JACK Quartet.
Tried-and-true composers are also featured, including music by Beethoven, Schnittke, Weber, Ravel and Prokofiev. But where are Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Handel? No one seems to like Baroque music.
Here is a link to the events with links and descriptions. All times are Eastern: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/arts/music/classical-music-streaming.html
Do you have other virtual and online concerts to suggest? Please leave details in the Comment sections.
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