The Well-Tempered Ear
The New York Times names the top 25 classical recordings of 2020 and includes sample tracks
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By Jacob Stockinger
What did the holidays bring you?
Did Hanukkah, Christmas or Kwanzaa bring you a gift card?
A subscription to a streaming service?
Maybe some cash?
Or maybe you just want to hear some new music or new musicians or new interpretations of old classics?
Every year, the music critics of The New York Times list their top 25 recordings of the past year. Plus at the end of the story, the newspaper offers a sample track from each recording to give you even more guidance.
This year is no exception (below).
In fact, the listing might be even more welcome this year, given the coronavirus pandemic with the lack of live concerts and the isolation and self-quarantine that have ensued.
The Ear hasn’t heard all of the picks or even the majority of them. But the ones he has heard are indeed outstanding. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear a sample of the outstanding Rameau-Debussy recital by the acclaimed Icelandic pianist Vikingur Olafssen, who scored major successes with recent albums of Philip Glass and Johann Sebastian Bach.)
Here is a link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/arts/music/best-classical-music.html
Of course not all critics agree.
The Ear has already listed the nominations for the Grammy Awards (a link is below), and more critics’ picks will be featured in coming days.
You should also notice that a recording of Ethel Smyth’s “The Prison” — featuring soprano Sarah Brailey (below), a graduate student at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music and a co-founder of Just Bach — is on the Times’ list as well as on the list of Grammy nominations.
What new recordings – or even old recordings — would you recommend?
The Ear wants to hear.
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The Madison Bach Musicians will open its new season with a virtual online concert of Haydn and Mozart this Saturday night and Sunday afternoon
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement, about a promising contrast-and-compare concert, from the Madison Bach Musicians:
The Madison Bach Musicians (MBM) will start its 17th season this Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, Oct. 3 and 4, with a virtual chamber music concert and livestream event featuring the irrepressibly joyous, witty and poised music of Classical-era masters Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).
The performances features period instruments and historically informed performance practices.
See details near the bottom about the schedules and how to buy tickets.
Performers are violinist Kangwon Kim and cellist James Waldo (on gut-strung period instruments), fortepianist Trevor Stephenson, and soprano soloist Morgan Balfour — winner of the 2019 Handel Aria Competition. (Below top is Kangwon Kim; below middle is James Waldo; and below bottom is Morgan Balfour.)
The broadcast will begin with a 30-minute pre-concert lecture by MBM artistic director Trevor Stephenson (below, in a photo by Kent Sweitzer) illuminating the program’s repertoire, the lives of Haydn and Mozart, and the aesthetic aims of the period instruments.
While most of the pieces on the program are buoyant and full of celebration, the concert will begin with a pensive and melancholy work commensurate with our current pandemic times.
Mozart composed the Sonata in E minor for violin and fortepiano in 1778 at the age of 22 while on tour in Paris. His mother, who was with him on the tour, became suddenly ill and died unexpectedly. This sonata is the only piece of instrumental music Mozart ever composed in the key of E minor, and its blend of gravitas, sparseness and tenderness is heartbreakingly poignant.
Mozart’s Piano Trio in G major, composed in 1788, shows him at his sunniest and most affable, with one brilliant and catchy tune after another suspended effortlessly — at least in Mozart’s hands! ― within the balance of Classical form.
The program’s first half ends with five of Mozart’s songs. Mozart truly loved the soprano voice, and he lavished some of his greatest writing upon it. The set includes perhaps his best-known song, Das Veilchen (The Violet)―which is also, oddly enough, Mozart’s only setting of a text by the German poet Goethe.
The second half of the concert is devoted to the music of Mozart’s near contemporary, Joseph Haydn, who was just 24 years older than Mozart.
Though the two composers came from very different musical and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Haydn (below) was lower working class, rural, and musical but not professionally trained.
Mozart (below) was urban, solid middle class, musically trained, sophisticated, and ambitious.
Both managed to carve out successful careers in the fertile musical culture of Vienna and its environs. They certainly knew each other and even made music together on occasion, playing in string quartets — with Haydn on violin and Mozart on viola.
Haydn composed two sets of English Canzonettas (songs) during his visits to England during the early 1790s.
The Mermaid, with its flirtatious beckoning, stretches the confines of the parlor setting (where this music was most likely performed) and suggests a cabaret environment. Fidelity, on the other hand, stays within the parlor style, emphasizing how the bond of devotion can overcome physical separation. Haydn brilliantly interweaves stormy, naturalistic episodes with declarations of unbending loyalty.
