The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Two Madison pianists perform four-hand American music Monday night at a concert for the Rural Musicians Forum at Taliesin in Spring Green
3 Comments
IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE 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
For the first time ever, the Rural Musicians Forum will present music for piano 4-hands, where two pianists play simultaneously on one piano.
On this coming Monday, July 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the Hillside Theater at architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin compound in Spring Green, Madison-based pianists Satoko Hayami (below top) and Jason Kutz (below bottom) will showcase four-hand piano music by American composers, spanning from 1864 to 2019.
The concert by the two graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music will present a variety of composers and works created for this ensemble: pre-ragtime composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s virtuosic arrangement of Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell Overture; excerpts from Samuel Barber’s Souvenirs, a ballet suite (heard played tag-team style in the YouTube video below); a lush arrangement of themes from the Wizard of Oz by William Hirtz; and the riveting Gazebo Dances by John Corigliano, a four-movement work that, in his own words, suggests “the pavilions often seen on village greens in towns throughout the countryside, where public band concerts are given on summer evenings.”
Additionally, the audience will hear the world premiere arrangement of Music in 3/4 for Four by Kutz, excerpts from his solo piano suite, Music in 3/4.
Admission is by free will offering, with a suggested donation of $15.
Taliesin’s Hillside Theater (below) is located at 6604 State Highway 23, about five miles south of Spring Green.
Tags: #AmericanComposer, #AmericanMusic, #balletsuite, #BandConcert, #BlogPost, #BlogPosting, #ChamberMusic, #ChamberMusicians, #ClassicalMusician, #FacebookPost, #FacebookPosting, #FrankLloydWright, #FreewillOffering, #GazeboDances, #GioachinoRossini, #GraduateStudent, #HillsideTheater, #JasonKutz, #JohnCorigliano, #LouisMoreauGottschalk, #MeadWitterSchoolofMusic, #PianoMusic, #RagtimeMusic, #RuralMusiciansForum, #SamuelBarber, #SatokoHayami, #SoloPiano, #SoloPianoMusic, #SpringGreen, #StateHighway, #Taliesincompound, #UniversityofWisconsin-Madison, #WilliamHirtz, #WilliamTell, #WilliamTellOverture, #WizardofOz, #WorldPremiere, #YouTubevideo, American, architect, arrangement, Arts, audience, ballet, ballet suite, band concert, blog, Chamber music, Classical music, classicalmusic, composer, composers, Concert, countryside, donation, ensemble, Ensemble Musical Offering, evening, event, excerpts, Facebook, forum, four-hand, Frank Lloyd Wright, freewill, gazebo, Gazebo Dances, Gioacchino Rossini, Gioachino Rossini, graduate student, greens, Hillside Theater, Jacob Stockinger, Jazon Kutz, John Corigliano, like, link, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, lush, Madison, Mead Witter School of Music, movement, Music, Musician, offering, Overture, pavilion, perform, performer, Pianist, Piano, piano music, public, Ragtime, reader, Rossini, rural, Rural Musicians Forum, Samuel Barber, Satoko Hayami, setting, share, showcase, simultaneously, solo, souvenir, Souvenirs, Spring Green, state highway, Student, style, subscriber, Suite, summer, tag, tag-team, Taliesin, theme, towns, unique, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW-Madison, variety, village, virtuosic, William Hirtz, William Tell, William Tell Overture, Wisconsin, Wizard of Oz, words, works, world premiere, YouTube
Classical music: The early music group Ensemble Musical Offering of Milwaukee will make its Madison debut this Sunday in an all-Handel program. Plus, the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s FREE “Final Forte” concerto competition is tonight at 7 on Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio, and University of Wisconsin-Madison violist Mikko Utevsky performs a FREE recital Thursday night at Capitol Lakes.
3 Comments
ALERTS: Our good friend and frequent contributor Mikko Utevsky writes: Dear Friends, I am giving a viola recital this Thursday, March 27, at 7:30 p.m. in the Grand Hall of the Capitol Lakes Retirement Community (333 West Main Street, near the Capitol Square). The program includes works by Franz Joseph Haydn, Ernest Bloch (the Suite Hebraïque), and viola sonatas of Johannes Brahms (Op. 120, No. 2) and Darius Milhaud (No. 1). I will be joined by pianists Jeff Gibbens and Adam Kluck. I hope the short notice will not prevent some of you from joining me there. Best, Mikko
Also, The Madison Symphony Orchestra‘s “Final Forte” young artist competition will be broadcast LIVE tonight at 7 p.m. on Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio.
For more details, here is a link to a previous post:
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 every other Sunday morning on WORT-FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
Here’s a Handelian heads-up, and with a Madison accent!
