The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: A reader urges others to donate ticket refunds to support the arts. What do you think?
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ALERT: The Wisconsin Chamber Choir has canceled its upcoming concert, “Music She Wrote,” on April 18.
By Jacob Stockinger
A reader — who prefers to remain anonymous but who has been deeply involved in the Madison arts scene for a long time — recently wrote:
“I’d like to suggest an angle for your column: Encourage subscribers to the various arts organizations and single ticket holders who can afford it NOT to ask for a refund on their upcoming cancelled concerts, if or when they are offered that option.
“I subscribe — on my own or as part of others’ subscriptions — to the Madison Symphony Orchestra (below, in photo by Peter Rodgers), the Madison Opera, the Broadway musicals at the Overture Center, Forward Theater, and the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Concert series. (I also buy a lot of single tickets to chamber music concerts by the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society and to American Players Theatre in Spring Green.)
“As all those arts organizations cancel their concerts and plays, they still have costs. Forward Theater, for instance, is paying the full contract of all the people who were involved with the production of “The Amateurs.” And I’m glad they are.
“Personally, I will not be asking for a refund on any of the tickets I long ago purchased. I want the arts to stay healthy in Madison, and not asking for a refund is a small gesture in trying to make sure they are able to move forward.” (At bottom is the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, which just announced its summer schedule from June 7 to June 28 and has not cancelled anything. Go to: https://bachdancing.org)
“You reach a lot of people and you could plant a lot of powerful seeds by making this the topic of a column.”
If you are a member of a performing arts group, what do you think?
If you are a ticket holder, what do you think?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The 7th annual Schubertiade at the UW-Madison is this Sunday afternoon and will explore the influence of Beethoven on Schubert
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By Jacob Stockinger
This coming Sunday afternoon, Jan. 26, is the seventh annual UW Schubertiade – named after the evening gatherings of friends (below) where the composer Franz Schubert performed and premiered his own music.
This year’s theme, given that 2020 is the Beethoven Year, is the immense influence that the older Beethoven (below top) 1770-1827) had on the younger Schubert (below bottom, 1797-1828).
The event will begin with a pre-concert lecture by UW-Madison Professor of Musicology Margaret Butler at 2:15 p.m. in the Rehearsal Hall at the new Hamel Music Center, 740 University Avenue, next to the Chazen Museum of Art.
Then at 3 p.m. in the 330-seat Collins Recital Hall in the same building, the two-hour concert will take place.
The concert will close with the usual custom. The audience and performers will join in singing “An die Musik” (To Music). (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear it sung by legendary German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and legendary British accompanist Gerald Moore.)
A reception will follow the concert in the main lobby.
For more description of the event plus a complete program and list of performers – who consist of UW-Madison graduates and musicians including soprano Jamie Rose Guarrine (below top) and mezzo-soprano Alisanne Apple (below middle) as well as the Pro Arte Quartet (below bottom, in a photo by Rick Langer) – go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/our-annual-schubertiade/
At the site, you will also find information about buying tickets – general admission is $20 with free student tickets on the day of the concert is space is available – and about parking.
The event was founded by and continues to be directed by wife-and-husband pianists Martha Fischer and Bill Lutes (below) who also sing, accompany and play works for piano, four hands.
Lutes sent the following introductory remarks: “Ever since Martha and I presented the first of our annual Schubertiades back in January 2014, we’ve looked for ways to keep our all-Schubert birthday parties fresh and interesting for our audience.
“From time to time we contemplated introducing another composer – maybe even switching our allegiance from the immortal Franz to another of our favorites: perhaps a “Schumanniade.”
“This time, with six years of all-Schubert behind us, we thought we would do the obvious and finally unite Schubert with the composer who probably meant more to him than almost any other – Beethoven, whose 250th birthday is being celebrated this year.
“Once Beethoven moved permanently to Vienna at age 22, he soon became famous and eventually was regarded as the greatest of the city’s composers.
“Schubert, who was born in Vienna five years after Beethoven’s arrival, grew up hearing the older master’s works, often at their premieres. As his genius flowered early, Schubert was often challenged and inspired by Beethoven’s music.