The concert will close with Haydn’s mercurial Piano Trio No. 27 in C major. Also composed during his London visits in the 1790s, this trio is the first of a set of three dedicated to the London-based virtuoso pianist Therese Bartolozzi. The Presto finale―with its unbridled high spirits―is a supreme example of Classical Era cheeky, theatrically conceived wit. (You can hear the finale in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
SCHEDULE AND TICKETS
As a result of public health guidelines in response to Covid-19 that do not allow for an in-person audience, we will livestream our concert from Grace Episcopal Church, downtown on Capitol Square, on Saturday evening for at-home viewing. (Below are Trevor Stephenson and Kangwon Kim rehearsing in masks at Stephenson’s home.)
The event will begin with a pre-concert talk by Trevor Stephenson at 7:30 p.m., and after the 8 p.m. concert, the musicians will remain on stage to answer questions submitted by our audience.
On Sunday, starting at 3 p.m. we will rebroadcast the Saturday evening recording and follow that with a live question-and-answer session with our musicians from their homes.
After purchasing tickets for $15 per household, you will be sent a link to access the performance. The recorded lecture and video will be available for up to 72 hours after they take place.
To purchase tickets, go to: https://madisonbachmusicians.org/oct-3-4-haydn-mozart/ or to: https://madison-bach-musicians.square.site/product/haydn-mozart-oct-3-4-livestream/54?cs=true
For information about the Madison Bach Musicians’ full season, go to: https://madisonbachmusicians.org/season-overview/
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Classical music: Trevor Stephenson announces the new season of the Madison Bach Musicians on YouTube. It features smaller concerts and familiar comfort music
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By Jacob Stockinger
At a time when so many concerts are being canceled, it is especially welcome when a local ensemble announces plans for the 2020-21 season.
To announce the 17th season of the Madison Bach Musicians — a period-instrument group that uses historically informed performance practices — the founder and artistic director Trevor Stephenson (below), who also plays the harpsichord, fortepiano and piano, has made and posted a 13-1/2 minute YouTube video.
The season will also be posted on the MBM website in early June, and will also be announced with more details about times and ticket prices via email and postal mailings.
In the video, Stephenson plays the harpsichord. He opens the video with the familiar Aria from the “Goldberg” Variations and closes with two contrasting Gavottes from the English Suite in G minor.
As usual, Stephenson offers insights in the programs that feature some very well-known and appealing works that are sure to attract audiences anxious to once again experience the comfort of hearing familiar music performed live.
One thing Stephenson does not say is that there seems to be fewer ambitious programs and fewer imported guest artists. It’s only a guess, but The Ear suspects that that is because it is less expensive to stage smaller concerts and it also allows for easier cancellation, should that be required by a continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
If the speculation proves true, such an adaptive move is smart and makes great sense artistically, financially and socially given the coronavirus public health crisis.
After all, this past spring the MBM had to cancel a much anticipated, expensive and very ambitious production, with many out-of-town guests artists, of the “Vespers of 1610” by Claudio Monteverdi. Nonetheless, MBM tried to pay as much as it could afford to the musicians, who are unsalaried “gig” workers who usually don’t qualify for unemployment payments.
“Hope and Joy” is a timely, welcome and much-needed theme of the new season.
The new season starts on Saturday night, Oct. 3, at Grace Episcopal Church downtown on the Capitol Square, and then Sunday afternoon, Oct. 4, at Holy Wisdom Monastery in Middleton.
The program is Haydn and Mozart: songs composed in English and German by Haydn plus songs by Mozart; the great violin sonata in E minor by Mozart; and two keyboard trios, one in C major by Haydn and one in G major by Mozart.
Only four players will be required. They include: Stephenson on the fortepiano; concertmaster Kangwon Kim on baroque violin; James Waldo on a Classical-era cello; and soprano Morgan Balfour (below), who won the 2019 Handel Aria Competition in Madison.
On Saturday night, Dec. 12, in the First Congregational United Church of Christ, near Camp Randall Stadium, MBM will perform its 10th annual holiday concert of seasonal music.
The program includes several selections from the “Christmas Oratorio” by Johann Sebastian Bach; a Vivaldi concerto for bassoon with UW-Madison professor Marc Vallon (below, in a photo by James Gill) as soloist; and the popular “Christmas Concerto” by Arcangelo Corelli.
