The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: A FREE concert of Polish piano music is on this Sunday afternoon at the UW-Madison
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post:
On this Sunday afternoon, Oct. 21, at 4 p.m., University of Oklahoma Professor Igor Lipinski (below) will perform a solo piano recital with commentary at Mills Concert Hall of UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music. Mills Hall is located at 455 North Park Street in the George Mosse Humanities Building.
At this FREE CONCERT, Lipinski will perform music by 19th through 21st century Polish composers: Fryderyk (Frederic) Chopin, Karol Szymanowski, Ignaz Jan Paderewski, Grazyna Bacewicz and Pawel Mykietyn. (Editor’s note: Sorry, no titles of specific works are listed.)
Since classical music from Poland has been rarely performed in concert halls in Madison, this recital will be a unique occasion to experience Poland’s musical heritage and diversity.
This concert also commemorates the 100th anniversary of Poland regaining independence at the conclusion of World War I, after 123 years of its partition and disappearance from the map of Europe.
Please join our local Polish community in celebrating this joyous occasion through appreciation of beautiful and captivating music from some of the Poland’s most important composers.
This event is organized by the Polish Student Association of UW-Madison and Mad-Polka Productions, with cooperation and financial support provided by Lapinski Fund (UW-Madison German, Nordic and Slavic Departments) and the Polish Heritage Club of Madison as well as the Sounds & Notes Foundation from Chicago.
ABOUT THE PERFORMER:
Prof. Igor Lipinski is native to Poland and currently teaching at the University of Oklahoma. At the age of 12, he won a Grand Prize at the Paderewski Piano Competition for Young Pianists in Poland.
He is a musician, piano teacher, performer and also a magician, sometimes surprisingly combining all of his interests during his performances.
He received his Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance from Northwestern University and since then performed over 100 concerts, both solo and with orchestras, all over the U.S.
This will be his debut in Madison.
For more information, go to: www.igorlipinski.com
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS:
Fryderyk (Frederic) Chopin (1810-1849, below): He was born in Poland, but also composed and performed in Germany, Vienna and France. Probably the most prominent Polish composer as well as pianist and performer. Much of Chopin’s inspiration came from Polish village music from the Mazovia region. Chopin composed 57 mazurkas – the mazurka being one of his most beloved type of compositions. He also composed numerous polonaises, concertos, nocturnes and sonatas. (You can hear famous Polish pianist Arthur Rubinstein perform Chopin’s famously nationalistic “Heroic” Polonaise in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937, below): Part of “Young Poland” group of composers at the beginning of 20th century, Szymanowski composed operas, ballets, sonatas, concertos, cycle of songs, string quartets. Many of his compositions were also inspired by Polish folk music, including the famous ballet “Harnasie” based on the culture of Polish highlanders which he experienced while living in Zakopane.
Ignaz Jan Paderewski (1860-1941, below) was a remarkable figure in Poland’s turn-of-the-century history. He was a pianist, composer, statesman, politician, philanthropist, actor, businessman, patron of the arts and architecture, wine grower and humanitarian. As a pianist, he was praised for his interpretations of music of Chopin, Liszt, Bach and Beethoven. He successfully toured western Europe before eventually setting off for the USA. Starting with his first 1891 tour he crossed U.S. about 30 times in his 50-year career.
He was a very popular, charismatic and somewhat extravagant figure, which eventually resulted in “Paddymania” phenomenon. He was largely influenced by Chopin in his composition of sonatas, concertos, polonaises, Polish dances, symphonies, mazurkas, krakowiaks, minuets and even one opera. He also relentlessly supported and lobbied for Poland ‘s independence as World War I unraveled. He influenced U.S. politicians and played a crucial diplomatic role in Poland regaining its independence in 1911.
Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969, below): Violinist, pianist, teacher, writer and composer, she was one of the few female classical music composers at the time in Poland and in the world. Thanks to a generous grant from Ignaz Jan Paderewski, she was able to study music in Paris. She composed numerous concertos, string quartets, sonatas, symphonies.
