The Well-Tempered Ear
Yunchan Lim’s Chopin etudes are the best ever
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By Jacob Stockinger
If you haven’t yet heard the new bestselling recording of Chopin’s etudes by pianist Yunchan Lim (below), what are you waiting for? It is a new treat each time you listen to it — as The Ear has many times.
When it comes to piano etudes, which is the higher Everest: Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes or Chopin’s two sets of Etudes.
To the Ear, etudes by Liszt (below) are flashier and revel more in sheer physical technique, while Chopin’s significantly shorter etudes — no less technically challenging or difficult — are deeper and revel more in music that serves specific techniques such as octaves, double-thirds, sixths, arpeggios and so forth.
To The Ear, Chopin (below) is clearly a superior creator of piano etudes, and is more ingenious at integrating music into the technical challenges.
I have listened to wonderful recordings of all the Chopin etudes by Maurizio Pollini, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Claudio Arrau, Louis Lortie, Garrick Ohlsson, Murray Perahia, Jan Lisiecki and others.
I don’t think any pianist would even think about recording all the treacherous etudes without proving that they have mastered them. So, unsurprisingly, all the sets are good. Very good. And you might even find individual etudes that outdo Lim.
But as a complete set, Lim’s is better.
Simply put, to these ears, Lim’s set is the best ever.
That is no small achievement for the 20-year-old, mop-haired South Korean who in 2022 won the last Van Cliburn International Piano Competition at 18 and has since gone on to have a meteoric global career.
He has already been recorded live playing his prize-winning performances of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (found on YouTube) and of all of Liszt’s 12 Transcendental Etudes (on the Steinway label).
But the Chopin etudes are his first studio recordings for Decca, which has signed Lim as an exclusive artist.
And what a debut it is.
Lim is a natural. He makes whatever he plays sound as if that is exactly how it is supposed to be played. He reminds me of what Zubin Mehta once said: “If you want to hear how a piece should sound, listen to Rubinstein.”
Same goes for Lim.
Lim finds new things in the scores, but they never sound distorted or forced. Listen to the left-hand voices, selections of tempi, shading, volume control and tone. At all times Lim makes the technical challenges he has mastered serve the music.
In the YouTube video at the bottom, just listen to his sensitive reading, with transparency and sublimely subtle rubato, of the famous “Tristesse” Etude in E major, Op. 10, No. 3, in E major, which Chopin viewed as one his very best melodies.
Chopin would approve.
My only disappointment is minor. Advance publicity said the recording would be comprehensive and include the less virtuosic but very poetic “Three New Etudes” that were published posthumously — just like Arrau’s and Lortie’s recordings do. But no such luck. We fans will just have to wait for another disc.
The Ear sure hopes that Madison audiences soon get the chances to hear Yunchan Lim live in both recitals and concertos.
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Should the 1812 Overture be played this Fourth of July?
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear recently noticed that the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra has once again scheduled the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky (below) as part of the finale of its Fourth of July concert on the evening of July 6, 2022.
The performance is part of this summer’s FREE Concerts on the Square (COS) by the WCO that run on six consecutive Wednesday nights from June 29 through Aug. 3. Concerts start at 7 p.m. on the King Street corner of the Capitol Square in downtown Madison, and will be conducted by Andrew Sewell.
For more information about the series and individual performers and programs, go to: https://wcoconcerts.org/concerts-tickets/concerts-on-the-square
An asterisk says programs are subject to change.
Which got The Ear to thinking: Should Tchaikovsky’s perennial favorite, the flashy and loud 1812 Overture, be played again this year?
It is a tradition that was started on Independence Day in 1974 by Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops, according to reputable sources.
But this year might be a very different case because of a quandary that might cause organizers, including PBS’ “A Capitol Fourth,” to rethink the program.
It is a choice that will confront many musical groups across the U.S., given the current unprovoked brutality and and war crimes being committed by Russia against Ukraine.
After all, many music groups, including the Metropolitan Opera, have already banned Russian performers who support Russian President Vladimir Putin and his unjustified war in Ukraine (below).
So here’s the question: Is it appropriate to play a favorite work celebrating a Russian military victory while Ukraine, the United States and Western allies, including NATO, are desperately trying to defeat Russian forces?
As you may recall, the overture was inspired by Russia’s victory over the invading forces of Napoleon who was attempting go conquer Russia. Like Hitler and the Nazis, Napoleon failed and the Russians prevailed. That is why, in the work, you hear the French national anthem “La Marseillaise” overcome by the chimes and cannons of the Russian victory hymn. (There was no Russian national anthem until 1815.)
Here is a link to more background in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_Overture
Will the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra or other orchestras as well as radio and TV stations around the U.S. find a substitute piece? Perhaps it could be the Ukrainian national anthem that is performed (as in the BBC Proms concert in the YouTube video at the bottom and as many other orchestras around the world, including the Madison Symphony Orchestra and John DeMain, have done).
What else could the WCO and other groups play — especially since Sousa marches are already usually featured on The Fourth?
Do you have a suggestion?
The Ear will be interested to see how the quandary is solved — with explanations and excuses, or with alternative music?
Meanwhile, as comedian Stephen Colbert likes to say: What do you think?
Should the “1812 Overture” be played on this Fourth of July?
Why?
