By Jacob Stockinger
It’s getting so that, more and more often, the week just isn’t long enough to cover the ever-increasing number of classical music events in the Madison area.
It is compounded by the fact that so many events mean more previews than reviews – which The Ear thinks benefits both the public and the performers.
But here are four more events that you might be interested in attending during the coming weekend:
SATURDAY
On Saturday night at 8 p.m. in Overture Hall, legendary superstar violinist Itzhak Perlman (below, in a photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco) will perform a recital with his longtime accompanist Rohan de Silva. (You can hear the two perform the Serenade by Franz Schubert in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The program includes the Sonata in A Major, Op. 2, No. 2, by Antonio Vivaldi; Sonata No. 1 in D Major, Op. 12, No. 1, by Ludwig van Beethoven; the “Fantasy Pieces,” Op. 73, by Robert Schumann; the Sonata No. 2 in G Major for Violin and Piano by Maurice Ravel; and selected works to be announced from the stage.
Tickets are $50 to $100. Here is a link for tickets and more information about the performers:
http://www.overture.org/events/itzhak-perlman
If you want to prepare for the concert and go behind the scenes with Perlman, here is a great interview with Perlman done by local writer Michael Muckian for the Wisconsin Gazette:
http://wisconsingazette.com/2017/04/20/itzhak-perlman-good-music-recipe-mix/
On Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium of the First Unitarian Society, 900 University Bay Drive, the Third Annual Mark Rosa Harpsichord Recital will take place. It features guest harpsichordist JungHae Kim (below top) and local baroque violinist Kangwon Kim (below bottom).
The program includes works by Arcangelo Corelli, Jean-Henri D’Anglebert, Jean-Marie Leclair, Gaspard LeRoux and Domenico Scarlatti.
Admission at the door is $15, $10 for seniors and students.
The harpsichord was built by Mark Rosa and is a faithful reproduction of the 1769 Pascal Taskin instrument at Edinburgh University. It has two keyboards, two 8-foot stops, one 4-foot stop, two buff stops and decorative painting by Julia Zwerts.
Korean born harpsichordist JungHae Kim earned her Bachelor’s degree in harpsichord at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore She then earned a Masters in Historical Performance in Harpsichord at the Oberlin Conservatory before completing her studies with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam on a Haskell Scholarship. While in The Netherlands she also completed an Advanced Degree in Harpsichord Performance under Bob Van Asperen at the Sweelinck Conservatorium.
Kim has performed in concert throughout United States, Europe and in Asia as a soloist and with numerous historical instrument ensembles including the Pierce Baroque Dance Company, the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Music’s ReCreation, and Agave Baroque. She performed at the Library of Congress with American Baroque and frequently performs with her Bay Area period instrument group; Ensemble Mirable.
As a soloist, Kim has performed with Musica Angelica, Brandywine Baroque, the New Century Chamber Orchestra, and with the San Francisco Symphony. Kim frequently teaches and performs at summer music
SUNDAY
On Sunday afternoon at 2:30 p.m. in the St. Joseph Chapel of Edgewood College, 1000 Edgewood College Drive, the Edgewood Chorale, along with the Guitar Ensemble, will give a spring concert.
The concert also features performances by students Johanna Novich on piano and Renee Lechner on alto saxophone.
The program includes music by Gabriel Fauré, John Rutter, Frederic Chopin, Bernhard Heiden and many others.
Admission is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Edgewood College’s Music Department was recognized by the readers of Madison Magazine with the Best of Madison 2017 Silver Award.
On Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. at the West Middleton Lutheran Church, 3773 Pioneer Road, at Mineral Point Road in Verona, the internationally acclaimed and Grammy Award-winning tenor Dann Coakwell (below) will team up with keyboardist and MBM founder-director Trevor Stephenson to perform Robert Schumann’s masterpiece song cycle Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Loves).
Just last week Coakwell sang the role of the Evangelist John in the Madison Bach Musicians’ production of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion.
Stephenson will be playing his restored 1855 Bösendorfer concert grand piano (both are below).
Also on the program are four selections from Franz Schubert’s last song collection Schwanengesang (Swansong).
This concert will start off a three-day recording session of this repertoire ― with a CD due for release later this year.
Tickets are $30. Seating at the church is very limited. Email to reserve tickets: www.trevorstephenson.com
ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, which runs from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Landmark Auditoriun of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, will feature harpist Linda Warren (below) playing music by Benjamin Britten, Pearl Chertok and Astor Piazzolla.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following note:
The Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble invites the public to a concert of baroque chamber music.