Pawel Mykietyn (1971-, below in a photo by Oliva Soto): Composer, clarinetist, member of Nonstrom Ensemble. In 1995, he won a first prize in the young composers category during the UNESCO composers competition in Paris. Mykietyn’s composing style is at times aggressive and postmodern, incorporating sharp rhythms to create a vivid and provocative sound. He has composed concertos, sonatas, symphonies, preludes and string quartets.
Thanks to all the sponsors and community support, this concert is FREE and open to the public.
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Classical music: UW-Madison piano students will perform a FREE concert of all 24 preludes by Debussy on Saturday night. On Sunday night, the Willy Street Chamber Players perform their summer preview concert
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By Jacob Stockinger
This is a busy weekend, especially if you are a fan of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. But two more events deserve notice:
SATURDAY
This year is the centennial of the death of the pioneering French composer Claude Debussy (below). The event will be celebrated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music all day this Saturday.
That’s when the annual “Keyboard Day” will take place, with a focus on French music and general matters of technique and interpretation. It is called “Debussy and the French Style” and covers everything from the French baroque keyboard masters to modern music, including how to use songs and poetry as keys to a composer’s mind.
All events are FREE and OPEN to the public.
But the really appealing part for many promises to be a concert at 7 p.m. in Mills Hall. That’s when UW students, both undergraduate and graduate, perform the complete 24 preludes by Debussy, which are landmark works of the piano repertoire. (You can hear Lang Lang play the famous and popular “Girl with the Flaxen Hair” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
It should be very memorable. The Ear remembers enjoying a similar event when students played all the mazurkas by Chopin and all the sonatas by Mozart.
Here is a link to the outstanding schedule of the events, workshops and master classes by faculty members, invited high school students and guest pianist Marina Lomazov (below), that start in the morning at 9 a.m. in Mills Hall:
https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/keyboard-day-with-marina-lomazov-and-mead-witter-faculty/
SUNDAY
On Sunday night, the critically acclaimed Willy Street Chamber Players (below) will give their usual preview concert – a sampler of sorts — of their upcoming summer season.
The concert will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in A Place to Be (below), a cozy and intimately exotic venue, at 911 Williamson Street on Madison’s near east side.
The program is To Be Announced, but the Willys have a great knack for combining older classics with new music.
Tickets are $20.
For information about the group and the concert, and to obtain tickets, go to:
http://www.willystreetchamberplayers.org/calendar.html
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Classical music: Master pianist Richard Goode performs music by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Alban Berg in a MUST-HEAR recital this Saturday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater
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By Jacob Stockinger
He may not have the instant worldwide name recognition and box-office appeal of, say, Lang-Lang or Martha Argerich.
But in The Ear’s book American pianist Richard Goode (below) is nonetheless a superstar.
That is because Goode is a chameleon in the best sense.
Whatever he plays — live or on recordings — feels as if someone with a deep understanding and a natural affinity for the unique qualities of that specific composer and work is at the keyboard.
His Bach always sounds so Bachian. His Mozart always sounds so Mozartean. His Beethoven always sounds so Beethovenian. His Schubert always sounds so Schubertian. And his Brahms – for which he won a Grammy – always sounds so Brahmsian. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear Goode discuss how he deliberately chooses a selective repertoire that he can return to again and again.)
Whenever you hear Goode, you come away thinking, “Now that is how the composer meant his music to sound.” Goode just disappears into the music.
Goode, who co-directed the venerable summertime Marlboro Music Festival for 14 years until 2013, always puts himself at the service of the music, never the other way around as so many other firebrand virtuosos do.
Goode, a shy man who collects books and fine art, is not given to flamboyance or theatrics. His interpretations always seem exactly right, never exaggerated and weird but both beautiful and emotionally convincing. He is, in short, a complete musician — recitalist, soloist in concertos and chamber music partner — and not just a great pianist. His is a quiet, self-effacing virtuosity.
You get the idea.
And you can sample such superlative musicianship for yourself this Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. when Goode returns to perform a varied recital in Shannon Hall at the Wisconsin Union Theater.
This is a performer and a program that no serious fan of the piano – professional or amateur, teacher or student — should miss.
On the program of music from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, are: a selection of Preludes and Fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2, by Johann Sebastian Bach; Alban Berg’s Sonata No. 1; Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op. 101, which Goode, who has recorded all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas, says is his favorite; the Nocturne in B Major, Op. 62, No. 1, and the Mazurka in C-sharp Minor, Op. 50, No. 3, by Chopin.
