The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: The UW Schubertiade last Sunday afternoon explored the influence of Beethoven on Schubert with insight and beauty
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ALERT: In early editions of my last post, I mistakenly said that the UW Choral Union and the UW Symphony Orchestra will perform the Verdi Requiem on May 25 and 26. The correct dates are APRIL 25 and 26. The Ear regrets the error.
By Jacob Stockinger
One of the most informative and enjoyable events of the Beethoven Year – 2020 is the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth – came early.
It took place last Sunday afternoon in the Collins Recital Hall of the new Hamel Music Center at the UW-Madison.
It was the seventh annual Schubertiade, and its theme was “Schubert and Beethoven: Influences and Homages.” A classic contrast-and-compare examination of two musical giants who lived and worked in Vienna in the early 19th century, the concert took place for almost three hours before a packed house. (Schubert is below top, Beethoven below middle, and the sold-out audience below bottom)
The annual event is organized by co-founders and co-directors UW piano professor Martha Fisher and her pianist husband Bill Lutes (below, greeting the crowd), who also perform frequently, especially as outstandingly sensitive and subtle accompanists.
They make the event, with audience members sitting onstage, look easy and informal. But it takes a lot of hard work.
The two sure know how to choose talent. As usual, all the singers and instrumentalists – UW alumni and faculty members (below) — proved very capable. The concert cohered with consistency.
Nonetheless, The Ear heard highlights worth singling out.
Baritone Michael Roemer (below) sang exceptionally in “An die ferne Geliebte” (To the Distant Beloved) by Beethoven (1770-1827). His voice brought to mind the young Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the inviting tone and direct delivery of the first song cycle ever composed. It was also the one that inspired the younger Schubert (1797-1828) to compose his own song cycles, and you could hear why.
Soprano Jamie Rose Guarrine (below right), accompanied by Bill Lutes and cellist Karl Knapp (below center), brought warmth, ease and confidence to the lyrical beauty of “Auf dem Strom” (On the River).
Tenor Daniel O’Dea (below) showed how Schubert’s setting of Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” – the same Romantic poem made famous in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony “Choral” – ended up much more lighthearted than the more familiar, serious and intense symphonic version.
Martha Fischer and Bill Lutes, who also sang as well as narrated and accompanied, showed complete blending and tightness in Schubert’s first published composition: “Eight Variations on a French Song.” It was for piano, four-hands – a sociable genre that Schubert favored and wrote a lot of.
Soprano Jennifer D’Agostino (below) sang Schubert’s song “Elysium” in which it is unclear whether it is a pastiche or a parody of Beethoven, who remained a mentor until Schubert died at 31. Could that ambiguity point to Schubert’s maturing sense of himself and his own art as compared to Beethoven’s?
One year after Beethoven’s death – Schubert was a pallbearer — Schubert put on his only formal public concert of his own work. That was when he premiered his Piano Trio No. 2, the bravura last movement of which was played by Bill Lutes with cellist Parry Karp and first violinist David Perry (below), of the UW’s Pro Arte Quartet.
Then all four members of the Pro Arte Quartet (below) – with violist Sally Chisholm and second violinist Suzanne Beia – played the last two movements of Beethoven’s late String Quartet in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131, the work that Schubert requested to hear performed as he lay on his death bed in his brother’s Vienna apartment.
Of course there were other moments that pleased and instructed. There was a set of four songs – one coupling sung by mezzo-soprano Allisanne Apple (below) — in which the same texts were set to music by both Beethoven and Schubert.
We got to hear Beethoven’s final song, “Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel” (Evening Song Beneath the Starry Firmament).
Then there was the heart-wrenching “Nachthymne” (Hymn to the Night) by Schubert, again beautifully performed by Jamie Rose Guarrine. (You can hear “Hymn to the Night,” sung by Elly Ameling, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
So in the end, what were the big lessons, the takeaways from this year’s Schubertiade?
One lesson is that for all his more familiar symphonies and concertos, his string quartets and piano trios, his piano sonatas and his sonatas for cello and violin, Beethoven was also a much more accomplished song composer than the public generally knows.
