The Well-Tempered Ear
How did pianist Yuja Wang’s heart respond to playing Rachmaninoff?
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By Jacob Stockinger
You might recall that in January of 2023, superstar Chinese pianist Yuja Wang (below) played a marathon Rachmaninoff concert in New York City’s Carnegie Hall.
It lasted 2½ hours and featured all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos plus his Rhapsody in a Theme of Paganini. It received rave reviews as well as standing ovations and sold-out houses.
Wang — famous for her ease and assurance in playing technically challenging compositions — performed with the Philadelphia Orchestra under conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Deutsche Grammophon recorded the same program Wang did in Los Angeles — but over two consecutive weekends rather than all at once — with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel.
In the YouTube video at the bottom you can hear the sublime slow movement from the Piano Concerto No. 2 from the series of LA performances. If The Ear is not mistaken, in closeups of her hands on the keyboard you can see what looks like a heart monitor on her wrist.
Time and length wasn’t the only remarkable thing about the concert.
Always a fashion plate, Wang wore a different stand-out dress for each piece, as you can see from the photo below:
In addition, she wore a heart monitor — as did the conductor, several players and members of the audience — to track her heart rate while she was playing.
Which concerto do you think proved the most challenging — at least to her heart?
Perhaps the Rach 3, which has been called the “Mt. Everest of piano concertos” and was even made into the 1996 movie “Shine” with its super-virtuosic difficulties at the heart of the story about mental health.
The results are in a story from Classic FM radio station in the UK. Here is a link:
https://www.classicfm.com/artists/yuja-wang/heart-rate-rachmaninov-marathon
The heart rate is an interesting angle at a time when so many people — both audiences and performers — wear wellness monitors and keep track of their own heart rates.
The administrators and performers probably thought showing the heart rate in real time on a jumbo screen during the performance would be too distracting.
But The Ear recalls seeing a live performance years ago by Mikhail Baryshnikov, who wore a heart monitor during one of his dances done to a solo cello suite by Bach.
It proved irresistible as a new hi tech take on classical music.
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Why did obituaries for pop star Eric Carmen omit Rachmaninoff?
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By Jacob Stockinger
The American songwriter and pop singer Eric Carmen (below) died in his sleep at 74 last Sunday. The cause has still not been revealed.
I haven’t checked out all the obituaries for Carmen, who fronted as the lead singer for The Raspberries before striking out on his own prolific and profitable career.
In the obits I did sample, I heard how the 2001 movie “Bridget Jones’s Diary” used Carmen’s “All By Myself” (1975) — with Renée Zellwegger on drums in the staring role — at the beginning of the hit film.
I heard how Céline Dion scored a huge hit with her version of the same song.
I heard praise quoted from the American superstar horror author, and sometimes amateur rock band member, Stephen King.
But all the obituaries thatI read on the web, saw on TV and heard on the radio omitted a central element of Carmen’s career in soft rock: his “theft” or “borrowing” — depending on what you think of his justification and the results of the lawsuit he lost — of music by Sergei Rachmaninoff (below).
Indeed, Carmen’s two biggest hits owe their irresistible melodies and harmonies — their tunes, if you will — to the Russian late Romantic composer (1873-1943).
Carmen — who was a trained classical pianist — certainly had a good ear, as his year-to-year, back-to-back hits demonstrated.
And he wasn’t ashamed to use what that ear heard and what he liked.
“All By Myself” uses a theme from the second movement of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1901). The main melody of the last movement also gave rise to the often recorded popular song “Full Moon and Empty Arms.”
Carmen’s “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” (1976) uses the main theme from the slow movement of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 (1907).
If you liked Carmen’s songs, you just might like the original Rachmaninoff works, if you don’t already know them.
Here is a link to a story by Cynthia Dickison for yourclassical.org that not only recounts what happened with the lawsuit but also — with YouTube videos — offers comparisons between the original Rachmaninoff and Carmen’s reworkings.
https://www.yourclassical.org/story/2024/03/12/eric-carmen-sergei-rachmaninoff
Chances are very good that you will also hear the complete Rachmaninoff works on radio stations and in live performance a lot sooner and certainly a lot longer than you will hear Eric Carmen’s music.