On Saturday night, April 24, at Grace Episcopal Church and Sunday afternoon, April 25, at Holy Wisdom Monastery, the MBM will perform a concert of German Baroque masterworks with the internationally renowned baroque violinist Marc Destrubé (below).
The program features Handel and Bach but also composers who are not often played today but who were well known to and respected by Bach and his contemporaries.
Specifically, there will be a suite by Christoph Graupner (below top) and a work by Carl Heinrich Graun (below bottom).
There will also be a concerto grosso by George Frideric Handel and two very well-known concertos by Bach – the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and the Concerto for Two Violins.
Here is the complete video:
What do you think of the Madison Bach Musicians’ new season?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Madison Bach Musicians summer workshops in early music are open to the public. A faculty concert is on Wednesday night and a FREE all-participants concert is on Friday at 12:30 p.m.
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REMINDER: Madison Opera’s annual Opera is the Park was cancelled last night because of weather and takes place TONIGHT in Garner Park at 8 p.m. For more information, go to: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/classical-music-madison-operas-annual-free-opera-in-the-park-returns-this-saturday-night-july-20-in-garner-park-and-celebrates-18-years-in-madison-plus-a-glimpse-of-the-upcoming-season/
By Jacob Stockinger
The fifth annual Madison Bach Musicians Summer Chamber Music Workshop (below, a cello class from last year) will be held from Monday, July 23, to Friday, July 26, at the West Middleton Lutheran Church, 3763 Pioneer Road, in Verona, Wisconsin.
The workshop is chaired by MBM assistant artistic director and baroque violinist Kangwon Kim (below), who says: “I’m excited to welcome 32 participants, our largest number ever, working in nine chamber groups this summer to share a week of intense music-making and learning.
” We will explore wonderful repertoire from the baroque and early classical periods, both familiar and rarely performed, while working intensely in an encouraging community that will support musical growth.”
Harpsichordist JungHae Kim (below top) from San Francisco and baroque violist Micah Behr from Madison will join returning faculty members recorder player Lisette Kielson, cellist Martha Vallon (below bottom), dance instructor Karen McShane-Hellenbrand, and MBM founder, artistic director and keyboardist Trevor Stephenson.
Musicians who range in age from 13 to older adulthood will receive personalized ensemble coaching in violin, viola, baroque cello, viola da gamba, piano, fortepiano, harpsichord and recorder. (You can sample the Madison Bach Musicians in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The public is invited to an evening Faculty Concert and various afternoon classes exploring continuo playing, specific instrument master classes, stage presence for musicians, sight-reading, baroque dance, and more.
The Faculty Concert on Wednesday night, July 23, at 7:30 p.m. will feature works by Carl Heinirch Graun (below top), Francesco Turini, Jean-Henri D’Anglebert (below bottom), Georg Philipp Telemann, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier and Henry Purcell on period instruments. Admission is $15 at the door.
The all-participants final concert of the music from the workshops is on Friday, July 26, at 12:30 p.m. It is FREE and open to the public.
An Auditor’s Pass for afternoon programming for the entire festival — including the Faculty Concert — is $40.
For more information, go to: https://madisonbachmusicians.org/summer-workshop/
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Classical music: On Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, the Madison Bach Musicians explore the miracle of Mozart across his lifetime and across different genres
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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
The Madison Bach Musicians concludes its 15th season on this coming Saturday night, April 6, at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoon, April 7, at 3:30 p.m. with The Mozart Miracle .
The program features performances of beloved music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791, below) with an all period-instrument chamber orchestra in the magnificent acoustic setting of the First Congregational United Church of Christ (below), 1609 University Avenue, near Camp Randall Stadium.
Period-instrument specialists hailing from Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Omaha, Seattle, Philadelphia and New York City will perform on natural or valveless horns, classical oboes, gut-strung violins, violas, cellos and a double bass played with 18th-century transitional bows.
Early music specialist and bassoon professor Marc Vallon (below to, in a photo by James Gill) of UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music will lead the orchestra (below bottom, in a performance last year at the First Unitarian Society of Madison).