But for The Ear, the biggest lesson of all is that despite Beethoven’s deep influence, Schubert retained his own special voice, a voice full of unforgettable melodies and harmonies, of lyricism and empathy.
And using a mentor to find, refine and retain one’s own identity is the highest homage any student can pay to a teacher.
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Classical music: Today is the Winter Solstice. It’s a good time to listen to Schubert’s “Winterreise” (Winter Journey) — this year in English translation
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By Jacob Stockinger
Winter starts today – Saturday, Dec. 21, 2019 – when the Winter Solstice arrives tonight at 10:19 p.m.
That means tonight — the longest night of the year — we turn the corner. The days start getting longer and the nights shorter.
It is also the day when The Ear likes to listen to the best winter music ever written: the cycle of 24 songs called “Winterreise” (Winter Journey) by Franz Schubert (1797-1828).
Over the years, The Ear has heard many fine versions. Among his favorite singers are Ian Bostridge, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Matthias Goerner and Thomas Quasthoff.
Next year, you can probably expect to see a new release of the performance this past week by mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the pianist-conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
But this year, he is listening – even as he writes – to a 2018 version by the critically acclaimed British baritone Roderick Williams (below top) with pianist Christopher Glynn (below bottom) on the Signum Classics record label.
The real and unusual appeal is that all the songs are sung in English — not the original German.
And The Ear finds it very appealing not to have to read translations but instead to sit back and listen directly to the meaning of the stories in the songs — all sung with excellent diction — in the austere, subtle and outstanding translation by theater director and writer Jeremy Sams (below).
It makes The Ear want to hear more Lieder or art songs sung in English translation — both live and recorded — just as he likes the translation, used by the Metropolitan Opera, done by the late American poet J.D. “Sandy” McClatchy of Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute”
Try it and see what you think.
Here is the first song on YouTube, where the audio proceeds through the remainder of the 70-minute cycle after the end of each song.
Enjoy. And let us know what you think of the English translation:
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Classical music: Two noteworthy concerts of Baroque chamber music, organ music and vocal music take place this Wednesday midday and Saturday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
This is another very busy week for classical music in the Madison area. If Baroque music interests you, there are two noteworthy concerts this week that should attract your attention.
JUST BACH
This Wednesday, Feb. 20. at 1 p.m. in Luther Memorial Church, 1021 University Avenue, the February midday concert by Just Bach (below, at its September concert) will take place.
Admission to the all-Johann Sebastian Bach concert is FREE with a goodwill offering accepted.
Because it will be lunchtime, food and drink are allowed.
This month’s concert includes three diverse works.
Organist Mark Brampton Smith (below) will open the program with the first movement of the Concerto in D Minor BWV 596. This is Bach’s arrangement for organ of the popular Concerto for Two Violins by Antonio Vivaldi, and it comes off with dramatic effect when transcribed to the organ.
Violinist Leanne League will take the stage next, with the Sonata for Violin in A Minor, BWV 1003.
The program ends with the hauntingly beautiful Cantata 82 “Ich habe genug”(I have enough), scored for solo bass voice and oboe, strings and continuo. The vocal soloist will be UW-Madison bass-baritone Paul Rowe (below). You can hear the incomparable Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sing the aria in YouTube video at the bottom.)
The orchestra of baroque period-instrument specialists will be led by concertmaster Leanne League, and will include oboist Claire Workinger (below), in her Just Bach debut.
Organizers and performers say the goal of this series is to share the immense range of Bach’s vocal and instrumental repertoire with the Madison community at large. The period-instrument orchestra will bring the music to life in the manner and style that Bach would have conceived.
The audience will be invited to sing along during the opening hymns and the closing cantata chorales.
The other Just Bach dates, all Wednesdays, this semester are March 13, April 24 and May 29.
WISCONSIN BAROQUE ENSEMBLE
The veteran Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble will perform a varied concert of vocal and instrumental chamber music this coming Saturday night, Feb. 23, at 7:30 p.m. in St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 1833 Regent Street.
Tickets can be purchased only at the door. Admission is$20, $10 for students.
Performers are: Nathan Giglierano, baroque violin; Eric Miller; viola da gamba; Sigrun Paust, recorder; Charlie Rasmussen, baroque cello and viola da gamba; Consuelo Sañudo, mezzo-soprano; Daniel Sullivan, harpsichord; and Anton TenWolde, baroque cello.
