The Well-Tempered Ear
American pianist André Watts dies at 77
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By Jacob Stockinger
The world-famous virtuoso pianist André Watts (below, in a photo from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University) has died. He was 77. The cause of death was prostate cancer.
Watts performed several times to critical and audience acclaim acclaim with the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
From the beginning of his career at 16 — his debut with the New York Philharmonic as a protege of Leonard Bernstein — Watts was known as an outstanding interpreter of the technically challenging music of Franz Liszt. (He performs the fiendishly difficult Paganini Etude “La Campanella” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Below are two stories about Watts’ passing.
Curiously and ironically, Watts seemed particularly shy when it came to speaking about his role in opening up the white world of Western classical music to performers of color, especially African-Americans. Yet he persistently encouraged the talents of those and other performers through his educational efforts.
Here is the official press release/obituary from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he was a distinguished professor since 2004.
And here is an updated Wikipedia entry with a lot of early background and a complete list of awards and honors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André_Watts
Have you heard André Watts perform live?
On recordings or TV?
What did he play?
What did you think?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Superstar maestro Gustavo Dudamel to leave LA for the New York Philharmonic
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By Jacob Stockinger
It will probably be the biggest music news story of the year, perhaps even the decade.
Gustavo Dudamel (below), the Venezuelan-born maestro of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will become the music director of the New York Philharmonic starting in 2026.
The news was announced late yesterday afternoon on both coasts. The New York Philharmonic post is probably the most prestigious music post in the United States, a podium once occupied by Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini, Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta and Kurt Masur.
In what one imagines is a very, very expensive coup — the financial terms were not disclosed — the New York Philharmonic recruited the 42-year-old superstar maestro who is known for giving passionate and fiery performances and for innovating music education programs, both of which have brought in bigger and younger audiences.
He also built a reputation for championing new music, Latin music and musicians of color. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear Dudamel conducting Mexican composer Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2, a Latin American piece he made famous and which is now often used by other orchestras on full programs or as an encore. In the video, he is conducting the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra, the senior orchestra of “El Sistema” and the post that Dudamel held before heading to Los Angeles.)
Dudamel has guest conducted the New York Philharmonic more than two dozen times. The musicians there have greeted him warmly and enviously, especially since their CEO Deborah Borda originally signed Dudamel to the Los Angeles post in 2009 when he was 26.
Born into a musical family, Dudamel himself became a professional musician by rising through the ranks of “El Sistema,” the national youth music organization in his native country. He studied violin and composition before turning to conducting with global success and fame.
In Los Angeles he has been nominated for and won many Grammys for his many recordings. He also been the music director of the Paris Opera.
It is worth noting: New York will soon have two of the most charismatic and recognizable conductors in the world: Dudamel; and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who is the music director of the Metropolitan Opera as well as the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Metropolitan Orchestra of Montreal.
Here are stories from both sides now: from the West Coast he is leaving and the East Coast he will be going to.
Here is the story by The New York Times:
And here is the story from The Los Angeles Times:
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Here are the Top 10 online concerts to stream in March, according to critics for the New York Times
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ALERT: The online live-streamed concert by the UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet — scheduled for this Friday night, March 5 — in the all-Beethoven cycle of string quartets has been canceled and postponed until next year. The Friday, April 9 installment of the Beethoven cycle will be held as Installment 7 instead of 8.
By Jacob Stockinger
Classical music critics of The New York Times have once again picked their Top 10 online concerts for the month of March.
The Ear has found such lists helpful for watching and hearing, but also informative to read, if you don’t actually “attend” the concert.
If you have read these lists before, you will see that this one is typical.
It offers lots of links with background about the works and performers; concert times (Eastern); and how long the online version is accessible.
Many of the performers will not be familiar to you but others – such as pianist Mitsuko Uchida (below, in a photo by Hiroyuki Ito for the Times), who will perform an all-Schubert recital, will be very familiar.
But the critics once again emphasize new music and even several world premieres – including one by Richard Danielpour — and a path-breaking but only recently recorded live performance of the 1920 opera “Die Tote Stadt” (The Dead City) by long-neglected composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (below), who is best known for his Hollywood movie scores but who also wrote compelling classical concert hall music. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear soprano Renée Fleming sing “Marietta’s Song.’)
But some works that are more familiar by more standard composers – including Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Ravel and Copland – are also included.
The Times critics have also successfully tried to shine a spotlight on Black composers and Black performers, such as the clarinetist and music educator Anthony McGill (below top), who will perform a clarinet quintet by composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (below) and music in the setting of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
No purists, the critics also suggest famous oboe and clarinet works in transcriptions for the saxophone by composer-saxophonist Steven Banks (below).