Internationally acclaimed soprano Ariadne Lih (below), from Montreal, Canada, will join the ensemble for Exsultate Jubilate — a ringing example of how Mozart could seamlessly fuse religious zeal with vocal pyrotechnics. (You can hear Renée Fleming sing “Exsultate Jubilate” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The program also features dance sequences, choreographed by Karen McShane Hellenbrand (below) of the UW-Madison, from Mozart’s ballet Les Petits Riens (The Little Nothings).
Also included are pre-concert lectures: On Saturday, April 6, at 7:15 p.m. there is a lecture by MBM artistic director Trevor Stephenson with an 8 p.m. concert . On Sunday, April 7, his lecture is at 2:45 p.m. with the concert at 3:30 p.m.
Advance-sale discounted tickets are $35 for general admission.
Tickets are available at Orange Tree Imports and Willy Street Coop (East and West). You can also buy advance tickets online at www.madisonbachmusicians.org
Tickets at the door are: $38 general for adults, $35 for seniors 65-plus, and student rush for $10, on sale 30 minutes before lecture.
MBM artistic director Stephenson (below) sent the following remarks to The Ear:
Here are two fantastic quotations about Mozart:
“Together with the puzzle he gives you the solution.” Ferrucio Busoni on Mozart
“It may be that when the angels go about their task of praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together as a family, they play Mozart…” Karl Barth
Both quotes underline, I believe, Mozart’s charismatic generosity of spirit, his sense of play and camaraderie. We’re all in this together! Mozart’s music is a perfect fusion of melodic inspiration — tunes so good they can stay in your head for joyous weeks at a time, or even a lifetime — and structural clarity.
His sense of proportion — when to display 18th-century balance and when to step outside the frame — is uncanny and always a delight. And for me, as a five-year-old-boy, dancing about the living room to the old LP vinyl — dancing lightly, though, so the record wouldn’t skip — it was Mozart’s boundless energy and joy, pouring out of the speakers, that really revved me up.
The Madison Bach Musicians program on this coming Saturday and Sunday will explore several sides of Mozart’s genius: master orchestrator and symphonist; aficionado of fugues; virtuoso keyboard player and mesmerizing improviser; ballet composer; and the greatest fashioner of material for the soprano voice.
MBM has assembled a Classical-period chamber orchestra, replete with gut strings and transitional bows, natural horns, and classical oboes. To this we’ll add: a fortepiano — the type of instrument Mozart toured with; an elegant dancer — for dance was an integral part of 18th-century living; and a magnificent soprano — Mozart was virtually besotted with the magic of the high female voice, and he wrote for it throughout his life with imagination and a sense of thrilling experiment that has never been equaled before or since.
Here is a bit about each selection:
Symphony No. 1 in E-flat major – Composed 1764 when Mozart was just eight years old (below), during an extended stay in London with his father Leopold and sister Nannerl. Strongly influenced by the symphonies of C. F. Abel and J. C. Bach (The London Bach, youngest son of Johann Sebastian).
Symphony No. 29 in A major – Composed 1774 when Mozart was 18 years old (below). It is often considered the pinnacle of his early symphonic writing.
Exsultate Jubilate for soprano and orchestra – Written 1773 in Milan for the castrato, or male soprano, Venanzio Rauzzini, it is an elegant fusion of rapturous melodies and vocal display.
Adagio & Fugue in C minor for strings – Composed in 1788, certainly the latest Mozart work on the program when the composer was 32. Mozart had by this time — largely through the Sunday soirees at Baron van Swieten’s—been studying Bach’s fugues closely for several years. This fugue is an arrangement of a work for two fortepianos, K. 426, which Mozart had composed five years earlier in 1783. Mozart added the opening Adagio for the strings version.
Fantasy in D minor for fortepiano – Mozart improvised frequently as part of both private and public performance. This Fantasy, with its dark distinctive opening which explores the fantastical low register of the fortepiano, may give us a good idea of what Mozart might have done one night just sitting down to “jam” for his friends.
Two French Songs for soprano and fortepiano — Birds follow the warm weather, so they never cease their courtship. And in the woods one day the protagonist foolishly rouses a sleeping Cupid — and pays a terrible price.
Ballet excerpts from Les Petit Riens – literally The Little Nothings. Mozart composed most, but not all, of this ballet in Paris 1778 for Jean-Georges Noverre, ballet master of the Paris Opera. The work served as an interlude to an opera by Niccolo Piccinni that closed after just four performances.