Wisconsin Public Radio host Norman Gilliland (below) will deliver a free pre-concert lecture at 6 p.m.
Tickets run from $20 to $47.
Here is a link to more background and information about obtaining tickets:
https://union.wisc.edu/events-and-activities/event-calendar/event/richard-goode-piano/
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Classical music: What is your favorite Sousa march for the Fourth of July? What other classical music celebrates the holiday?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is the Fourth of July, Independence Day, when we mark the day and the Declaration of Independence when the U.S officially separated from Great Britain to become not a colony but its own country.
Over the past decade The Ear has chosen music from many American composers to mark the event – music by Edward MacDowell, Charles Ives, William Grant Still, George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, William Schuman, Joan Tower, John Adams and so many others.
And of course also featured around the nation will be the “1812 Overture” by Peter Tchaikovsky.
You will probably hear a lot of that music today on Wisconsin Public Radio and other stations, including WFMT in Chicago and WQXR in New York City.
Here is a link to nine suggestions with audiovisual performances:
http://www.classical-music.com/article/nine-best-works-independence-day
But The Ear got to thinking.
It is certainly a major achievement when a composer’s name becomes synonymous with a genre of music. Like Strauss waltzes. Bach cantatas and Bach fugues. Chopin mazurkas and Chopin polonaises.
The Ear thinks that John Philip Sousa is to marches what Johann Strauss is to waltzes. Others have done them, but none as well.
So on Independence Day, he asks: Which of Sousa’s many marches is your favorite to mark the occasion?
The “Stars and Stripes Forever” — no officially our national march — seems the most appropriate one, judging by titles. “The Washington Post” March is not far behind.
But lately The Ear has taken to “The Liberty Bell” March.
Here it is a YouTube video with the same Marine Band that Sousa, The March King, once led and composed for:
And if you want music fireworks in the concert hall to match the real thing, you can’t beat the bravura pyrotechnical display concocted and executed by pianist Vladimir Horowitz, a Russian who became an American citizen and contributed mightily to the war effort during World War II.
Horowitz wowed the crowds – including fellow virtuoso pianists – with his transcription of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” in which it sounds like three or four hands are playing. Judge for yourself. Here it is:
Of course, you can also leave the names of other American composers and works to celebrate the Fourth. Just leave a word and a link in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear!
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Classical music: A second photograph of Chopin has been discovered. Here it is along with how it was found and what it tells us
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By Jacob Stockinger
A conservative musician who admired and valued the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart above that of Ludwig van Beethoven and his own contemporaries, Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) is one of the most popular and most played of all Romantic composers.
He remains a perennial favorite of audiences, students and concert artists. Witness the recent sold-out concerts featuring Chopin’s music by Trevor Stephenson at his home and by Adam Neiman at Farley’s House of Pianos. An amazingly high percentage of Chopin’s works remains in the active repertoire.
His was no belated posthumous fame, either. Chopin, the famous Polish pianist-composer who was exiled in Paris, was well-known and widely respected in his own lifetime by the public and by other famous composers and pianists such as Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann.
Yet despite many drawings and paintings of Chopin – often at odds in their depictions — until recently only one known photograph of Chopin existed: The familiar one taken by Louis-Auguste Bisson in Paris towards the end of Chopin’s life, just months before he died of tuberculosis at age 39 in 1849.
Now a second photograph — or daguerreotype, to be exact — has been discovered. It probably dates from 1847 or so.
Here is the new photographic portrait of Chopin:
Want to know some background?
Here is the story from Poland via The Washington Post and the Associated Press:
https://etsuri.com/articles/a-rare-unknown-photo-of-frederic-chopin-probably-found
Here are the two known photographs side by side for comparison:
http://www.businessinsider.com/only-2-known-photos-of-chopin
And here is a terrific blog analysis of the two photographs that also discusses his late music and what the photographs tell us about Chopin:
http://jackgibbons.blogspot.com/2010/03/chopins-photograph.html
The Ear wonders how long it will be before we start seeing the new photograph of Chopin on CD jackets and liner notes.
