The Well-Tempered Ear
Is a lot of ‘woke’ music inferior to the music it replaces?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Is a widespread attempt to explore historically ignored music and overlooked, marginalized composers interfering with the public hearing greater, more important and more beautiful music?
It is a problematic but timely question or issue, especially during an era of political correctness and in our current culture wars.
To be sure, you can hear some memorable music that has unjustifiably been excluded from the so-called canon. The discovery of Florence Price (below) is a prime example. The same can be said for Clara Schumann.
It does seem that a lot of the newly rediscovered pieces and composers — Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian, women, LGBT — deserve an initial hearing, if only out of curiosity and to correct the historical record.
But after being heard for the first time, many of them seem second- or third-rate. They deserve to be shelved for another few decades in favor of restoring greater music and greater composers to the active performing repertory.
To The Ear, for example, the symphonies by Michael Haydn always sound inferior to those of his famous older brother Joseph. And it doesn’t matter what critics and audiences of the day said, history its often — if not always — the better judge. The symphonies and violin concertos of the impressive and influential Joseph de Boulogne (Chevalier de Saint-Georges, below) are simply not as artistically interesting or engaging as those by his contemporary Mozart.
Anyway, whatever you think, The Ear came across an essay on the internet by George Leef that was published in The National Review — the iconic conservative political magazine founded by William Buckley. It contains background about current nationwide programming guidelines and organizations that you might not know.
It is an interesting point of view. It often goes over the top and clearly overstates the case against “woke” repertory by accusing those who support it of being “enemies of classical music” rather than sincere and well-intentioned progressive advocates of artistic justice.
But it deserves a serious reading and a serious answer to the provocative question of balancing the great and the less great. Here is a link:
Read it for yourself and make up your own mind.
Then please tell The Ear and other readers what you think in the Comment section.
The Ear wants to hear.
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See and hear The Cliburn piano competition for FREE via streaming. It runs through June 18
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By Jacob Stockinger
The 16th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition got under way this past Thursday, June 2, and will run through Saturday, June 18, when the winners will be announced.
2022 marks the 60th anniversary year of the competition, which the American pianist Van Cliburn founded at Texas Christian University after his 1958 Cold War victory in the Tchaikovsky International Competition in Moscow,.
You can follow it all online. The complete impressive competition is being broadcast on medici.tv and on YouTube.
But The Ear has used the competition’s own streaming website and finds the videos, sound quality, contestant biographies and background information very professional and helpful. So far, it has been a thoroughly satisfying, enjoyable and engaging experience. I highly recommendation it for students, amateur pianists and all music lovers.
For The Ear, one of the most impressive performances from yesterday was given by the 21-year-old Chinese pianist Yangrui Cai (below), heard in the YouTube video at the bottom. Such beautiful and subtly virtuosic but shaded Liszt and Brahms is not often heard.
Here is a link to the home page (below): https://cliburn.org
From there you can hear live performances, past performances and many facts , including the complete schedule, about The Cliburn, as it is now called. All times are Central Daylight.
Starting at 10 a.m. today — Saturday, June 4 — will see the final 10 performances (3 in the morning and night, four in the afternoon) of the preliminary round, which has featured 30 pianists in 40-minute solo recitals. Except for a specially commissioned “Fanfare Toccata” by Sir Stephen Hough, who is also on the jury, the choice of programs is entirely up to the individual contestants.
The road to the Cliburn is not easy.
It started with 388 applicants. That was trimmed down to 72 by preliminary judges. Out of 72, 30 were chosen by jurors to compete.
After today, it will be on to the quarter-finals with 18 contestants in 40-minute recitals with no repetition from the preliminary round; then the semi-final round with 12 contestants in a combination of 60-minute solo recital along with a Mozart piano concerto accompanied by the Fort Worth Symphony conducted by the Nicholas McGegan, who is famous for his interpretations of Baroque and Classical era music; and the final concerto round with each contestant play two concertos with Fort Worth Symphony under famed conductor Marin Alsop, who is also the head juror.
The Ear will be posting his own thoughts as he experiences the extensive competition, maybe after each round or even each day.
But The Ear also wants to hear from you.
Do you have thoughts about the various contestants?
Who are your favorites and why?
Thoughts about the programs and repertoire being played?
Other thoughts about the competition in general?
The Ear Wants to hear.
