The Well-Tempered Ear
Longtime friends organist Greg Zelek and Madison native and award-winning trumpeter Ansel Norris team up for a FREE live-streamed concert this Tuesday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
Two longtime friends and fellow musicians will team up this Tuesday night, April 27, to close this season’s organ concert series, sponsored in the Overture Center by the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
It will be live-streamed online because of the pandemic restrictions on attendance.
The concert features the critically acclaimed MSO organist Greg Zelek (below left) and Ansel Norris (below right), an award-winning trumpeter who is a native of Madison.
The program includes works by Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn and Samuel Barber among others.
The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. CDT. It is FREE but you must register. The concert will be available to registered listeners for unlimited access through May 31.
Here is a link to the MSO website where you can register. It also has more information about the program and biographies of the two performers: https://madisonsymphony.org/event/norris-zelek-2021-streamed/
Here is more background. It appeared in the latest issue of the email newsletter of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO), of which Norris was a member for many years:
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Ansel Norris and Greg Zelek first met in 2010 as high school seniors who had both been selected as finalists in the YoungARTS Awards. The YoungARTS Award is a big competition with just a small percentage of students selected for the $10,000 prize from the thousands of high school applicants. In classical music that year, 12 students became finalists and assembled in Miami for a week of master classes with internationally recognized arts leaders. “You know, there really is a synergy with trumpet and organ. The sounds are produced in a similar way and the way the sounds blend together is really special. Even then, I imagined a concert together.” Ten years later, the two friends were dreaming up this concert when Greg was in Miami in February, 2020. And then the world shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Norris has distinguished himself as a solo, orchestral and chamber musician. As Greg Zelek (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) writes: “Concerti of Bach and Haydn will bookend this program filled with music that is both written and arranged for this electrifying pairing of instruments. Mr. Norris’ remarkable technique and soaring lyricism will be on full display while our Mighty Klais both supports and shimmers in this exhilarating performance you won’t want to miss!” Register here for Tuesday’s concert!
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Due to popular demand, Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) opens its FREE virtual master classes to the public. Today features the violin and Monday features the bass
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) welcomes back two distinguished and successful alumni this weekend to teach the fifth and sixth master classes in an ongoing series that has already wowed observers. (WYSO alumni are noted below with an asterisk.)
Each virtual event is free and open to the general public with registration required in advance.
“The series has been so fabulous that, due to popular demand, we’ve opened up the events to anyone who wants to attend,” says Susan Gardels, marketing and communications director for WYSO.
TODAY – Sunday, Jan. 10 — from 5:30-7:30 p.m. CST Derek Powell, a violinist with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., will coach four WYSO violin members in a two-hour master class.
This will be followed the next evening with a master class coached by Scott Pingel, Principal Bass with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (Monday, Jan. 11, 6:30-8:30 p.m. CST).
A master class presents a one-on-one opportunity for a student musician to learn from a guest artist with an audience invited to observe the process.
In previous master classes in this series, the audience has learned instrument performance techniques and musical interpretation tips from a wide variety of guest artists who professionally play music around the world.
With the master classes presented in an intimate Zoom setting, the audience learns along with the student— and it is amazing to see the sudden growth in a student’s musical prowess as a master class proceeds.
Derek Powell’s bio includes his experience with the New World Symphony where Powell (below) performed as concertmaster with famed conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and as a violinist with the Army Strings, as well as his current experience with the National Symphony Orchestra.
Scott Pingel (below) was a trumpet player in his WYSO days with a side love for electric bass. Pingel switched to concert bass as an undergraduate at UW-Eau Claire, continued studies at the Manhattan School of Music, and played with the New World Symphony and the Charleston Symphony before joining the San Francisco Symphony as Principal Bass in 2004. He recently created buzz by playing with Metallica in a packed house with the San Francisco Orchestra.
