The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Two FREE concerts at the UW-Madison this Friday evening offer Brahms fans music for piano, cello and clarinet.

ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, which takes place from 12:15 to 1 p.m. at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, will feature Leslie Damaso, mezzo-soprano; Shannon Farley; Jason Kutz, piano; Beth Larson, violin and viola; Morgan Walsh, cello; Chris Allen, guitar; and Gregg Punswick, piano. The program includes music by George Philipp Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi, Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. No word on specific pieces, sorry.

By Jacob Stockinger

“Aimez-vous Brahms?” asked the famous French novelist Francoise Sagan in a title of a bestselling novel.

Well, yes, The Ear does indeed love the music of Johannes Brahms (below).

And if you too love Brahms, this week features two concerts that sound very promising and offer a big dose of Brahms.

Call it Brahms Day.

Or, more appropriately, Brahms Night.

Unfortunately or fortunately – depending on your point of view and your power of endurance — both concerts are on Friday evening and may even overlap, although The Ear hopes not.

It is a pretty heavy and intense dose of Brahms, especially of the beautifully introspective late or “autumnal” music he composed shortly before he died.

At 6:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall is a recital by doctoral student and collaborative pianist Satoko Hayami (below top), who will be joined by her fellow graduate students, clarinetist Kai-Ju Ho (below middle) and cellist Kyle Price (below bottom), in performing late music by Brahms.

The program includes the Sonata in E-flat for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 120, No. 2, which is often played on the viola, although it was originally composed for the clarinet; the Zigeunerlieder, Op. 103; and the Trio for Clarinet for Piano, Clarinet and Cello.

Then at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW-Madison cello professor Uri Vardi (below top) and guest pianist Uriel Tsachor (below bottom), from the University of Iowa, will perform BOTH cello sonatas by Brahms – The Ear loves them both — plus six art songs transcribed for cello and piano. (You can hear the haunting second movement of the last Cello Sonata, in F major, by Brahms played by cellist Jian Wang and pianist Emanuel Ax in a YouTube video at the bottom.)

Vardi is something of a specialist in Brahms and has just released a performance on the Delos record label of the three Piano Trios, which included Pro Arte Quartet violinist and UW-Madison violin professor David Parry.

So it all sounds very promising. And very Brahmsian.