For more information, go to: www.madisonbachmusicians.org
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Classical music education: The all-student Madison Youth Symphony Orchestra scores another big success with music by Mozart, Copland and Grieg
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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 Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (below, in a photo by Steve Rankin), founded and led by Mikko Rankin Utevsky is celebrating its fourth season of summer training sessions and public concerts.
I had to miss the first one of this summer, back in June, but I caught up with their second one, on last Saturday night, given at the First United Methodist Church on Wisconsin Avenue.
The church is now pursuing an active program of concerts, and this was the first one I have attended there. The hall (below) is a beautiful and spacious one, with fine acoustics. The fifty-odd people who attended were all but dwarfed by its amplitude.
The first half of the program was devoted to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat, K. 271, often known by the name “Jeunehomme” for the student who inspired it. It is a boldly innovative work, even as it is the composer’s first truly mature essay in this form.
The soloist was Trevor Stephenson (below top and left in bottom photo), artistic director of the Madison Bach Musicians, playing his own fortepiano.
That instrument lacks the big and forceful sound of the modern grand piano, and Stephenson rightly shunned heroics for greater delicacy. Even with an orchestra of only 16 players, the instrument defined a balance that was fascinatingly different from what we usually hear. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the Mozart concerto played on a fortepiano by Malcolm Bilson, who was Trevor Stephenson’s teacher.)
After the intermission, Utevsky identified a policy now established by the organization, one that allows certain players in the orchestra to become podium “interns”, for training and for one performance opportunity.
This time cellist Elizabeth Strauss (below) was given a chance to conduct the familiar string arrangement that Edvard Grieg made of his song Våren (usually translated as “The Last Spring”).
Strauss seemed very confident. I did find her tempo a little faster than seems good to me, and a string group of only a dozen players could hardly achieve the polish and richness that most performances bring off. Still, the point is the wonderful experience given to such a trainee-conductor in these circumstances.
The concert concluded as Utevsky conducted the recast orchestra (below) in the suite for 13 instruments that Aaron Copland derived from his ballet Appalachian Spring.
This is a beautiful piece of Americana in music, and both conductor and players gave it their full devotion. The result was a handsomely well-balanced and nicely blended performance that obviously moved the audience greatly.
The MAYCO organization has made a real place for itself in Madison’s summer music, giving valuable experience to both the conductor and his student players, as they grow into mature orchestral musicians.
Long may it succeed!
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Classical music education: The all-student Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) performs music by Mozart and Aaron Copland this coming Saturday night and Sunday afternoon
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By Jacob Stockinger
This coming weekend, the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO, below in a photo by Steve Rankin) performs “Interplay,” featuring music by Mozart, Copland and Grieg.
There will be two performances.
The first is on Saturday, Aug. 4, at 7:30 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church (below), 203 Wisconsin Avenue, off the Capitol Square.
Then on Sunday, Aug. 5, MAYCO will perform at 12:30 p.m. in Brittingham Gallery 3 at the UW-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art as part of the monthly “Sunday Afternoon Live at the Chazen” series, which can be STREAMED LIVE by going to: https://www.chazen.wisc.edu/index.php?/events-calendar-demo/event/sunday-afternoon-live-at-the-chazen-8-5-18/
Admission for the Saturday performance is $10 at the door; students by donation. The Sunday performance is FREE, and reservations can be made by going to the above link.
For more information, visit www.mayco.org or www.facebook.com/madisonchamberorchestra.
ABOUT THE ORCHESTRA
MAYCO is a free summer festival ensemble dedicated to providing an intensive small orchestra experience for advanced high school and college musicians.
Founded in 2010 by music director Mikko Rankin Utevsky, the orchestra prepares a full program over the course of each one-week summer session, culminating in a public concert (below is a photo by Dennis Gotowksi of the concert this past June).
For The Ear, Utevsky (below top) and his general manager and concertmaster-wife Thalia Coombs (below bottom) answered some questions about the concerts:
WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE PROGRAM?
The orchestra will be joined by guest soloist Trevor Stephenson (below), who is the artistic director and keyboard player of the Madison Bach Musicians. On fortepiano, he will solo in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K. 271, sometimes nicknamed the “Jeunehomme” Concerto. (You can hear the lively, tuneful and infectious last movement of the Mozart concerto in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Stephenson has led workshops on historical performance practices with the orchestra in past seasons, and we’re delighted to work with him to bring one of Mozart’s weirdest and wildest youthful masterpieces to life.
