The Well-Tempered Ear
The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra starts its four-concert Winter Chamber Series TONIGHT at 7:30. Tickets are $30 for one-time access from Friday night to Monday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The new semester of virtual online concerts begins tonight with the inauguration of the Winter Chamber Series by the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (WCO, below in a photo by Mike Gorski).
Tonight’s program features music by Giovanni Gabrieli, Valerie Coleman, Alec Wilder, Craig Russell and Franz Schubert. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the first movement of the Schubert Cello Quintet, played by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.)
The programs are short and feature classic works as well as new music and neglected composers. Often single movements or excerpts rather than complete works are performed.
Concerts all debut on Fridays and remain available through Monday night. Debut dates are TONIGHT, Jan. 22; Feb. 26; March 26; and April 16. A ticket entitles the purchaser to one viewing.
Here is a description of the chamber music series from the WCO:
“While full orchestras remain sidelined, the WCO is excited to present the Winter Chamber Series. This new series will feature chamber works for multiple ensembles ranging from trios to octets, showcasing the versatility and caliber of the WCO’s 34 world-class musicians.
“Patrons will enjoy the four-concert series in the comfort of their own home, streaming each concert on WCO Live on-demand starting at 7:30 p.m. on the evening of the concert launch.
“All programs will be 60–75 minutes in length, with not only music but also stories from the WCO’s own musicians on their journey to becoming professional musicians.
“Also included is a pre-concert talk with maestro Andrew Sewell and Norman Gilliland, as well as a post-concert reflection with musicians of the WCO.”
Here is a link to the concerts, with programs plus notes by music director and conductor Sewell (below in a photo by Alex Cruz) as well as a link to purchase tickets from the Overture Center box office: https://wcoconcerts.org/concerts-tickets/winter-chamber-series
In addition, the WCO has started a musician’s relief fund. It seeks donations to pay musicians for the wages they have lost due to postponed or canceled concerts.
Here is a link: https://wcoconcerts.org/support/donate
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The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra cancels its first Masterworks concert and launches an online virtual Winter Chamber Series in January
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By Jacob Stockinger
With the surge in the coronavirus pandemic, the dominos are starting to fall again — this time for the spring series of live, in-person concerts that had been planned.
Friday night brought important news from the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (below, in photo by Mike Gorski).
The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (WCO) has canceled its first Masterworks concert, with guest cellist Amit Peled, in late January. In its place the WCO is launching its first-ever digital Winter Chamber Series.
The virtual, online series of digital concerts will feature the ensemble’s 34 players in smaller groups of four to eight, That will be safer for both players and audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Four home-viewable virtual online concerts are planned: Jan. 22, Feb. 26, March 26, and April 16. Programs are not available except for the first concert.
Also included are a pre-concert talk with WCO music director and maestro Andrew Sewell (below top, in a photo by Alex Cruz) and Wisconsin Public Radio host Norman Gilliland (below bottom), and post-concert reflections with musicians of the WCO.
The ticket price for each concert, which will run 60-75 minutes, is $30 per household. A ticket entitles you to one viewing of the concert between Friday, Jan. 22, and Monday, Jan. 25. The concert will start streaming at 7:30 p.m. on Friday.
Patrons who have already purchased season subscription tickets can apply that to the full series of four concerts.
Tickets are available online at the Overture Center box office. See below.
The program for the first Winter Chamber Concert on Jan. 22 is:
Four Canzonas by the Baroque Italian composer Giovanni Gabrieli (below):
“Tzigane” (a term for music by Hungarian gypsies or Romani) for Wind Quintet by the contemporary American composer Valerie Coleman (below):
The first movement of the famed String Quintet in C major, D. 956, by the Austrian Romantic composer Franz Schubert (below):
Four Octets by the 20th-century American composer and jazz musician Alec Wilder (below), which you can sample in the YouTube video at the bottom.
To see more background about the composers, more details about the concert and purchase tickets, go to: https://www.overture.org/events/wco-chamber-series
You can also check out the series as it progressively gets announced on the WCO home website: https://wcoconcerts.org/concerts-tickets/winter-chamber-series
The concert series sounds like a terrific substitution for the regular concerts that cannot yet take place.