The program is:
Nicolas Bernier – “Diane” Cantata for voice and basso continuo
Marin Marais – Pièces de violes (Pieces for Viola da Gamba), selections from Book 4
Louis Couperin – Pièces de clavecin (Pieces for harpsichord)
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier – Trio sonata, Op. 37, No. 2
INTERMISSION
Francesco Paolo Supriani – Sinfonia for cello and basso continuo
Georg Fridrich Handel – “Nel dolce dell’ oblio” (In Sweet Forgetfuness)
Tommaso Giordani – Duo for two cellos, opus 18 no 5
Georg Philipp Telemann – Quartet in G minor TWV 43 g4
Following the concert, there will be a reception at 2422 Kendall Ave., Apt. 2.
For more information, go to www.wisconsinbaroque.org
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Classical music: Today is the winter solstice. What music best captures or celebrates winter?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is the Winter Solstice.
Winter arrives at 10:28 a.m. Central Standard Time.
That means we are turning the corner. Starting today, nights will get shorter and days will get longer.
But there is still plenty of the year’s most blustery and bone-chilling weather ahead of us.
Lots of classical music celebrates winter.
Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” is a popular choice.
So is the “Winter Dreams” symphony by Tchaikovsky.
Here are links to two compilations of winter music, lasting for a total of more than two hours, on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNMIgZAx2gQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2jAweLVLRk
But no music is more wintry than the celebrated song cycle “Winterreise” or “Winter Journey” by Franz Schubert (below).
Every year, The Ear uses the solstice and the coming of winter to listen once again to this deeply moving and surprisingly modern song cycle.
Many excellent recordings exist. Famed German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (below left, with pianist Gerald Moore) made multiple recordings over many years.
In recent years Matthias Goerner, Thomas Quasthoff, Mark Padmore, Jonas Kaufmann and many others have already made acclaimed recordings, always with distinguished pianists including Gerald Moore, Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Daniel Barenboim and Paul Lewis.
Yet I always find the most satisfying version to be the one made by English tenor Ian Bostridge with Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andnes.
Bostridge’s tenor voice lends a lightness that has a certain clarity and almost speech-like quality to it.
And Bostridge, who wrote the excellent book “Schubert Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession” – a song-by-song analysis of the cycle — knows the texts and contexts of the songs inside and out. His are well-informed and thoroughly thought-out interpretations.
The whole cycle takes about 70 minutes to listen to.
This year The Ear might do one of the 24 songs in the cycle each day and then the entire cycle in one sitting at the end.
The different approach might yield some new insights and new pleasure.
Anyway, choose your own artists and your own way of listening.
But it is a great and timely choice.
Here is “Good Night,” the first song of “Winterreise”:
And here is “The Organ Grinder,” the last song and a favorite of writer Samuel Beckett who found a shared sensibility in the lean austerity of the music of the music and the text:
What winter music would you listen to or recommend to mark the solstice and the coming of winter?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: This Friday night is a FREE sampler concert of great German art songs based on great German poetry
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By Jacob Stockinger
There is a good reason why art songs are usually referred to by their German name ”Lieder.”
It is because the 19th century in Germany remains a Golden Age when great German Romantic composers such as Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann drew inspiration from great German Romantic poets such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (below top) and Heinrich Heine (below bottom).
You can hear a generous sampler of such works, including many well-known individual songs and a famous complete song cycle, this Friday night in a FREE concert at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall.
The singers are guest tenor Wesley Dunnagan (below top) and UW faculty baritone Paul Rowe (below bottom, in a photo by Michael R. Anderson).
The pianists are Benjamin Liupaogo (below top) and UW graduate Thomas Kasdorf (below bottom), who is substituting for Martha Fischer.
The concert is also a partnership between the UW School of Music and the UW German Department. And it marks the 50th Wisconsin Workshop, a series based on the Wisconsin Idea.