For more information, go to: WYSO Amazing Masterclass Series:
Here are details and links to register:
*Derek Powell, Violin Master Class
TODAY, Sunday, Jan. 10, 5:30-7:30 p.m. CST
Free and open to the public
Click here to register in advance
_______________________________
*Scott Pingel, Bass Master Class
Monday, Jan. 11, 6:30-8:30 p.m. CST
Free and open to the public
Click here to register in advance
Here are is a schedule of future WYSO alumni master classes:
Katherine Steele (below), oboe
Sunday, Jan. 17, 6-8 p.m. CST
(Principal Oboe, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra) https://wysomusic.org/katherine-steel-masterclass/
James Shields (below), clarinet
Sunday, Jan. 24, 7-9 p.m. CST
(Principal Clarinet, Oregon Symphony Orchestra)
Read more about James Shields
*Nancy Goeres (below), bassoon
Sunday, Feb. 7, 6-8 p.m. CST
(Principal Bassoon, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra)
Danbi Um (below), violin
Sunday, Feb. 21, Time TBD
(Soloist, member Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center)
Megumi Kanda (below), trombone
Sunday, Feb. 28, 5:30-7:30 p.m. CST (Principal Trombone, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra)
David Perry (below), violin
Sunday, March 7, 6-8 p.m. CST
(First Violin, UW-Madison Pro Arte Quartet and UW-Madison Music Professor)
Naha Greenholtz (below), violin
Sunday, March 28, 6-8 p.m. CST
(Concertmaster, Madison Symphony Orchestra and Quad Cities Symphony Orchestra)
*Sharan Leventhal (below), violin
Sunday, April 11, 6-8 p.m. CST
(Boston Conservatory)
For more information, go to https://wysomusic.org or call (608) 733-6283.
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Classical music: What concerts or performances in 2019 did you most like, and do you most remember and want to praise?
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By Jacob Stockinger
The concert season’s winter intermission will soon draw to a close.
So this is a good time to recall favorite concerts and performances of last year.
But let’s be clear.
This is a not a request to name “The Best Concerts of 2019.”
Calling them the most memorable concerts doesn’t necessarily mean they were the best.
Perfection or “the best” sounds so objective, but can really be quite personal and subjective. So much can depend not only on the music and the performers, but also on your own mood and your taste or preferences.
So please share the concerts or performances that you most liked and enjoyed, the one that most still linger in your mind. And, if you can pin it down, tell us why you liked them so much and why they linger for you.
There are so many excellent groups and concerts, so much fine classical music, in the Madison area that there should be lots of candidates.
Here are several performances or complete concerts that The Ear remembers with special fondness.
The MADISON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) held a season-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of John DeMain’s tenure as its music director and conductor. The big event came at the end: Mahler’s massive Symphony No. 8 – the so-called “Symphony of a Thousand” – that brought together the MSO and the MSO Chorus as well as the Madison Youth Choirs and the UW-Madison Choral Union.
It proved an impressive, overwhelming and moving display of coordination and musicianship, a testament to how far DeMain (below, in a photo by Prasad) has brought the orchestra.
(Also memorable on the MSO season were pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin in Ravel’s jazzy Piano Concerto in G Major and UW-Madison pianist Christopher Taylor in the Leonard Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” symphony during the MSO tribute to Bernstein, with whom DeMain worked closely.)
The WISCONSIN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA (below, in a photo by Mike Gorski), under its veteran music director Andrew Sewell, continues to test its own limits and surpass them. Particularly impressive was the last concert of the winter season with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14 featuring two outstanding soloists: soprano Mary Mackenzie and bass Timothy Jones.
The playing of the difficult score was precise but moving, and the singing blended beautifully. It made one understand why during this season – when the orchestra marks 60 years and maestro Sewell (below, in a photo by Alex Cruz) marks his 20th season — the WCO has deservingly graduated to two performances of each Masterwork concert (one here on Friday nights followed by one in the Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield on Saturday night).
Also memorable was an impressive concert by the mostly amateur but critically acclaimed MIDDLETON COMMUNITY ORCHESTRA. The Ear likes amateur musicians, and for their 10th anniversary concert they really delivered the goods in Dvorak’s famous Symphony No. 9 “From the New World” and, with fabulous guest soloist J.J. Koh (below — principal clarinet of the Madison Symphony Orchestra — in Mozart’s sublime Clarinet Concerto.
