The Well-Tempered Ear
Here are the Top 10 online concerts to stream in March, according to critics for the New York Times
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ALERT: The online live-streamed concert by the UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet — scheduled for this Friday night, March 5 — in the all-Beethoven cycle of string quartets has been canceled and postponed until next year. The Friday, April 9 installment of the Beethoven cycle will be held as Installment 7 instead of 8.
By Jacob Stockinger
Classical music critics of The New York Times have once again picked their Top 10 online concerts for the month of March.
The Ear has found such lists helpful for watching and hearing, but also informative to read, if you don’t actually “attend” the concert.
If you have read these lists before, you will see that this one is typical.
It offers lots of links with background about the works and performers; concert times (Eastern); and how long the online version is accessible.
Many of the performers will not be familiar to you but others – such as pianist Mitsuko Uchida (below, in a photo by Hiroyuki Ito for the Times), who will perform an all-Schubert recital, will be very familiar.
But the critics once again emphasize new music and even several world premieres – including one by Richard Danielpour — and a path-breaking but only recently recorded live performance of the 1920 opera “Die Tote Stadt” (The Dead City) by long-neglected composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (below), who is best known for his Hollywood movie scores but who also wrote compelling classical concert hall music. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear soprano Renée Fleming sing “Marietta’s Song.’)
But some works that are more familiar by more standard composers – including Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Ravel and Copland – are also included.
The Times critics have also successfully tried to shine a spotlight on Black composers and Black performers, such as the clarinetist and music educator Anthony McGill (below top), who will perform a clarinet quintet by composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (below) and music in the setting of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
No purists, the critics also suggest famous oboe and clarinet works in transcriptions for the saxophone by composer-saxophonist Steven Banks (below).
Also featured is a mixed media performance of words and music coordinated by the award-winning Nigerian-American novelist, essayist and photographer Teju Cole (below), whose writings and photos are irresistible to The Ear.
Here is a link to the story in the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/arts/music/classical-music-streaming-concerts.html
Are there other online concerts in March – local, regional, national or international – that you recommend in addition to the events listed in the Times?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The Festival Choir of Madison performs under famed choral conductor Joseph Flummerfelt this Saturday night.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following timely and important announcement:
The Festival Choir of Madison (below) and its new artistic director Sergei Pavlov – who teaches at Edgewood College — will close the current season with a special concert this Saturday night, May 7, at 7:30 p.m. at the Christ Presbyterian Church, located at 944 East Gorham Street in downtown Madison.
The performance features one of the legendary American choral conductors, Maestro Joseph Flummerfelt (below right, with Sergei Pavlov). You can hear a long Q&A interview with Joseph Flummerfelt in the YouTube video at the bottom.
The program with the Festival Choir includes music by German composers Felix Mendelssohn and Johannes Brahms, British composer Herbert Howells, Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, Polish composer Henryk Gorecki and Scottish composer James MacMillan. Sorry, no word on individual works to be performed.
Tickets for the evening concert are available at the door and cost between $9 and $15.
Since 1971, Joseph Flummerfelt (below) has been responsible for most of the choral work of the New York Philharmonic, working closely with its music directors Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel and Alan Gilbert. Until 2004 he was Director of Choral Activities in the Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey.
Joseph Flummerfelt (below) with the Westminster Symphonic Choir and New York Choral Artists has been featured in 45 recordings, including a Grammy Award-winning CD of the Symphony No. 3 by Gustav Mahler with Leonard Bernstein. His collaboration with the great American composer Samuel Barber includes the Grammy Award-winning recording of Barber’s opera “Anthony and Cleopatra.”
In 2004 Flummerfelt was awarded a Grammy for the New York Choral Artists’ recording of “On the Transmigration of Souls,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning composition written by John Adams in memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks on 9/11.
A master teacher, Flummerfelt’s many former students occupy a number of major choral positions throughout the world. Yannick Nezet-Seguin (below) — the current music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, who, as a teenager, studied with Dr. Flummerfelt in two advanced conducting summer workshops — cites him as one of the two major influences in his life as a conductor. A 2009 New York Times article said, “Mr. Nezet-Seguin called those sessions with Flummerfelt the only significant conducting lessons he ever had.”
Flummerfelt has a special connection with Madison as well. As an undergraduate student in De Pauw University in Indiana, he was deeply inspired by a performance of a visiting choir, and the conductor of this group was Robert Fountain, the legendary Director of Choral Programs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.
Also on Saturday, May 7 at 11 a.m. there will be a question/answer session for all who would like to meet the Maestro Flummerfelt. The host is Edgewood College, and the session will be at the Washburn Heritage Room in the Regina Building. This is a FREE event.
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Classical music: Edgewood College offers two promising band and choral concerts this coming weekend. Plus, a FREE concert of new music for harp and cello is Friday at noon
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium of the historic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features harpist Linda Warren and cellist Carol Wessler in the music of Harper Tasche and Laura Zaerr.
By Jacob Stockinger
Two promising band and choral concerts are on tap this weekend at Edgewood College.
Both will take place in the St. Joseph Chapel, 1000 Edgewood College Drive.
FRIDAY
The Edgewood College Concert Band, under the direction of Walter Rich (below), will perform a benefit concert for Luke House on Friday at 7 p.m.
Admission is FREE with a freewill offering to benefit the Luke House community meal program.
Included on the program are Flourish for Wind Band by Ralph Vaughan Williams; “Serenity” by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo; “Chorale and Capriccio” by Caesar Giovanini; “Jerusalem” by Hubert Parry; “I’m Seventeen Come Sunday” by Percy Grainger; “Daybreak” by Carl Strommen and “Children of Gaia” by Robert Sheldon.
