The Well-Tempered Ear
Conductor Edo de Waart retires after 60 years
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By Jacob Stockinger
World-famous Dutch conductor Edo de Waart (below) announced on Wednesday that he is retiring after a career that has spanned 60 years.
You might recall that de Waart, 82, was the music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra from 2008 to 2017 and is now a conductor laureate of the MSO.
He lived in Middleton, Wisconsin, a suburb of Madison, while conducting in Milwaukee. He and his sixth wife, Rebecca Dopp, and their two children now live in Maple Bluff, another suburb of Madison.
De Waart is known for championing contemporary music and for an his extensive catalogue of recordings.
The Ear especially loved his early recording of Mozart’s “Gran Partita” wind serenade with the Netherlands Wind Ensemble. You can hear the sublime slow movement — which was used in the film “Amadeus” — in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Here is a press release from his current agent:
https://www.harrisonparrott.com/news/2024-04-09/conductor-edo-de-waart-announces-his-retirement
Here is a link to a biography in Wikipedia that has many details about de Waart and his career:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_de_Waart
Did you ever hear de Waart conduct?
Did you happen to play music under Edo de Waart?
Do you have a favorite de Waart recording?
What do you think of Edo de Waart as a conductor?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Here is how the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) plan to continue lessons and performances this fall despite the coronavirus pandemic
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PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has just received the following updates from an email newsletter about the upcoming season of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO). Over more than 50 years, WYSO has served tens of thousands of middle school and high school students in southcentral Wisconsin and northern Illinois. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the WYSO Youth Orchestra play a virtual performance from the past season of the famous finale from Rossini’s “William Tell” Overture.)
After many weeks of planning, and in consultation with Public Health Madison and Dane County (PHMDC) and the McFarland School District, WYSO is excited to announce a fall semester plan that will mark a safe return to in-person music-making—and our first season at the McFarland Performing Arts Center (below) https://www.wysomusic.org/the-wyso-weekly-tune-up-april-17-2020-wysos-new-home/
We had a brief delay last Friday when PHMDC released Emergency Statement #9 delaying in-person start dates for all schools in Dane County. We checked in with the Public Health agency and they re-affirmed that WYSO is not a school —and the 15 students maximum-sized groups outlined in this plan are absolutely perfect. It is time to set up the tents!
The WYSO season will begin on the weekend of Sept. 5, when the winds and brass students from all three full orchestras (Youth, Philharmonia and Concert) will begin their fall rehearsals outside under two enormous tents in the McFarland High School parking lot (below). The 60 winds and brass students will be divided into approximately nine or 10 cohorts, who will meet in two-hour blocks on Saturdays and Sundays.
With a single cohort of masked and socially distanced students spread out within the 40′ x 60′ tent, with “bell covers and bags” for their instruments, the season will not look like any previous WYSO Fall.
If you’ve not been involved in the new science of aerosol transmission, this whole scenario might seem very curious. The reasoning is simple: The winds and brass instruments have been singled out as more problematic since you have to blow into them to make music. The blowing releases more “aerosols,” the tiny droplets that can transmit the coronavirus.
However, researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have recently released the first results from a five-month study and have found that the following actions bring down the transmission risk considerably:
- Social distancing 9 to 15 feet apart.
- Adding bell covers and bags (below) for the instruments (essentially the instruments have to wear masks as well as the students).
- Playing outside, which reduces risks due to the increased air circulation.
Because we are in Wisconsin, the “outdoor” location shortens the season for the winds and brass players so by beginning the season on Sept. 5 and ending on the weekend of Oct. 24, they can just squeeze in an 8-week cycle.
Meanwhile, the WYSO string and percussion players, approximately 300 in number and representing all five orchestras, will begin their fall season indoors on Oct. 17, after McFarland moves to a hybrid model for the school year.
The string players will be divided into 15-student cohorts by orchestra, with a wonderful mix of violins, violas, cellos and basses in each group, and with the groups spread throughout one wing of the high school in large music rooms and atriums.
The percussionists have been scheduled into the new Black Box Theater and they are excited to begin playing on the brand new marimbas and timpani so recently acquired by WYSO through a gift from an incredibly generous anonymous donor.
Everything has been carefully scheduled so that at any given time there will not be more than 125 students, conductors and staff in the building.
Start and end times have been staggered. The large beautiful spaces at McFarland will easily hold the socially distanced and mask-wearing players. And the orchestras will again be scheduled into Saturday and Sunday mornings and afternoons. Even the WYSO Chamber Music Program (below) has been scheduled into the intricate puzzle.
The rest of this exciting fall story has to do with adding incredibly talented professional musicians to lead some of the cohorts and the amazing repertoire available for groups of 15 musicians, whether they play winds, brass, strings or percussion.
From Mozart’s “Gran Partita” to Beethoven’s Symphonies No. 2 and 6; from Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella Suite” to Bartok’s Divertimento, and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings — there is almost an “embarrassment of riches” of exciting, seldom-played repertoire, to quote WYSO Music Director Kyle Knox (below). And this fall, that repertoire will be right in WYSO’s wheelhouse.