But it wasn’t only large-scale works that The Ear remembers.
Three chamber music concerts continue to stand out.
During the summer, the WILLY STREET CHAMBER PLAYERS and guest UW-Madison pianist Christopher Taylor (both below) delivered a performance of Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A Major that would be hard for any group to match, let alone surpass, for its tightness and energy, its lyricism and drama.
The same goes for the veteran PRO ARTE QUARTET at the UW-Madison, which this fall started its complete cycle of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets in the new Hamel Music Center to celebrate the Beethoven Year in 2020 when we mark the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
The quartet played early, middle and late quartets with complete mastery and subtlety. Treat yourself. Don’t miss the remaining five concerts, which resume in February and take place over the next year at the Hamel center and also at the Chazen Museum of Art, from where they will also be live-streamed.
Finally, The Ear will always remember the wholly unexpected and thoroughly captivating virtuoso accordion playing he heard last summer by Milwaukeean Stas Venglevski (below) at a concert by the BACH DANCING AND DYNAMITE SOCIETY. Venglevski performed music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Igor Stravinsky and Astor Piazzolla in a new and enthralling way.
Unfortunately, for various reasons The Ear missed many other concerts – by the Madison Opera and the University Opera among others – that promised to be memorable performances.
But perhaps you can fill him in as we start 2020 concerts next weekend.
What concerts in 2019 did you like most and do you most remember and praise? Why?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The 10th anniversary concert of the Middleton Community Orchestra hit all the right notes – including a surprise of high beauty
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By Jacob Stockinger
Last Wednesday night at the Middleton Performing Arts Center, the mostly amateur but critically acclaimed Middleton Community Orchestra (below, in a photo by Brian Ruppert) celebrated its 10th anniversary.
The MCO hit all the right notes. And there were many of them, both big and small.
But perhaps the biggest one was also the quietest one.
It came during the repetition section near the end of the heart-rending slow movement of the Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622, by Mozart.
The Ear knows the piece and considers it one of the most perfect compositions ever written. But suddenly he heard the familiar work in a fresh way and with a new appreciation, thanks to the talented guest soloist J.J. Koh, who is principal clarinet of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. (You can hear the slow movement in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The movement was going beautifully when suddenly, Koh (below) brought the dynamics down to almost a whisper. It felt prayer-like, so quiet was the sound. Yet it was completely audible. The tone was rich and the notes on pitch, even though Koh sounded as if he were barely breathing. It was a heart-stopping, breathtaking moment of high beauty.
It takes a virtuoso to play that softly and that solidly at the same time. And Koh was backed up with the same subtlety by the fine accompaniment provided by the scaled-down orchestra under conductor Steve Kurr.
The sublime result was nothing short of haunting, a musical moment that The Ear will remember and cherish as long as he lives.
And he wasn’t alone. A complete silence fell over the appreciative audience as Koh and the MCO were playing, and at intermission it was what everybody was talking about and wondering at. You just had to be there. It was the kind of musical experience that makes a live performance so engaging and unforgettable.
That moment of communion between soloist and ensemble by itself was enough to tell you how very much the MCO, which improves with each performance, has accomplished in its first decade.
There were other noteworthy moments too.
Of course tributes had to be paid.
So the evening started off with some brief background and introductory words from the co-founders and co-artistic directors Larry Bevic and Mindy Taranto (below).
Then Middleton Mayor Gurdip Brar (below) came on stage to read his official 10th anniversary proclamation and to urge people to applaud. He proved a jovial, good-natured cheerleader for the large audience of “good neighbors” that included many children.
When the music finally arrived, conductor Kurr (below) raised the curtain with his own original 14-minute episodic composition celebrating the “Good Neighbor City” of Middleton. It proved a fitting work for the occasion that evoked both the Midwestern harmonies of Aaron Copland and the brassy film scores of John Williams.