Or why not?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The Middleton Community Orchestra and solo trumpeter Jessica Jensen score big with an unusual program
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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 photos.
By John W. Barker
The concert by the largely amateur Middleton Community Orchestra (below, in a photo by Margaret Barker) on Wednesday night presented a novel program at the Middleton Performing Arts Center.
In the relatively brief first part, it presented two unusual items.
The first was by Nebojsa “Neb” Macura (b. 1982, below right with conductor Steve Kurr), a local musician of Serbian background, who has been particularly identified with Russian folk music and ensembles. But he also plays viola in the MCO, which gave him this opportunity in the spotlight.
His piece, Polar Night, is quite brief, but in this version for full orchestra (with piano), it is grounded with secure melodic flow, and it unfolds into a tonal picture full of beautiful colors. My only reservation was that I wanted more of it — either more music in this piece or other sections around it.
Macura is obviously talented, and he has a confident sense of orchestral writing. I really look forward to hearing more of him. Indeed, the MCO might well serve as exactly the laboratory in which he can develop new creations.
The second item was only a bit longer, a Trumpet Concerto by Russian composer Aleksandra Pakhmutova (b. 1929, below). Her long career has involved her in jazz, and also in extensive scoring for films. But she has a feeling for Russian traditional song, and that could be heard in this concerto.
It is cast in only a single movement, but it proceeds episodically. There is certainly much flashy writing for the solo instrument, and local trumpeter Jessica Jensen (below) brought off her role dashingly.
The longer second part of the concert was devoted to the Symphony No. 3, the “Rhenish,” by Robert Schumann. This splendid work was inspired by observation of life along the Rhine River.
It is unusual in being written in five movements, not the conventional four. (Oddly, their individual markings were not printed in the program, but conductor Steve Kurr (below) gave a clever spoken introduction that outlined the score for the audience.)
This is a very extroverted work, calling for a lot of orchestral sonority. I suspect that a little more rehearsal time would have helped the avoidance of some blemishes: rapid passages, especially in the first movement, were roughly articulated, and there were some tiny gaffes all along.
But the players were devoted in responding to maestro Kurr’s rather propulsive tempos. This score gives a lot to do particularly to the horn section, which played with ardent splendor.
As always, then, the MCO earned further laurels for presenting this very adventurous program.
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Classical music: Should the Madison Symphony Orchestra return to a traditional Opening Gala concert with a guest soloist and big pieces, and move the all-orchestra concert to a later date?
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By Jacob Stockinger
You can’t blame longtime music director and conductor John DeMain (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) for wanting to put the spotlight on the players of the Madison Symphony Orchestra that he has built up over nearly 25 years.
After all, the orchestra members play well and respond superbly to DeMain’s direction, no matter what you might think of his programming and interpretations. He is proud of them with good reason.
So The Ear can easily understand why for the past few years DeMain has chosen to use an all-orchestra concert, with its principals taking the place of guest soloists, to open the season.
Yet DeMain also likes to emphasize the challenges he faces in selling tickets, filling seats and keeping the MSO a commercially successful orchestra.
The Ear noticed that this year, the all-orchestra opening concert of works by Bach-Stokowski, Mendelssohn and Berlioz, with principal violist Christopher Dozoryst as soloist, seemed to draw a smaller and less enthusiastic audience than the second concert did last weekend.
That second concert included the “Mother Goose” Suite by Ravel, the surefire “New World” Symphony by Dvorak and the Piano Concerto by Samuel Barber with guest pianist Olga Kern (below). The audience wildly cheered her and her flashy, virtuosic playing until it received an encore (the Prokofiev etude heard in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
So the question came to The Ear:
Should the MSO return to a traditional Gala Opening, with a surefire program and a high-profile guest soloist, and leave the all-orchestra concert until the second concert of the season?
The Ear checked out what other orchestras do.
This year, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. The Los Angeles Philharmonic opened with a gala program that featured pianists Yuja Wang and Jean-Yves Thibaudet teaming up in an all-Mozart program. The San Francisco Orchestra featured superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
The Philadelphia Orchestra programmed pianist Emanuel Ax and the music of Beethoven, Brahms and Leonard Bernstein, whose centennial is being celebrated this season. The Boston Symphony Orchestra opened with Frederica von Stade, plus other singers, in an all-Bernstein program.
True, the Sheboygan Symphony also used the all-orchestra opener, and The Ear is sure there are many other orchestras, including some prominent ones, that do the same.
But it got The Ear to wondering. So he asked some other loyal MSO fans what they thought about returning to a traditional Gala Opening – one that announces to potential subscribers that great soloists will be featured during the season – and then moving the all-orchestra concert to a different date.
All the people he spoke to agreed that such a move would probably draw bigger audiences and capture the public’s attention better. One loyal patron even said that by going to the all-orchestra opening, the MSO (below, in a photo by Greg Anderson) was “just being cheap.”
Plans are probably already being made for next season, so it is likely too late to make any changes that soon.
But what about the 2018-19 season?
What do you think?
Should the Madison Symphony Orchestra return to a traditional Gala Opening that features big-name soloists and well-known pieces?
Should it move the all-orchestra concert with principal soloists to, say, the second concert of the season?
Or should things stay the way they are?
Which way do you think would be more commercially successful and sell more seats for that concert and for the rest of the season?
And which way would be more artistically satisfying?
The Ear wants to hear.
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