But The Ear wonders if the price per concert is a bit steep, given that comparable concerts by UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music , the Wllly Street Chamber Players and Just Bach are free – although they do ask for donations — and that the Madison Opera charged $50 for its entire fall digital series while the Wisconsin Union Theater charges between $10 and $20 per virtual concert.
The Ear likes the eclectic programming, but also thinks it is kind of teasing and unsatisfying to offer just the first movement of such an organic masterpiece and profoundly beautiful work as the Schubert Cello Quintet. Doing one movement of a chamber music work somehow seems very different from doing one movement of a symphony.
It would also be nice to see the programs for all the concerts plus a series discount as an incentive.
What do you think about the WCO’s Winter Chamber Series?
What do you think about the price and the programming?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Wind music is in the spotlight this coming week at the UW-Madison
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By Jacob Stockinger
Last weekend brought the fifth annual Brass Fest to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music.
This week, wind music takes center stage at the UW-Madison.
Here is a listing of the FREE events — except for the concert in Baraboo on Friday — that are open to the public:
WEDNESDAY
On this Wednesday, Oct. 3, at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, the veteran Wingra Wind Quintet (below), made up of UW faculty members, will perform a FREE program called “I Hate Music,” taken from the title of a song cycle by Leonard Bernstein. (You can hear a song, sung by Barbara Bonney, from “I Hate Music” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The composers are all American and include Bernstein as well as Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, David Diamond and Walter Piston.
The guest artist is soprano Sarah Brailey, a UW-Madison alumna, who just excelled last week in Baroque music by Johann Sebastian Bach and who has established a national reputation while winning high praise from The New York Times.
For details about the specific pieces on the program as well as more background about the Wingra Wind Quintet (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot), which was founded in 1965, go to:
https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/wingra-wind-quintet-4/
FRIDAY
On Friday, Oct. 5, at 7:30 in the Al Ringling Theatre in Baraboo, the Wingra Wind Quintet will team up with the celebrated Pro Arte Quartet (below in a photo by Rick Langer) and guest double bassist Kris Saebo, to perform Franz Schubert’s Octet for winds and strings, D. 803. For more information, including purchasing tickets, go to: http://www.alringling.org/events
This coming Friday, Oct. 5, at 8 p.m. In Mills Hall, the UW Wind Ensemble (below), under conductor Scott Teeple and two graduate student conductors –- Ross Wolf and Cole Hairston — will perform a FREE concert of varied music from Giovanni Gabrieli and Johann Sebastian Bach to Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
For more the complete program, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/uw-wind-ensemble-3/
SUNDAY
On Sunday afternoon, Oct. 7, at 2 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW professor of composition and jazz saxophone Les Thimmig (below) will present a FREE 10-year retrospective of his compositions for different kinds of clarinets.
Also performing are his faculty colleagues clarinetist Alicia Lee (below) and pianist Jessica Johnson.
For information about Thimmig and the concert’s program, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/faculty-recital-compositions-of-les-thimmig-solo-and-duo/
At 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 7, in Morphy Recital Hall, guest flutist John Bailey (below), who teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, gives a FREE lecture and recital of music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Philippe Gaubert and Theodor Blumer. Sorry, no specific works are mentioned.
Bailey will be joined by UW pianist Daniel Fung.
For extensive background about Bailey, who is a member of the Moran Woodwind Quintet, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/guest-artist-recital-and-lecture-john-bailey-flute/
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Classical music: The new period-instrument group Sonata à Quattro makes its debut and excels in early Baroque music
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ALERT: The All-Festival Concert that closes this summer’s 19th annual Madison Early Musical Festival will take place in Mills Hall on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. Admission is $20 for the general public, $10 for seniors and students. Here are two links where you can find more specific information, including composers and works on the program:
https://memf.wisc.edu/event/all-fest-2018/
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.
By John W. Barker
Marika Fischer Hoyt (below) is becoming another powerhouse in our musical scene. Already a spark plug of the Ancora String Quartet, and now the director of the annual “Bach Around the Clock” bashes, she has organized a new ensemble, Sonata à Quattro, which made its debut on Wednesday night at Pres House.
This was done under the aegis of the current Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF) as a “fringe concert” — in the manner long-established by the Boston Early Music Festival. Plus, the concert’s theme was “The Lübeck Connection,” clearly tying it to the MEMF.
The music was early Baroque, almost entirely from the 17th century.
