The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: This week the UW-Madison will put the spotlight on vocal music reclaimed from the Nazis and contemporary theater music inspired by Samuel Beckett
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By Jacob Stockinger
Coming just before the Spring Break, this week will be a busy one at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music.
Here are the highlights that include a lecture and a concert about vocal music resurrected from the Nazis as well as an evening of contemporary works inspired by the 20th-century playwright Samuel Beckett.
But other important events, including some graduate student recitals, are also on the Events Calendar at https://www.music.wisc.edu/events/.
All events listed here are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
TODAY
Tonight at 6:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall, guest trumpeter Richard Illman (below) with present a multimedia video concert with UW trombonist Mark Hetzler and UW trumpeter Alex Noppe.
Sorry, no word on composers or works on the program.
For more information, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/guest-artist-richard-illman-trumpet-special-multi-media-concert/
At 7 p.m. in 2411 Humanities Building, a FREE lecture will be given by the guest award-winning singer Kristina Bachrach and UW pianist Daniel Fung on the “Rediscovered Voices Initiative.” The project seeks to reclaim musicians and musical works that were killed or suppressed by the Nazis during World War II. (This lecture was originally scheduled for March 9.)
The duo will also give a performance Tuesday night. For details, see below.
For more information, go to:
TUESDAY
At 7 p.m. in Music Hall, at the foot of Bascom Hill, guest singer Kristina Bachrach and UW pianist Daniel Fung (below) will give a concert for the “Recovered Voices Initiative” that rediscovers and revives music and musicians lost to the Nazis in World War II. (The concert was originally scheduled for March 10.)
For more information about the performers, the project and the complete program, go to:
WEDNESDAY
At 7:30 p.m. In Mills Hall, a FREE concert will be given by the UW Concert Band (below top) under Mike Leckrone (below bottom). Sorry, no word on the program.
FRIDAY
At 1:30 p.m. in Music Hall, the Decoda Chamber Ensemble (below in a photo by Matt Dine) from New York City will give a FREE and PUBLIC master class and workshop for student chamber ensembles. The focus is on interactive performance and audience engagement.
No word on composer or pieces. But for more information, go to:
https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/master-class-decoda-chamber-ensemble/
At 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, “Sounding Beckett” will be presented. The concert features the intersection of music and drama as inspired by the Nobel-Prize winning playwright Samuel Beckett (below).
The performers feature guest group Cygnus Ensemble (below), which will play six short musical works based on three of Beckett’s one-act plays (“Footfalls,” “Ohio Impromptu” and “Catastrophe”).
The two works for each play include compositions by UW-Madison alumnus Chester Biscardi (below top) and current UW composer Laura Schwendinger (below bottom). You can hear Biscardi’s music for “Ohio Impromptu” in the YouTube video at the bottom.
There will also be instrumental master classes, a lecture and panel discussion with UW drama professor Patricia Boyette as well as Laura Schwendinger.
NOTE: A master class will also be held but the date, time and place have not yet been announced.
For an excellent longer story with more background and details, go to:
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Classical music: UW Choral Union and UW Symphony Orchestra resurrect Paul Hindemith’s long-neglected 20th-century secular Requiem with fine singing and committed playing
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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 once a month on Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. For years, he served on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison. He also took the performance photographs below.
By John W. Barker
It is unusual that, within the space of a few days, we have parallel performances of two very untraditional Requiems, ones setting vernacular texts rather than liturgical Latin ones.
The UW Choral Union and UW Symphony(below) performed Paul Hindemith’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d: A Requiem For those we love” last weekend. And the Madison Symphony Chorus and Orchestra will give us Johannes Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem) this coming weekend, May 5-7.
(NOTE: Here is a link with more information about the three MSO performances this coming weekend:
It is hard to resist the temptation to compare them.
They were, of course, composed about a century apart, in the contexts of very different stylistic eras. They reflect very different aesthetics: High Romantic warmth for Brahms, conservative modernism for Hindemith.
The different texts chosen also determine crucial differences. Brahms selected Luther’s German translations of passages from Scripture, as a broad collage of human consolation and solace, whereas the German-born Hindemith, a naturalized American citizen who fled from Hitler’s Nazism, in a patriotic commemoration of the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chose the long poem of grieving that Walt Whitman (below) wrote over the death of President Abraham Lincoln.
The relatively concise Scriptural texts allowed Brahms to develop rich melodic and contrapuntal elaborations. Hindemith’s determination to set Whitman’s complete poem, of 208 verses in altogether irregular free verse, committed him to keep things in constantly moving continuity, with little chance for pausing and elaborating.