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Too bad the Wisconsin Union Theater didn’t book a great pianist for next season
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By Jacob Stockinger
“We are living in a Golden Age of pianists,” famed concert pianist, Juilliard teacher and frequent Madison performer Emanuel Ax (below) has said.
He should know. But you would never guess that from the recently announced next season at the Wisconsin Union Theater (below).
The WUT has not booked a solo pianist for the 2022-23 season.
Here is a link to the lineup for the next season:
https://union.wisc.edu/visit/wisconsin-union-theater/seasonevents/
Is The Ear the only one who has noticed and is disappointed?
Who else feels bad about it?
After all, this is the same presenting organization that brought to Madison such legendary pianists as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ignaz Jan Paderewski, Percy Grainger, Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Dame Myra Hess, Guiomar Novaes, Egon Petri, Robert Casadesus, William Kapell, Claudio Arrau, Alexander Brailowsky, Gary Graffman, Glenn Gould, Rosalyn Tureck, Byron Janis, Misha Dichter, Peter Serkin, André Watts, Lili Kraus and Garrick Ohlsson
It is the same hall (below) in which The Ear has heard Rudolf Serkin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Angela Hewitt, Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Valentina Lisitsa, Andras Schiff, Joyce Yang, Yefim Bronfman, Jeremy Denk, Ingrid Fliter, Richard Goode, Leon Fleisher, Simone Dinnerstein, Wu Han and so many other great and memorable names including, of course, Emanuel Ax.
What a history!
As you can see and as The Ear likes to say, the Wisconsin Union Theater is “The Carnegie Hall of Madison.” For over 100 years, it is where the great ones play.
One irony is that many of those former bookings of pianists took place when the University of Wisconsin School of Music had many more pianists on the faculty and provided a major alternative venue for piano recitals.
Another irony is that so many young people take piano lessons (below) and are apt to want to attend, probably with their parents, to hear a live professional concert piano recital. You would think the WUT would also see the advantages of having such community outreach links to the public and to music education, especially since the WUT has hosted Open Piano Day for the public. (See the YouTube video of a Channel 3000 story in February 2020 at the bottom.)
From what The Ear reads, there are lots of up-and-coming pianists, many affordable names of various winners of national and international competitions. They should be affordable as well as worthy of being introduced to the Madison public.
But that seems a mission now largely left to the Salon Piano Series.
Plus, so many of the new pianists are young Asians who have never appeared here, which should be another draw for the socially responsible and diversity-minded WUT.
But that is another story for another day.
What do you think of the WUT not presenting a solo pianist next season?
Maybe there will be a pianist booked for the 2023-24 season.
What pianists would you like see booked by the WUT student programming committee?
The Ear wants to hear.
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The famed International Tchaikovsky Competition has been expelled from the World Federation of International Music Competitions
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By Jacob Stockinger
One of the granddaddies of all international music competitions — probably the best known and most prestigious — has been disowned.
The International Tchaikovsky Competition — the one that catapulted the young American pianist and first winner Van Cliburn (below, during the competition) to worldwide fame during the height of the Cold War, for which he received the only ticker tape parade in New York City ever given to a musician — has been expelled from the World Federation of International Music Competitions, which was founded in 1957 and represents 110 music competitions and programs to help young musicians build a career.
The move comes in response to recent events in Ukraine — including alleged Russian war crimes during its brutal, deadly and unprovoked invasion.
The famed Tchaikovsky Competition — which started in 1958 and is now for pianists, violinists, cellists, vocalists as well as woodwind and brass players — is held in Moscow and St. Petersburg and is financed and organized by the Russian government. It has launched the careers on many great musicians.
It is co-chaired by the discredited Russian conductor Valery Gergiev (below right, in 2014), a close friend and avid supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin (below left) and of the conflict in Ukraine.
The expulsion came about because the Tchaikovsky Competition refused to condemn the Russian invasion, as the federation requested.
Here is a link to the story that was published on the website Classical Music, an online publication of the BBC Music Magazine. It contains background on both the competition and the current state of affairs regarding Russian musicians and the Russian conflict in Ukraine. It has a lot of noteworthy links:
And here is the response from the organizers of the Russian competition, which takes place every four years. The 16th competition was held in 2019, and the 17th is still scheduled for 2023. (The announcement of the 2019 piano winners — by the Russian former piano winner Denis Matsuev, who has been boycotted because of Ukraine — is in the YouTube-Medici.TV video at the bottom.)