The first half presented pieces by seven composers, including, among the better-known ones, Michael Praetorius, Giovanni Gabrieli, Heinrich Schütz, Heinrich Ignaz Biber and Antonio Vivaldi.
In the earlier pieces, the instruments were not originally specified at all — and one of them was in fact purely vocal. But the later ones clearly displayed the definition of the early string ensemble.
Indeed, the basic players — besides the backup harpsichord — were seated (below) in what is now familiar in the configuration of the latter-day string quartet, with the subtle suggestion that the earlier sonata à quattro genre was its natural predecessor.
The presence here of Vivaldi—besides Gabrieli, the only Italian among these Germans, and of later date—seemed a bit incongruous, but his familiar Sinfonia ‘al Santo Sepolcro’ actually illustrated well the mature à quattro texture. (You can hear the Vivaldi in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
And a most impressive conclusion for this first half of the program was the fascinating eight-part Sonata in A minor by the sadly neglected Samuel Capricornus (1628-1665)—its eight-voice scoring not serving as a double choir but as a richly textured study in contrasting high with low parts.
For this first half, the core performers were Nathan Giglierano and Christine Hauptly Annin, violins; Fischer-Hoyt, viola; and Charlie Rasmussen, cello, with harpsichordist Daniel Sullivan.
They were joined along the way by gambist Phillip Serna (below top) who performed later on violone; and, for the Capricornus also violinist Thalia Coombs (below second), violist Micah Behr (below third) and viola da gambist Eric Miller (below bottom, in a photo by Katrin Talbot).
The program’s second half was devoted entirely to the music of Dietrich Buxtehude (below, ca. 1637-1707), the big star of the MEMF constellation.
First we had a Trio in B-flat from his Op. 2 collection, then a slightly French-style solo harpsichord Suite in D minor from Daniel Sullivan (below top).
Finally, we had two solo cantatas, sung by Kristin Knutson (below bottom), whose lovely soprano voice blended beautifully with the instruments.
This new ensemble will continue with concerts scheduled ahead for the coming season. But certainly this appearance represents a beautiful, and perfectly timed, introduction in a concert of true delight.
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Classical music: Voces Aestatis — Summer Voices — will perform early and Baroque vocal music this Friday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following information to post from Ben Luedcke, the artistic director of the choral group Voces Aestatis (Summer Voices, below).
Luedcke writes:
Voces Aestatis (Summer Voices) will present its third annual summer concert this Friday night, Aug. 25, at 7:30 p.m. at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church (below top and below bottom), 1833 Regent Street in Madison.
Tickets are $20 and available at the door. (Cash and check only; sorry, no credit or debit card sales.)
Artistic Director Ben Luedcke (below) and Assistant Director Ena Foshay have carefully selected singers with a pure blend to perform in this intimate concert venue.
Voces Aestatis is Madison’s only professional choir that specializes in early music.
The group will maintain its tradition of favoring a cappella repertoire of the 16th century, but new this year will be a collaboration with Saint Andrew Episcopal’s music director, Ken Stancer (below).
Stancer will accompany the choir on organ in four 17th-century pieces, including works by Heinrich Schütz, Giovanni Gabrieli, Henry Purcell and Marc-Antione Charpentier.
While the Purcell is the familiar, powerful and climactic “Hear My Prayer,” Gabrieli’s “O Jesu mi dulcissime” and Charpentier’s “Te Deum,” H.147, are rarely performed and are not to be missed.
The Gabrieli setting is for double-choir. But rather than two equal choirs, there are separate low-voice and high-voice choirs that provide a unique and sonorous texture of men and women. Additionally, the Charpentier is full of variety, including solos and quartets within the larger 10-minute piece.
Other a cappella works round out the program, including music by Tomás Luis de Victoria and William Byrd (below).
Most noteworthy will be the group’s fresh look at the double-choir motet “Super flumina babylonis,” by Phillipe de Monte (below). Although the work is typically performed rather slowly and lamentingly, the group will bring a decisively different interpretation with a quicker tempo and active articulations. (You can hear a traditional performance in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Also of note on the first half are pieces by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (below top) and Orlando di Lasso (below bottom), with texts from the “Song of Solomon” — a collection of bible passages that allege to describe the love between Christ and the Church, though they are in fact favorites of choral composers as they are known for their rather erotic descriptive passages.