In any case, as an homage, here is Chopin’s last composition, the archetypically Polish form of the Mazurka in F minor, Op. 68, No. 4, played in a YouTube video by Vladimir Ashkenazy :
Tags: Adam Neiman, artist, Arts, Ashkenazy, audience, Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Classical music, Compact Disc, composer, Composition, Concert, conservative, daguerrotype, exile, fame, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Liszt, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, mazurka, Mozart, Music, Paris, photo, photograph, Piano, Poland, Polish, repertoire, Schumann, students, Trevor Stephenson, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube
Classical music: Pianist Adam Neiman defines what makes for great Chopin playing. He performs an all-Chopin recital this Sunday afternoon at Farley’s House of Pianos.
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By Jacob Stockinger
What makes for great Chopin playing?
It is an especially germane question since the critically acclaimed pianist Adam Neiman (below) will perform an all-Chopin recital this coming Sunday at 4 p.m. at Farley’s House of Pianos, 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.
Tickets are $45. For more information, go to:
http://salonpianoseries.org/concerts.html
Neiman –pronounced KNEE-man — has appeared here as a soloist with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and recorded piano concertos by Mozart with the WCO. He is a critically acclaimed prize-winning pianist with a major concertizing and recording career. He also teaches at Roosevelt University in Chicago and is a member of the Trio Solisti, a piano trio that has been hailed as the successor to the famous Beaux Arts Trio.
Here is a link to Neiman’s website with information about him and his recordings, including upcoming releases of Beethoven, Liszt and Rachmaninoff:
Adam Neiman also recently did an email Q&A interview with The Ear:
There are some exceptional players of Beethoven and other German composers who sound completely out of their element in Chopin. What qualities do you think make for great Chopin playing and what makes Chopin difficult to interpret?
Chopin’s music incorporates a narrative language and an emphasis on very “first person” points-of-view; in other words, it is highly personalized, expressing emotion from the perspective of the individual, including nationalistic sentiments. Often, Germanic music aims for “objective” viewpoints, with extremely stringent instructions by the composer.
For players who struggle with the open-ended idiomatic flavor in Chopin’s music, the lack of objective instruction by the composer can make it difficult for them to know what to do. (You can hear Adam Neiman discussing much more about Chopin’s personality and artistic achievement in the YouTube video at the bottom)
To play Chopin (below) at a very high level requires imagination and freedom, as well as a poetic and introspective musical tendency. The fluidity of rubato, the contrapuntal interaction between the hands and the frequent use of widely spread textures requires a nimble master of the instrument, one with the ability to emphasize the piano’s specific virtuosic abilities.
In addition, Chopin’s music is centered around a bel canto operatic style of melody, whereas Germanic melody tends to be more motivic in nature, and therefore developmental.
A composer like Beethoven will emphasize motivic metamorphosis as a means of augmenting a form to create large structures, whereas Chopin will glide from one melodic area to another, using harmonic exploration as the central means of formal expansion.
This compositional difference outlines different strengths in the pianists, as the skill set to play reams of melody lines in succession can often be very different from those skills required to highlight motivic development in a work.
Can you place the 24 Preludes that you will be playing within the context of Chopin’s entire body of works. What would you like the public to know about the preludes and how you see them individually and as a group?
The 24 Preludes were composed while Chopin was on holiday in Mallorca, Spain, which proved to be Chopin’s first palpable bout with tuberculosis, the disease that eventually killed him. (Below is an 1849 photo of Chopin on his deathbed.)
Many of these works were written in a fever-state, in haste, and during a stressful time period in which Chopin was not only facing his own mortality, but also dealing with the myriad challenges of integrating with the children of his lover, the French writer Aurora Dudevant who is better known as George Sand.
These Preludes are like snapshots into the mind of the composer at a moment in time, often without regard for cohesion or development. They exist in a timeless place, where the music expresses the extremely personal sentiments roiling through Chopin’s consciousness.
In many ways, these works capture his spirit in the most distilled possible way, giving the player and listener an opportunity to view the mind and heart of Chopin without filter or refinement, hallmarks of his larger works.