For more information and background, go to:
http://www.music.wisc.edu/event/faculty-recital-paul-rowe-voice-martha-fischer-piano/
If you want to prepare and check out some of the repertoire, here is the complete program:
GEDICHTE VON JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749-1832)
Felix Mendelsson (1809-1847): Ich Wollt’ Meine Lieb’
Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Erster Verlust; Nähe des Geliebten; Rastlose Liebe; Musensohn; Schäfers Klagelied; An die Entfernte; Erlkönig
GEDICHTE VON HEINRICH HEINE (1797-1856)
Clara Schumann (1819-1826): Lorelei; Sie liebten sich beide; Ihr Bildnis
Franz Schubert: Ihr Bild; Das Fischermädchen
Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Lorelei
Felix Mendelssohn: Abendlied
Intermission
Robert Schumann (1810-1856): Dichterliebe, Opus 48 (1840)
Im wunderschönen Monat Mai
Aus meinen Tränen sprießen
Die Rose, die Lilie, die Taube, die Sonne
Ich will meine Seele tauchen
Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome
Ich grolle night (sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the YouTube video at bottom)
Und wüßten’s die Blumen, die kleinen
Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen
Hör’ ich das Liedchen klingen
Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen
Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen
Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet
Allnächtlich im Traume seh’ ich dich
Aus alten Märchen
Die alten, bösen Lieder
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Classical music: You can hear Schubert’s last songs at the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival TONIGHT at 7:30
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has been informed that seats still remain for tonight’s all-Schubert concert at the popular Token Creek Chamber Music Festival.
Half of the concert will be piano music, including the six Moments Musicaux and a work for piano, four-hands, a genre that Schubert often composed in and performed with friends. Ya-Fei Chuang (below) is the featured piano soloist.
Also on the program is “Swan Song” – sung by tenor Charles Blandy (below top) with pianist Alison D’Amato (below bottom) of the Eastman School of Music and the University of Buffalo.
Here are program notes by the festival’s co-artistic director and prize-winning composer John Harbison about the work:
Schwanengesang is not a planned cycle. Instead it is a collection of Schubert’s last songs, as serious and searching as the two great cycles Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise.
Thematically and musically, the songs have much in common and, taken together, they are unequalled in plumbing the emotional depths of the soul, heart-wrenching and heartwarming.
We can’t be certain whether Schubert (below) ever intended them to be performed as a unity.
When they were published early in 1829, after his death at 31, it was the first publisher, Tobias Haslinger, who named the collection Schwanengesang (Swan Song), presumably to emphasize that these were the last fruits of the composer’s genius.
The sequence consists of settings of seven poems by Rellstab, six by Heine and, as an encore, Seidl’s “Taubenpost,” quite likely the very last song Schubert ever wrote. (You can hear “Taubenpost,” sung by the famed German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
For more information about the festival, the remaining concerts and tickets, visit www.tokencreekfestival.org
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Classical music: UW Choral Union and UW Symphony Orchestra resurrect Paul Hindemith’s long-neglected 20th-century secular Requiem with fine singing and committed playing
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By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who hosts an early music show once a month on Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. For years, he served on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison. He also took the performance photographs below.
By John W. Barker
It is unusual that, within the space of a few days, we have parallel performances of two very untraditional Requiems, ones setting vernacular texts rather than liturgical Latin ones.
The UW Choral Union and UW Symphony(below) performed Paul Hindemith’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d: A Requiem For those we love” last weekend. And the Madison Symphony Chorus and Orchestra will give us Johannes Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) this coming weekend, May 5-7.
(NOTE: Here is a link with more information about the three MSO performances this coming weekend:
It is hard to resist the temptation to compare them.
They were, of course, composed about a century apart, in the contexts of very different stylistic eras. They reflect very different aesthetics: High Romantic warmth for Brahms, conservative modernism for Hindemith.
The different texts chosen also determine crucial differences. Brahms selected Luther’s German translations of passages from Scripture, as a broad collage of human consolation and solace, whereas the German-born Hindemith, a naturalized American citizen who fled from Hitler’s Nazism, in a patriotic commemoration of the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chose the long poem of grieving that Walt Whitman (below) wrote over the death of President Abraham Lincoln.