Finally, Jacob Obrecht’s “Salve Regina” for six voices is likely to stun listeners not only for its beauty, but also because it was written almost 100 years earlier than anything else on the program.
It features a noticeably different and almost austere harmonic palette with overlapping thick textures, as well as many complicated rhythms and chants in between major sections.
Please visit VocesAestatis.org for more information or to support the organization. The group relies on individual donations, so we thank you in advance for supporting the arts in Madison.
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Classical music: UW-Madison’s third annual Brass Fest takes place this Friday and Saturday, and spotlights the debut of the Stockholm Chamber Brass
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By Jacob Stockinger
Attention all BRASS FANS!
A big and loud fanfare is in order.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music is hosting its third annual Brass Festival this coming Friday and Saturday – complete with special logo T-shirts to benefit the event.
The schedule includes master classes (on the trumpet, trombone, tuba and horn) and performances.
The major concerts require tickets – adult admission is $20 for the Friday night concert and $15 for the Saturday night concert with $5 admission for students and children for both concerts.
The star of the festival is the Stockholm Chamber Brass (below), which is on its first tour of the U.S.
The UW-Madison’s Wisconsin Brass Quintet (below) will also feature prominently.
Wisconsin Brass Quintet
Concerts are on Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall. There will be a reception after the Saturday night concert.
One of the major works to be performed is Malcolm Arnold’s Brass Quintet. It will be heard at the Friday night concert. (You can hear the Arnold quintet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Players from several area high schools will also be featured in the festival and performances.
For more information, including background on the Stockholm Chamber Brass and a link to the complete programs, which includes music by Gabrieli, Mahler, Shostakovich and Scandinavian composers, visit this link:
http://www.music.wisc.edu/event/brass-fest-3/
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Classical music: What is your favorite Easter music? There is so much to choose from. Here are two samplers.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is Easter Sunday, 2016.
You don’t have to be a believer to know that the events of Easter have inspired great classical music, especially in the Baroque era but also in the Classical, Romantic and Modern eras.
Of course, there is the well-known and much-loved oratorio “Messiah” by George Frideric Handel, who wrote it for Easter, not Christmas as is so often assumed because of when it is usually performed. (NOTE: The Madison Bach Musicians will perform “Messiah,” with period instruments and historically informed performance practices, at the First Congregational United Church of Christ on Friday and Sunday, April 8 and 10.)
There is a lot of instrumental music, including the gloriously brilliant brass music by the Venetian composer Giovanni Gabrieli and the darker Rosary sonatas for violin by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber and the “Lamentation” Symphony, with its sampling of familiar tunes and intended to be performed on Good Friday, by Franz Joseph Haydn.
Easter music cuts across all kinds of nationalities, cultures and even religious traditions: Italian, German, English, Scottish, American, Russian, French and Austrian.
But the occasion — the most central event of Christianity — is really celebrated by the huge amount of choral music combined with orchestral music – perhaps because the total effect is so overwhelming and so emotional — that follows and celebrates Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and then ultimately to Easter and the Resurrection from death of Jesus Christ.
For The Ear, the pinnacle is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (below), especially his cantatas, oratorios and passions.
But today The Ear wants to give you a sampler of 16 pieces of great Easter music, complete with audiovisual clips.
Here is one listing that features music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Thomas Tallis, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Gustav Mahler, Francis Poulenc and James MacMillan:
http://www.classical-music.com/article/six-best-pieces-classical-music-easter
And here is another listing that features music by Antonio Vivaldi, Hector Berlioz, Gioachino Rossini, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Bach’s “Easter Oratorio” (rather than his “St. Matthew Passion” or “St. John Passion”) and “The Resurrection” oratorio (other than “Messiah”) by Handel.
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2015/04/ten-classical-music-pieces-for-easter.html
Curiously, no list mentions the gorgeous and haunting “Miserere” (below) by Gregorio Allegri. It was traditionally performed in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel on the Wednesday and Good Friday of Holy Week, but was kept a closely guarded secret. Publishing it was forbidden. Then a 12-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart heard it and copied it down from memory.
Finally, The Ear offers his two favorite pieces of Easter music that never fail to move him. They are the passion chorale and final chorus from the “St. Matthew Passion” by Johann Sebastian Bach:
What piece of music is your Easter favorite?