Despite the widely varied emotional content of these Preludes, as a set they hold together as a marvelous and surprisingly cogent musical journey. They exemplify the 19th-century “Romantic” ideals of fantasy, freedom, individuality and raw emotion.
You will also perform all four Ballades. How they do they rank within Chopin’s output? What would you like listeners to know about each of the four ballades, about what they share in common and what distinguishes each one? Do you have favorites and why?
If the Preludes represent the pinnacle of Chopin’s ability to express poetic ideals within miniature forms, the Ballades represent the apex of his more grandiose musical philosophy.
The Ballade, as a form, emanates from epic poetry, often portraying a heroic protagonist overcoming seemingly inescapable challenges. Ballades can also be tied to nationalistic notions, and for Chopin, all four Ballades are truly Polish in their expression.
As Chopin’s native Poland was invaded and he was cut off permanently from re-entry, Chopin became an orphan of the world, whose adopted home of France revered and celebrated him without equal.
His musical mission — exemplified by the Ballades, Mazurkas and Polonaises in particular — was to heighten awareness of Poland’s cultural contributions to a European audience totally unaware of the goings-on in the east.
As a result of the immense conflicts suffered by Chopin’s homeland, and in keeping with the deep pride and identification Chopin felt as a Pole, these Ballades express the emotional rollercoaster of a lone Polish hero — perhaps Chopin himself, autobiographically — battling the world.
All four of these works make an enormous impression on the listener. From the despair and anger of the first Ballade, the bi-polar conflicts of the second (below is the opening of the second Ballade in Chopin’s manuscript), the pastoral hopefulness of the third, and the desolate introspection of the fourth, these Ballades speak to the soul and require the most intensely personal voice of the performer.
They require the possession of immense physical power and emotional maturity, which renders these works as being among Chopin’s most challenging.
I love all four of them equally. They are true masterworks of the highest order.
In there anything else you would like to say?
I am deeply honored and extremely delighted to return to Madison to perform this recital. I look forward to seeing many familiar faces, as well as new friends. Thank you!
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Classical music: Trevor Stephenson is offering a 4-part Chopin course and an all-Chopin concert on Feb. 25 (NOT Feb. 24 as first announced an mistakenly printed here). TODAY is the deadline for enrolling in the course
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By Jacob Stockinger
Trevor Stephenson (below), who founded and co-directs the Madison Bach Musicians, may be best known in the Madison area for his work with early music and Baroque music.
But Stephenson, who is known for his outstanding pre-concert lectures as well as for his performances, is also deeply involved in period instruments and historically informed performance practices concerning Romantic music.
He writes to The Ear: “In February, I’m offering a four-part course on piano music by Frederic Chopin (below). This will meet on Thursday evenings 6-7:30 p.m. at my home studio. Information is below. Email me to enroll.
“Also, I’ll play an all-Chopin house concert on SATURDAY, FEB. 25 AT 7 P.M. — NOT Sunday, Feb. 26, at 3 p.m. as first and mistakenly printed here — which will be here at the home studio as well. Refreshments will be served. Reservations are required (trevor@trevorstephenson.com). Admission is $40.”
CHOPIN COURSE
DATES: February 2, 9, 16, 23
TIME: Thursdays 6−7:30 p.m.
PLACE: 5729 Forstyhia Place, Madison WI 53705
COST: Enrollment is $120
Reading knowledge of music is suggested.
Class size is limited to 15, and enrollment closes TODAY, Friday, Jan. 27.
Contact trevor@trevorstephenson.com
TOPICS:
Feb. 2: Waltzes, Preludes
Feb. 9: Nocturnes, Mazurkas
Feb. 16: Etudes, Polonaises
Feb. 23: Ballades, Scherzos
Instruments to be used are: an 18th-century Fortepiano (Sheppard after Stein) c. 1840; a Cottage Upright Piano (attr. C. Smart ) c. 1850; and English Parlor Piano (Collard & Collard) c. 1855; and a Viennese Concert Grand Piano (Bösendorfer)
Subject matter will include: Origins of Chopin’s compositional style; tonal qualities of his pianos, early 19th-century temperaments; fingering; pedaling; articulation; touch; tempo; and tempo rubato.