“We bring together these two giants who lived in the same city, knew the same people, attended the same musical events, perhaps met or quite possibly didn’t.
“Yet Beethoven’s presence and example guided Schubert in his own road toward the Ultimate Sublime in music. Our concert of “Influences and Homages” features works where the musical, if not the personal, relationship is there for all to hear.”
Lutes also supplied a list of the song titles in English translation:
“Ich liebe dich” – I love you
“Der Atlas” – Atlas
“Auf dem Strom” – On the River
“Der Zufriedene” – The Contented Man
“Der Wachtelschlag” – The Quail’s Cry
“Wonne der Wehmut” – Joy in Melancholy
“Kennst du das Land?” – Do You Know the Land?
“An die ferne Geliebte” – To the Distant Beloved
“An die Freude” – Ode to Joy
“Gruppe aus dem Tartarus” – Scene from Hades
“Elysium”
“Nachthymne” – Hymn to the Night
“Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel” – Evening Song Beneath the Starry Firmament
Have you attended a past Schubertiade (below, in Mills Hall)?
What did you think?
Would you recommend it to others?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The Festival Choir of Madison will sing “Songs of Fate” this Saturday night. A FREE all-Brahms concert of violin, cello and piano music is Friday night
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ALERT 1: The concert on this Friday night, Nov. 1, by the UW-Madison Madrigal Singers has been POSTPONED. A future date will be announced.
ALERT 2: This Friday night, Nov. 1, at 7 p.m. at Oakwood Village Woods, 6205 Mineral Point Road, UW-Madison cellist Parry Karp – joined by pianist David Abbott and clarinetist Christian Ellenwood – will perform a FREE all-Brahms chamber music concert. On the program are the Cello Sonata No. 2 in F Major, Op. 99; the Violin Sonata No. 2, in A Major, Op. 100, arranged for cello by Karp; and the Clarinet Trio in A minor, Op. 114.
By Jacob Stockinger
The Festival Choir of Madison (below) will present its first concert of the season — “Songs of Fate” – this Saturday night, Nov. 2, at 8 p.m. at Luther Memorial Church, 1021 University Ave., in Madison.
Under artistic director and Edgewood College professor Sergei Pavlov (below top), the choir will perform “Gesang der Parzen” (Song of the Fates) and “Schicksalslied” (Song of Destiny, heard in the YouTube video at the bottom) by Johannes Brahms; “Stabat Mater” by Giuseppe Verdi; and Alexander Borodin’s “Polovtsian Dances.” The concert will feature the Romanian pianist Samir Golescu (below bottom) accompanying the choir.
The concert has general seating. Admission is $10 for students, $15 for senior citizens and $20 for adults. Tickets will be available at the door the day of the concert. Tickets can also be purchased online at: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4383429
The Festival Choir of Madison is an auditioned, mixed-voice volunteer choir of over 50 experienced singers. The group performs thematic concerts of artistically challenging choral music from around the world for listeners who enjoy traditional, modern and eclectic works, and for singers who enjoy developing their talents with others.
To learn more about the Festival Choir, including other concerts this season, go to: www.festivalchoirmadison.org.
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Classical music: The Karp family turns in a memorable and moving 40th annual Labor Day concert that also took listeners back in time
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By Jacob Stockinger
If you missed the free 40th annual Karp Family Labor Day Concert on Tuesday night in Mills Hall, you missed more than music. You missed the kind of event that makes for long and precious memories.
Sure, you can nitpick the program and the performers, who also included daughter-in-law violist Katrin Talbot (below right) and guest violinist Suzanne Beia (below left), who performs with the Pro Arte Quartet, the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.
You could ask, for example, which cello transcription worked better – the Violin Sonatina, Op. 100, by Dvorak or the Violin Sonata No. 10, Op. 96, by Beethoven. (The Ear votes for the Dvorak.)