The relatively concise Scriptural texts allowed Brahms to develop rich melodic and contrapuntal elaborations. Hindemith’s determination to set Whitman’s complete poem, of 208 verses in altogether irregular free verse, committed him to keep things in constantly moving continuity, with little chance for pausing and elaborating.
To be sure, Hindemith (below) was never a distinguished lyricist, for all his skills, so his writing is endless declamation by the soloists, backed by strongly cast choral statements. (You can hear famed baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the chorus sing the opening of the Hindemith requiem in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
There are many lovely and powerful moments, but they pass by quickly and leave little of memorable expressiveness. There is much clever music here, but in sum total it is more dutiful than beautiful.
The performance in Mills Hall — I heard the one Sunday night — showed a stage packed with musicians. There were two soloists, a chorus of exactly 100 singers, and an orchestra (the UW Symphony) of 67 players, 46 of them on strings. UW choral director and conductor Beverly Taylor (below) drew from all of them deeply committed musical results.
Of the two soloists, soprano Jennifer D’Agostino (below left) sang with beauty and expression, but it was baritone James Held (below right) who stole the show, with a ringing voice, superb diction, and a genuine eloquence.
The huge chorus was quite magnificent, well unified, fully serious in its enunciation, and capable of some truly musical sound — and Hindemith, though nowhere near Brahms as a choral composer, gave them some serious challenges. The orchestra sounded a bit rough at the very beginning, but settled into participating strongly in the performance.
Whatever reservations one may have about Hindemith’s score, this Whitman Requiem, one of his last important works and premiered in 1946, is a significant piece. It is far less frequently heard than that by Brahms, and so it is very good that UW choral director Beverly Taylor has brought it to our attention.
Tags: A German Requiem (Brahms), Abraham Lincoln, American, American Record Guide, Arts, baritone, Beverly Taylor, blog, choral music, citizen, Classical music, collage, composer, conservative, consolation, counterpoint, critic, declamation, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Early music, expressiveness, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, free verse, German, History, Hitler, Isthmus, Jacob Stockinger, Johannes Brahms, John DeMain, John W. Barker, Latin, Latin America, lecture, liturgical, liturgy, lyric, lyricist, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Medieval, melody, MEMF, memorable, modernism, Music, Nazi, Nazism, Paul Hindemith, photo, photographs, poet, Poetry, poiem, President, professor, Requiem, resurrect, reviewer, Romantic, sacred, secular, solace, soloist, soprano, symphony, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW Choral Union, UW Symphony Orchestra, vernacular, verse, vocal music, Walt Whitman, WORT-FM 89.9, writing, YouTube
Classical music: Today is the Winter Solstice and winter officially starts. The Ear greets it once again by listening to Franz Schubert’s song cycle “Winterreise.”
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By Jacob Stockinger
Despite all the snow and cold of the past few weeks, winter officially begins today.
The winter solstice, bringing with it the longest night of the year, arrives today at 4:44 a.m., Central Standard Time, this morning, Wednesday, Dec. 21.
To mark the occasion, people often listen to appropriate music such as the “Winter” section of “The Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi or the “Winter Dreams” Symphony by Peter Tchaikovsky.
Over the past several years, something else has become a tradition for The Ear.
Every year on the arrival of the Winter Solstice, he listens to a recording of the song cycle “Winterreise” (Winter Journey”) by Franz Schubert.
It takes about 70 minutes.
One unforgettable hour plus.
Too bad it isn’t performed live every year or featured every year on Wisconsin Public Radio.
There are so many excellent recordings of the work.
Over the years, The Ear has listened to the songs performed in recordings by Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, Haken Hagegard, Mark Padmore, Jonas Kaufmann and UW-Madison baritone Paul Rowe, who one year did perform it live with pianist Martha Fischer on the Winter Solstice at the First Unitarian Society of Madison *(below) — and it was magical.
Yet his favorite remains the version by the English tenor Ian Bostridge with Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes for EMI Records. (Bostridge also made one for Hyperion Records with pianist Julius Drake.)
The Ear likes the way Bostridge uses a kind of Sprachstimme or speech singing to bring expressiveness to the music. He also like the touch of lightness that the tenor range brings to the music, which is plenty dark by itself.
Also, every year, The Ear sees if he has a new favorite song in the cycle. But so far he still has two favorites, which you can find on YouTube along with the rest of the cycle.