The ballet suite from “Appalachian Spring” by Aaron Copland (below) is one of the defining works of his classic American sound, juxtaposing the pastoral beauty of the countryside with his trademark rhythmic vitality. We are performing the original chamber version, in which the clarity of texture illuminates the intricate internal structure of the piece.
Two high school students from our Conducting Apprenticeship Program will lead Grieg’s affecting miniature, “Last Spring,” for string orchestra. Cellist Elizabeth Strauss and violinist Monona Suzuki (below, in 2013) are this year’s Apprentices.
WHY IS THE CONCERT CALLED “INTERPLAY”?
We wanted to highlight the sense of conversation and interaction present in the two major works on this program.
The Mozart concerto is remarkable for the degree of interplay between soloist and orchestra. From the opening bars they are constantly interrupting each other, finishing each other’s sentences. It’s what gives the piece its unique sense of drama.
There’s a truism that Mozart made everything he wrote into an opera, and it’s certainly evident here: the melodies could have been lifted straight out of “The Marriage of Figaro.”
In the Copland work, it’s more about the intricacy of texture and the sense of playfulness in the way the various parts interact.
This project is funded in part by a grant from the Madison Arts Commission, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board; and by Dane Arts, with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.
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Classical music: The Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) performs works by Bach, Elgar and Shostakovich plus a world premiere by Zachary Green this Saturday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following note to post from Mikko Rankin Utevsky – the founder and director of the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra (MAYCO) – and his concertmaster wife Thalia Coombs. Both are graduates of the Mead Witter School of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dear Friends:
Thalia and I are excited to announce the Madison Area Youth Chamber Orchestra’s 2018 concerts that begin this coming Saturday night.
MAYCO is a mentorship-based training orchestra for advanced high school and college musicians, and we’ll be returning to our two-concert season format this summer. Details about the programs are below.
We have run MAYCO on a volunteer basis almost entirely on ticket revenue for the past eight years. But as expenses for space and music have risen, we’ve begun to outgrow that budget. If you’d like to help support our educational and performing work and keep this extraordinary organization going strong, you can make a tax-deductible contribution through our financial sponsor, Arts Wisconsin:
http://www.artswisconsin.org/programsservices/fiscal-receiver-services/supportmayco/
If you want to learn more about our work, you can follow us on Facebookand check out our website.
Here are the two programs this summer:
Saturday, June 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Immanuel Lutheran Church (below top), 1021 Spaight Street
Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 (in the YouTube video at the bottom)
Elgar: Serenade for Strings, Op. 22
Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony in C minor, Op. 110, (from the String Quartet No. 8)
Zachary Green (below bottom): “Semblance” a 2018 New Music Project commissioned work
Saturday, August 4, at 7:30 p.m. in First United Methodist Church (below top), 203 Wisconsin Avenue
Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major with Trevor Stephenson (below bottom) of the Madison Bach Musicians on fortepiano
Copland: Appalachian Spring
This program will be repeated on August 5 at 12:30 p.m. as part of the live-streamed Sunday Afternoon Live at the Chazen Museum concert series.
Tickets for the June 16 and August 4 performances are $10 at the door; students are admitted by donation. Tickets can also be purchased in advance via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/madison-area-youth-chamber-orchestra-craft-tickets-46700364046.
Thank you all for your support, and we hope to see you this summer.
Mikko and Thalia
This project is funded in part by a grant from the Madison Arts Commission, with additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board; and by Dane Arts, with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.
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Classical music: On Saturday “The MET Live in HD” will feature Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute.” Also, UW trombonist Mark Hetzler’s concert is TONIGHT (NOT Saturday) as is a concert of Mozart’s music for piano-four hands
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CORRECTION: The Stravinsky concert by UW trombone professor Mark Hetzler and friends is TONIGHT at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall – NOT Saturday night as incorrectly listed in the posting yesterday. For more information about the performers and the program, go to:
ALERT: The Ear received the following word from early music specialist Trevor Stephenson: “Tonight, my distinguished colleague from France, Marcia Hadjimarkos, will join me for a program of Mozart’s thrilling music for piano four-hands.
“The concert will be held at the Madison Christian Community church, 7118 Old Sauk Road. The acoustics there for the fortepiano are really wonderful. Tickets are available at the door. They cost $20 for the general public and $10 for students.”
By Jacob Stockinger
The broadcasts of “The Met Live in HD” don’t usually fall in consecutive weeks.
