The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: This Wednesday brings a FREE Just Bach concert and the FREE Final Forte concerto competition of the Madison Symphony Orchestra on Wisconsin Public Radio and Wisconsin Public Television
2 Comments
IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event.
By Jacob Stockinger
This Wednesday, March 13, brings two noteworthy and FREE events: this month’s midday Just Bach concert; and, at night, the annual Final Forte teenage concerto competition of the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
Here are details about both events:
JUST BACH
This month’s FREE hour-long performance by Just Bach (below, in a photo by John W. Barker) will take place at Luther Memorial Church, 1021 University Avenue, starting at 1 p.m. Food and drink are permitted and free-will donations are accepted.
The program this Wednesday is: the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor “Dorian” for organ, BWV 538, by Johann Sebastian Bach; the cantata “Herr, Ich Warte auf dein Heil” (Lord, I Wait for Your Salvation) by Johann Michael Bach, a cousin of Johann Sebastian; and the famous cantata “Christ lag in Todesbanden” (Christ Lay in the Bonds of Death”), BWV 4, by Johann Sebastian Bach. (You can hear the opening Sinfonia and Chorus to the latter in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Here is a list of upcoming performances and programs for the second semester:
https://justbach.org/concerts/
And here is a link to the home page and website with links to information about the performers and more.
FINAL FORTE
Then on Wednesday night, starting at 6:45 p.m. in Overture Hall of the Overture Center, the four finalists in the annual Final Forte teenage concerto competition, held by the Madison Symphony Orchestra, will compete accompanied by the MSO and conductor John DeMain.
The public is invited to attend the FREE event, but tickets but must be reserved in advance.
The performances will also be broadcast live starting at 7 p.m. by both Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) and Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR).
The four finalists, from dozens of statewide applicants who took part in the two preliminary rounds, are (below, from left): violinist Monona Suzuki of Fitchburg playing Ravel; cellist Grace Kim of Waunakee playing Saint-Saens; flutist Holly Venkitaswaren of Lisbon playing Pierce; and pianist Antonio Wu of Madison playing Rachmaninoff.
For more information about the performers, what they will perform and how to obtain tickets, as well as background on the competition, including impressive radio and television ratings, go to:
Tags: #BachCantata, #BaroqueMusic, #BlogPost, #CamilleSaint-Saens, #CelloConcerto, #ChoralMusic, #ChristianChurch, #ChristianReligion, #FacebookPost, #FacebookPosting, #FinalForte, #FitchburgWisconsin, #FluteConcerto, #FoodandDrink, #HomePage, #HomeWebsite, #JesusChrist, #JohannMichaelBach, #JohannSebastianBach, #JohnDeMain, #JustBach, #LisbonWisconsin, #LutherMemorialChurch, #MadisonSymphonyOrchestra, #MadisonWisconsin, #MartinLuther, #MauriceRavel, #OrganMusic, #OvertureCenter, #OvertureHall, #PianoConcerto, #SergeiRachmaninoff, #SergeiRachmaninov, #ViolinConcerto, #VocalMusic, #WisconsinPublicRadio, #WisconsinPublicTelevision, #YouTubevideo, annual, Arts, audience, Bach, Bach cantata, Baroque, Baroque music, blog, Broadcast, Camille Saint-Saëns, Cantata, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, chorus, Christ, Christian, church, Classical music, compete, composer, concerto, conductor, cousin, death, donation, Dorian, drink, Early music, Facebook, Final Forte, finalist, finalists, Fitchburg, flute, flutist, food, forward, free, fugue, home page, impresisve, impressive, information, Jacob Stockinger, Jesus, Johann Michael Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach, John DeMain, Just Bach, Kim, like, link, Lisbon, live, Lord, Luther, Luther Memorial Church, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, march, Martin Luther, Maurice Ravel, Midday, Music, noteworthy, Orchestra, organ, Overture Center, Overture Center for the Arts, Overture Hall, performer, Pianist, Piano, piece, post, posting, program, Radio, rating, Ravel, Religion, reservation, sinfonia, Suzuki, symphony, tag, teenage, teenager, Television, ticket, toccata, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Violin, violinist, vocal music, Website, Wednesday, Wisconsin, wisconsin public radio, Wisconsin Public Television, WPR, WPT, Wu, YouTube
Classical music: Hearing Bach and Haydn on a clavichord proves intimate and revelatory. Plus, a FREE trombone recital is tonight and an organ recital on Sunday afternoon
Leave a Comment
ALERT 1: Tonight at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW-Madison trombonist Mark Hetzler will give a FREE recital with pianist Vincent Fuh. Hetzler will perform a retrospective of pieces he has recorded over the past 14 years, representing five different recordings. Music from the following recordings from his Summit catalogue will be represented in this recital: American Voices (2002); Serious Songs, Sad Faces (2003); 20th Century Architects (2004); Three Views (2012); and Blues, Ballads and Beyond (2015).