One is the opening song, “Gute Nacht” or “Good Night.” It is hard to imagine a better way to kick off the mysterious cycle than with such an obviously metaphorical song in which “night” plays so many roles and has so many meanings.
Here it is:
And of course, he also loves the last song, “Der Leiermann” or “The Organ Grinder.” Listen to its alternation with between voice and piano, to that drone broken by silence showing despair, solitude and loneliness, and you understand why it was also a favorite of the great modernist playwright Samuel Beckett.
Here it is:
The Ear wishes you a hopeful winter – despite all the signs that it will instead be a winter of deep discontent – and hopes you will find time to take in “Winterreise.”
It is Franz Schubert’s winter journey.
But it is also my own and yours.
Here is Bostridge talking about what the cycle means to him:
Enjoy.
And tell us if you have a favorite performance of “Winterreise” and why?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: Arts, baritone, Chamber music, Classical music, cold, Compact Disc, cycle, depair, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Dreams, drone, EMI, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Four Season, Franz Schubert, Haken Hagegard, Hyperion, Ian Bostridge, Jacob Stockinger, Jonas Kaufmann, Leif Ove Andsnes, loneliness, Madison, Mark Padmore, Martha Fischer, metaphor, modernist, Music, night, organ, organ grinder, Paul Rowe, Piano, playwright, Samuel Beckett, Singing, snow, solitude, solstice, song, song cycle, Tchaikovsky, tenor, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Vivaldi, vocal music, winter, Winter Dreams, Winterreise, Wisconsin, wisconsin public radio, YouTube
Classical music: This year’s Token Creek Chamber Music Festival celebrates local ecological restoration with “water music”
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By Jacob Stockinger
Here is an overview of the upcoming 27th Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, which starts this Saturday, Aug. 27, and runs through Sunday, Sept. 4.
TOKEN CREEK, WIS. – Years in the planning, summer 2016 marks the completion of a major ecological restoration project on the Token Creek Festival property in the northeast corner of Dane County, part of the watersheds vital to the hydrology of Madison and southeastern Wisconsin.
During the 1930s, one of the most important feeder streams in the area, and its only cold-water trout stream, was ruined when it was widened to support short-lived commercial interests and development. Now, decades later, in a monumental effort, that stream has at long last been relocated, restored and rescued.
Festival-goers will be able to experience the project firsthand on the opening weekend, when each concert is preceded by an optional stroll along the new stream, with conversation guided by restoration ecologists and project managers.
Celebrating this monumental ecological project, the season theme of this year’s Token Creek Chamber Music Festival is: Water Music. Virtually all of the works programmed evoke brooks and streams and rivers and water in its many forms, with its ritual meanings, associations, allusions, and as metaphor.
In keeping with the theme, the Festival has adopted Franz Schubert (below) as the summer’s featured composer. His poetic, melancholic, ultimately organic and inevitable relationship to the natural world was expressed in composition after composition, wedded to his intense involvement with the poetry of his era, itself so infatuated with birds, fields, clouds and streams.
The second program emphasis continues the festival’s most persistent theme: the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Three strands of Bach’s music previously explored at Token Creek will be taken up again. We will present our third complete cantata performance, O heiliges Geist und Wasserbad, a mysterious and poetic piece from early in the composer’s career, with soloists from the Madison Choral Project (below).
We will conclude our survey of the three Bach violin concertos, this year the E major, co-artistic director Rose Mary Harbison (below top) again as soloist. And we take up our sequence of fugues from The Art of Fugue, co-artistic director and composer John Harbison (below bottom), who has won the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur “genius grant,” adding three more to his personal odyssey with this work, due to conclude in 2030.
NEW ARTISTS
Token Creek is pleased to introduce several new artists this season, including Grammy Award-nominated mezzo-soprano Margaret Lattimore, who has been praised for her “glorious instrument” and dubbed an “undisputed star…who has it all – looks, intelligence, musicianship, personality, technique, and a voice of bewitching amber color.”
Ms. Lattimore will offer works of Franz Schubert and John Harbison on the Festival’s opening concerts, By the Brook (August 27 and 28), where she will be joined by pianist Molly Morkoski.