The concert is this Saturday night, April 11, at 8 p.m. in Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church (the exterior is below top, the interior is below bottom), 1833 Regent Street, Madison, on the near west side.
Members of the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble include: Brett Lipshutz – traverso; Eric Miller – viola da gamba, baroque cello; Consuelo Sañudo – mezzo-soprano; Monica Steger – traverso, harpsichord; Martha Vallon – viola da gamba; and Max Yount – harpsichord.
Tickets at the door only: $20 for the public, $10 for students.
For more information call (608) 238-5126 or visit www.wisconsinbaroque.org.
The program includes:
Intermission
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. 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
Trevor Stephenson’s Madison Bach Musicians (below, in a photo by John W. Barker) opened their 2013-14 season — which marks the 10th anniversary of the local early music group — with a splendid concert of Baroque string music at the First Unitarian Society’s Atrium Auditorium on Saturday night and then repeated it again on Sunday afternoon at the Madison Christian Community Church on Old Sauk Road.
I went to the Saturday night performance. As always, the proceedings were prefaced by a talk from founder, director and keyboardist Stephenson (below, in a photo by John W. Barker) in his usual witty and informative style.
The rich program proved to be a study in string sounds. Joining harpsichordist Stephenson, along with cellist Anton TenWolde, were five guest players.
Marilyn McDonald (below) is something of the matriarch of Baroque violin playing and teaching, and two of the other players here have been her students: violinist Kangwon Kim and violist Nathan Giglierano. Two others were Brandi Berry and Mary Perkinson, both skilled players known here.
The program was, to a considerable extent a constant switching of these talented violinists. A Concerto for Four Violins without Bass was one of those endlessly fascinating experiments by Georg Philipp Telemann, complete with a finale of fanfares.
Two chamber works by George Frideric Handel (below top) graced separate parts of the program. A Sonata for Violin and Continuo featured the amazingly deft McDonald, with the continuo pair. And a Trio Sonata, Op. 2, No. 9, joined her with the spirited Kim. A Sonata for Two Violins by Jean-Marie Leclair (below, bottom) brought together Berry and Kim.
The first half concluded with a revitalized warhorse: the notorious Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel, reclaimed from all its stupid arrangements, and restored as a contrapuntal delight for three violins with continuo, as well as reunited with its brief concluding Gigue. Perkinson joined McDonald and Berry for this.
Here, I must say, I found another example of how attending a live performance makes all the difference. Watching the players in person, I could follow how leading lines were transferred in turn, canonically, from one violin to another, with a clarity that no recorded performance could allow.
In the second half, after Handel’s Trio Sonata, Stephenson himself played on the harpsichord the final Contrapunctus or fugue from Johann Sebastian Bach’s “The Art of Fugue.” Along the way in this, Bach (below) introduced the motto of his own name, made up of the German musical notes of B, A, C, B-flat (“H” in German notation). And then the piece trails off abruptly where, story has it, Bach dropped his pen forever.
The grand finale was a truly exhilarating performance of the Concerto in A minor for Two Violins, Strings, and Continuo, No. 8 by Antonio Vivaldi (below and in a popular YouTube video with over 3 million hits at the bottom) and included in his Op. 3 publication. (Bach himself so admired this work that he made a keyboard concerto transcription of it.)
Here again, too, I had one of those moments of insight that live performances alone can give.
The players were arrayed, one to a part, with the cello by its harpsichord continuo partner on the far left, the strings then spread out towards the right. The violist Giglierano, in his only appearance, was furthest on the edge.
That isolation from the cello–which really belongs to the continuo, not to the string band–was telling, for it enabled me to appreciate how Vivaldi used the viola as the lowest voice in what is really three-part string writing. This was notably obvious in the middle movement, which was written almost entirely senza basso (without bass). Again, such awareness can come only from a live performance, rather than a recorded one.
It goes without saying that all the performers played with the highest level of skill and stylistic sense, joined with infectious enthusiasm.
MBM concerts used to be held in the lovely intimacy of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (below top) on Regent Street. Now, they can virtually fill the First Unitarian Society’s Atrium (below bottom), in a photo by Zane Williams) with an audience close to 200 –and a very enthusiastic bunch, at that.
Thirty years ago a concert like this would have been inconceivable. The Madison public was just not as aware and as prepared and as receptive as it has come to be by now. Stephenson and his colleagues in the Madison Bach Musicians are one of the major forces that have brought about that process. How much we owe them!
