The Well-Tempered Ear
A busy weekend of online concerts features the UW Symphony, Edgewood College, Madison Opera, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Bach Around the Clock and more
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By Jacob Stockinger
With only a little over a month left before the academic year ends at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it’s not surprising that the last weekend in March is very busy with noteworthy – and competing – online concerts.
Each morning at 8 through Friday, Bach Around the Clock will release the last concerts of its 10-day online festival. You can find the programs – including the finale Friday night at 7 with Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 — and link for streaming here: https://bachclock.com/concert-schedule
The weekend starts tonight with one of The Ear’s favorite groups during the Pandemic Year: the UW-Madison Symphony Orchestra
Here is a day-by-day lineup. All times are Central Daylight Time:
TONIGHT, MARCH 25
The UW-Madison Symphony Orchestra (below) performs a FREE virtual online concert TONIGHT starting at 7:30 p.m.
The concert will be preceded by a 7 p.m. talk about Igor Stravinsky with modern musicologist and Penn State Professor Maureen Carr as well as conductor Oriol Sans and Susan Cook, UW musicologist and director of the Mead Witter School of Music.
The program is: Suite from the opera “Dido and Aeneas” by Henry Purcell, with student conductor Alison Norris; Duet for Two Violins and String Orchestra by the contemporary American composer Steve Reich; and the Neo-Classical “Apollon musagète” (Apollo, Leader of the Muses) by Stravinsky. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear an excerpt of the Stravinsky played by the Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle conducting.)
Here is the link to the talk and concert. Click on more and you can also see the members of the orchestra and the two violin soloists: https://youtu.be/2rgHQ4lWTV8
For more information about the program, including notes, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/uw-madison-symphony-orchestra/
FRIDAY, MARCH 26
At 7:30 p.m. the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra will post for three days the third of its four online chamber music concerts (below). There will be excerpts of music by Beethoven and Brahms as well as complete works by Jessie Montgomery and Alyssa Morris.
Tickets to the online on-demand event are $30, with some discounts available, and are good through Monday evening.
Here is a link to more about this concert, including program notes by conductor and music director Andrew Sewell, and how to purchase tickets: https://wcoconcerts.org/events/winter-chamber-series-no-iii
At 8 p.m., the music department at Edgewood College will give a FREE online Spring Celebration concert. It will be livestreamed via music.edgewood.edu
The performers include: the Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Sergei Pavlov (below); the Guitar Ensemble, under the direction of Nathan Wysock; and the Chamber Winds, directed by Carrie Backman.
Highlights include the Guitar Ensemble’s performance of Wish You Were Here, by David Gilmour and Rogers Waters, and the Chamber Winds epic Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The Chamber Orchestra, which will perform live, will feature Musical moment No. 3, by Franz Schubert and Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg.
SATURDAY, MARCH 27
At noon, in Grace Episcopal Church on the Capitol Square downtown, there will be a FREE online concert. Grace Presents: “A Patient Enduring”: This early music program of medieval conductus (a musical setting of metrical Latin texts) and ballade, English lute song, and duets from the early Italian Baroque features two sopranos, Grammy-winnner Sarah Brailey (below) and Kristina Boerger, with Brandon Acker on lute and theorbo.
Here is a link: YouTube.com/GracePresentsConcerts
You can also go to this webpage for a link: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/grace-presents-a-patient-enduring/
At 3 p.m. the Perlman Trio, a piano trio that is made up of UW-Madison graduate students, will give a FREE online concert. The program includes piano trios by Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert.
Here is a link to the YouTube video: https://youtu.be/EAjK0DfWB3A
Here is a link to the complete program plus background, names and photos of the performers as well as to the performance: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/perlman-piano-trio/
At 7 p.m. the UW-Madison’s Wingra Wind Quntet (below) will perform a FREE pre-recorded online concert. Here is a link to the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn7eobSnfr8
And here is a link to the page with more background information about the faculty members – including bassoonist Marc Vallon (below top) and flutist Conor Nelson (below bottom) – and to the complete program: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/wingra-wind-quintet/
SUNDAY, MARCH 28
From 4 to 5:30 p.m., guest mezzo-soprano Julia Ubank (below) will give a free online recital with pianist Thomas Kasdorf.