The response — which accuses the federation of “persecuting” Russian musicians and promises that it will be held as usual and remain open to contestants worldwide — is posted on the competition’s website:
https://tchaikovskycompetition.com/en/news/415.htm
It makes one wonder what the effects on the next Tchaikovsky competition will be.
Will potential jurors outside Russia boycott the competition?
Will non-Russian contestants — with the exception perhaps on Chinese and Belarusian performers — avoid participating?
And what will be the effect on the inaugural Rachmaninoff Competition for pianists, composers and conductors that is scheduled to take place this June in Moscow?
What do you think?
Is it the right call by the international federation?
Or the wrong call?
Why do you think so?
The Ear wants to hear.
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To celebrate Pride month, here are lists of LGBTQ+ composers, performers and musical ensembles
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By Jacob Stockinger
June is Pride month.
And this weekend will see Pride marches and celebrations in some major cities including New York City, Chicago, Paris and Rome.
As time passes, scholars are finding out more about the LGBTQ+ composers, performers and musical groups that have been hidden by history.
And some ironies emerge. One can only imagine the response of conservative, right-wing Evangelical Christians who find out that the composer of “Messiah” – George Frideric Handel (below) — was queer, at least according to some researchers.
For most listeners, surprises abound.
Here is a good place to start. It is the very large Wikipedia entry of LGBTQ+ composers and performers, both contemporary and historical. The Ear finds it very informative. It is organized by the kind of musicians they are and the category of their sexual identity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:LGBT_musicians
If you want to be more selective, try these: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/greatest-lgbtq-conductors-you-should-know/. They include Marin Alsop (below top) and her teacher and mentor Leonard Bernstein (below bottom).
Here is longer essay that focuses on lesbian conductors as well as gay men and reaches back to the Middle Ages: http://www.glbtqarchive.com/arts/conductors_A.pdf
And here is one with some great photos or pictures of the individuals: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/great-classical-composers-who-were-gay/
Finally, here are some of the international music ensembles – with audio samples of their performances — made up of LGBTQ+ singers and instrumentalists, including the Rainbow Symphony of Paris (in the YouTube video at the bottom, performing the beautiful Gloria by the gay French composer Francis Poulenc in a benefit Concert Against Homophobia for UNESCO): https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/best-lgbtq-classical-music-ensembles/
Inevitably, some readers will react by asking: What difference does the sexual identity of composer or performer make? All that matters, they argue, is the music.
Here is a reply to that specious argument that focuses on Yannick Nézet-Séguin (below), the music director of the Metropolitan Opera, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the City Symphony of Montreal. It appeared in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/15/arts/music/yannick-nezet-seguin-met-opera-gay.html
Happy Pride – this month and every day of the year!
Do you have questions, additions or comments?
Leave them below.
The Ear wants to hear.
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Longtime friends organist Greg Zelek and Madison native and award-winning trumpeter Ansel Norris team up for a FREE live-streamed concert this Tuesday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
Two longtime friends and fellow musicians will team up this Tuesday night, April 27, to close this season’s organ concert series, sponsored in the Overture Center by the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
It will be live-streamed online because of the pandemic restrictions on attendance.
The concert features the critically acclaimed MSO organist Greg Zelek (below left) and Ansel Norris (below right), an award-winning trumpeter who is a native of Madison.
The program includes works by Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn and Samuel Barber among others.
The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. CDT. It is FREE but you must register. The concert will be available to registered listeners for unlimited access through May 31.
Here is a link to the MSO website where you can register. It also has more information about the program and biographies of the two performers: https://madisonsymphony.org/event/norris-zelek-2021-streamed/
Here is more background. It appeared in the latest issue of the email newsletter of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO), of which Norris was a member for many years:
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Ansel Norris and Greg Zelek first met in 2010 as high school seniors who had both been selected as finalists in the YoungARTS Awards. The YoungARTS Award is a big competition with just a small percentage of students selected for the $10,000 prize from the thousands of high school applicants. In classical music that year, 12 students became finalists and assembled in Miami for a week of master classes with internationally recognized arts leaders. “You know, there really is a synergy with trumpet and organ. The sounds are produced in a similar way and the way the sounds blend together is really special. Even then, I imagined a concert together.” Ten years later, the two friends were dreaming up this concert when Greg was in Miami in February, 2020. And then the world shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Norris has distinguished himself as a solo, orchestral and chamber musician. As Greg Zelek (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) writes: “Concerti of Bach and Haydn will bookend this program filled with music that is both written and arranged for this electrifying pairing of instruments. Mr. Norris’ remarkable technique and soaring lyricism will be on full display while our Mighty Klais both supports and shimmers in this exhilarating performance you won’t want to miss!” Register here for Tuesday’s concert!