After intermission, the full 90-member MCO under Kurr returned and turned in a performance of Antonin Dvorak’s popular “New World” Symphony that did them all proud.
The tempo was energetic with a strong, constant pulse that didn’t falter. As usual, the string and wind sections proved outstanding – and still seem to get better each time.
But the real star this time was the brass, whose prominent part in the Dvorak symphony is hard to play. Playing consistently on pitch and expressively – they were clearly well-rehearsed — the brass boosted the whole performance and raised it to a new level. Which is exactly what the anniversary concert demanded and received.
The Ear wasn’t alone in being impressed.
A professional musician visiting from San Francisco said simply: ”They are much better than our community orchestra.”
Is there better homage to pay to a 10th anniversary concert and to make listeners look forward to hearing more? If you aren’t going to MCO’s affordable and appealing concerts, you are only cheating yourself.
For more information about the complete season, including programs, performers, guest soloists and how to join or support the MCO, go to: http://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
If you went, what did you think of the opening anniversary concert?
Leave your opinions and good wishes in the comment section.
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Steve Kurr talks about his new work celebrating Middleton that will be premiered Wednesday night by the Middleton Community Orchestra alongside Mozart and Dvorak
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By Jacob Stockinger
This Wednesday night, Oct. 9, the mostly amateur but highly praised Middleton Community Orchestra (below) will open its 10th anniversary season, which is dedicated to retired critic John W. Barker for his help in championing the ensemble.
The concert is at 7:30 p.m. in the comfortable and acoustically excellent Middleton Performing Arts Center (below, in a photo by Brian Ruppert), which is attached to Middleton High School, 2100 Bristol Street.
Admission is $15 for the public, free for students. Tickets are available from the Willy Street Coop West and at the door. The box office opens at 6:30 p.m. Auditorium doors open at 7 p.m.
The appealing program features J.J. Koh (below), principal clarinet of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, as guest soloist in the beautiful and poignant Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the sublime slow movement, which may sound familiar from when it was used in the soundtrack to the film “Out of Africa.”)
Also on the program is the popular Symphony No. 9 – “From the New World” – by Antonin Dvorak.
But raising the curtain will be the world premiere of a work that was written specifically for this orchestra on this occasion in its own city.
The piece was composed by Steve Kurr, who teaches at Middleton High School and who is the resident conductor of the MCO.
For more information about the MCO’s season along with critical reviews and information about how to join it or support it and how to enter its new youth concerto competition, go to:
http://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
Kurr, below, will conduct the premiere of his own work, which he recently discussed via email with The Ear:
How much do you compose and why do you compose?
When I do compose, which is not often, it is usually with a specific event in mind. I have written several things for the musicians at Middleton High School, including a four-movement string symphony, a piece for a retiring colleague, and several works we have taken on tour.
In this case, the 10th season of the Middleton Community Orchestra provided a great reason to write. I always enjoy the process, but it can be time-consuming, so I don’t do it as often as I might like.
How does composing fit in with your teaching and conducting?
Most of the composing I do comes in the summer because it is when I can devote larger chunks of time. This new work was germinating in some form for several years, but almost all of the notes-on-the-page work came this past June.
How do you compose?
I approach composition in an analytical way, which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I think about structure early on in the process, both at the full work scale and in the smaller sections.
Most of my work comes on the computer in the notation software Finale, and some comes on the piano or on a string instrument.
I run ideas past my wife Nancy for her input and for this piece I also got a huge amount of advice and help from composer and MCO violist Neb Macura (below). (Thanks, Neb! You were invaluable!) Most of the melodic material came to me in the car on the way to school.
How would you describe your musical or tonal style?
I would say that my style is mostly tonal and not all that adventurous in terms of harmony. The fact that I have spent much of my musical career studying the works of the Classical and Romantic periods shows through. And yet you might find some moments that hint at more recent styles.
Can you briefly tell the public about the new piece to be premiered?
“Good Neighbors” is subtitled “Episodes for Orchestra” and the connected episodes describe various aspects of the Middleton community.