WYSO will video-capture this year’s Fall Concerts of students playing in the beautiful McFarland Performing Arts Center to 800 empty seats and let you know the exact Fall Concert dates as we get closer. Click here for additional information.
While WYSO is incredibly excited about our in-person plan for rehearsals and playing music together, we have also drawn up two alternate plans, and know that not everyone will be able to participate in-person.
WYSO Registration is underway, and we are asking those who cannot participate in the McFarland experience to let us know their needs through the registration process, so that we can create the best virtual experience possible for those involved. Tuition payment is not due at registration.
To register, go to: https://www.wysomusic.org/members/wyso-registration-form/
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Classical music: Chamber music group Con Vivo lives up to its lively name as guest conductor John DeMain opens the season with an ambitious and gloriously performed program of Wagner and Mozart.
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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 every other Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
Con Vivo!, the plucky band of chamber musicians (below) based at the First Congregational Church, launched its season with perhaps its most ambitious offerings yet.
Augmenting its ranks appropriately, it set a program titled “Baker’s Dozen,” the point being that each of the two major works offered called for 13 musicians (if not always the same ones).
Each work is too large to fit into the usual “chamber” boundaries, and yet is too small to belong in the orchestral realm. Accordingly, they are rarities, and the Con Vivo! opportunity to hear them was particularly welcome.
It was the more welcome because, indeed, there were two performances of the program. After only two full rehearsals, as a kind of “dress rehearsal”, the ensembles presented the program on Thursday evening, November 8, at the auditorium of Capital Lakes Retirement Center, followed by the official performance the next evening at First Congregational (below). (That the Capital Lakes performance was something of a dress rehearsal was testified to by one stop for a corrected replay.) I took advantage of the circumstance to attend both performances, a fascinating experience.
The two major works are quite contrasted.
Richard Wagner’s so-called “Siegfried Idyll” was a chamber piece written as a birthday present for his wife Cosima after the birth of their son, Siegfried. Wagner (below) was at work on his opera Siegfried at the time, and quotations or references in the piece were filled with personal meanings for the composer and his family. Often this score is played by orchestra, with the five string parts spread out for a full string section, but the intimacy of the original is much more appropriate.
The other major work was Mozart’s Gran Partita, K. 361. (You can hear it in its entirety at bottom in a popular YouTube video with the late conductor and acclaimed Mozart interpreter Sir Charles Mackerras.) Despite its length of about 45 minutes, it is never too much, but rather a feast of Mozart’s astounding facility and imagination in his varied combinations of the reed instruments against solid chordal foundations by the four horns.
No other composer has been able to match Mozart (below) in his wonderful writing for wind ensemble, and this is his crowning achievement by far in this medium. This score is pure bliss. For me, the chance to hear it two evenings in succession was as if I had been able to visit heaven not once but twice!
That double exposure proved particularly fascinating to me, and I had my own reactions to the differences between the two performances. I was able, too, to discuss with a number of the players, and compare notes on how they responded to both the performances and the two venues, and both pro and con.
First off, it must be mentioned that Con Vivo! made the wise decision to invite a conductor to preside, and in this case no less than John DeMain (below in a photo by Prasad), the lignite music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. I had the feeling that the Wagner went a bit too slowly the first evening, but achieved more coherent ensemble and a more flowing, even caressing quality the second evening. In the Mozart, I found one tempo choice questionable, but this was resolved handsomely the second time around.
Obviously, the difference between the drier acoustics of the Capital Lakes hall (below) and the richer ones at First Congregational had some effects on these judgments, as did also the fact that the players felt more confidence in the final performance. And, without question, DeMain’s subtle and supple leadership contributed greatly to the sum total.
Here I confess to a secret hankering. The Mozart work has long been identified as a “Serenade for Thirteen Wind Instruments.” That was taken to mean that the bass line should be played by a contrabassoon.
On the other hand, in recent years notice has been made of the fact that the part has directions to play pizzicato in three passages in the work: in the second Trio of the second Minuet, in the sixth variation in the penultimate movement, and in one episode in the rondo finale.
Now, it is rather difficult for reed instruments, of any size, to play pizzicati, so a string bass has been the working solution nowadays. But the string bass has a light and somehow incompatible sound against the winds. The contrabassoon would provide greater strength, as well as better congruity with the other reeds.
Well, maybe the solution is to divide the part between contrabassoon and string bass as appropriate.
It should not be forgotten that the program had its bonus features. Between the two major works, violinist Olga Pomolova (below left) of the Madison Symphony Orchestra joined with DeMain, now acting as pianist, in an arrangement for violin and piano of a highly romantic early (and quite un-Wagnerian) piano piece by Wagner, an “Albumblatt” (Album Page). And, at the Friday performance, Pomolova also played a brief and beloved tidbit by Fritz Kreisler that represented deeply personal inspiration to her.
The final results of all this constituted a magnificent treat of truly rare and absolutely glorious chamber music. And really done con vivo, “with life”!
Tags: American Record Guide, Charles Mackerras, Con Vivo, Fritz Kreisler, Gran Partita, Jacob Stockinger, John DeMain, John W. Barker, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Richard Wagner, Siegfried Idyll, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Violin, wind instruments, winds, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube
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