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Today – Monday, March 29 – is World Piano Day. Here are links to free online recitals. What does the piano mean to you? Did it play a role during the pandemic?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today – March 29, 2021 – is World Piano Day.
That is because today is the 88th day of 2021.
Gotta have some kind of code or symbolic meaning, after all.
In any case, there are virtual online celebrations all over the world. Here is a link to the official welcoming website that also lists Spotify and SoundCloud playlists from past years and dozens of worldwide events this year, running from March 25-30: https://www.pianoday.org
You can also find more on Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The piano means a lot to The Ear, who listens to it and plays it. He loves, loves, loves the piano.
What has the piano and piano music meant to you in your life?
What role did the piano play for you during the past pandemic year?
Have you listened to or discovered newer, younger talent?
Do you have favorite pianists, either historic or current? What do you like about them?
Or maybe you have favorite piano pieces?
Please tell us all about you and the piano in the Comment section.
The Ear wants to hear.
In the meantime you can listen to the World Piano Day “monster recital” by 17 pianists who record for Deutsche Grammophon. The “Yellow Label” – the first commercial record label — has signed a lot of great pianists in its time, and still does.
Here is a link to the YouTube DG recital, which lasts 2 hours and 50 minutes. If you go to the actual YouTube site, click on Show More to see the complete list of performers and pieces. Otherwise performers and programs are displayed on the screen:
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The eighth annual UW Schubertiade is this Sunday afternoon. It features a FREE online retrospective of the past seven years plus a new four-hand piano performance
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By Jacob Stockinger
The University of Wisconsin has posted the following announcement:
For the eighth consecutive year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music will present its annual Schubertiade — a special concert celebrating the music of Franz Schubert (below).
Traditionally these concerts have been held around the composer’s birthday. This year’s concert will in fact occur on his birthday — this Sunday, Jan. 31, at 3-4:30 p.m. CST. The pre-recorded premiere is at: https://youtu.be/7sshhKiFPAg
You can also use the link to prepare for the concert before or during the concert. You will find the program with song titles, the original German texts and English translation, and biographies of the performers by simply clicking on “SHOW MORE” on the YouTube website and follow the links to PDFs.
BECAUSE THERE ARE NO COPYRIGHT ISSUES, ACCORDING TO UW OFFICIALS, THE POST SHOULD BE UP AND AVAILABLE INDEFINITELY AFTER ITS PREMIERE.
As in past years, founders and performers Martha Fischer (below left), professor of piano and head of the collaborative piano program at UW-Madison, and her husband Bill Lutes (below right), an independent piano teacher, and UW emeritus artist-in-residence, will host the program.
These concerts have been presented in the sprit of the first Schubertiades (below, in a painting by Julius Schmid) that took place during the composer’s lifetime (1797-1828) in the homes of his friends and fellow artists, poets and fans.
These were social as well as musical occasions with Schubert himself presiding at the piano, giving his audience a chance to hear his latest songs, piano duets and chamber music, as well as pieces that had already become favorites.
This year’s Schubertiade will be different in response to the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. It will be an online look back — or Rückblick — at past concerts, with songs chosen from performances that have been preserved in the audio and video archive.
The featured performers will include faculty members, students and alumni from the Mead Witter School of Music, along with special guests.
In addition, pianists Fischer and Lutes will give a “new” performance recorded for this occasion of the great Fantasie in F minor for piano duet. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear that work, performed by Dutch brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen and recorded live in Seoul, South Korea.)
The songs have been chosen to reflect themes that were not only relevant to Schubert and his circle, but also to all of us in the midst of this challenging time: hope for a brighter future; the need for connection with others; remembrance of happier times; and the consolation to be found in nature.
Schubert left a vast and precious legacy of beauty — an enormous output of music that he composed in his short lifetime.
In a sense, each time his music is performed and heard, it is a journey from the past to our own time, the sounds speaking to us today as vividly and consolingly as they did when they were created 200 years ago.
