The Well-Tempered Ear
Bach Around the Clock 2021 will incorporate many new aspects – including more audiences and artists of color — into the 10-day free virtual festival that runs March 17-26
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following update about Bach Around the Clock (BATC), the annual March free event to celebrate the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (below). Like last year, the year’s will be virtual and online and spread out over 10 days, from March 17 to March 26.
The BATC 2021 Festival is shaping up brilliantly. We have about 50 participants signed up so far, with musical selections totaling more than eight hours.
As always, it has a nice mix of ages and levels of performers, from young students to seasoned professionals. It also runs from traditional instruments like the violin, viola, cello, oboe, bassoon, piano and organ as well as the human voice to more unusual instruments like the clavichord, 6-string electric bass and a saxophone quartet.
We are so grateful to all the participants who have volunteered to share their talents. (Below is the Webb Trio playing last year from home.)
Last year’s virtual format forms the basis of this year’s festival, but we’ve expanded on that in some very exciting ways.
BATC board member Melanie de Jesus (below) is producing two mini-films aimed at making the festival more accessible to participants. For the tech-challenged among us, the “How to Film Yourself” video will make it easier for musicians to participate virtually.
This film will be available this THURSDAY, Feb. 25, in time to help participants film and submit their performances by the March 5 deadline. Would you like to perform? For information about signing up for slots. Click here to let us know!
Make your own recording or request a time slot at a BATC venue where a professional videographer will create a recording for you to keep. Harpsichord, piano and organ are available.
Melanie’s “Bach for Kids” film will be published during the festival, and will introduce basic musical concepts to the youngest participants. It will culminate in a sing-along, play-along, dance-along performance of some simple Bach tunes, as demonstrated by some (very) young students at the Madison Conservatory, where de Jesus is the director.
Another significant new element of this year’s festival will be our evening Zoom events, including receptions with performers, and guest artists giving special performances, lecture/demos, master classes and panel discussions.
In keeping with this year’s theme of “Building Bridges Through Bach,” we will celebrate and feature musicians and guest artists of color.
We are thrilled to announce Wisconsin Public Radio music host Jonathan Overby (below) as our keynote speaker. Overby’s work to research and demonstrate how music, especially sacred music, serves as a cultural bridge, has taken him all over the planet. His core values are in close alignment with the theme of this year’s festival, and his address will set the tone for the rest of the festival.
The virtual format enables us to bring in guest artists from afar. Lawrence Quinnett (below), on the piano faculty of Livingstone College, a private, historically black college in Salisbury, North Carolina, will perform all six French Suites, and give a brief talk on his approach to ornamentation. (You can hear Quinnett performing French Suite No. 1 by Bach in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Clifton Harrison (below, in photo by Stephen Wright), violist in the Kreutzer String Quartet, in residence at Oxford University in England, will give a master class for interested BATC participants. Information on how to audition for this opportunity will be shared very soon.
We are extremely pleased that Trevor Stephenson (below), artistic director of the Madison Bach Musicians, will give an evening lecture and demonstration on the Goldberg Variations.
Through his performances, interviews and extremely popular pre-concert lectures, Trevor has served as a very important builder of bridges to the music of J.S. Bach in Madison and beyond. It would be hard to overstate the impact of Trevor’s work to make Bach’s music accessible to local audiences of all ages and backgrounds. We’re sure viewers will enjoy this event.
An astonishing new development resulted from BATC’s outreach efforts to local high schools: Steve Kurr (below), orchestra director at Middleton High School and former conductor of the Middleton Community Orchestra, decided to incorporate BATC into his curriculum this semester.
Fifteen of his students will perform for BATC, filmed by four other students, and then the students will all view the performances and write essays about them.
BATC is delighted with this creative initiative, looks forward to receiving the videos from this cohort of students, and hopes to expand on this kind of outreach in future years. Maybe we can include the final essays on our website, if the students agree.