The program features songs by Mahler, Debussy, deFalla, Jake Heggie and Ellen Cogen.
Here is the complete program plus a link to the recital: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/julia-urbank-voice-recital/
From 4 to 5:30 p.m. the Madison Opera will host a Opera Up Close cocktail hour discussion with four general directors of opera companies. Here is the website’s description:
“Four opera general directors walk into a chat room…. Stepping outside the Madison Opera family, Kathryn Smith (below, in a photo by James Gill) is joined by three colleagues: Michael Egel of Des Moines Metro Opera, Ashley Magnus of Chicago Opera Theater, and Lee Anne Myslewski of Wolf Trap Opera.
“From how they got into opera, to the ups and downs of running an opera company, their favorite productions, funniest moments, and more, it will be a unique and entertaining afternoon.
Here is a link with more information including the cost of a subscription: https://www.madisonopera.org/class/general-directors/?wcs_timestamp=1616947200
At 6 p.m., Rachel Reese, a UW-Madison doctoral student in violin, will give a lecture-concert about the Violin Concerto No. 2 by the rediscovered African-American composer Florence Price (below). She will be accompanied by pianist Aubrie Jacobson.
Here is a link to the concert plus background about Rachel Reese: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/rachel-reese-lecture-recital/
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Classical music: How did a reformation in religion and a revolution in printing change music? The 19th annual Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF) offers answers and samples this week. Part 2 of 2
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By Jacob Stockinger
Starting this Saturday and running through the following Saturday, the 19th annual Madison Early Music Festival will explore the profound effects that the Lutheran Reformation and the invention of printing had on Renaissance and Baroque music of the time.
The festival is called “A Cabinet of Curiosities: A Journey to Lübeck.” For a complete listing of programs, lectures, concerts and workshops, with information about tickets, go to: https://memf.wisc.edu
Soprano Cheryl Bensman Rowe — who directs the festival with UW Arts Institute’s Sarah Marty and her husband and UW-Madison baritone Paul Rowe — recently agreed to do a Q&A with The Ear about the upcoming festival. Here is Part 2 of 2. And, if you missed the beginning, here is a link to Part 1:
How does early north German music differ from its counterparts in, say, Italy, France, Germany and England. What is the historical origin and aesthetic importance of the music from that era in that part of the world?
One of the biggest changes during the Reformation in Germany began with sacred music and the far-reaching changes in the way it served the church. The music of mass, motet, psalm and hymn heard in the great urban cathedrals, cloistered chapels and royal palace churches of Catholicism represented the “otherness” of the divine, a God unreachable by the untutored masses.
Written in an intellectual language which required years of rigorous training to learn and understand, it was only the disciplined, practiced choir boys and men who could perform this sacred polyphony in all its wonder and glory.
Luther sought to traverse this divide. Though he held the existing music of sacred polyphony in high esteem, he felt that music could be used to even greater effect in furthering the education and religious commitment of the people.
Luther (below) chose the hymn form as the principle means to his musical aims. A prolific hymnodist himself, he authored hymns such as the famous “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God“) several settings of which begin the All-Festival concert, attempted to connect existing high art with folk music in a style that would appeal to all classes, clergy and laity, men, women and children. His texts were in the German vernacular in order to convey messages that would be understood by all in a way that the Latin of preexisting hymns were not.
The culmination of those first 100 years of reformed musical development and the composers whose works will be performed throughout the week at MEMF, launched the reformed hymnody of Luther (below) and his followers into the stratosphere of such giants as Heinrich Schütz, Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Sebastian Bach (all the Bachs for that matter) and on, a trail that continues to the present day.
What music and composers of that era have been most neglected and least neglected by historians and performers? Does rediscovery of works and composers play a special role this year?