Also featured is a mixed media performance of words and music coordinated by the award-winning Nigerian-American novelist, essayist and photographer Teju Cole (below), whose writings and photos are irresistible to The Ear.
Here is a link to the story in the Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/arts/music/classical-music-streaming-concerts.html
Are there other online concerts in March – local, regional, national or international – that you recommend in addition to the events listed in the Times?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Here is a comprehensive overview of classical music in 2020. It includes deaths, virtual seasons, world premieres, major awards, new albums and other noteworthy events
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By Jacob Stockinger
The last day of a year, especially a year as tragic and eventful for the arts as 2020, seems a good time for a retrospective.
For many years, Wikipedia has done a fine job of collating noteworthy classical music events, both nationally and internationally.
Organized by categories and then by month and day, the events include deaths, many from COVID-19 of course.
The list also includes the world premieres of new operas and new works in other musical genres. (You can hear “From the Diary of Anne Frank and “Meditations on Rilke” by the American conductor, educator and composer Michael Tilson Thomas — below in a photo by Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times — in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The list, which has 567 footnotes and citations, includes cancellations, staff changes, virtual and online concert seasons and other fallout from the coronavirus. And they include awards for new recordings.
If you hover the cursor over names in blue print, you will also get specific details or biographical information with a portrait or photo in many cases. Then click on the blue name and you will go to the organization’s or individual’s home website.
The Ear finds it very useful as a year-in-review and hopes you do too.
Take a look for yourself. And here’s hoping that both artists and the arts thrive better in the coming new year of 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_in_classical_music
What do you think of the Wikipedia list?
How did it leave you feeling?
Do you have something to add to the list?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Library of Congress streams UW pianist Christopher Taylor’s online Liszt-Beethoven symphony recital for free this Thursday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
This Thursday night, Dec. 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. CST, University of Wisconsin-Madison virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor (below) will close the celebration of the Beethoven Year, marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, at the Library of Congress. After the concert’s premiere, it will stay posted online.
For the past several years, Taylor has been performing the solo piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt of Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies both in Russia and at the UW-Madison.
Here is more from the website of the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music:
“It takes extraordinary skill as an orchestrator to condense an entire symphony by Beethoven (below top) into a version for a solo instrument, but that is just what Franz Liszt (below bottom) accomplished in his piano transcriptions. (You can hear a sample, along with a visual representation, of the Fifth Symphony transcription in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
“Hear virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor perform three of these transcendent symphony transcriptions, works he describes as a “new perspective on something familiar.” (The Ear, who has heard Taylor’s impressive performances of almost all nine symphonies, finds that comparing the two versions is like looking at the same photograph in color and then black-and-white. Color emphasizes details while black-and-white emphasizes structure. You hear new things by comparing the two.)
The performance was pre-recorded in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall of the Hamel Music Center.
The program is:
BEETHOVEN/LISZT
Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
You can find more details at: https://loc.gov/concerts/christopher-taylor.html
You can Register on Eventbrite
Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.
He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks.
Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace.
Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia and the Caribbean.
At home in the U.S. he has appeared with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, the Madison Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony. As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues.
In chamber music settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets.
His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel.
Throughout his career, Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects. Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt; performances and lectures on the complete etudes of Gyorgy Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano (below) in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.
Numerous awards have confirmed Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.
Taylor lives in Middleton, Wis., with his wife and two daughters. He is a Steinway artist.
For more biographical information — including his piano teachers and his education as well as his interest in mathematics and engineering — go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/christopher-taylor-concerts-from-the-library-of-congress/
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Pianist Jeremy Denk combines first-rate playing with innovative programs. He performs a virtual online recital this Friday night for the Wisconsin Union Theater
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By Jacob Stockinger
Jeremy Denk (below) is not only one of the top pianists on the concert stage today. He is also one of the most interesting and thoughtful pianists when it comes to original, innovative and eclectic programming.
Denk will display his talents again when he performs his third solo recital in Madison this Friday night, Dec. 11, for the Wisconsin Union Theater.
The concert of music by Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Missy Mazzoli is at 7:30 p.m. and will be preceded by a public Q&A at 7 p.m. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, both the discussion and the concert will be virtual and online.
Access to the online posting is $20 for the general public, $17 for Wisconsin Union members, and $10 for students.