There are a few other ideas still under construction; perhaps a panel discussion with educators, or one with local musical bridge-builders (aka “Angels in our Midst”)?
Please help us keep this festival free and open to all.
Bach Around The Clock is a unique program in our community. It offers everyone the opportunity to share their love of the music of Bach. There is no charge to perform or to listen.
But the festival is not free to produce! BATC provides venues, instruments, videographers, editors, and services for performers and audience.
We need your support!
Click on there link below to donate securely online with a PayPal account or credit card: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=WU7WWBW5LBMQJ
Or you can make a check out to Bach Around The Clock and mail it to: Bach Around The Clock, 2802 Arbor Drive #2, Madison, WI 53704
Bach Around The Clock is a 501(c)(3) organization; your donation is tax-deductible as allowed by the law. Donors will be listed on the acknowledgments page of the BATC website .
For the latest updates, please visit our website, bachclock.org, or our Facebook page, facebook.com/batcmadison.
We hope you will join us.
Marika Fischer Hoyt, Artistic Director, Bach Around The Clock, (608) 233-2646
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Classical music: More World Cup soccer this weekend means more music by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Here is installment No. 3.
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By Jacob Stockinger
It is the second-to-last weekend for the FIFA World Cup of soccer -– or football, as the rest of the world calls the sport –- in Brazil, especially now that Brazil has survived by defeating Colombia and that Germany defeated France.
As I have said before, for The Ear the famed athletic competition has become a great excuse to explore a composer who is also world-class but whose music is too often overlooked.
I am talking about the 20th-century composer Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. So here is another morsel to whet your appetite, to tease you into listening to — and maybe even playing more of –- the music of Villa-Lobos (below).
Once again you can hear how he incorporates folk music – folk songs, tunes and dance rhythms – into his concert hall music. In this one you can even hear how he tries to bring in Bach to Brazil. It is neo-Classicism at its best.
At the bottom is the gorgeous first movement from the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4 for solo piano, as played live by Brazilian native Nelson Freire (seen below with Martha Argerich).
It is slowly and deeply moving, Amazonian Bach that I find is haunting and stays with you, making you want to listen to it again and again. It reminds The Ear of a Chorale Prelude by Johann Sebastian Bach (below), especially the ones reworked in piano transcriptions by Ferruccio Busoni; or maybe a Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier or an organ work, perhaps the prelude to a toccata; or maybe even a slow movement from one of the French or English Suites or the Partitas; or one of the variations from the “Goldberg” Variations.
Here are links to the Cello Choir concert of the annual Summer National Cello Institute that is held each summer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music and that gave rise to the Villa-Lobos postings.
And here are the links to the first two installments that feature the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 and No 1, which both deserve repeated hearings:
And finally here is the link to the YouTube video with today’s installment of the greatness of Heitor Villa-Lobos music, the neglect of which is yet another sign of how Eurocentric the concert hall programming usually is:
Tags: Arts, athlete, athletic, Bach, Bachianas Brasileiras, Brazil, Busoni, Chorale, chorale prelude, Classical music, Colombia, English Suites, Ferruccio Busoni, FIFA World Cup, football, France, French Suites, Germany, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Madison Opera, Music, Nelson Freire, organ, Piano, Prelude, soccer, Sport, Sports, transcription, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, World Cup, YouTube
Classical music education: Prize-winning Korean conductor and pianist Myung Whun Chung records an album of music that rewards and encourages piano students.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Spring is the time for year-end piano recitals, for piano teachers and students to show off their stuff as the school year ends.
If you are looking for something to give a young piano student -– or, for that matter, even an older piano student -– The Ear can’t think of a better gift than a new album from ECM Records.
It is the debut recital of solo piano works by the prize-winning Korean conductor and pianist Myung Whun Chung (below), whose fabulously musical family includes a famous violinist sister and a cellist brother with whom he recorded many famous trios by Antonin Dvorak, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn and others. (Below, he is seen conducting at the BBC Proms.)