Did you know about Eric Carmen’s “use” of Rachmaninoff?
What do you think of it?
What do you think it was ignored in obituaries?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Looking for serious fun? The thoroughly successful opening concerts by the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society bode well for the upcoming second weekend
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By Jacob Stockinger
After 28 summers, going to a concert by the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society still feels like attending a family reunion – the best kind of family reunion where everyone is familiar and friendly, where everything is fun, and where you always leave glad that you went.
That’s not by chance.
The first thing that co-founders and co-artistic directors Stephanie Jutt and Jeffrey Sykes did last Friday and Saturday nights was to thank the loyal audience. And the audience, full of longtime fans, returned the favor by being attentive to and appreciative of the first-rate music-making as well as responsive to the horseplay and antics – such as the surreal scene of virtuoso Axel Strauss playing “The Skater’s Waltz” on his violin while rollerblading around the stage (below).
BDDS players really mean it when they say that their audiences are in for something different, something they won’t find elsewhere and won’t forget.
Last weekend that meant the return of two longtime guest performers: San Francisco cellist Jean-Michael Fonteneau and Montreal violinist Axel Strauss (below, with pianist Jeffrey Sykes). Neither disappointed as they performed very varied music by Franz Joseph Haydn, C.P.E. Bach, Johannes Brahms, Gabriel Faure, Lili Boulanger, Maurice Ravel and Ned Rorem. And as always, the amazing pianist Jeffrey Sykes proved a chameleon who blended masterfully into the style of each period and each composer.
But for The Ear, the unexpected standout last weekend was guest accordion player Stas Venglevski from Milwaukee. Born in Russia and trained at the Moscow Conservatory, he is a virtuoso player, a sensitive arranger and a convincing composer – all done with good humor and a charismatic stage presence.
The Ear never thought of the accordion – the Russian bayan, to be specific – as an instrument for chamber music. But he does now, after hearing Venglevski play serious Russian, French and Latin American music that ran the gamut from a graceful waltz and a sprightly polka to torchy tangos. And then there were his flying fingers punching out “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” a real crowd-pleaser.
The large audience responded on both nights with wild applause and a standing ovation every time that Venglevski (below) played, and Jutt promised the audience that he will be back.
“As you can see, we have fun here,” Jutt deadpanned.
She is not exaggerating.
Which bodes well for the second weekend of three that will happen this coming weekend.
The second weekend — two programs in three venues — celebrates Jutt and Sykes, plus two of BDDS’ favorite guest artists: violinist Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio and Madison pianist Thomas Kasdorf.
Kasdorf (below) and Sykes are both featured in a program called “Rock the Sykes-o-delic Kas-bah.” Kasdorf is featured in Brahms’ Horn Trio with guest horn player Karl Kramer Johansen, and in the appealing and accessible Café Concertino by the contemporary Australian composer Carl Vine.
Sykes will perform another chamber transcription of a Classical-era symphonic work, which over the years has become a welcome specialty of BDDS. In this case it is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s snappy and appealing Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K. 271, the “Jeunehomme” concerto. (You can hear the irresistible last movement of the piano concerto, used in the film “Amadeus,” in the YouTube video at the bottom.) Sykes will also perform in Robert Schumann’s “Fairy Tales” for clarinet and viola.
A Madison native, cellist Alison Rowe (below) — an artist from the Dynamite Factory, which is BDDS’ program for emerging talent — will be featured in the Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Major by Johann Sebastian Bach.
“Rock the Sykes-o-delic Kas-bah” will be performed at the Stoughton Opera House on Friday, June 21, at 7:30 p.m. Braisin’ Hussies Food Cart will be parked outside the Opera House prior to the performance. The program will also be performed in Spring Green at the Hillside Theater, Sunday, June 23, at 2:30 p.m.