Tags: Arts, Bach, Ballade, Baroque, Chopin, composer, composing, Composition, Early music, etude, fingering, fortepiano, Frédéric Chopin, harpsichord, historically informed performance practices, house concert, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Madison, Madison Bach Musicians, mazurka, nocturne, pedaling, period instruments, Piano, polonaise, Prelude, Romantic, rubato, Scherzo, style, temperament, Tempo, tone, touch, Trevor Stephenson, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Vienna, Viennese, Waltz, Wisconsin
Classical music: Will the “death” of classical music be good for the future of classical music? Plus, today’s Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen features a fortepiano recital
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ALERT: Trevor Stephenson, keyboardist and founder of the Madison Bach Musicians, will perform a solo recital on the fortepiano TODAY starting at 12:30 p.m. in Brittingham Gallery III of the Chazen Museum of Art at the UW-Madison.
The program includes works — sonatas and mazurkas, a fantasy and an impromptu — by Domenico Scarlatti, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Frederic Chopin, Joseph Haydn and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
Admission is FREE and the recital will be streamed live at the following website:
http://www.chazen.wisc.edu/about/news/press-releases/a-concert-by-trevor-stephenson-june-5
By Jacob Stockinger
This past week, two readers posted comments about the so-called Death of Classical Music.
One reader clearly lamented it and didn’t believe in it.
The other reader didn’t desire it, but seemed to accept it as a fact and remarked that the demise was classical music’s own fault due to conservative programming and other shortcomings in falling behind the times.
Along comes pianist Charlie Albright (below), a former prodigy from Seattle who was trained at the famed Juilliard School. (You can learn more about him in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Albright’s point of view is that the “death” of classical music might even be beneficial to classical music in the long run – at least if you are talking the “death” of classical music such as it is right now and has been in recent times.
Albright’s essay appeared on the CNN website and makes for interesting reading and food for thought.
At least The Ear thinks so.
Read it and see what you think.
Then share your thoughts and ideas about the death of classical music and Charlie Albright’s essay with The Ear and other readers.
Here is a link:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/29/opinions/classical-music-dying-and-being-reborn-opinion-albright/
Tags: Arts, Bach, Baroque, Beethoven, Chamber music, Charlie Albight, Chazen Museum of Art, Chopin, Classical music, CNN, fantasy, fortepiano, Haydn, impromptu, Jacob Stockinger, Juilliard School, Juilliard School of Music, Madison, Madison Bach Musicians, mazurka, Mozart, Music, New York, New York City, Piano, prodigy, Scarlatti, Seattle, Sonata, Trevor Stephenson, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, YouTube
Classical music: Learn about the odd history of Frederic Chopin’s heart and its long, eerie journey from France back to Poland.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Frederic Chopin (1810-1849, below in a photo from 1849) remains one of the greatest and most popular of all classical composers, both for amateurs or students and for professional performers.
As they say, he was “the poet of the piano,” and he composed almost exclusively for that instrument, even revolutionizing and modernizing piano technique through his two books of etudes.
Chopin, who was one of the greatest melody writers in the history of Western music, is also known for his fusing of the clarity and counterpoint of the Baroque and Classical-era styles with the emotion or passion of the Romantic style. Chopin loved the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he did NOT like, admire or play most of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven.
But Chopin was also a famed dandy who wore a new pair of lavender kid leather gloves every day and who was known for his love affairs. That is probably why some images of Chopin (like the one below from Getty Images) tend to glorify him or idealize him, and to make his as handsome, as beautiful, as his music.
But most people probably do not know much about his quirkier side.
And nothing in Chopin’s life seems more quirky than his death and The Tale of Chopin’s Heart.
It all stems, as I recall, from his terrifying fear of being buried alive. But then the story gets complicated and involves France and Poland, World War I, the Roman Catholic Church and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany during World War II.
Here are two links to fill you in.
The first comes from NPR (National Public Radio):
The second comes from The Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/17/chopin-heart_n_6170820.html
There is also research that questions whether Chopin actually died from tuberculosis or from some other malady.
But that is another story from another time.
And here is a YouTube video of the last piece that Chopin composed: His Mazurka in F Minor Op, 68, No. 4, as played by Chopin master Arthur Rubinstein. The mood of the piece seems to fit the sad story.