Ms. Morkoski (below), who last appeared at Token Creek in 2013, consistently garners praise for her refined virtuosity and “the bold confidence and interactive grace one wants in a devoted chamber music maker.” In addition to the opening program, Morkoski will also be heard on the season finale in Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet (Sept. 2 and 4).
On that same concert, tenor William Hite and pianist Kayo Iwama join forces in Schubert’s devastating and tragic song cycle, Die Schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Miller’s Daughter), in which a brook functions prominently as the protagonist’s confidante. (You can hear the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sing “The Miller and the Brook” from the flowing song cycle in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini has called Hite (below) a “breathtaking communicator of spoken nuance” for his ability to reveal the meaning and emotion embodied in the text and the music, solidifying his reputation as an engaging and expressive artist.
http://www.williamhitetenor.com/
Kayo Iwama (below) is associate director of the Bard College Conservatory of Music graduate vocal arts program, the master’s degree program for classical singers, and she also coordinates the vocal studies program at the Tanglewood Music Center. Her frequent concert partners include Dawn Upshaw and Lucy Shelton.
http://www.bard.edu/academics/faculty/details/?action=details&id=1838
VIOLS AND WILLIAM WARTMANN
Finally, the “technically faultless and consistently sensitive and expressive,” consort of viols, Second City Musick (below), based in Chicago, will offer a guest recital on Tuesday, Aug. 30, anchored by John Harbison’s The Cross of Snow.
Craig Trompeter, Russell Wagner, Anna Steinhoff at the Planetarium, Chicago, May 30, 2013
Commissioned by local businessman and philanthropist William John Wartmann (below) in memory of his wife, mezzo-soprano Joyce Wartmann, this evocative new piece, on texts of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, blends the ethereal lushness of violas da gamba with the haunting clarity of the countertenor voice, here Nathan Medley (below bottom), to explore the emotions of grief, loss and love.
At its first performance in Chicago last May, a local critic praised both the work and the musicians: “The Chicago-based ensemble was ideally suited to premiere this profoundly affecting work, and the shared sensibility between composer and performers was noticeable.”
Tuesday’s program will also include works of Henry Purcell, William Byrd, John Jenkins and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Other festival artists this season include vocalists Rachel Warricke, Sarah Leuwerke, Daniel O’Dea, and Nathan Krueger; violinists Rose Mary Harbison, Laura Burns, and Isabella Lippi; Jen Paulson, viola; Karl Lavine, cello; Ross Gilliland, bass; Linda Kimball, horn; and John Harbison, piano.
HERE ARE FESTIVAL PROGRAMS AT A GLANCE:
Program 1: By the Brook – Schubert, Bach and Harbison
Saturday, Aug. 27: 6:45 p.m. – optional guided stream stroll*; 8 p.m. – concert
Sunday, Aug. 28: 2:45 p.m. – optional guided stream stroll*; 4 p.m. – concert
*(The stream stroll is free, but reservations are recommended)
Program 2: Music for Viols, Then & Now
Tuesday, Aug. 30, at 7:30 p.m.
Program 3: Water Colors = Two Schubert Masterworks
Friday, Sept. 2 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 4 at 4 p.m.
Concert tickets are $32 (students $12). The preview stream stroll on opening weekend is free to concertgoers, but advance reservations are recommended.
Reservations can be made in several ways:
- Online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/token-creek-chamber-music-festival-2016-tickets-26070692142
- Website (printable order form): www.tokencreekfestival.org
- Phone: 608-241-2525 (voicemail only, please leave a message)
- Email: info@tokencreekfestival.org
- U.S. mail: P.O. Box 5201, Madison WI, 53705
Performances take place at the Festival Barn, on Highway 19 near the hamlet of Token Creek (10 minutes north of Madison) with ample parking available. The venue, indoors and air-conditioned, is invitingly small—early reservations are recommended.
More information about the Token Creek Festival and all events and artists can be found at the website, www.tokencreekfestival.org or by calling 608 241-2525.