Episode 1 depicts the city of Middleton and its bustling energy within a small town feel. Episode 2 is about all of the water around, including the creeks, ponds and Lake Mendota. Episode 3 is the Good Neighbor Festival, appearing at the end of summer for so many years. Episode 4 describes the land around, including the rolling farmland, the driftless area, and the Ice Age Trail.
The final episode brings together tunes from the previous four, combining them to demonstrate that the Good Neighbor City is more than the sum of its parts. The opening theme shows up in several different versions throughout, including most notably the theme from Episode 4.
Is there anything else you would like to say?
At first I considered the endeavor almost self-indulgent as I set a piece of my own in front of the ensemble. Then I started to feel presumptuous. It is a humbling experience to see my name on a program with Mozart and Dvorak, two of my favorite composers.
It has been a terrific experience working with these fine musicians as we realize this new work together. My thanks go to them for their willingness to help me present this gift to the Middleton community.
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Classical music: Is a local Dvorak revival in the making? This Friday night, Christopher Taylor joins the Willy Street Chamber Players to perform the famed Piano Quintet
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By Jacob Stockinger
Is a major local revival of music by Antonin Dvorak (below) in the making?
Many signs point to: Yes!
At the end of the past season, maestro John DeMain of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, which has also performed the Symphony No. 9 “From the New World,” announced that he was on board as a fan when he told the audiences about the upcoming season, which features the MSO performing Dvorak’s dramatic Symphony No. 7 in D Minor and the large-scale Requiem.
In recent seasons, we have also seen the Madison Opera stage the opera “Rusalka”; the Middleton Community Orchestra perform the Symphony No. 6; the UW-Madison’s Pro Arte String Quartet and the Ancora String Quartet perform the miniatures “Cypresses”; the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra play some “Slavonic Dances”; and more.
What’s not to like about Dvorak? He was one of music’s greatest melodists, something that Johannes Brahms envied and a reason why Brahms helped promote his music. And his use of folk music – Czech, Native American and African-American – is captivating as well as multicultural.
Here is a link to more about Dvorak in his Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%C3%ADn_Dvořák
As audience responses prove, there is so much Dvorak to be fond of.
But one of the greatest works will be performed this Friday night, July 26, at 6 p.m. in the Immanuel Lutheran Church, 1021 Spaight Street.
That is when the Willy Street Chamber Players, in the final concert of their fifth summer series, will perform the famed Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 81 (1887). (You can hear the engaging opening movement, played by pianist Evgeny Kissin and the Emerson String Quartet, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The Willys will team up with the acclaimed UW-Madison virtuoso pianist and Van Cliburn Competition bronze medalist Christopher Taylor, who is a gifted chamber musician as well as a superb soloist.
Filling out the program are Three Nocturnes (1924) by Ernest Bloch and “Voodoo Dolls” (2008) by Jessie Montgomery.
Admission is $15 with a reception afterwards.
Dvorak, who has never fallen out of favor but who seems to have sparked a new enthusiasm, composed a lot.
In addition to the nine symphonies, the string serenade and the piano quintet, there is a lot of chamber music, including string quartets, piano trios, piano quartets; concertos for the violin, cello and piano; and many miniatures, including the lovely “Songs My Mother Taught Me.” There is also some solo piano music that has largely been neglected.
Do you love Dvorak’s music?
What about it do you especially like?
Do you have a favorite Dvorak work?
Let us know what it is, with a YouTube link if possible, in the Comment section.
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Madison native and virtuoso trumpeter Ansel Norris has made it to the final round of the 16th International Tchaikovsky Competition. You can hear him perform live on Thursday morning or in replay
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A REMINDER and CORRECTION: American pianist Kenneth Broberg, who performed last season in Madison on the Salon Piano Series at Farley’s House of Pianos, will be the last finalist – not the second-to-last – in the final concerto round of the 16th International Tchaikovsky Competition. The pianist from China that was to play after him played yesterday instead.
Broberg will play the “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” by Sergei Rachmaninoff and the Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, by Tchaikovsky. You can watch his performance live still on Thursday morning at 11:45 a.m. by going to https://tch16.medici.tv/en/ and clicking on PIANO LIVE or REPLAY after the performance.