To be sure, Hindemith (below) was never a distinguished lyricist, for all his skills, so his writing is endless declamation by the soloists, backed by strongly cast choral statements. (You can hear famed baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the chorus sing the opening of the Hindemith requiem in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
There are many lovely and powerful moments, but they pass by quickly and leave little of memorable expressiveness. There is much clever music here, but in sum total it is more dutiful than beautiful.
The performance in Mills Hall — I heard the one Sunday night — showed a stage packed with musicians. There were two soloists, a chorus of exactly 100 singers, and an orchestra (the UW Symphony) of 67 players, 46 of them on strings. UW choral director and conductor Beverly Taylor (below) drew from all of them deeply committed musical results.
Of the two soloists, soprano Jennifer D’Agostino (below left) sang with beauty and expression, but it was baritone James Held (below right) who stole the show, with a ringing voice, superb diction, and a genuine eloquence.
The huge chorus was quite magnificent, well unified, fully serious in its enunciation, and capable of some truly musical sound — and Hindemith, though nowhere near Brahms as a choral composer, gave them some serious challenges. The orchestra sounded a bit rough at the very beginning, but settled into participating strongly in the performance.
Whatever reservations one may have about Hindemith’s score, this Whitman Requiem, one of his last important works and premiered in 1946, is a significant piece. It is far less frequently heard than that by Brahms, and so it is very good that UW choral director Beverly Taylor has brought it to our attention.
Tags: A German Requiem (Brahms), Abraham Lincoln, American, American Record Guide, Arts, baritone, Beverly Taylor, blog, choral music, citizen, Classical music, collage, composer, conservative, consolation, counterpoint, critic, declamation, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Early music, expressiveness, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, free verse, German, History, Hitler, Isthmus, Jacob Stockinger, Johannes Brahms, John DeMain, John W. Barker, Latin, Latin America, lecture, liturgical, liturgy, lyric, lyricist, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Medieval, melody, MEMF, memorable, modernism, Music, Nazi, Nazism, Paul Hindemith, photo, photographs, poet, Poetry, poiem, President, professor, Requiem, resurrect, reviewer, Romantic, sacred, secular, solace, soloist, soprano, symphony, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW Choral Union, UW Symphony Orchestra, vernacular, verse, vocal music, Walt Whitman, WORT-FM 89.9, writing, YouTube
Classical music: Pianist Philippe Bianconi returns to solo in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Madison Symphony Orchestra this weekend. The MSO premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra by Witold Lutoslawski is also on the program
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By Jacob Stockinger
Pianist Philippe Bianconi (below, in a photo by Bernard Martinez) returns this weekend to solo with the Madison Symphony Orchestra (MSO) in one of the most challenging works written for piano, Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3.
The program opens with Schumann’s dramatic Manfred Overture, followed by the MSO’s premiere performance of Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Concluding the program is a performance of the notoriously difficult Piano Concerto No. 3 composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff (1973-1943). The performance features French pianist Bianconi, who won a silver medal at the Van Cliburn Competition and who has performed frequently with the MSO.
The concerts take place in Overture Hall of the Overture Center, 201 State St., on Friday night, April 7 at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday night, April 8, at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoon, April 9 at 2:30 p.m. Ticket information is further down.
Robert Schumann (1810-1856, below) composed the Overture to Manfred in 1848 during a time of many revolutions throughout Europe, with political feelings running high across the continent.
In Bryon’s mystical poem, Manfred, Bryon’s hero, a “freedom fighter who is tortured by guilt and melancholy” perfectly suited the time and political environment of Europe.
Schumann once wrote in a letter to Franz Liszt (who directed the complete version in 1851): “I feel that it is one of the strongest of my artistic children, and I hope that you will agree with me.”
Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994, below), began work on Concerto for Orchestra in 1950. This is the first time this piece will be performed by the Madison Symphony Orchestra. (You can hear the dramatic opening of the work, performed by Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the YouTube videos at the bottom.)
Originally from Warsaw, Poland, the Lutoslawski family fled to Russia to escape the German occupation of World War I. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lutoslawski’s father and uncle were executed by the Bolsheviks for their political activism and the family returned to Warsaw. Lutoslawski had studied piano and composition between the wars, but was then drafted into the Polish army and captured by the Nazi’s in 1933.
He escaped captivity and found his way back to Warsaw where he worked as a cabaret pianist. Lutoslawski fled Warsaw a second time, just months before the Nazis leveled the city in 1945 – “losing most of his scores in the process.” He then returned to Warsaw when it was controlled by the Soviets.
Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra is based in part on folk styles – apparently at the request of conductor Witold Rowicki, to whom it is dedicated. It is his most popular piece.
Sergei Rachmaninoff (below) composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 in 1909. He spent the summer in the Russian countryside, relaxing on his wife’s family’s estate, while also writing one of the most challenging works for piano in the repertoire. This piece is a “fiery display of piano technique” that has been called “The Mt. Everest of piano concertos.”
