The Well-Tempered Ear
The Madison Bach Musicians host a virtual online Baroque Tour starting this Saturday, April 24, and lasting through May 8
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following notice from Trevor Stephenson, the founder and artistic director of the Madison Bach Musicians (MBM), who will debut their season-closing concert live and online this coming Saturday night, April 24:
Stephenson (below) writes:
Since travel has been so very limited during the pandemic, Madison Bach Musicians is elated to conclude its 2020-21 season with a musical journey through both space and time, and invites you to join us from the intimacy and safety of your own home.
A Baroque Tour is a musical travelogue of instrumental masterworks from 17th- and 18th-century Europe. Luminaries like Handel, Vivaldi, Purcell and Buxtehude are in the mix on this program with their brilliant though lesser-known contemporaries such as Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (below top), Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Andrea Falconieri (below bottom) and Francisco Jose de Castro.
A Baroque Tour will explore the glorious sonic landscapes of Italy, Spain, France, England and Germany.
Our ensemble for this program consists of five strings plus harpsichord, and we are thrilled that baroque bassoon virtuoso Marc Vallon (below, in a photo by James Gill), who teaches at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, will join us for Vivaldi’s exuberant Bassoon Concerto in B-Flat Major. (You can hear the opening movement in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
A Baroque Tour will be broadcast via live-streaming from the acoustically spectacular sanctuary of Grace Episcopal Church on this Saturday evening, April 24. (Rebroadcasts will be available on demand through May 8.)
Tickets are $15 and available online at: https://madison-bach-musicians.square.site/product/a-baroque-tour-april-24-2021-livestream-on-demand-until-may-8/57?cs=true&cst=custom
If you wish to purchase tickets through the mail, use this downloadable form: https://madisonbachmusicians.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MBM-2020-21-Live-Stream-Ticket-Form-A-Baroque-Tour.pdf
Here is the schedule for the concert and related events:
From 7:30-8 p.m., in a pre-concert lecture, MBM artistic director Trevor Stephenson will discuss the composers, the repertoire and the historical instruments.
The performance will run from 8 p.m. until approximately 9:15 p.m.
The evening will then conclude with a live Question-and-Answer session with the musicians who will be socially distanced on the concert platform.
Listeners should submit their questions—in advance or during the broadcast—via email to Karen Rebholz at madisonbachmusicians.manager@gmail.com.
THE MUSICIANS are:
Marc Vallon – baroque bassoon soloist
Kangwon Kim (below) – baroque violin
Emily Dupere – baroque violin
Micah Behr – baroque viola and baroque guitar
Martha Vallon – baroque cello and viola da gamba
James Waldo – baroque cello (and tambourine)
Trevor Stephenson – harpsichord
THE PROGRAM is:
HANDEL – Sonata in A major for Violin and Continuo, HWV 361
CHARPENTIER – Concerto for Four Viols, H 545
PURCELL – Trio Sonata in C major, Z 795
VIVALDI – Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, RV 503
GUILLEMAIN – Sonata in A minor for Two Violins, Op. 5, No.1
BUXTEHUDE – Trio Sonata in G major, BuxWV 271
DE CASTRO – Trio Sonata in C major, Op. 1, No. 6
FALCONIERI – La Folia (Folías de España)
Here is a link to some brief biographies and interesting facts about these remarkable composers: https://madisonbachmusicians.org/april-24-a-baroque-tour-a-livestream-event/
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Classical music: The venerable Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble opens its 18th season with fabulous Baroque music fabulously played. Plus, pianist Joyce Yang gives a FREE and PUBLIC master class Wednesday afternoon.
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ALERT: Late news comes that pianist Joyce Yang will give a FREE and PUBLIC master class for the UW-Madison School of Music on Wednesday from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Play Circle of the Wisconsin Union Theater. On Thursday at 8 p.m. in Shannon Hall of the Wisconsin Union Theater, Yang will perform a solo recital of music by Domenico Scarlatti, Claude Debussy, Isaac Albeniz, Alberto Ginastera and Sergei Rachmaninoff. For more information about Joyce Yang, the concert and tickets, visit:
http://www.uniontheater.wisc.edu/Season15-16/joyce-yang.html
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 for 12 years hosted 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
The Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble (below) opened its new season in Madison with a fine concert at the Gates of Heaven on Saturday night.
As always, the program was varied in contents and in performer involvements.
Running as a thread throughout was the artistry of University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music professor and soprano Mimmi Fulmer (below center left, in a photo by John W. Barker) and mezzo-soprano Consuelo Sañudo (below center right), a familiar team.
At intervals, they sang a pair of madrigals by Girolamo Frescobaldi (most familiar as a keyboard composer); an extended setting by Marc-Antoine Charpentier of the Miserere Psalm, with concluding lines added from the Lamentations of Jeremiah; and an Ave Maria by the really obscure Dutch composer Benedictus Buns (c.1642-1716), also known as Benedictus a Sancto Josepho.
The instrumentalists (Nathan Giglierano, Mary Parkinson, violins; Brett Lipshutz and Monica Steger, flutes; Eric Miller, gamba; plus cellist Anton TenWolde and Max Yount, harpsichord, as continuo) joined with them variously as appropriate, to lovely effects.
At one extreme of texture, violinist Perkinson, supported by continuo, played a richly demanding sonata by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. At the other extreme, all the players joined in for a vivacious finale with excerpts from the Suite in E minor from the first book of Georg Philipp Telemann’s Musique de Table (Tafelmusik) anthologies.
For me, however, and I think for a lot of the good-sized audience, the real high point of the program came just after the intermission, when the two violinists, with continuo, gave an absolutely smashing rendition of the Follia Sonata, the last of the 12 Trio Sonatas, Op. 1, by Antonio Vivaldi. (Below in an ensemble shot by John W. Barker.)
In this tour de force of writing, Vivaldi surpassed his model, Arcangelo Corelli’s Violin Sonata Op. 5, No. 12, whose 19 variations, cascade one virtuosic extravagance after another. (You can hear the Vivaldi’s “La Follia” sonata in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
Fabulous Late Baroque music, fabulously played!
The WBE has been giving these concerts for the past 18 years. They continue to be unpretentious but thoroughly satisfying programs of Baroque chamber music in an appropriate chamber setting. Long may they continue!
The group’s next concert in Madison will be on Sunday, Nov. 29, at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.
For more information visit: http://www.wisconsinbaroque.org
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