Jutt (below top) and Sant’Ambrogio (below bottom, in a photo by Stephanie Ann Boyd) worm their musical way into the most unexpected places in the other program, “Steph Infection.” The Nocturne for flute, violin, horn and piano of Franz Doppler opens the program, which continues with Jutt’s own arrangement of Antonin Dvorak’s popular “American” String Quartet, with a flute substituting for one of the two violins.
Dmitri Shostakovich’s Five Pieces for flute, clarinet and piano add spice to the program, and the evening concludes with Ernst von Dohnanyi’s epic Sextet for clarinet, horn, violin, viola, cello and piano. A work that ranges from stormy and turbulent to tender and funny, it features an all-star cast including audience favorite clarinetist Alan Kay, horn player Karl Kramer Johansen, violist Carol Cook (principal at the Lyric Opera of Chicago), and Madison’s own cellist of the UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet, Parry Karp (below).
“Steph Infection” will be performed at The Playhouse, Overture Center for the Arts, Saturday, June 22, at 7:30 p.m.; and in Spring Green at the Hillside Theater, Sunday, June 23, at 6:30 p.m.
And of course there could also be some unannounced surprises – more door prizes, perhaps a mystery guest, or more shenanigans and antics that correspond to the “Name Dropping” pun theme of the programs.
For tickets ($43-$49) and more information, go to: https://bachdancing.org
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Classical music: The Mosaic Chamber Players perform an all-Schubert concert on Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon, Opera Props presents singers in a benefit concert to support the opera program at the UW-Madison
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ALERT: On this Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m., in the Madison Christian Community Church at 7118 Old Sauk Road on Madison’s far west side, Opera Props will present a benefit concert to raise money for the UW-Madison’s opera program and University Opera.
Student singers and piano accompanist Daniel Fung will perform arias and songs. But the spotlight will shine on University of Wisconsin-Madison alumna soprano Julia Rottmayer, who is a new faculty member at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music. (Sorry, no specific program is given and no names of composers and works are mentioned.)
Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door with student tickets costing $10. Tickets include a reception with local Gail Ambrosius chocolate, fruit, cheese and wine. For more information, go to: https://www.uwoperaprops.org
By Jacob Stockinger
Why is The Ear increasingly drawn to the music of Franz Schubert (below) over, say, the music of his contemporary and idol Ludwig van Beethoven? It seems to be more than its sheer beauty and lyricism. It also seems to possess a certain warmth or human quality that he finds irresistible, poignant and restorative, especially if it is true, as the Buddha said, life is suffering.
In any case, The Ear is not alone.
The Madison-based Mosaic Chamber Players (below, in a photo by John W. Barker) will open their new and ambitious season this coming Saturday night with a concert of music by Franz Schubert.
The all-Schubert concert is at 7:30 p.m. in the chapel of the First Congregational United Church of Christ, 1609 University Avenue, near Camp Randall Stadium — NOT at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, as was incorrectly stated earlier in this blog post.
The program includes two Sonatinas for Violin and Piano in D Major, D. 384, and A minor, D. 385; the famous “Arpeggione” Sonata, D. 821, performed on the cello with piano; and the lovely and songful Adagio or “Notturno” (Nocturne) for Piano Trio, D. 897, which you can hear with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Daniil Trifonov, in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Tickets cost $15 for adults; $10 for seniors; and $5 for students. Cash and checks only will be accepted; no credit cards.
Members of the Mosaic Chamber Players are: founder and pianist Jess Salek (below top); violinist Wes Luke (below second), who plays with the Ancora String Quartet and Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra; violinist Laura Burns (below third), who also plays with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the MSO’s Rhapsodie String Quartet; and cellist Kyle Price (below bottom), who founded the Caroga Lake Music Festival in New York State and is pursuing his doctoral degree at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music with distinction and who was a member of the graduate student Hunt Quartet while he studied for his master’s.
A reception will follow the concert.
For more information about the Mosaic Chamber Players and about their new season, which includes some very varied composers but no specific titles of works, go to: http://www.mosaicchamberplayers.com
What do you find so appealing and so special about the music of Schubert?
What is your favorite Schubert work?
Leave your thoughts in the COMMENT section with a link, if possible, to a YouTube video performance.
The Ear wants to hear.
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