One hour before each performance, John DeMain (below, in a photo by Prasad), music director of the MSO, will lead a 30-minute Prelude Discussion in Overture Hall to enhance concertgoers’ understanding and listening experience.
For more background on the music, visit the Program Notes, written by MSO trombonist and UW-Whitewater professor Michael Allsen (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot), at: http://www.allsenmusic.com/NOTES/1617/7.Apr17.html
Single Tickets are $16 to $87 each, available at madisonsymphony.org/bianconi and through the Overture Center Box Office at 201 State Street or call the Box Office at (608) 258-4141.
Groups of 15 or more can save 25% by calling the MSO office at (608) 257-3734. For more information visit, madisonsymphony.org/groups
Student rush tickets can be purchased in person on the day of the concert at the Overture Center Box Office at 201 State Street. Students must show a valid student ID and can receive up to two $12 or $15 tickets. More information is at: madisonsymphony.org/studentrush. Students can receive 20% savings on seats in select areas of the hall on advance ticket purchases.
Seniors age 62 and up receive 20% savings on advance and day-of-concert ticket purchases in select areas of the hall.
Discounted seats are subject to availability, and discounts may not be combined.
Exclusive funding for the April concerts is provided by the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.
For more information about the Madison Symphony Orchestra, go to madisonsymphony.org
Tags: Arts, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Classical music, concerto, Daniel Barenboim, discount, France, French, Germany, Jacob Stockinger, John DeMain, Lutoslawski, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Manfred Overture, Music, Nazi, Nazism, Orchestra, Overture Center, Philippe Bianconi, Piano, Piano Concerto No. 3 (Rachmaninoff), Poland, Polish, program, program notes, Rachmaninoff, Rachmaninov, Russia, Schumann, senior, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Student, symphony, Trombone, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW-Whitewater, Warsaw, Wisconsin, World War II, YouTube
Classical music: Heard enough about Prince? Read about violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Plus, a FREE voice recital commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare is at noon on Friday
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium of the historic Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, located at 900 University Bay Drive, features tenor Adam Shelton and pianist Vincent Fuh in the program “Assassinating Shakespeare.” The concert features music by Gerald Finzi, Roger Quilter, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Schubert and Dominick Argento.
By Jacob Stockinger
It’s a week later but news about the premature death at 57 on April 21 of the influential superstar pop rocker Prince continues to preoccupy the media.
To flood the media, really.
The Ear doesn’t want to take away from Prince and his substantial artistic achievements. Nor does The Ear mean to belittle Prince’s premature death, which is sad and unfortunate but hardly unusual in the world of pop music — and not really tragic in the larger scheme of things, given how the world is filled today with terrorism and refugees.
But he does think maybe a little perspective about this celebrity or star is required.
Does anyone else share The Ear’s impatience with such saturation coverage and think that the media have gone overboard? There have been so many stories, so much repetition, such meaningless follow-up and continuing coverage that it almost belittles Prince’s death with endless trivialities and predictable banalities.
So take a break.
Here is a story – from the Deceptive Cadence blog for NPR or National Public Radio — about this past weekend’s 100th anniversary of the April 22, 1916 birth of the famed British violinist, teacher and polymath Sir Yehudi Menuhin (below top as a child, from the Underwood Archives, and below bottom as an older man in a photo by Erich Auerbach for Getty Images).
It is filled with inspiring details that command your respect for this great artist and humanitarian, who was international in his interests and many of whose accomplishments The Ear didn’t know. You can hear him playing Bach in the YouTube video at the t bottom.
It is written by Tom Huizenga and features a lot of commentary and recollection by the gifted violinist Daniel Hope (below), who played music of European Jewish composers exiled in Hollywood during World War II by Hitler and the Nazis coming to power, with the Madison Symphony Orchestra two seasons ago.
Here is a link:
Tags: Argento, artist, Arts, Bach, blog, Britain, celebrity, Chamber music, Classical music, Compact Disc, concerto, Daniel Hope, Dominick Argento, Elgar, England, English, Europe, exile, Felix Mendelssohn, Finzi, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Frank Lloyd Wright, Franz Schubert, Hitler, Hollywood, humanitarian, Jacob Stockinger, Jewish, Johann Sebastian Bach, Korngold, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Mozart, Music, Nazi, Nazism, NPR, Piano, pop, prince, refugees, Rock, rock and roll, Roger Quilter, Shakespeare, Sonata, star, symphony, tenor, terrorism, UK, United Kingdom, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Violin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, World War II, Yehudi Menuhin, Yehudi Menuhin School, YouTube
Classical music: Presidential debates should include questions about funding and supporting the arts and humanities
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By Jacob Stockinger
Well, well.
Tomorrow night — from 7 to 9 p.m. CDT on CNBC — there will be another presidential debate.