Hetzler will repeat this concert on Thursday, Nov. 17 in Fond du Lac, at St. Patrick’s Church, 41 E. Follett Street, as part of the Searl Pickett Chamber Music Series.
For more information go to: http://www.markhetzler.com/
ALERT 2: Tomorrow afternoon, Sunday, Nov. 13, at 4 p.m., Dan Broner, the music director at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, will give a FREE organ recital at the FUS Meeting House, 900 University Bay Drive. The program features the Trio Sonata No. 4 in E minor, “Sleepers Wake!” and the Prelude and Fugue in A major by Johann Sebastian Bach; Prelude, Fugue and Variations by Cesar Franck; and “Dorian Chorale” and “Litanies” by Jehan Alain. Donations will be accepted.
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 photos.
By John W. Barker
The clavichord was an instrument of subtle importance in the 18th century. It was a kind of alternative to the harpsichord in several ways. For one, its strings were not plucked, as in a harpsichord, but hammered, as in its descendants, the fortepiano and the subsequent pianoforte or just plain piano.
The clavichord, moreover, was really an instrument for private use, for practice, study and composing work, rather than for concert use, beyond the most intimate of audiences. (You can hear a sample, using J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2, in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
Local builder and restorer, Tim Farley has made several clavichords before, but this one is a relatively large one. Notable is its incorporation of wood from a number of old pianos, and some rare maple wood that had been submerged in water for a long time. Out of these elements he has created an instrument of great beauty and elegance, as well as of distinctive artistic usefulness.
To introduce this new instrument to Madison’s musical community, Tim and his wife Renee, the reigning royalty of the remarkable Farley’s House of Pianos on the city’s far west side, chose not to do so in their usual salon, as it is too commodious and not noise-free.
Instead, they brought it to the historic Gates of Heaven Synagogue on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 6. A program of four works was played on it by David Schrader (below), an early music specialist who teaches at Chicago’s Roosevelt University.
An audience of about 45 attended. I suspect many were surprised by how tiny (not tinny!) was the instrument’s sound—much more pale than what they would have expected from a harpsichord. Modest as is the Gates of Heaven hall, it was still a bit larger than ideal. Nevertheless, the audience followed the performance intently, and I heard no complaints from anyone afterwards about inaudibility.
The music chosen was entirely from the 18th century. It began with the Partita No. 5 from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Clavierübung or Keyboard Works. On these terms, we heard it as Bach might have played it himself for his own pleasure—or as a student might do for study.
The two middle works were from the other end of the century. An extended Sonata, K. 330, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart would in its time have been played on the fortepiano, or even harpsichord, and sounded rather pallid this way.
But a two-movement Sonata in G minor by Franz Joseph Haydn, full of introspective feeling, worked well on the clavichord as highly personal expression.
Balancing the opening with J. S. Bach was the closing work, a three-movement Sonata in A minor (Wq49), a relatively early work by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, his most influential son. C.P.E. Bach was famous as an expressive player, and for music of inward probing.
I had hoped to hear Schrader demonstrate on this new instrument its feature of Bebung, a capacity for quasi-vibrato quivering on sustained notes that the clavichord’s action famously allowed the player to exploit. There was some of that, but Schrader explained that such an effect did not work on many pitches, limiting its possibilities.
Listeners for whom this type of instrument is unfamiliar surely found this program illuminating, while this instrument’s excellence was a further reminder of what craftsmanship Tim Farley (below, seated at the clavichord he built) has brought to Madison.
Tags: American Record Guide, Arts, Bach, ballads, Baroque, blues, Cesar Franck, Chamber music, Chicago, Chorale, Classical music, clavichord, David Schrader, Dorian, Early music, Farley's House of Pianos, fortepiano, fugue, Gates of Heaven Synagogue, harpsichord, History, Isthmus, Jacob Stockinger, Jehan Alain, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Williams, Keyboard, litanies, litany, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Mark Hetzler, Medieval, Mozart, Music, organ, partita, Piano, Prelude, Roosevelt University, Sleeps Wake, Sonata, Trombone, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, variations, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, wood, WORT-FM 89.9, YouTube
Classical music: The early music group Ensemble SDG will perform psalms by Heinrich Schütz and other composers as well as sonatas and a canticle this Saturday night at Luther Memorial Church.
Leave a Comment
By Jacob Stockinger
The Madison-based duo Ensemble SDG will perform a concert of early music on this Saturday night, November 22, 2014, at 7 p.m. in the Luther Memorial Church (below), 1021 University Avenue, in Madison, Wisconsin.
The concert will feature special guests William Hudson, tenor, and Katherine Shuldiner, viola da gamba.
The program includes settings of Psalm texts by Heinrich Schütz (below with his psalms at bottom in a YouTube video), Johann Hermann Schein, and Jacques de Bournonville, with a setting by Johann Philipp Krieger of the anonymous canticle Laetare anima mea, as well as sonatas by Giovanni Battista Fontana, Dieterich Buxtehude and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre.