Do you have a different one to suggest that you can leave in the COMMENT section, perhaps with a link to a YouTube video?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: America, American, Antonio Vivaldi, Arts, Austria, Austrian, Bach, Baroque, Beethoven, Biber, brass, Cantata, Chamber music, Choir, choral music, Christ, Christian, Christianity, Classical music, concerto, cross, Easter, English, France, French, Gabrieli, George Frideric Handel, German, Germany, Good Friday, Gregorio Allegri, Haydn, historically informed performance practices, Holy Week, Italian, Italky, Jacob Stockinger, James MacMillan, Jesus, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Madison Bach Musicians, Mahler, Messiah Part II, Miserere, Mozart, Music, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, oratorio, Orchestra, Palm Sunday, Passion, period instruments, Poulenc, Resurrection, Rossini, Russia, Russian, Scotland, Scottish, Seven Last Words, Sistine Chapel, string, Sunday, symphony, Tallis, UK, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, US, Vatican, Venice, Viola, Violin, Vivaldi, vocal music, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube
Classical music: Voces Aestatis will perform its second annual concert of 16th-century choral music this coming Friday night.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear’s friends at the choral group Voces Aestatis (below) – which performs early and pre-Baroque music – send word:
Voces Aestatis (pronounced VO-ches Eh-STA-tees) – or Summer Voices — is a professional choir of 16 voices that specializes in choral literature from the Renaissance and earlier.
The choir will present its second annual concert in Madison on this coming Friday night, Aug. 21 at 7:30 p.m. at Saint Andrew‘s Episcopal Church, 1833 Regent Street. Tickets are $15 at the door.
Director Ben Luedcke (above, far left in front row, and below) has prepared a concert that will feature both sacred and secular works from the 16th century.
Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church (below) is an intimate and acoustically ideal performance space for this ensemble — which is a highly select group of Madison singers, hand-picked for their vibrant voices, blended tone and experience with early music, particularly the a cappella repertoire of the 16th century.
One of the few professional choirs in Madison, this group of paid singers only rehearses a handful of times, performing once per year.
The first half of the concert will begin and end with double-choir pieces by Jean Mouton, and the master of the polychoral sub-genre, Giovanni Gabrieli. Music by William Byrd (below) and Jean l’Heritier celebrate the glory of God.
Also included are works by Giuseppe Pierluigi da Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso (below), with texts taken from the Song of Songs. Though sanctioned in the Old Testament as an allegory of the love between Christ and the Church, these biblical passages are infamous for their explicit erotic qualities and have been favorites of choral composers for centuries.
Music of Carlo Gesualdo and Antonio Lotti, with dramatic texts taken from the Tenebrae service of Good Friday round out the first half of the concert.
The second half features both English and Italian madrigals by Orlando Gibbons, John Bennet, Jacques Arcadelt, and Claudio Monteverdi (below). These highly sensual texts deal with lust as well as death, even questioning the meaning of our short lives.
Video and audio recordings from last year’s concert are available on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogmeA8EYrW0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQQ-cDhyFao
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzm2TmSEFjw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuRZ5b3NR6c
Tags: a cappella, Antonio Loti, Arts, Arts and Culture, Audio, Baroque, Bible, Carlo Gesualdo, Choir, choral music, Christ, church, Classical music, Claudio Monteverdi, death, Early music, England, Episcopal, erotic, Gabrieli, God, Good Friday, Great Britain, Italian music, Italy, Jacob Stockinger, Jacques Arcadelt, Jean ;, Jean l'Heritier, Jean Mouton, Jesus, John Bennet, lust, Madison, madrigals, Old Testament, Orlando di Lasso, Orlando di Lassus, Orlando Gibbons, Palestrina, Renaissance, sacred, secular, Song of Songs, St. Andrew, UK, United Kingdom, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, video, vocal music, William Byrd, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: The Madison Bach Musicians successfully mines early music for its latest holiday concert of unusual offerings superbly performed.
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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 for 20 years hosted 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 (MEMF) and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison. And he also provided the performance photos for this review.
By John W. Barker
Trevor Stephenson (below top) and his Madison Bach Musicians (below bottom) have established a solid tradition of offering a December “holiday” concert as a triumphant antidote to the debasement of musical life that the Christmas season seems to bring inevitably with it.
This time around — specifically, last Saturday night at the First Congregational Church United Church of Christ — was no exception, and even a step forward.