But this weekend is an exception.
Last Saturday and then again on Wednesday, the current season premiered with a critically acclaimed production of Bellini’s “Norma.”
This Saturday, a new production of the ever-popular “The Magic Flute” by Mozart will be featured.
The three-hour show starts at 11:55 a.m. on Saturday at the Marcus Point Cinema on the far west side of Madison and the Marcus Palace Cinema in Sun Prairie.
Encore performances at both movie theaters are this coming Wednesday at 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
The full-length opera will be sung in German with English surtitles.
Tickets are $22 for the public, and $18 for seniors.
The production promises to be special for two reasons: the elaborate, colorful staging and innovative costumes by director Julie Taymor, famous for her oversized puppet-like costumes in “The Lion King”; and vibrant conducting by longtime Metropolitan Opera artistic director and now emeritus conductor James Levine. (You can hear the upbeat Overture in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Below are some other photos to give you a taste of the production:
Here is a link for notes about the production, including several videos:
http://www.metopera.org/Season/2017-18-Season/zauberflote-mozart-tickets/
And here is a link to a synopsis and notes about the cast:
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: Legendary Austrian pianist and scholar Paul Badura-Skoda dies at 91. In the 1960s, he was artist-in-residence at the UW-Madison School of Music
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By Jacob Stockinger
Paul Badura-Skoda, the celebrated Austrian pianist who was equally known for his performances and his scholarship, and who was artist-in-residence at the UW-Madison in the mid-1960s until 1970, died this past Tuesday at 91.
A Vienna native, Badura-Skoda was especially known for his interpretations of major Classical-era composers who lived and worked in that city including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.
He was the only pianist to have recorded the complete sonatas by those composers on both the modern piano and the fortepiano, the appropriate period instrument.
If memory serves, Badura-Skoda’s last appearances in Madison were almost a decade ago for concerts in which he played: the last piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert; a Mozart piano concerto with the UW Chamber Orchestra; and a solo recital of Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Chopin at Farley’s House of Pianos.
But he also performed and recorded Bach, Chopin and Schumann among others. And Badura-Skoda was also renowned as a conductor, composer, editor and teacher.
You can find many of his recordings and interviews on YouTube. Normally, this blog uses shorter excerpts. But the legendary Paul Badura-Soda is special. So in the YouTube video at the bottom you can hear Badura-Skoda’s complete last recital of Schubert (Four Impromptus, D. 899 or Op. 90), Schumann (“Scenes of Childhood”, Op. 15) and Mozart (Sonata in C Minor, K. 457). He performed it just last May at the age of 91 at the Vienna Musikverein, where the popular New Year concerts take place.
Here are links to several obituaries:
Here is one from the British Gramophone Magazine:
https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/pianist-paul-badura-skoda-has-died-at-the-age-of-91
Here is one from WFMT radio station in Chicago, which interviewed him:
https://www.wfmt.com/2019/09/26/pianist-paul-badura-skoda-dies-at-age-91/
Here is one, with some surprisingly good details, from Limelight Magazine:
https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/paul-badura-skoda-has-died/
And here is his updated Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Badura-Skoda
But you will notice a couple of things.
One is that The Ear could not find any obituaries from such major mainstream media as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. But each had many other feature stories about and reviews of Badura-Skoda’s concerts over the years in their areas.
The other noteworthy thing is that none of the obituaries mentions Badura-Skoda’s years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music in the 1960s, where he helped to raise the profile and prestige of the School of Music. Getting Badura-Skoda to join the university was considered quite an unexpected coup.
So here are two links to UW-Madison press releases that discuss that chapter of his life and career.
Here is an archival story from 1966 when Badura-Skoda first arrived at the UW-Madison:
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/UW/UW-idx?type=turn&entity=UW.v67i8.p0011&id=UW.v67i8&isize=text
And here is a press release that came from the UW-Madison News Service eight years ago on the occasion of one of Badura-Skoda’s many visits to and performances in Madison:
https://news.wisc.edu/writers-choice-madison-welcomes-badura-skoda-again-and-again/
Rest in Peace, maestro, and Thank You.
It would be nice if Wisconsin Public Radio paid homage with some of Badura-Skoda’s recordings since a complete edition was issued last year on the occasion of his 90th birthday.
If you wish to pay your own respects or leave your memories of Paul Badura-Skoda and his playing, please leave something in the comment section.
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