The Milwaukee-based Ensemble Musical Offering is to make its first appearance in Madison on this Sunday afternoon, March 30, at 2 p.m., at the First Unitarian Society of Madison’s new and crisply designed Atrium auditorium (below, in a photo by Zane Williams) at 900 University Bay Drive.
Tickets are $15, payable at the door, and available in advance from www.ensemblemusicaloffering.org or by calling (414) 258-6133.
The group, whose supplemental title is the Midwest Bande for Early Music, was founded in 2000 by harpsichordist and director Joan Parsley. As she herself defines the ensemble: “Its mission is to foster appreciation for early music, circa 1580-1750, through professional performance on period instruments, educational activities, and community outreach.”
Winner of several grants, the ensemble not only performs regularly in its home city, but supports the Greater Milwaukee Baroque Festival, which is a competition for students of string and keyboard instruments, plus a one-week Summer Baroque Institute.
The instrumental membership of the ensemble (below) consists of about 10 players — divided between strings and winds — including harpsichord. All play baroque instruments, and use the one player per part approach.
For their Madison appearance, the EMO will present a program aptly titled “Hallmarks of Handel.” It will contain a balanced survey of the great composer’s instrumental and vocal music.
The most familiar music will be the G-major Suite, the third and last division of George Frideric Handel’s beloved and popular “Water Music” (at bottom in a YouTube video played on modern instruments by Sir Neville Marriner and the Acadmey of St. Martin in the Fields) — the set that features only woodwinds, without brass, against the strings.
There will also be no less than two of the Op. 3, Concerti Grossi, Nos. 4 and 6, which give strong roles to winds (as well as harpsichord in the latter). It will be interesting to hear these works, usually treated as “orchestral,” in this more intimate chamber-music character.
One more instrumental work is a composite of music that Handel used in his opera “Ottone.” Because of the prominence of the bassoon in the scoring, it will be presented in this program as a Sinfonia for Bassoon, Strings and Continuo.
The other side of the program is vocal, and touches upon what was, for Handel, his major areas of composition, his Italian operas and English oratorios. There will be two arias drawn from Handel’s first London triumph, “Rinaldo,” composed in 1711.
The oratorio realm will be represented indirectly. The program will allow a rare opportunity to hear examples of some two-dozen chamber duets and trios, with continuo, that Handel composed over the years to Italian texts, following patterns set by role model Agostino Steffani.
Handel seemed to use these brief, three-movement mini-cantatas as tryouts of some vocal ideas, and he then incorporated many of those ideas into larger works. The two to be offered, composed in July 1741, contain musical germs that Handel allowed to blossom as three choral movements in “Messiah,” composed later that year. Listeners will surely be surprised and delighted to recognize those inimitably Handelian ideas in their first form.
Though headquartered in Milwaukee, the EMO draws upon musicians from beyond their city, as, indeed, so many early music groups do — witness the Madison Bach Musicians. For EMO, there is a particular reliance on personnel from around our state, and from Madison in particular.
Thus, two admired Madison early music players are involved: Baroque violinist Edith Hines (below top) as leader of the strings, and Teresa Koenig (below bottom), a specialist in Baroque wind instruments.
In addition, this program offers two sopranos for the vocal pieces, each with a Madison connection. Sarah Richardson is currently a doctoral candidate at the UW School of Music, studying with University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music professor and baritone Paul Rowe. And Chelsea Morris Shephard, who has sung with the Madison Bach Musicians, will be remembered as a finalist in in last summer’s Handel Aria Competition for the Madison Early Musical Festival.
Such a rich menu of Handel is bound to appeal to lovers of this fabulous composer’s wonderful music, and attract those who should be such lovers.
Tags: Agostino Steffani, American Record Guide, Arts, Baroque, Bloch, Brahms, Chamber music, Classical music, Darius Milhaud, Early music, Ensemble Musical Offering, Ernest Bloch, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Franz Joseph Haydn, George Frideric Handel, Handel, Handel Aria Competition, Haydn, Jacob Stockinger, Johannes Brahms, London, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Mikko Utevsky, Milhaud, Milwaukee, Music, Music education, Neville Marriner, Sarah Richardson, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Water Music, Wisconsin Public Television, WORT-FM 89.9, YouTube
Recent Comments
 | Brian Jefferies on Classical music: A major reass… |
 | welltemperedear on What made Beethoven sick and… |
 | rlhess5d5b7e5dff on What made Beethoven sick and… |
| welltemperedear on Beethoven’s Ninth turns 200… |
 | Robert Graebner on Beethoven’s Ninth turns 200… |
The Well-Tempered Ear 