The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: This Tuesday night, May 21, at 7:30 the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras perform an impressive Side-by-Side concert that is FREE and UNTICKETED in Overture Hall
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By Jacob Stockinger
This coming Tuesday night, May 21, at 7:30 p.m. in Overture Hall of the Overture Center, 201 State Street, is another event that can’t help but build audiences and generate good will for classical music.
That is when, once again, the professional musicians of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and the student musicians of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras will play side-by-side (below, in a rehearsal), under the baton of WCO music director Andrew Sewell, in an inspiring example of apprenticeship and cooperation.
The Ear has been to the concert before, and loved the experience, which he found moving and excellent. He highly recommends it.
The ensemble repertoire to be played is ambitious and impressive.
In addition, soloists on the program are winners of the WYSO Concerto Competition: flutist Brian Liebau and violinist Benjamin Davies Hudson (below).
Says the WCO website: “Supporting young musicians in our community is essential to the future of music and the arts in Madison. We welcome all in the community to join us at this FREE concert.”
TICKETS
There is no charge for this concert, and no ticket is necessary to enter. Seating is general admission. Doors open at 6:45 p.m., and the concert begins at 7:30 p.m.
REPERTOIRE
Antonin Dvorak, “Slavonic Dances,” Op. 46, Nos. 1, 3 and 8 (1878)
Hamilton Harty, “In Ireland,” a fantasy for flute, harp and orchestra (1935)
Camille Saint-Saens, “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso,” Op. 28 (1863), for violin and orchestra. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you hear the catchy, tuneful and virtuosic work performed by violinist Itzhak Perlman.)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 (1877-78), movements 3 and 4
Modest Mussorgsky, selections from “Pictures at an Exhibition” (1874; arranged by Maurice Ravel in 1922)
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Classical music education: The UW-Madison Pro Arte Quartet performs music by Edward Elgar with the Middleton High School Orchestra in a FREE concert this Thursday night
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison 900 University Bay Drive, features the ensemble New Muse with Danielle Breisach, flute; Peter Miliczky, violin; Joshua Dieringer, viola; Ben Bauer, cello; and Yana Avedyan, piano, in new music by Nathan Froebe, Benjamin Boyajian, and Jonathan Posthuma. The concert runs from 12:15 to 1 p.m.
By Jacob Stockinger
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s acclaimed Pro Arte Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer) will travel west on Thursday – all the way to the suburb of Middleton.
That where the Pro Arte will perform Sir Edward Elgar’s “Introduction and Allegro” with the Middleton High School Orchestra (below) under conductor Steve Kurr, who also conducts the Middleton Community Orchestra. (You can hear the Elgar piece in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The FREE and UNTICKETED concert is this Thursday night from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in the Middleton Performing Arts Center that is attached to the high school, 2100 Bristol Street.
Conductor Steve Kurr says this about the program:
“The rest of the program includes Rossini’s Overture to “The Barber of Seville,” the “Colonel Bogey March” and the “Peer Gynt Suite No. 1” by Edvard Grieg.
“Also on the program are the three winners of this year’s Concerto-Aria competition: Marimbist Alex Warholic plays the first movement of the Violin Concerto in A Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach; soprano Chloe Cole sings “V’adoro pupille” from the opera “Julius Caesar:” by George Frideric Handel; and violinist Rachael Lee performs the “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” by Camille Saint-Saens.
“The concert begins with two works performed by the MHS Honors Wind Ensemble.
“The Elgar is such a great work, and underperformed. The Pro Arte musicians are such great inspirations to our high school musicians.”
Tags: aria, Arts, Bach, Baroque, Benjamin Boyajian, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, Colonel Bogey March, concerto, Edvard Grieg, Elgar, ensemble, First Unitarian Society of Madison, flute, Grieg, Handel, hands, high school, honors, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Jonathan Posthuma, Madison, march, marimba, Music, Nathan Froebe, New Muse, New Music, opera, Orchestra, Overture, Peer Gynt, Piano, Rossini, Saint-Saens, soprano, string, Suite, symphony, The Barber of Seville, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, Wind, winds, YouTube
Classical music: The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra again proves that it’s not just for summer pops listening anymore as it opens its winter season to the full house its deserves.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Can it really be that the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra –- The Little Orchestra That Could -– is finally getting the long overdue recognition and larger audiences that it deserves? One hopes so, and it certainly seems so.
Last Friday night on the Capitol Theater of the Overture Center, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra opened its new winter season to a full and enthusiastic house.
So perhaps the tide is indeed turning and the WCO will not continue to be hamstrung by its own success, by which I mean its historic role and pops repertoire in the always popular summertime Concerts on the Square. The WCO should be taken more seriously by the area’s classical fans.
Friday saw a full house – but not necessarily a sold-out house since the WCO generously offers tickets to students and others in need -– which was what they deserve, and have deserved, for a longtime.
The ensemble’s playing proved nothing short of terrific, and the soloists – violinist Rachel Barton Pine and violist Matthew Lipman – proved nothing short of spectacular.
Here are the points that The Ear took away.
1. The music of the famous 18th-century composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (below top) and Franz Joseph Haydn (below bottom) can by now seem so safe and so predictable. The Classical-era style is that well established. So it is high praise to the WCO ‘s longtime music director and conductor Andrew Sewell, who his starting his 15th season, that these most established of Classical composers again seemed vital and even, at times, daring and radical. No music box Mozart from the WCO!