Denk’s performance, which is part of the Theater’s 101st Annual Concert Series, will include “Papillons” (Butterflies), Op. 2, by Robert Schumann; Three Romances, Op. 21, by Clara Schumann; “Bolts of Loving Thunder” by the contemporary American composer Missy Mazzoli (below); and Four Pieces for Piano, Op. 119, by Johannes Brahms. (You can hear Denk play the lyrically introspective first intermezzo of Brahms’ late Op. 119 in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
To purchase tickets to Denk’s performance, visit https://union.wisc.edu/events-and-activities/event-calendar/event/jeremy-denk/
Ticket buyers will receive an email from the box office approximately 2 hours before the event begins that will contain their link to view the performance. Anyone who purchases a ticket within 2 hours of the event’s start time will receive their email within 15 minutes of purchase.
To The Ear, Denk’s well-planned and fascinating program seems like a probing contrast-and-compare, narrative exploration of the musical styles and close personal relationships – a kind of love triangle — between Robert and Clara Schumann (below top); between Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, whom Robert Schumann championed; and between Brahms and Clara Schumann, who also championed Brahms (below bottom) but rejected him as a lover and suitor after the premature death of her husband Robert.
One of America’s foremost pianists, Denk is a winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and the Avery Fisher Prize, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In the United States, Denk has performed with the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony and Cleveland Orchestra and frequently performs at Carnegie Hall. Internationally, he has toured with the world-famous Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and performed at Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms.
Denk’s talents include writing about music. Some of his stories about music have been featured on the front page of The New York Times Book Review as well as in The New Yorker, The New Republic and The Guardian. Many of those writings form the basis for a forthcoming book.
His passion for composing both music and writing compositions is evident in his music-based blog “Think Denk” — “to think” in German is “denizen” — which dates back to 2005.
“Jeremy Denk is one of the greatest pianists of our generation,” says WUT director Elizabeth Snodgrass. “While many pianists specialize in a particular period or composer, Jeremy is a musical omnivore whose wide-ranging interests span centuries and styles, and he is exceptional at playing all of them. As The New York Times said, he is ‘a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs.’”
Proof of that can be found in the program “c. 1300-c. 2000” he toured with and recorded last year for Nonesuch, which features a sampling tour of 700 years of keyboard compositions.
Said a critic for the Boston Globe: “Denk has “an unerring sense of the music’s dramatic structure and a great actor’s intuition for timing.”
This performance was made possible by the David and Kato Perlman Chamber Music Endowment Fund.
Learn more about Jeremy Denk at: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Website
For more information and a video clip of Denk playing different Brahms, go to: https://union.wisc.edu/events-and-activities/event-calendar/event/jeremy-denk/
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The New York Times music critics pick 10 online concerts and operas to watch through the month of November
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By Jacob Stockinger
Classical music critics for The New York Times have again listed their picks of virtual and online concerts that will be streamed during the month of November, starting this Sunday, Nov. 1, and running right through Nov. 30. In September, they did the same for the month of October.
The list of 10 highlights includes chamber music, orchestral music and operas as well as lots of new music, world premieres of commissions and even the Cliburn International Piano Competition, now known simply as The Cliburn.
Most of the events are posted and available for quite a while.
Note that all times are Eastern and that on this Sunday, Nov. 1, daylight saving ends.
As the critics point out, the list may be especially helpful and enjoyable now that the weather is turning colder, people are isolating at home during the nationwide spikes in coronavirus cases, and concert halls remain closed to the public.
Well-known institutions such as The Metropolitan Opera (below) and the Los Angeles Opera are featured. (You can sample an earlier Met production of Philip Glass’ “Satyagraha” – about the early life of Gandhi — in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
So are symphony orchestras from Detroit, Seattle, San Francisco and Cincinnati.
And pianist Igor Levit (below top), who this past year released the highly praised, award-winning complete cycle of 32 piano sonatas by Beethoven and who was named Artist of the Year by Gramophone magazine, is also featured, as is the outstanding Chicago-based violinist Jennifer Koh (below bottom, in a photo by the Los Angeles Times).
Here is a link to the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/28/arts/music/classical-music-stream.html
What do you think of the choices?
Do you have other concerts or classical music events to add to the list?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Madison Opera cancels its January production of “She Loves Me.” Will other groups follow suit? Plus, tonight is the last online concert by the LunART Festival of music by Black women
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ALERT: TONIGHT, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. the third LunART Festival will wrap up with the second of its two FREE streamed “Human Family” concerts featuring the works of Black women (below). Due to popular demand, last week’s concert is still posted and available for viewing. This week’s concert will be followed by a virtual party. Here are links for information, programs and biographies: https://www.lunartfestival.org/2020virtualfestival and https://welltempered.wordpress.com/?s=LunART
By Jacob Stockinger
The coronavirus pandemic continues to slowly take its toll on local live productions during the current season.