The Music Department at Edgewood College has hosted benefit concerts for Luke House since 1994.
SUNDAY
Two vocal ensembles will perform a concert at 2:30 p.m., Sunday in St. Joseph Chapel. Admission is FREE.
Featured will be the Chamber Singers (below), under the direction of Sergei Pavlov (center at the bottom of the stairs). The group has just returned from performances at the International Sacred Music Festival in Quito, Ecuador.
The Chamber Singers will perform excerpts from the Mass in F by Domenico Zipoli; “Usnijze mi, usnij” by Polish composer Henryk Gorecki; “Holy, Holy” from the Gospel Mass by Robert Ray; and a Victor Johnson arrangement of “Bonse Aba,” a traditional Zambian work. Todd Hammes, adjunct faculty member in the Music Department, will assist on percussion.
Also performing will be the Women’s Choir (below top), under the direction of Kathleen Otterson (below bottom). The Women’s Choir will perform Israeli and Jewish folk songs, a spiritual, and the “Domine Deus” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in G major, also featuring Victoria Gorbich on violin. (You can hear the glorious Bach piece performed in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
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Classical music: The UW-Madison Symphony Strings performs a forceful all-Beethoven program. Plus, the So Percussion ensemble performs Saturday night and the Edgewood College Chamber Orchestra performs on Sunday afternoon.
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ALERTS: First, a reminder that the acclaimed and innovative So percussion ensemble performs this Saturday night at 8 p.m. in Shannon Hall at the Wisconsin Union Theater. Here is a link with information about the program, which includes the minimalism of Steve Reich, and the performers as well as tickets:
http://www.uniontheater.wisc.edu/Season15-16/so-percussion.html
The Edgewood College Chamber Orchestra will perform this Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in the St. Joseph Chapel, 1000 Edgewood College Drive. The orchestra, under the direction of Blake Walter, will perform the “Lucio Silla” Overture by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the Concertino for Horn and Orchestra in D major by Michael Haydn, featuring horn soloist Dafydd Bevil; “Three Pieces in the Old Style” by Henryk Gorecki; and the Symphony No. 2 in A Minor by Camille Saint-Saëns. Admission is $5, or free with Edgewood College ID.
By Jacob Stockinger
Don’t be fooled by the name.
The UW Symphony Strings Orchestra (below) is a lot more than string players who also belong to the UW-Madison Symphony Orchestra. And it is NOT to be confused with the All-University String Orchestra, which is made up of amateur musicians and non-music students and is conducted by Janet Jensen.
Conductor Kyle Knox (below) explains:
During one concert cycle per year, the UW Symphony Orchestra performs at Music Hall with UW Opera. Given the space limitations of the opera pit, not all of our 75 Symphony members will play the opera.
So during this period the Symphony is split into two ensembles – Opera Orchestra and Symphony Strings. Professor James Smith conducts the Opera Orchestra and I conduct the Symphony Strings.
Symphony Strings is a good venue for our players to perform some of the core classical chamber orchestra repertory. Given the reduced size of the ensemble and the stylistic demands of music from the late Classical period, the Symphony Strings provides a wholly different performance challenge as compared to what they will experience in the large orchestra works performed in other concert cycles.
Playing Mozart and playing Mahler are very different experiences. Both are difficult, but in different ways. Last year, we did Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 and Haydn’s Symphony No. 88. This year, we’ll do two of the lesser-performed Beethoven Symphonies, Nos. 1 and 4.
As its name suggests, Symphony Strings has traditionally been a “strings only’ group.” When necessary, recruitment for winds, brass and percussion starts with players from the Symphony Orchestra roster who are not involved with the opera. Inevitably players from other ensembles are recruited as needed to ensure that all parts are covered. It all works out one way or another.
True to Knox’s words, it does work out.
A week ago Wednesday night in Mills Hall the Symphony Strings did indeed perform two symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 1 and Symphony No. 4. (You can hear Symphony No. 1 performed by the Vienna Philharmonic under conductor Christian Thielemann in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
And sure enough, as well as strings, the orchestra included the required winds, brass and percussion.
The playing by all parties was very good. True, you could detect some unevenness. The cellos (below), for example, seemed especially polished and better in pitch or intonation than the violins, which were rough by comparison. Maybe that is because the cello section includes more accomplished undergraduates or more advanced graduate students or because the section is smaller in number or because the cello part is easier.
Still, one has to make allowances. After all, these are students, not professionals. And it is still early in the season and school year. Most of all, Beethoven simply is not easy, not even early Beethoven.
And that was one of the highlights. The program included two lesser-known Beethoven symphonies and they went together extremely well.
Graduate student conductor Knox (below, center right), who is quite busy these days with many engagements — including the Middleton Community Orchestra and the Madison Opera — drew sharp attacks and clean quick releases, forceful accents, sudden and dramatic dynamic shifts in tempi and volume. Those are all hallmarks of exceptional Beethoven playing.
It was enough to make The Ear hope that the group does another program with Beethoven’s two other less well-known symphonies: Nos. 2 and 8. Maybe next semester, or maybe next year.
Then again, The Ear loves the same early Beethoven (below), influenced by the Classical era of Haydn and Mozart, that many other listeners skip over: the early symphonies, the early piano sonatas, the early piano trio, the early violin sonatas, the early cello sonata and the early string quartets.
And often a soloist pulls up the quality, so perhaps a faculty soloist would be a good addition.
But soloist or not, it is well worth hearing.
So The Ear highly encourages orchestral fans to go. The next performance is on Thursday, March 17, at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall. No program is listed yet. But write the concert into your datebooks. You’ll be happy you did.
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