The always astonishing and amazing Republicans, led by the always astonishing and amazing Donald Trump and Dr. Ben Carson, will debate in Boulder, Colorado.
The Ear has watched three presidential debates so far — two Republican and one Democratic.
But he still has no idea of where the various candidates on both sides stand when it comes to government support of the arts –- including music — and the humanities.
Please tell us, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, what you think?
And you too, Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum and Chris Christie and Jeb Bush and Rand Paul and John Kasich and ….
Do you want to defund PBS?
Or defund NPR?
Or will you support these important and historic cultural commitments? Why or why not?
Along the same lines, do you want to defund, sustain or enhance the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities?
Why or why not?
Some funny reasoning is going on here. Some of the candidates want to eliminate all subsidies to the arts, which are a form of economic development after all – at a time when a lot of conservatives don’t mind funding big rich corporations in the same name of economic development.
The arts create a lot of jobs and spark a lot of spending and stimulus. Or don’t the culture-challenged charlatans realize that?
Stop and think a minute about the local situation. The Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Madison Opera, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, the Wisconsin Union Theater, the Overture Center (below), public schools, the University of Wisconsin and its School of Music — all rely in part on public funding. They employ a lot of people and generate a lot of value.
Don’t these issues deserve a public airing? Doesn’t the arts consuming public have a right to know where the various candidates stand on these issues? Shouldn’t voters know what they might be getting in those areas?
As The Ear understand its, one flank of the attack has to do with the so called left-leaning liberal or progressive bias and politics of PBS and NPR.
Plus, there is the view that the art that public taxpayer money is helping to create doesn’t defend the so-called family values that the most radically conservative Republicans and Christian fundamentalists and Evangelicals want defended.
The other flank of the attack has to do with the stance that government should be smaller and that therefore should be funding less in general.
Makes you wonder just how the radical “freedom coalition” and Tea Party people in South Carolina, Texas and California feel about having a smaller government when it comes to providing aid for victims of torrential floods and devastating wildfires. And how is that kind of help for those in need different from funding education or health care?
AUSTIN, TX – MAY 25, 2015
Extreme flooding takes place in Austin, Texas May 25, 2015.
(Photo by Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images)
Anyway, wouldn’t it be appropriate for some of the panelists to question the candidates on the issues pertaining to the arts and humanities?
The Ear is reminded of Sir Winston Churchill’s comment during World War II. Some members of the British Parliament asked him if funding for the arts shouldn’t be cut and used instead to fight Hitler and the Nazis. He said no and added, “Then what would we be fighting for?”
Tell the Ear what you think. Leave a COMMENT.
Maybe, just maybe, someone else will read it and pass it along and we will finally get a substantive discussion from the candidates about where they stand on arts and humanities funding by the federal government.
Tags: Arts, Ben Carson, Bernie Sanders, Boulder, California, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Christian, Classical music, Colorado, conservative, corporations, Democratic, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, economic development, Evangelicals, family values, fire, floods, Freedom Caucus, Freedom Coalition, fundamentalism, Hillary Clinton, Hitler, Jacob Stockinger, Jeb Bush, left, leftist, liberal, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Nazis, Nazism, NPR, Overture Center, PBS, Politics, presidential debate, progressive, public schools, Rand Paul, Republican, Republican Party United States, Rick Santorum, South Carolina, Tea Party, Ted Cruz, Texas, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Winston Churchill, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, wisconsin public radio, Wisconsin Union Theater, World War II, YouTube
Classical music: Richard Strauss turned 150 on Wednesday. Was he or wasn’t he a Nazi at heart? Here is a Strauss quiz and excerpts from 10 works. What is your favorite Strauss moment or Strauss work?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Late Romantic composer Richard Strauss turned 150 on this past Wednesday. (He is seen below in a 1914 photo from the Hutton Archives and Getty Images.)
Yet Strauss remains something of an enigma.
Was he really a Nazi in his heart? Or just taken advantage of in his old age by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen?
How much do you know about Strauss?
And what pieces of his music do you like the most?
Maybe these links will help you decide.
The first is a puzzler or quiz from the Deceptive Cadence blog at NPR. The Ear found it tricky. See what you think.
And here is a link to audio samples of what the BBC Music Magazine deems 10 of the best moments on Strauss’ music.
http://www.classical-music.com/article/richard-strauss-150th-birthday-playlist
But The Ear asks: Why no waltzes or excerpts from the opera “Der Rosenkavalier,” which is one of his favorites? Listen to them performed brilliantly by conductor Daniele Gatti and the Gustav Mahler youth Orchestra at the 2012 BBC Proms concert series in the YouTube video at the bottom.
What is your favorite musical moment or passage or work by Richard Strauss?
The Ear wants to hear.
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