Here is a link to his biography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myung-whun_Chung
And here is a taste with some description from ECM:
http://player.ecmrecords.com/myung-whun-chung–piano
The CD features great sonic engineering. The piano sound is clear and upfront, not overly resonant and not percussive. The treble and bass are well-balanced. And the playing seems relaxed and natural, never tense or forced, whimsical or neurotic.
The album contains a variety of 10 pieces for different levels of playing, though most are for advanced beginners or intermediate students. As Chung explains at the bottom in a YouTube video, he made this album not for pianists, but for young people. We need more of that kind of caring and music education.
“Fur Elise’ by Ludwig van Beethoven and Peter Tchaikovsky’s “Autumn Song” lead on to more difficult works like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” as well as two Impromptus from Op. 90 (E-flat Major and G-flat Major) by Franz Schubert and two Nocturnes by Frederic Chopin.
The simpler “Traumerei” from “Scenes of Childhood” by Robert Schumann, which the great virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz always used as a signature encore, leads to the underplayed as well as harder and longer Arabesque by the same composer. (Below is Myung Wha Chung recording at the piano in a photo by Rainer Maillard for ECM Records.)
So there is a variety of learning levels built-in as a teasing incentive to push on to the next one.
But such playable beauty is its own incentive.
The CD makes clear that great music is not necessarily hard or virtuosic music. Chung’s “Fur Elise” is not rushed, but instead beautiful and unrushed Beethoven at his best.
I also like the way Chung opens the recital slowly with Claude Debussy’s “Clair de lune.” It proves an engaging and inviting way to set the mood, to calm the often hectic and nervy experience of a solo recital. (Below, Chung is seen playing on stage at the plush and warmly Old Word-elegant Teatro La Fenice in Venice in a photo by Sun Chung for ECM Records.)
You can see why Chung won second prize at the Tchaikovsky International Competition and why he guest conducts so frequently. He is a born musician. This is fine playing, not over-pedaled. Good rhythms and very fine tempi rule the day. And Chung demonstrates a fine use of rubato, or flexible tempi and timings, as well as a legato singing tone.
The album also serves as a reminder to piano students that there is more to music, and to possible professional and even prominent careers in music, than solo playing. The many famous conductors who went on from playing the piano include George Solti, Daniel Barenboim, Leonard Bernstein and, locally, both John DeMain of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Madison Opera, and Andrew Sewell of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.
This CD reminds The Ear of the albums “My First Recital” and “My Second Recital” albums by the late Ruth Laredo. They too also had all good pieces, all very well played. The Ear thinks we could use more albums that help show how great musicians started and then got great. As for music education and music appreciation, it serves a similar purpose to Leonard Bernstein’s great “Young People’s Concerts.”
Sure, I would have liked to hear something included by Johann Sebastian Bach, who is so essential to learning music — maybe one or two of the Two-Part Inventions that most piano students get to know. Or maybe one of the easier Preludes from “The Well-Tempered Clavier” or a movement from one of the French or English suites.
But then you could also ask for some of the easier Chopin preludes, mazurkas or waltzes, or maybe a Brahms Waltz.
Maybe those will come in a sequel, and maybe by next spring’s recital time.
One can hope –- and listen to this lovely recording while waiting.
But for this lesson, in any case, Myung Whun Chung — seen below in photo by Jean Francois Leclerq for ECM Records– gets a gold star.
Tags: Arts, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Chung, Classical music, English Suites, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, French Suites, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, John DeMain, Leonard Bernstein, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison Opera, Madison Symphony Orchestra, mazurkas, Music, Music education, music lessons, Myung Wha Chung, Myung Whun Chung, opera, Piano, piano lessons, Prelude, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, recital, Ruth Laredo, Tchaikovsky International Competition, Two-Part Invention, Waltz, Well-Tempered Clavier, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Young People's Concerts, YouTube
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