Tags: accompaniment, accompany, allusion, Art of Fugue, Arts, association, Bach, Bard College, baritone, Baroque, bass, birds, Byrd, Cantata, Cello, Chamber music, Chicago, choral music, Classical music, clouds, commission, composer, concerto, countertenor, Dane County, Dawn Upshaw, development, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Early music, ecology, fields, Franz Schubert, fugue, genius grant, Grammy, grief, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horn, Jacob Stockinger, Jenkins, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Harbison, John Jenkins, Kayo Iwama, lieder, loss, Love, Lucy Shelton, MacArthur Fellow, Madison, Madison Choral Project, Margaret Lattimore, metaphor, Mezzo-soprano, Molly Morkoski, Music, natural world, nature, New York Times, organic, Piano, poetic, Poetry, premiere, Pulitzer Prize, Purcell, restoration, Rose Mary Harbison, Second City Musick, sing, singer, solo, Sonata, song, song cycle, stream, streams, Tanglewood Festival, tenor, Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, Trout, Trout Quintet, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viol, Viola, Violin, vocal music, vocalist, water, Water Music, watershed, William Hite, William Wattmann, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: Today is the Winter Solstice. So The Ear offers you Schubert’s “Winterreise.”
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By Jacob Stockinger
Tonight we turn the corner.
At 10:48 p.m. CST we will experience the Winter Solstice.
That means that from now until late June, the days will start getting longer and the nights shorter.
True, so far we have not had much cold or snow, thanks to El Nino.
But we still have the coldest months of the season – January and February – to look forward to.
One of The Ear’s winter rituals is to listen to the song cycle “Winterreise” – winter journey – by Franz Schubert (below) on or around the first day of winter.
It is such a unique and astonishing work, so modern in so many ways.
And there are so many outstanding recorded versions of it that The Ear likes: Mark Padmore with pianist Paul Lewis; Matthias Goerner with Christoph Eschenbach; Thomas Quasthoff with Charles Spencer; Peter Schreier with Sviatolsav Richter; Hermann Prey and Karl Engel; and of course the legendary Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with Gerald Moore, Joerg Demus and later with Alfred Brendel.
More locally, he also likes the version, complete with black-and-white photographs by Katrin Talbot that was done by UW-Madison baritone Paul Rowe with UW-Madison pianist Martha Fischer. (It is published by the University of Wisconsin Press.)
But probably The Ear’s favorite version of the amazing cycle so far is the one done by British tenor Ian Bostridge with Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. The Ear prefers the higher tenor range to the baritone range. He also likes not only Bostridge’s transparent sound and outstanding diction, but also his kind of singing speech style — Sprachstimme – that adds to the storytelling of the cycle.
The complete 70-minute cycle is available from YouTube but only by going through the 24 different videos, one per song in the cycle.
And there is a preface that features both Bostridge and Andsnes talking about the work and about performing it.
By the way, an excellent companion to the cycle is the book and e-book that Bostridge has published –- a doctoral thesis called “Schubert’s Winter Journey” Anatomy of an Obsession” (Knopf).
It is a comprehensive look at the aesthetic, historical, cultural and the literary aspects of the astonishing work and analyzes each of the 24 songs in the cycle. The Ear has read it and highly recommends this definitive study by someone who knows the famous song cycle inside and out after performing it more than 100 times.
Here is a set-up piece with pianist Jeremy Denk interviewing Ian Bostridge about his book:
And here are Bostridge and Andsnes talking about the cycle:
And “Gute Nacht” (Good Night) here is the opening song of “Winterreise”:
And “Der Leiermann,” the closing song of “Winterreise”:
The Ear urges you to sample many more, in order or out of order.
Let The Ear and other readers know which performers you prefer and which songs in the cycle are your favorite?
Tags: Alfred Brendel, Arts, baritone, Britain, Chamber music, choral music, Classical music, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, El Nino, England, Franz Schubert, Gerald Moore, Hermann Prey, Ian Bostridge, Jacob Stockinger, Jeremy Denk, Jorg Demus, Madison, Mark Padmore, Music, Norway, Paul Lewis, Peter Schreier, Piano, solstice, song cycle, Sviatoslav Richter, tenor, Thomas Quasthoff, UK, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, vocal music, winter, Winterreise, Wisconsin, YouTube
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