Ensemble SDG (below) features Madison musicians Edith Hines, baroque violin, and John Chappell Stowe, professor of harpsichord and organ at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music. The duo has performed across the United States, and their recording of the complete works of J. S. Bach for violin and keyboard is soon to be released by Arabesque Records.
William Hudson is a founding member and director of LIBER: Ensemble for Early Music and was recently appointed Assistant Professor of voice and diction at Illinois Wesleyan University (Bloomington, Ill.).
Katherine Shuldiner recently graduated from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, specializing in viola da gamba performance. She lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
Admission to the concert on November 22 is $15; admission is free for students with a valid ID.
Ensemble SDG, a baroque violin and keyboard duo formed in 2009, performs music spanning the entire Baroque period, with a particular focus on the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. The duo has presented works by German, French and Italian composers of the 17th and 18th centuries in recitals from the Midwest to the East Coast. Venues include Fringe Concerts at the 2009, 2011, and 2013 Boston Early Music Festivals; a recital featuring the Brombaugh organ at First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois; the biennial meeting of the American Bach Society and the annual joint conclave of the Midwest and Southeastern Historical Keyboard Societies; the Michigan Festival of Sacred Music; Wisconsin Public Radio’s Sunday Afternoon Live from the Chazen; and multiple appearances at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, one being a performance of J.S. Bach’s six sonatas for violin and obbligato keyboard. This fall the duo will release a recording of Bach’s complete works for violin and keyboard.
Ensemble SDG takes its name from the epigraph (below top) used by Johann Sebastian Bach (below bottom) to sign many of his works. Soli Deo Gloria (“to God alone the glory”) represents the members’ common approach to music and to life, and it is with this grounding that they approach their technique, choice of repertoire, and interpretative decisions.
Highly sought after as a specialist in historical performance, tenor William Hudson has been described as “positively hypnotic” by Gramophone magazine. An accomplished ensemble singer, Mr. Hudson has performed with many of the nation’s leading early music ensembles including the Boston Early Music Festival Opera, The New York Collegium, The Waverly Consort, The Rose Ensemble, Boston Bach Ensemble, and Ensemble Project Ars Nova (PAN).
As a founding member and director of LIBER: Ensemble for Early Music (formerly Liber unUsualis), he has performed extensively throughout North America and abroad at international music festivals in England, Wales, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, France, Latvia, Estonia, and Spain. Mr. Hudson also enjoys an active solo career, singing the Evangelist in Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion, Apollo in Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo, the title role in Giacomo Carissimi’s Jephte, Lucano in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Mercury in Eccles’ Judgment of Paris, and Alessandro Stradella’s oratorio San Giovanni Battista with the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra.
An active scholar and clinician, Mr. Hudson (below, in a photo by Tall & Small Photography) was the winner of the 2009 Noah Greenberg award and has presented at the International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. He has led master-classes and given lecture-demonstrations in medieval performance practice at universities throughout North America. He has recorded with Naxos, Passacaille, Arsis, Titanic and Dorian. Mr. Hudson holds a Master’s degree in Historical Performance from the Longy School of Music and a Doctor of Music in Early Music from Indiana University. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor of voice and diction at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois.
Katherine Shuldiner graduated from Oberlin Conservatory in viola da gamba performance under the tutelage of Catharina Meints. She has performed with Chicago based ensembles such as The Newberry Consort, BBE: Bach and Beethoven Ensemble, and The OC (The Opera Company).
She has also performed with Washington Bach Consort and La Follia Austin Baroque. Katherine recently finished her two-year term on the board of the Viola da Gamba Society of America and was chosen to perform in the first Early Music America’s Young Performers Festival during Boston Early Music Festival. This past summer, Katherine taught at the Madison Early Music Festival as well as the VdGSA Conclave.
Tags: Arabesque, Arts, Austin, Bach, Baldwin-Wallace University, Baroque, Beethoven, Belgium, Boston, Boston Early Music Festival, canticle, Cello, Chamber music, Chicago, Classical music, Compact Disc, Dorian, Early music, Edith Hines, England, Ensemble SDG, Estonia, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Florida Atlantic University, France, French music, German music, Germany, Gramphone, harpsichord, Heinrich Schütz, ILLINOIS, Illinois Wesleyan University, Indiana University, Ireland, Italian music, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Chappell Stowe, Katherine Shuldiner, Latvia, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Michigan, Monteverdi, Music, Naxos, Newberry Consort, Noah Greenberg, organ, psalm, SDG, singer, Sonata, Spain, Stradella, tenor, Texas, The Rose Ensemble, Titanic, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, viola da gamba, Violin, vocal music, William Hudson, wisconsin public radio, YouTube
Recent Comments
The Well-Tempered Ear 