The Madison Opera has now canceled its second production of the season, the Broadway musical “She Loves Me” by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, which was scheduled for late January in the Capitol Theater of the Overture Center.
Here are details from Madison Opera: “We will replace She Loves Me with a Digital Winter season that lasts from January to March. Details will be announced in December. (She Loves Me will be part of our 2021/22 season, so it’s only a delay!)”
For more about Madison Opera’s digital fall season – which costs $50 per household to subscribe to – go to: https://www.madisonopera.org/Fall2020
The next digital event is at 7:30 p.m. next Saturday, Oct. 24, by Sun Prairie bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen (below, in a photo by Lawrence Brownlee), who has performed around the world, including at the Metropolitan Opera.
He will perform a live-streamed concert from the Madison Opera Center that will be a tribute to the American bass Giorgio Tozzi (below), who was Ketelsen’s teacher at Indiana University. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear Tozzi sing “This Nearly Was Mine” from “South Pacific” by Rodgers and Hammerstein.)
Here is Tozzi’s biography from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giorgio_Tozzi
Soprano Emily Secor (below top) and pianist Scott Gendel (below bottom) will perform with Ketelsen.
Here is a link to details of Kyle Ketelsen’s recital: https://www.madisonopera.org/class/liveketelsen/?wcs_timestamp=1603567800
___________________________________________________________________________
The cancellation makes The Ear wonder: Are local groups and presenters being too timid or too hopeful when it comes to future plans for the current season?
After all, this past week we learned that both the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic have canceled the rest of the current season due to public health concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic. And all indications are that it will be a very rough, unsafe winter and spring in Wisconsin and Madison.
That’s why The Ear suspects that, unfortunately, the rest of the season will either be canceled or be virtual and moved online. It even seems more than plausible that there will be no live performances until the winter or spring of 2022.
So you can probably expect further word pretty soon of more cancellations, postponements and virtual online performances from the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Madison Opera, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, the Wisconsin Union Theater, the UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music, the University Opera and others.
What do you think?
Will there be operas, orchestral performances and live chamber music sometime yet this season?
When do you think it will be safe to perform and attend live concerts?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Leon Fleisher, the inspirational pianist and teacher who died a week ago, had ties to Madison
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By Jacob Stockinger
Famed American pianist and teacher Leon Fleisher (below, in a photo by Chris Hartlove), who also conducted, died of cancer at 92 last Sunday, Aug. 2.
Wisconsin Public Radio, like many other media outlets including National Public Radio (NPR) and most major newspapers and television stations, devoted a lot of time to tributes to and remembrances of Fleisher.
That is as it should be. If any musician deserved it, Fleisher did.
Fleisher (1928-2020) was a titan who became, over many years and despite major personal setbacks — stemming from an almost paralyzed right hand — a lot more than a keyboard virtuoso.
But despite lots of air time, less well covered has been his relationship to Madison audiences, who had the pleasure of seeing and hearing him several times in person.
In 2003 and then again in 2016 (below top) — at age 88 — Fleisher performed with the University of Wisconsin’s Pro Arte String Quartet (below bottom).
Both times he played the Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, a masterpiece of chamber music. He and his wife, Katherine Jacobson, also performed a joint recital at the Wisconsin Union Theater in 2009.
Fleisher felt at home in Baroque, Classical, Romantic and even modern music. He was renowned as an interpreter of Brahms. Indeed, his early and widely acclaimed recordings of both Brahms piano concertos as well as of the Waltzes and Handel Variations remain landmarks.
Once he was again playing with both hands, Fleisher also recorded the piano quintet for Deutsche Grammophon with the Emerson String Quartet, another frequent and favorite performer in Madison. (You can hear the finale in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Here is a this blog’s review of his last Madison appearance: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/?s=Leon+Fleisher
Fleisher liked performing with the Pro Arte, and therein lies another historical tale.
His most influential teacher — the famed pianist Artur Schnabel, with whom the San Francisco-born Fleisher went to study in Europe when he was just 9 — also played often with the earlier members of Pro Arte Quartet. Together they recorded Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet by Franz Schubert, and that recording is still in the catalogue and available on Amazon.
Fleisher discusses studying with Schnabel in his entertaining and informative 2010 autobiography “My Nine Lives” (below).
Fleisher was a child prodigy who made his name while still young. Famed French conductor Pierre Monteux – who conducted the world premiere of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” in Paris — called Fleisher the “musical find of the century.” Fleisher made his concerto debut at 16 with the New York Philharmonic under Monteux.