It was further testimony, also, of Stephenson’s thriving collaboration with Marc Vallon of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music faculty. Vallon chose a good many of the selections, organized the program, conducted (below top) some of it, and played the dulcian (Baroque bassoon, below bottom on the right).
In that last, Vallon was joined by his wife, Martha Vallon, on viola da gamba as well as by Anna Steinhoff on the same instrument, violinists Kangwon Kim and Brandi Berry, plus Linda Pereksta on recorder.
There was also a fine vocal quartet of soprano Chelsea Morris (below, far left), alto Sarah Leuwerke (far right), tenor Kyle Bielfeld (center left) and bass Davonne Tines.
Stephenson himself, held much of it together playing on a dandy “orgel positif” or chamber organ, made all of wood.
The program was a nicely varied mix of vocal and instrumental music, and going back further than the usually featured 18th century.
Of the vocal works, all but one were sacred in character and function, though few were specifically related to the Christmas season.
The 16th century was represented by Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594) in four Latin pieces for the vocal group alone. (One was an extraordinary chromatic study, typical of the composer’s experimentation with tonic bypassing of the old modal system.) The rest of the material was effectively from the 17th century, a time of wide explorations of the new Baroque idiom.
After an organ fugue by Giovanni Gabrieli, the explicitly instrumental pieces came from the pens of Johann Schenck (1660-1716), and Antonio Bertali (1605-1669), with varying instrumentations—the one by Schenck for two gambas (below, with Martha Vallon on the left and Anna Steinhoff) was particularly delicious.
Again in varying combinations, singers and players joined in selections by Heinrich Schütz (1585-1682), Johann Froberger (1616-1692), and Johann Schelle (1648-1701), as well as by two members of the musically prolific Bach family, of generations before Johann Sebastian Bach: Heinrich Bach (1615-1692), and Johann Michael Bach (1648-1694). The latter’s double-choir German motet provided a chance for all 11 performers to come together for a grand finale (singers in one choir, instruments in the other).
German was the predominant language of these vocal works. But an interesting curiosity was an adaptation that Heinrich Schütz made (his SWV 440), fitting a German translation to Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi’s Italian madrigal, “Chiome d’oro” (the Monteverdi version is in a YouTube video at the bottom).
All the performers were expert in their work, though the two gamba players were particularly appealing among the instrumentalists, while — with no disrespect to the others — Morris and Leuwerke were truly wonderful in their singing assignments.
What matters most is that Stephenson and his colleagues have once again demonstrated that the realms of early music have endless treasures to offer — ones most particularly welcome on the parched December scene.
A large and enthusiastic audience testified to public recognition of that fact.
Tags: American Record Guide, Antonio Bertali, Arts, Bach, Baroque, basssoon, Cello, Chamber music, chamber organ, Choir, Christmas, Christmas music, Classical music, conductor, Early music, Froberger, Gabrieli, German, German music, Germany, Heinrich Bach, holiday music, Isthmus, Italian music, Italy, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Michael Bach, Johann Schelle, Johann Schenck, Johann Sebastian Bach, John W. Barker, Madison, Madison Bach Musicians, Madison Early Music Festival, madrigal, Marc Vallon, MEMF, Monteverdi, motet, Music, organ, Orlando de Lassus, Orlando di Lasso, Quartet, recorder, Schütz, Trevor Stephenson, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viol, viola da gamba, Violin, vocal music, Wisconsin, WORT FM 88.9, YouTube
Classical music: The Madison Bach Musicians will perform rarely heard vocal and instrumental holiday music from the Renaissance and Baroque eras this Saturday night.
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By Jacob Stockinger
If you follow this blog, you know the high respect that The Ear has for the Madison Bach Musicians (below) and its founder-director Trevor Stephenson, who is also a first-rate keyboard player and a supremely talented explainer whose talks are unfailingly instructive and entertaining.
Stephenson writes to The Ear about this weekend’s upcoming holiday concert, which will feature a lot of vocal music and compositions that are rarely heard in the usual holiday concert programs. Each year, he says, attendance keeps growing steadily for the early holiday music performed on period instruments with historically informed performance practices.