Performers
Martha Fischer and Bill Lutes, pianists
Alumni:
Jamie-Rose Guarrine, soprano (below, in a photo by Peter Konerko)
Emily Birsan, soprano
Michael Roemer, baritone
Jennifer D’Agostino, soprano
Daniel O’Dea, tenor
Wesley Dunnagan, tenor
Sarah Brailey (alumna and current DMA student)
Sara Guttenberg
Guests:
Marie McManama, soprano
Cheryl Bensman-Rowe, mezzo-soprano
Faculty:
Mimmi Fulmer, soprano
Paul Rowe, baritone (below)
Julia Rottmayer, soprano
Staff
David Alcorn, videographer, editor, etc.
Katrin Talbot, images for audio only tracks
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Today is the Winter Solstice. Here is a piece to make you look forward to longer days, warmth and the Summer Solstice next year
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today – Monday, Dec. 21 — is the Winter Solstice, the longest night and shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It arrives at 4:02 a.m. CST.
The Ear expects that Wisconsin Public Radio, among other media outlets, will be marking the event with traditional, often austere, winter music. That includes “Winter” from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”; maybe some songs from Schubert’s “Winterreise” (Winter Journey); Peter Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons” and “The Nutcracker”; and, of course, plenty of winter holiday music, including carols and the Baroque oratorios, cantatas and concertos by Bach, Handel, Telemann, Corelli and others.
But many people – strained by the coronavirus pandemic –are already eagerly looking forward to the days growing longer, which will culminate in the Summer Solstice at 10:31 p.m. CST on Sunday, June 21, 2021.
Who needs to celebrate the season’s cold and darkness? So The Ear thought that we could all use a little sonic sunlight, tonal warmth and musical hope, especially at the end of this Plague Year.
There are standards and favorites such as Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” and Vivaldi’s “Summer.”
But to The Ear that work that really lifts one’s spirits, and captures the kind of joyful abandon and youthful energy of the mid-summer event, complete with animal noises and romance, is the “Overture to a Midsummer Night’s Dream” by a 17-year-old Felix Mendelssohn (below).
You can hear it below in a YouTube performance by the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig conducted by the late, great German conductor Kurt Masur, whose son, Ken-David Masur, is the new music director and conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.
The Ear hopes you enjoy it.
What music would you like to hear or play to mark the Winter Solstice?
Leave a suggestion with your reason and, if possible, YouTube link in the Comment section.
The Ear wants to hear.
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Does Wisconsin Public Radio play too much harp music?
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PLEASE NOTE: Due to a technical glitch, the following commentary was posted briefly yesterday and then withdrawn. That also disabled the commentary function temporarily. Once the glitch is solved, The Ear will post it again. That means some of you will get it twice. I apologize for any inconvenience. And to the fans who have kindly greeted my return, heartfelt thanks. I will be posting more details about the use and frequency of this blog in the near future.
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
Can’t help it.
The harp always reminds The Ear of a giant egg slicer.
Still, The Ear loves the sound of the harp — in the right works.
That usually means when it is blended into orchestral works (Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Mahler come to mind) and chamber music works (Debussy and Ravel come to mind).
But when it comes to solo harp and harp concertos, no thanks. Barring some Baroque music and Classical works — Handel’s concerti grossi and Mozart’s “Brunch” Concerto for Flute and Harp — he’ll pass for the most part.
So much harp music, both original and arranged, just sounds second-rate or worse. Can anyone name a masterpiece for the solo harp written by a great composer? And I don’t mean Louis Spohr who composed for his harpist wife.
The solo harp repertoire is very small, hence the need for so many transcriptions.
That’s a problem.
The harp tends to make music for other instruments sound so .. so … so pleasant! Even when the original is dramatic, it’s all pluck pluck, twang twang, zing zing. Just listen to the YouTube video at the bottom of J.S. Bach’s mighty Toccata and Fugue in D minor for Organ played on the harp.
So, The Ear asks, why has Wisconsin Public Radio started playing so much harp music on almost every show? (Below is WPR host, accomplished harpist and harp evangelist Ruthanne Bessman, who often includes harp music in her Saturday Morning program “Classics by Request.”)
Is it because the public really loves hearing the harp so much?
Is it because the radio show hosts do?
Do listener surveys indicate a preference for the harp?
Does the covid pandemic play a role in seeking bland but soothing music?
What do you think?
Do you like or even crave harp music?
Do you think WPR is programming too much harp music these days?
Too little?
Or the right amount?
Leave a comment, please.
The Ear wants to hear.
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