Fleisher was just 36 and preparing for a tour with the Cleveland Orchestra and George Szell – a perfect pairing and a conductor with whom he recorded all the Beethoven and Brahms concertos among may others – when he found he could not uncurl the last three fingers of his right hand.
Various diagnoses and causes were offered, and many cures were tried. In the end, it seems like that it was a case of focal dystonia that was caused by over-practicing, especially octaves. “I pounded ivory six or seven hours a day,” Fleisher later said.
After a period of depression and soul-searching, Fleisher then focused on performing music for the left hand; on conducting; and especially on teaching for more than 60 years at the Peabody Institute, located in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University.
There he helped shaped the career of many other famous pianists, including André Watts, Yefim Bronfman and Jonathan Biss (below, in a photo by Julian Edelstein), who played when Fleisher received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2007. (All three have performed with the Madison Symphony Orchestra.)
Here is an inspiring overview of Fleisher’s life and career from the Peabody Institute: https://peabody.jhu.edu/faculty/leon-fleisher/
And here is another short biography from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Fleisher
Here are three especially noteworthy obituaries:
The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/02/arts/music/leon-fleisher-dead.html
The Washington Post, written by critic Anne Midgette who worked with Fleisher on his memoir: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/leon-fleisher-sublime-pianist-with-one-hand-or-two-dies-at-92/2020/08/02/c7c98f90-527d-11e6-b7de-dfe509430c39_story.html
The Ear has always found Fleisher’s playing remarkable for its technical fluency combined with the utmost clarity and exacting but flexible sense of rhythm. He always managed to make a piece of music sound just right, as it was intended to sound. His musicality always seemed innate and perfectly natural.
Sample it for yourself. The Ear thinks the performance of all five Beethoven concertos with George Szell still sets a high standard with its exciting, upbeat tempi, its exemplary balance between piano and orchestra, and its exceptional engineering.
The affable Fleisher will long remain an inspiration not only for his playing and teaching, but also for his determination to overcome personal obstacles and go on to serve music — not just the piano.
Did you ever hear Leon Fleisher play live or in recordings? What did you think?
Do you have a comment to leave about the legacy of Fleisher?
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
NPR names relevant classical albums in a musical Diary of the Plague Year of the pandemic, racial protests, wildfires and hurricanes
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By Jacob Stockinger
For an unusual and difficult year, NPR (National Public Radio) and critic Tom Huizenga have found a new and unusual way to recommend this past year’s top classical music recordings.
On the “Deceptive Cadence” blog for NPR, Huizenga kept a personal month-by-month diary of “music and mayhem.”
For last February, for example, this ancient image of The Dance of Death inspired contemporary composer Thomas Adès to compose his own “Totentanz” or Dance of Death. (You can hear an excerpt from the work in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Some of the thematically-related music is modern or contemporary, some of it is from the Baroque or Classical era.
In June, as protests against the death of George Floyd (below top) flared up and spread worldwide, NPR names a recording of the “Negro Folk Symphony” by African-American composers William Dawson and Ulysses Kay (below bottom), thereby helping to rediscover Black composers whose works have been overlooked and neglected in the concert hall and the recording studio.
Devastating wildfires on the West Coast, Presidential impeachment and hurricanes on the Gulf Coast also found their way into the choices of music to listen to.
It is an unusual approach, but The Ear thinks it works.
See and hear for yourself by going to the sonic diary and listening to the samples provided.
Here is a link to the NPR album diary: https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2020/12/21/947149286/music-and-mayhem-a-diary-of-classical-albums-for-a-troubled-2020
But many roads, if not all, lead to Rome, as they say.
What is also interesting is that a number of the NPR choices overlap with ones listed by music critics of The New York Times as the 25 best classical albums of 2020.
Some choices also are found on the list of the nominations for the Grammy Awards that will be given out at the end of January.
In other words, the NPR diary can also serve as yet another holiday gift guide if you have gift cards or money to buy some new and notable CDs, and are looking for recommendations.
Here is a link to the Times’ choices, which you can also find with commentary and a local angle, in yesterday’s blog post: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/arts/music/best-classical-music.html
https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-new-york-times-names-the-top-25-classical-recordings-of-2020-and-includes-sample-tracks/
And here is a list to the Grammy nominations: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/11/28/for-holiday-shopping-and-gift-giving-here-are-the-classical-music-nominations-for-the-63rd-grammy-awards-in-2021/
What do you think of the NPR musical diary of the plague year?
Do you find it informative? Accurate? Interesting? Useful?
Would you have different choices of music to express the traumatic events of the past year?
The Ear wants to hear.
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