Throughout the week we will be featuring compositions from the Choir Library from the Marienkirche in Lübeck (below) is a collection of music that Lübeck scholar and Buxtehude biographer Kerala Snyder catalogued and reconstructed.
The collection ended up in Vienna in the 19th century, and is a comprehensive data base that includes compositions by German and Italian composers, including Heinrich Schütz, Hermann Schein, Palestrina – the list starts with Agazzari and ends with Zucchini.
Besides the Choir Library compositions, audiences will have an opportunity to hear works of Buxtehude that have never been performed in Madison.
Can you tell us about the program and performers for the All-Festival concert on Saturday, July 14?
The All-Festival Concert (below) includes all of our workshop participants and faculty. We work together to prepare the concert all week and it is truly a MEMF community project. The music will be drawn from settings and compositions based on Lutheran chorales such as Ein Feste Burg and from the Choir Library of the Marienkirche.
The concert concludes with Buxtehude’s Missa Brevis and concludes with his grand motet, Benedicam Dominum in omne tempore, written for six contrasting choirs, which Buxtehude surely composed to match the structural design of the Marienkirche. (You can hear the Kyrie from Buxtehude’s “Missa Brevis” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Are there other sessions — guest lectures, certain performers, particular works — that you especially recommend for the general public?
All the planning that goes into each festival leads me to encourage the general public to attend everything. The concert series, lectures and workshop have so much to offer.
Special events include a dance with a live band drawn from the MEMF Faculty with dance instruction by Peggy Murray, Tanzen und Springen,at Memorial Union in the Grand Hall on Thursday night.
The lecture series features some well-known Madison scholars — John W. Barker and J. Michael Allsen, plus Michael Alan Anderson (below top), director of Schola Antiqua and professor of musicology, and Jost Hermand (below bottom), Professor Emeritus at the UW-Madison.
There will be a special exhibit created for MEMF in the lobby of Memorial Library by Jeanette Casey, the Head of the Mills Music Library and Lisa Wettleson of Special Collections at Memorial Library.
This curated display reflects the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. The exhibit will be in the lobby of Memorial Library and open to the public through Thursday, July 19, 2018, with a special talk about the exhibit during the festival on Monday, July 9, at 11:30 a.m. This wonderful partnership allows the library to display rarely seen original and facsimile publications, some dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries within the context of the MEMF theme.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Martin Luther, who was a great lover of music, said: “The riches of music are so excellent and so precious that words fail me whenever I attempt to discuss and describe them…. In summa, next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. It controls our thoughts, minds, hearts, and spirits…”
Join us to hear what Luther was talking about! Get your tickets for the concert series! Attend the lectures! Take some classes! You’ll find a link for all the information about MEMF at www.madisonearlymusic.org
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: In 2019 who died? What recordings won prizes? What music had its premiere? Here is a comprehensive and detailed worldwide retrospective from Wikipedia
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PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
A new year is always a good time to do a review and take a look backward to assess the previous year.
Many local publications – newspapers and magazines — do Best of the Year round-ups.
But The Ear has never seen a more comprehensive list with major news and almost daily entries around the world than he found in Wikipedia, which has retrospectives going back to 2009 and looking forward to 2029.
In short, all the reviws are well worth exploring for the reminders they hold that, as the proverb goes, “Ars longa, vita brevis” or “Art is long, life is short.” (It is usually quoted in Latin translation from the original ancient Greek that was written by Hippocrates.)
There are seven different categories to click on, each with long entries. If you hover the cursor over the names or words that are spelled in blue, you will see more text and often a photograph. The categories are:
EVENTS
NEW WORKS
NEW OPERAS
ALBUMS
DEATHS
MAJOR AWARDS
REFERENCES
There are so many details that you may want to check out just one or two categories at a time over several days.
Here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_in_classical_music
Do you know of someone or something – especially of local importance, such as the death in October of longtime Madison music critic John W. Barker (below, in a photo by Mark Golbach) – that did not make the list? Please leave word in the Comment section.
And here’s hoping that 2020 brings us even more important and memorable new and old music, but less loss.
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