Here is what Trevor Stephenson (below) says:
This Saturday evening, Dec. 13, at 8 p.m. the Madison Bach Musicians will present its fourth annual Holiday Concert (below is a photo from the 2012 holiday concert) in the beautiful sanctuary of the First Congregational United Church of Christ, at 1609 University Avenue, near historic Camp Randall stadium.
The preconcert lecture is at 7:15 p.m. and the concert begins at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 for the public, $20 for students and seniors over 65, and they are available at Orange Tree Imports, Willy Street Co-op (east & west), Farley’s House of Pianos, Room of One’s Own and Ward Brodt. For tickets bought at the door, add $5. Student rush tickets will be available for $10 with a valid student ID. For more information about tickets and about MBM, visit www.madsionbachmusicians.org
This year, MBM has set the “Way-Back” machine for the 16th and 17th centuries.
We’ll open with a set of five masterworks for a capella or unaccompanied vocal quartet by Orlando di Lassus.
In addition to soprano Chelsea Morris (below, who now lives in Madison and who won the second Handel Aria Competition last summer at the Madison Early Music Festival), and alto Sarah Leuwerke (who also lives here in Madison), two outstanding young singers from New York City will be featured. Bass Davone Tines and tenor Kyle Bielfield are both recent graduates in voice from the Juilliard School and both are concertizing extensively throughout the world. Here are their websites. http://www.davonetines.com/ and
http://www.bielfield.com/
Then an instrumental band featuring recorder, dulcian or Renaissance bassoon, two viola da gambas, two baroque violins, and positive organ will present sonatas by Antonio Bertali and Johann Schenk.
Instruments and voices will join in works by Heinrich Schütz, Johann Schelle, Johann Froberger, and two of Johann Sebastian Bach’s amazing uncles Heinrich Bach and Johann Michael Bach.
The 16th and 17th centuries were full of religious upheaval, scientific advancement, global exploration and great advances in the dissemination of knowledge through the publishing revolution. The music printing presses as well really start rolling during these centuries.
The astoundingly beautiful music of Orlando di Lassus (below), which will open our upcoming concert, might have been largely unknown and –- after his death — even completely lost had it not been for the publishing houses (many of them in the Netherlands) that saw a strong market for this work.
It’s staggering really to think of the dozens, probably hundreds, of musicians pre-dating the advent of broad publication whose works existed only in a few handwritten copies that have not survived. Of course, even after publishing gets going in the latter part of what we now call the Renaissance in the 16th century, only a few composers enjoyed consistent press
What strikes me over and over again me about Lassus’ music is how the incredible complexity of its counterpoint is consistently directed toward a clear spiritual point. Remarkably, this miracle of style is still present 200 years after Lassus in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, where the density of the countrapuntal fabric actually helps keep the emotion centered. Claude Debussy remarked how in Bach’s music “the issue is never lost.”
Also, Lassus treats the human voice so well; all four singers have beautiful, independent lines that weave together into a mesmerizing curtain of sound. Legend has it that Lassus’ voice itself was so compelling that as a young singer he was “absconded with” more than once.
For the second work on the program I’ll play a fugue on the positive organ. This type of organ weighs only about 200 pounds and is relatively portable; MBM borrowed this beautiful instrument, made by the Dutch builder Klop, from Stephen Alltop in Evanston, Illinois.
The fugue I’ll play is by Giovanni Gabrieli, music director at the magisterial St. Mark’s church in Venice, which still stands today. Pieces like this fugue were typically composed in “open score,” simply four independent lines with no instrumental designation — the counterpoint is so great, the music works in any medium. I always imagine what it might have sounded like on four sackbuts (Renaissance trombones) positioned in opposing galleries in a resonant space like St. Marks.
The program also features two viola da gambas, bowed though fretted instrument in roughly the same register as a cello (there are also tenor and treble gambas).
Gambists Martha Vallon and Anna Steinhoff will perform a sonata by Heinrich Schenck based upon the famous Rhinemaidens legend, though this work comes two centuries before Richard Wagner went ballistic on the idea in hid “Ring” cycle.
The first half of the program will end with instrumental sonatas by the Italian virtuoso violinist Antonio Bertali (below and in a YouTube video at the bottom), who worked most of his career in Vienna, and was known for importing early Italian opera into the Austrian region. We’ll mix baroque violins, gambas, recorder, dulcian and organ in the Bertali set.
The second part of the program opens with two pieces by German composer Heinrich Schütz (below).