And you could also ask which performer stood out the most. (The Ear thinks that is the great-grandmother and matriarch pianist Frances Karp playing in a Mozart piano quartet. At 90, Frances still possesses beautiful tone, the right volume and balance, and the necessary technical chops. They say there is nowhere to hide in Mozart, but Frances Karp did need any place to hide. Her Mozart was, simply, sublime.)
But, in the end, those kinds of questions and critiques really seem beside the bigger point.
What mattered most was the sheer enjoyment of hearing a family perform live some wonderful music by Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak and Schumann (the passionate Adagio and Allegro in A-flat Major, Op. 70, played by Lynn Harrell in the YouTube video at the bottom).
And what mattered more as The Ear thought about it was the kind of time travel the concert involved.
There were two kinds, really.
One had to do with having watched the various performing Karps – clearly Madison’s First Family of Music – over four decades. It was touching to realize that The Ear has seen cellist Parry Karp, to take one example, evolve from son to husband to father to grandfather. And through it all, the music remained.
In today’s culture of short attention spans, that kind of constancy and persistence — through the inevitable ups and downs of 40 years — is something to celebrate, admire and cherish.
Time travel happened in another way too.
The Ear first watched Frances Karp accompany her son Parry (below top), then watched son Christopher Karp accompany his older brother Parry (below bottom). And it called to mind the days when – before radio or recordings – families made music together in their homes.
Historically, that’s how many great composers and much great music got started. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Felix Mendelssohn played piano duets with their gifted sisters, Nannerl and Fanny, respectively. Jean Sibelius played duets with his sister. And there were surely many more. Hausmusik, or “house music,” played a vital role.
And this is how it felt at the traditional Karp family concert. We felt invited into a loving, close and gifted musical family who were performing as much for each other as for the audience.
We could use more of that.
The musical and the familial mixed so beautifully, so convincingly, that all one can say after the event is “Thank you” with the ardent wish to hear them again next year.
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Classical music: Today is Memorial Day – a good time to remember the civilian dead as well as the military dead. The Ear likes Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin.” What music would you listen to to mark the holiday?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is Memorial Day, 2019, when the nation honors the men and women who died in military service. The Ear would like to see much more attention and remembrance paid to the huge number of civilians — much higher than military personnel and soldiers — who have died in wars and military service, whose lives weren’t given but taken.
In fact, why not establish and celebrate a separate holiday to honor civilian deaths in war? Perhaps it would help to know the detailed history and background of the holiday, since it is not as straightforward or modern as you might expect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day
What piece of classical music would you listen to in order to mark the holiday?
There is a lot to choose from.
The Ear especially likes “Le Tombeau de Couperin” by the early 20th-century French composer Maurice Ravel. It is a “tombeau” – a metaphorical “tomb” or “grave” used by the French to mean paying homage to the dead – in two senses.
Its neo-Classical or neo-Baroque style recalls the 18th-century world of French composers and harpsichordists including Jean-Philippe Rameau and Francois Couperin. But in a second sense, Ravel (below, in 1910) dedicated each of the six movements to a friend – in one case, two brothers — who had died during World War I. So part of its appeal is that it is a very personal statement of grief.
Here is more detailed background about the piece:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_tombeau_de_Couperin
The work was orchestrated later, which added sonic color but cut out two movements. The Ear prefers the original piano version, which seems a little more percussive, austere and straightforward — less pretty but more beautiful, and more in keeping with the holiday by evoking sentiment without sentimentality.
In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear it in a live performance by Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt.