ALERT: Two early music friends who perform together as the Ensemble SDG, baroque violinist Edith Hines and UW harpsichordist and organist John Chappell Stowe, write to The Ear: “Ensemble SDG (below) is pleased to invite the public to our FREE upcoming performance on Wisconsin Public Radio‘s “Sunday Afternoon Live from the Chazen.” The recital will be this Sunday, October 6, from 12:30-2 p.m. in Brittingham Gallery III at the Chazen Museum of Art (750 University Avenue, Madison). It will be broadcast live on WPR’s News and Classical Music network (in the Madison area, 88.7 WERN) and streamed online here.
By Jacob Stockinger
This weekend will witness a landmark: It marks the opening of the 10th anniversary season of the Madison Bach Musicians.
In only a decade, the accomplished baroque ensemble (below) has risen to the fore of the many early music group in the area.
The MBM, under director and founder Trevor Stephenson will give two performances – on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon of a concert that features the acclaimed guest baroque violinist Marilyn McDonald (below), who tours widely and also teaches at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Stephenson is a masterful and humorous explainer and will also give a pre-concert lecture at each performance. Other MBM musicians include: Marilyn McDonald, Kangwon Kim, Brandi Berry, Mary Perkinson on baroque violins; Nathan Giglierano on baroque viola; Anton TenWolde on baroque cello’ and Trevor Stephenson on harpsichord. (You can hear MBM musicians play and talk in a News 3/Channel 3000 YouTube video from 2011 at the bottom.)
The program features: Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concerto in G major for Four Violins; George Frideric Handel’s Violin Sonata in G minor, HWV 364, and Trio Sonata in E major, Op. 2, No. 9, HWV 394; Jean-Marie Leclair’s Violin Duo in G minor; Johann Pachelbel Canon and Gigue in D major; J.S. Bach’s Contrapunctus 19 from The Art of Fugue (with B-A-C-H Fugue); and Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor for Two Violins, RV 522.
Performances are on Saturday, October 5, with a 7:15 p.m. lecture and 8 p.m. concert at the First Unitarian Society’s crisp Atrium Auditorium (below, in a photo by Zane Williams) at 900 University Bay Drive on Madison’s near west side; and on Sunday, October 6, with 2:45 p.m. lecture and 3:30 p.m. concert in Blessing Room of Madison’s Christian Community Church, 7118 Old Sauk Road on the far west side of Madison.
Advance tickets, cash or check only, are discounted and run $20 for general admission, $15 for students and seniors 65 and over; and are available at A Room of One’s Own; Farley’s House of Pianos; the east and west locations of the Willy Street Co-op; Orange Tree Imports; and Ward-Brodt Music Mall.
At the door, tickets are $25 for general admission and $20 for students and seniors.
For more information, call (608) 238-6092 or visit www.madisonbachmusicians.org
MORE ABOUT THE GUEST SOLOIST
Marilyn McDonald, a founding member of the Smithson Quartet and the Castle Trio, currently plays in the Axelrod Quartet in residence at the Smithsonian Institution; the Axelrod Quartet is named in honor of the donor of the decorated Stradivarius instruments on which the quartet performs.
She has toured world-wide as a chamber musician playing repertoire ranging from baroque to contemporary, appearing at Alice Tully Hall, the Metropolitan Museum, the Frick Gallery, the Caramoor, Utrecht and Mostly Mozart Festivals, Wigmore Hall, Disney Hall, Ravinia and the Concertgebouw, as well as appearing as soloist with the Milwaukee and Omaha Symphonies. Concertmaster positions include Boston Baroque and the Peninsula Music Festival.
She has been artist in residence at Boston University and has held visiting professorships at the Eastman School of Music and at Indiana University. She teaches each summer at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and has been honored with the “Excellence in Teaching” award at Oberlin, where she is professor of violin. McDonald’s recordings are heard on the Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Virgin Classics, Decca, Gasparo, Smithsonian and Telarc labels.
REST OF THE ANNIVERSARY SEASON
The Madison Bach Musicians’ 10th anniversary season also includes:
On December 14, the third annual Baroque Holiday Music program at the First Congregational Church.
On April 18 and 19, the season will conclude with Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor, conducted by University of Wisconsin-Madison bassoonist Marc Vallon (below). The MBM will collaborate on this venture with the Madison Choral Project under Edgewood College choral director Albert Pinsonneault.
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