Sewell’s readings of both composers is not timid in any way, but robust and energetic. Not that Sewell (below) sacrifices the elegance and balanced proportion that we expect to hear in Classical compositions. But he also brings an approach that features up-beat tempi, sharply accented beats, long phrases and an emphasis on dissonant harmonies that helped listeners see how such staple Classical composers were innovative revolutionaries in their day and helped pave the way to modernity.
Really, at one point during Haydn’s late Symphony No. 96 “The Miracle” The Ear could look down the road of music history and see not only Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert coming, but even Gustav Mahler (below), with his use of peasant dances, harmonic suspensions and dissonances, and a kind of tightly knit theme-and-variations method of composing and adding to the music’s momentum.
2. The WCO knows how to book outstanding and exciting soloists. Chicago violinist Rachel Barton Pine (below), playing a violin once chosen by Johannes Brahms himself, showed superb tone and musicianship with just the right splash of head-turning virtuosity. But she can sing too, and she held the audience in her hand when she played the famous quiet Lullaby by Brahms as an encore.
One very discerning listener whom The Ear knows thought that Barton Pine’s stellar rendition of Camille Saint-Saens’ showpiece “Introduction and Rondo capriccioso” was the best version of the several he had heard in three performances over the past several months. It helped, I think, that you could watch the playing as well as hear the piece. As the composer Igor Stravinsky used to advise: Listen with your eyes.
Similarly the violist Matthew Lipman (below), who was making his WCO debut, did a terrific job. He may look about 16, but he plays like a seasoned veteran with confidence and fine tone.
The two string players excelled in the Double Concerto for Violin and Viola by Benjamin Britten -– but more about that performance and work later. Yet what really brought the string duo a prolonged standing ovation was their encore: the famous solo Passacaglia for Violin and Viola by George Frideric Handel, as arranged by Johan Halvorsen. (You can hear a version of this great violin and viola piece, with Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, in a YouTube video at the bottom.) What fun it was to hear it live!
3. The hybrid programming proved typical of Andrew Sewell, who likes to combine the familiar with the unknown. So Mozart’s popular Overture to the opera “The Marriage of Figaro” and the well-known late Haydn symphony were balanced out by the rarely programmed Violin Concerto No. 5 by the mid-19th century Romantic Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps (below), a competent but, to The Ear’s ears, not a particularly inspired composition. I think I can wait another decade or two before hearing a repeat performance.
The Double Concerto for Violin and Viola by the young Benjamin Britten is another matter. I need to hear it again, and that will not be easy since it is not often programmed or recorded.
But the hallmarks of mature Britten (below) all seemed there, if not yet seamlessly assembled. The music sounded modern but accessible, clearly not academic. This was real music, not what The Ear calls R&D Music — Research and Development Music — that is designed more to make a point or win tenure than to please the ear or touch the heart.
In all, it was a delightful night of music-making, and if you are not going to the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, you are only cheating yourself of great pleasure and great performances.
Reviews, of course, are by nature subjective. So here is another one you can compare this review to:
It is a review by the highly respected John W. Barker (below) for Isthmus:
http://www.isthmus.com/daily/article.php?article=43770&sid=c9ccfe0ad418291bab1d31cde0181d49
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: The Madison Symphony Orchestra announces its 2020-21 season to mark The Beethoven Year. Plus, this Sunday afternoon, the Edgewood Chamber Orchestra also celebrates The Beethoven Year
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ALERT: The Madison Symphony Orchestra has just announced its 2020-21 season, which is heavy on works from Beethoven’s mid-career “Heroic” period to mark the Beethoven Year celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of the composer (below).
Other composers to be featured include Haydn, Mozart, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Sibelius, Honegger, Grofé, Kabalevsky and the African-American composer George Walker.
Familiar soloists include pianists Olga Kern and Garrick Ohlsson; violinists James Ehnes and Gil Shaham. Also soloing are retired UW-Madison professor and MSO principal oboe Marc Fink and MSO concertmaster Naha Greenholtz.
The traditional Christmas Concert is in early December.
The “Beyond the Score” program in late January, with actors from American Players Theater in Spring Green, focuses on Stravinsky’s revolutionary “The Rite of Spring.” And the MSO Chorus will perform in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Choral” and “Missa Solemnis.”
All concerts will be conducted by John DeMain.
Here is a link to details about the season and how to subscribe: https://madisonsymphony.org/concerts-events/2020-2021-symphony-season-concerts/
Let The Ear know what you think of the new MSO season in the Comment section.
By Jacob Stockinger
This Sunday afternoon, Feb. 23, the Edgewood Chamber Orchestra of Edgewood College presents a special winter concert.
The performance is at 2:30 p.m. in McKinley Performing Arts Center of Edgewood High School, 2219 Monroe Street, on Madison’s near west side.
The conductor is Blake Walter (below, in a photo by John Maniaci) and the guest soloist is violinist David Huntsman.
The concert celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Chamber Orchestra will perform the Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36, by Beethoven, who seems influenced in this work by Mozart and especially his teacher Haydn but who moved beyond them in this symphony. (You can hear the innovative Scherzo movement, which replaced the traditional minuet, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Also on the program are Handel’s Overture to the opera “Semele” and the virtuosic Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saens, which features soloist David Huntsman (below).
Tickets are $5 for general admission, and admission is free with an Edgewood High School or Edgewood College ID.
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