But there are lots of other works to choose from by many composers: John Adams (“The Wound Dresser” after poetry of Walt Whitman); Samuel Barber (Adagio for Strings); Ludwig van Beethoven (slow movements of Symphonies 3 and 7, and of the Piano Sonata Op. 26); Johannes Brahms (“A German Requiem”); Benjamin Britten (War Requiem); Frederic Chopin (Funeral March from Sonata No. 2, polonaises, preludes and the “Revolutionary” Etude); Aaron Copland (“Fanfare for the Common Man” and “Letter From Home”); Edward Elgar (“Nimrod” from “Enigma Variations”); Gabriel Faure (Requiem and Elegy for cello); Franz Joseph Haydn (“Mass in Time of War”); Paul Hindemith (“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d – A Requiem for Those We Love”); Charles Ives (Variations on “America” and “Decoration Day”); Henry Purcell (“When I Am Laid in Earth”); John Philip Sousa (“Honored Dead” March); Ralph Vaughan Williams (Symphony No. 3 “Pastoral”); and many others, including Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Here is a list from the British radio station Classical FM:
Here is a list of patriotic music from Nashville Public Radio:
Here is another list from an American source:
http://midamerica-music.com/blog/five-classical-works-memorial-day/
Here are more sound samples from NPR:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104341851
And here is another one from Northwest Public Radio:
https://www.nwpb.org/2015/05/22/memorial-day-music-commemorate-celebrate/
What do you think of a holiday commemorating civilian deaths in war?
What favorite piece of classical music would you play and listen to as you mark Memorial Day?
Let us know, with a YouTube link if possible, in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The Wisconsin Chamber Choir performs Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” this Friday night in Madison and Sunday afternoon in Whitewater
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement about performances this coming weekend by the Wisconsin Chamber Choir (below) and the professional orchestra Sinfonia Sacra of what is, unfortunately and undeservedly, often considered, when compared to Handel’s “Messiah,” “The Other Oratorio” for the holiday season:
There will be two performances of four parts of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” (1734). On Friday night, Dec. 14, 7:30 p.m. at the Luther Memorial Church (below), 1021 University Ave., in Madison; and on Sunday, Dec. 16, at 2 p.m. in the Young Auditorium at the UW-Whitewater, 930 Main Street, in Whitewater.
Advance tickets for the Friday night performance at Luther Memorial Church in Madison are available for $20 ($10 for students) from www.wisconsinchamberchoir.org, via Brown Paper Tickets, or at Orange Tree Imports (Madison) and Willy Street Coop (all three locations in Madison and Middleton).
Advance tickets for the Sunday afternoon performance at Young Auditorium in Whitewater are available from www.uww.edu/youngauditorium/tickets
Of the six cantatas that make up the “Christmas Oratorio,” Part, 1, 2, 3 and 5 will be performed. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the brisk and energetic opening, performed by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus of Vienna with the Arnold Schoenberg Choir.)
Parts 1 to 3 tell the Christmas story: Mary and Joseph, the birth of Jesus, the shepherds and the angels. Part 5 introduces the magi from the East, traditionally known as the Three Kings.
The music offers a sampling of every style of music in the repertoire of Johann Sebastian Bach (below) as a composer.
Massive, concerto-like movements crowned by brilliant trumpet fanfares, booming timpani and virtuosic fugues highlight the full chorus.
Solo arias, duets and trios and even one instrumental movement provide a contemplative contrast with constantly changing instrumental colors—from lush strings to playful flutes and the pastoral sounds of oboes and bassoons.
Featured vocal soloists include mezzo-soprano Rachel Wood (below top) and tenor J. Adam Shelton (below middle), both on the faculty of UW-Whitewater. Highly accomplished members of the choir, including baritone Bill Rosholt (below bottom, and a Madison Savoyards regular), will share the solo parts with these professionals.
The members of Sinfonia Sacra, under concertmaster Leanne League (below), are drawn from the rosters of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble and the music faculties of UW-Madison, UW-Whitewater and UW-Oshkosh.
Trumpet virtuoso John Aley (below top) and oboist Marc Fink (below bottom) will also perform.
Founded in 1998, the Wisconsin Chamber Choir has established a reputation for excellence in the performance of oratorios, a cappella choral works from various centuries, and world premieres.
Bach’s music has always occupied a special place in the choir’s repertory, with performances of the Christmas Oratorio (2002 and 2003), the Mass in B minor (2005), the St. John Passion (2010) and the Magnificat (2017).
Artistic Director Robert Gehrenbeck (below) has been hailed by critics for his vibrant and emotionally compelling interpretations of a wide variety of choral masterworks.
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