The first is a celebratory Christmas piece (Christ the Lord is Born Today) for voices and instruments. That will be followed by a very secular piece, Golden Hair–for soprano, alto, two violins, and continuo—about how “you torture me with your beauty. Why won’t Venus send me some comfort! I languish and die.”
Seventeenth-century or whenever — how some things never change! Schütz worked at the Dresden court during the incredibly turbulent times of the Thirty Years War; some of his music is even designed for reduced ensembles, due to the ravages of the war. As a young man he traveled to Italy and studied with Monteverdi. Some of Schutz’s music is even directly borrowed, or adapted from Monteverdi, as is the case with Golden Hair as Schutz converts it from Italian to German.
Next are two works by Heinrich Bach (below), Johann Sebastian Bach’s great uncle. First is an instrumental transcription of “Have Mercy Upon Us, O Lord God” for two violins and two gambas. Second is the mezzo-soprano solo, with instrumental accompaniment, “Oh, had I tears enough in my head to wash away my sins.” This unusual work sounds almost like 20th-century expressionism in many places. The harmony is very gnarled, twisted and gothic. To me, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck is just around the corner.
Following this is a rare vocal work by the great 17th-century keyboard composer Johann Froberger (below). The inventive texture mixes three voices and instruments and the text celebrates the vanquishing of death and the ecstatic speaking in tongues by the Apostles when visited by the Holy Spirit. The vocal lines are very nimble and suggest the animation of “speaking in all languages.”
Johann Schelle’s wrote a good deal of seasonal music and this Christmas piece is a prayer to the infant Jesus imploring him to rest in our hearts so that we will never again forget him.
The sentiment is very close to that found in the final aria in J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, “Mache dich mein herze rein,” in which the soul expresses its longing to have the Savior entombed and enshrined within our hearts, so that we may live in grace. Schelle was the Kapellmeister at Leipzig during much of the latter part of the 17th century — two generations before J. S. Bach took the job in the early 1720s.
The final composer featured on this Holiday program, Johann Michael Bach, was the son of Heinrich Bach and was also the father of Johann Sebastian Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara Bach. Put another way, Johann Michael Bach was J. S. Bach’s father-in-law. The text is from the Christmas gospel, where the angels implore the shepherds not to be afraid, but to rejoice, for the Savior has come to earth. J. M. Bach set the text for antiphonal choirs, and MBM will do this by having voices in dialogue with the instrumental band.
Here is the complete program:
Orlando de Lassus (c. 1532–1594): Ave Regina Coelorum; Adoramus te; Carmina Chromatico; Missa pro defunctis; Introit Jubilate Deo
Giovanni Gabrieli (1557–1612): Fuga del nono tono
Johann Schenck (1660–1716?): Sonata III for two viols from “Le Nymphe di Rheno”
Antonio Bertali (1605–1669): Sonata in A minor for two violins and continuo; Sonata in G major for recorder, violin and dulcian
INTERMISSION
Heinrich Schütz (1585–1682): Heute ist Christus der Herr geboren; Güldne Haare
Heinrich Bach (1615–1692): Erbarm dich ein, O Herre Gott (instrumental version).
Johann Froberger (1616-1667): Ach, dass ich Wassers genug hätte; Alleluia Absorta est mors.
Johann Schelle (1648–1701): Ach mein herzliebes Jesulein
Johann Michael Bach (1648–1694): Fürchtet euch nicht
Tags: a cappella, Alban Berg, alto, Apostles, aria, Arts, Austria, Bach, Baroque, bass, Bassoon, Bertali, Cello, Chamber music, Christmas and holiday season, Classical music, Claudio Monteverdi, composer, Concert, contrapuntal, counterpoint, Debussy, dulcian, Dutch, Early music, Froberger, fugue, Gabrieli, Germany, gospel, Handel, Historically informed performance, holiday music, instrumental music, Italy, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Juilliard School of Music, Madison, Madison Bach Musicians, Madison Early Music Festival, MEMF, Mezzo-soprano, Music, New York City, opera, organ, Orlando di Lasso, Quartet, recorder, Renaissance, Rhein Maidens, Richard Wagner, Ring cycle, sackbut, saviour, Schütz, Sonata, soprano, St. Mark's, tenor, Trombone, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Venice, viola da gamba, Violin, vocal music, Wozzeck, YouTube
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