By Jacob Stockinger
This news came to The Ear late or he would have passed along more information much earlier.
Ansel Norris (below), a 26-year-old Madison native and virtuoso trumpeter, has made it as one of the nine finalists — the contest started with 47 contestants in trombone, French horn, trumpet and tuba — in the first-ever Brass Competition at the 16th International Tchaikovsky Competition.
You can hear Norris perform live on Thursday morning at 7:45 a.m. via live-streaming or afterwards via replay. Just go to https://tch16.medici.tv/en/
Then click on BRASS and choose WATCH or REPLAY.
You can also listen to his earlier performances.
Here is a link to his performance in the first round, when he played a concerto by Franz Joseph Haydn plus works by Allen Vizzutti and Georges Enescu:
https://tch16.medici.tv/en/replay/first-round-with-ansel-norris/
And here is a link to his performance in the semi-final round, where he played concertos by Johann Friedrich Fasch and Vladimir Peskin — you can hear a much younger Norris play the first movement with piano in the YouTube video at the bottom — as well as a solo competition piece by Théo Charlier:
https://tch16.medici.tv/en/replay/semi-final-with-ansel-norris/#filter?instrument=brass
His performance in the finals, with an orchestra in St. Petersburg instead of Moscow, will take place on Thursday, June 27, at 7:45 a.m.
He will play Lensky’s aria “Where, Where Have You Gone?” from the opera “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky and the Trumpet Concerto by Rodion Shchedrin. Playing opera arias and art songs on the trumpet is a Norris specialty.
Norris, a graduate of Northwestern University who was also a member of the well-known New World Symphony in Miami, studied with John Aley, University of Wisconsin-Madison Emeritus Professor and Principal Trumpet of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, and played for many years in the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras.
Norris is the son of Katherine Esposito, the concert manager and publicity coordinator at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music.
Here is a link to the more complete and current biography posted by the Tchaikovsky Competition:
https://tch16.medici.tv/en/competitors/ansel-norris/
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Classical music: Start the holiday season with the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s FREE Community Carol Sing, with organ, on Monday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
‘Tis the season—for singing together in groups!
The Madison Symphony Orchestra (MSO) will host a FREE Carol Sing in Overture Hall of the Overture Center, 201 State Street, on this coming Monday, Nov. 27, at 7 p.m.
All ages are welcome.
No tickets or reservations are needed for the free Carol Sing, which will last approximately 45 minutes.
MSO Principal Organist and Curator Greg Zelek will lead the Carol Sing with the Overture Concert Organ (below).
Familiar carols will be sung, and solo organ works will include the Carol Rhapsody (heard in the YouTube video at the bottom) by Richard Purvis and an arrangement of “Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella.”
Greg Zelek (below) is the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s own principal organist and Curator of the Overture Concert Organ and Series. Zelek has been praised as one of the most exciting young organists in the American organ scene. He has performed with the Metropolitan Opera, the New World Symphony, and in Carnegie Hall with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra.
Zelek directs the programming for the instrument. In addition to the Free Farmers’ Market Organ Concerts, the instrument is featured in the annual MSO Christmas concert, along with several Free Community Hymn Sings and a Christmas Carol Sing.
See details for all organ performances at www.madisonsymphony.org/organperformances.
Support for all Overture Concert Organ programs is provided by the Diane Endres Ballweg Fund.
The MSO’s Free Community Carol and Hymn Sings are presented in partnership with the Overture Center for the Arts.
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Classical music: Should the Madison Symphony Orchestra return to a traditional Opening Gala concert with a guest soloist and big pieces, and move the all-orchestra concert to a later date?
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By Jacob Stockinger
You can’t blame longtime music director and conductor John DeMain (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) for wanting to put the spotlight on the players of the Madison Symphony Orchestra that he has built up over nearly 25 years.
After all, the orchestra members play well and respond superbly to DeMain’s direction, no matter what you might think of his programming and interpretations. He is proud of them with good reason.