Tags: Arts, Études, Bach, Baroque, Catholic Church, Chopin, Classical music, etude, France, Germany, Getty Images, heart, History, Hitler, Jacob Stockinger, Ludwig van Beethoven, mazurka, melody, Mozart, Music, Nazi, Nazi Germany, NPR, Piano, Poland, Roman Catholic, Roman Catholicism, Romantic, technique, The Huffington Post, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, World War I, World War II, YouTube
Classical music: NPR plays musical anthropologist and goes into the field to bring back a live recording of glam pianist Yuja Wang playing Prokofiev at the Steinway Factory in New York City.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has to hand it to NPR’s terrific classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” and to NPR’s “All Songs Considered.”
For quite some time now, NPR has featured “Tiny Desk Concerts” — classical, jazz, folk, roots music — during which major performers play live in the crowded NPR studio. They are easy to link to and stream over your computer or maybe even your TV set these days. (NPR books great guests, including, below bottom, superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma.)
You can also find NPR links to and archives of other live performances -– often through radios stations such as WQXR-FM in New York City and WGBH in Boston –- and include a recital of live music in major halls and venues, including one of Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy and Frederic Chopin by the acclaimed Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes at Carnegie Hall (below). And there are many, many others.
And now Deceptive Cadence seems to be acting like musical anthropologist. The time they went out “into the field” – that is, not in the usual venues and concert halls.
That’s not unheard of, of course. That is how the great composer Bela Bartok (below) started out as a musical anthropologist or ethnologist of Hungarian and Romanian folk music, and then used his research to morph into one of the pioneers of musical modernism. Chopin used Polish music like the mazurka to create a new Romanticism. And in American folk music, the musical anthropology of Alan Lomax is legendary.
Specifically, NPR went to the piano factory of Steinway and Sons in New York City and recorded the red-hot glam pianist Yuja Wang playing the fiercely difficult Toccata in D Minor, Op. 11, with all its hypnotic repetition of a single note, by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev on a brand new Steinway concert grand. (You can see and hear it in a YouTube video at the bottom. Don’t forget to click on the icon that is second from the right to enlarge the video image to fill your computer screen.)
The music and the physical virtuosity or dexterity is amazing to behold.
It is also kind of cute and informal to watch the diminutive figure of the glamorous Wang playing difficult cert music in a cold, wood-strewn and equipment-strewn warehouse in fingerless wool hobo gloves that go up her forearm –- but only after she uses the reflective fallboard above the keys to put on glossy lipstick and so complete her outfit of black fur-like boa, black stiletto heels and geometrically high fashion black-and-white dress.
Ah! Those tribal ceremonies and native attire!
Anyway, here is a link to the performance by Yuja Wang at the Steinway and Sons factory in the borough of Queens, not the usual Steinway showroom in Manhattan where most pianists test and choose pianos for their performances.
The Tiny Desk Concerts archive has lots of kinds of live performances.
For example, here is the famed Kronos Quartet (below) doing a recent Tiny Desk Concert featuring its latest recordings. Many other such concerts by other artists have been archived and are readily accessible:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/246393060/kronos-quartet-tiny-desk-concert
And here is a link to the archive, with links to other older archives, of music Live in Performance housed at NPR. It includes chamber music, orchestral music (below is the Mideast peace-promoting Palestinian-Israeli West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under co-founder and director Daniel Barenboim in Carnegie Hall), operas and recitals:
http://www.npr.org/series/10210144/classics-in-concert/?ps=sa
Tags: Alan Lomax, All Songs Considered, anthropology, Arts, Béla Bartók, Beethoven, Boston, Carnegie Hall, Chamber music, Chopin, Classical music, Daniel Barenboim, Debussy, enthnography, Folk music, Haydn, Hungary, Israeli, Jacob Stockinger, Kronos Quartet, Ludwig van Beethoven, MANHATTAN, mazurka, New York City, NPR, opera, Palestinian, Piano, Poland, Queens, Romania, Sergei Prokofiev, Steinway & Sons, Tiny Desk Concert, toccata, Wang, West-Eastern Divan Orchetsra, WGBH, WQXR-FM, YouTube, Yuja Wang
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