So The Ear can easily understand why for the past few years DeMain has chosen to use an all-orchestra concert, with its principals taking the place of guest soloists, to open the season.
Yet DeMain also likes to emphasize the challenges he faces in selling tickets, filling seats and keeping the MSO a commercially successful orchestra.
The Ear noticed that this year, the all-orchestra opening concert of works by Bach-Stokowski, Mendelssohn and Berlioz, with principal violist Christopher Dozoryst as soloist, seemed to draw a smaller and less enthusiastic audience than the second concert did last weekend.
That second concert included the “Mother Goose” Suite by Ravel, the surefire “New World” Symphony by Dvorak and the Piano Concerto by Samuel Barber with guest pianist Olga Kern (below). The audience wildly cheered her and her flashy, virtuosic playing until it received an encore (the Prokofiev etude heard in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
So the question came to The Ear:
Should the MSO return to a traditional Gala Opening, with a surefire program and a high-profile guest soloist, and leave the all-orchestra concert until the second concert of the season?
The Ear checked out what other orchestras do.
This year, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra opened with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. The Los Angeles Philharmonic opened with a gala program that featured pianists Yuja Wang and Jean-Yves Thibaudet teaming up in an all-Mozart program. The San Francisco Orchestra featured superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
The Philadelphia Orchestra programmed pianist Emanuel Ax and the music of Beethoven, Brahms and Leonard Bernstein, whose centennial is being celebrated this season. The Boston Symphony Orchestra opened with Frederica von Stade, plus other singers, in an all-Bernstein program.
True, the Sheboygan Symphony also used the all-orchestra opener, and The Ear is sure there are many other orchestras, including some prominent ones, that do the same.
But it got The Ear to wondering. So he asked some other loyal MSO fans what they thought about returning to a traditional Gala Opening – one that announces to potential subscribers that great soloists will be featured during the season – and then moving the all-orchestra concert to a different date.
All the people he spoke to agreed that such a move would probably draw bigger audiences and capture the public’s attention better. One loyal patron even said that by going to the all-orchestra opening, the MSO (below, in a photo by Greg Anderson) was “just being cheap.”
Plans are probably already being made for next season, so it is likely too late to make any changes that soon.
But what about the 2018-19 season?
What do you think?
Should the Madison Symphony Orchestra return to a traditional Gala Opening that features big-name soloists and well-known pieces?
Should it move the all-orchestra concert with principal soloists to, say, the second concert of the season?
Or should things stay the way they are?
Which way do you think would be more commercially successful and sell more seats for that concert and for the rest of the season?
And which way would be more artistically satisfying?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Today is the Fourth of July. Here are two extended playlists of American masterpieces
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is Independence Day – the Fourth of July holiday.
It is a good occasion to listen to classical music by American composers (below), which you can hear much of the day on Wisconsin Public Radio.
But here are two other extended playlists of American classical music:
Here, thanks to a California radio station, is a list with complete performances of some of the best American masterpieces, including the “New World” Symphony by Antonin Dvorak, the “Afro-American” Symphony by William Grant Still (below), “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin and “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” by Leonard Bernstein:
https://www.capradio.org/music/classical/2019/07/04/playlist-american-classical-music-for-your-fourth-of-july/
And thanks to Minnesota Public Radio, here are four hours of patriotic music for the holiday: https://www.classicalmpr.org/story/2018/06/29/celebrate-the-fourth-of-july-with-our-4hour-patriotic-classical-playlist
Finally, in the YouTube at the bottom is the “American” String Quartet by Antonin Dvorak (below), who summered in Spillville, Iowa. He loved hearing and tried to capture sounds of nature, including bird songs, traditional Black spirituals and music by Native Americans.
The Ear especially likes it because it is proof that just as Americans have been influenced by European composers, European composers, European composers have been influenced by American composers.
Do you have a special or favorite piece of classical music to help celebrate the Fourth of July?
What do you like about it?
Leave a comment with a YouTube link if possible?
The Ear wants to hear.
Share this:
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