Pablo Casals | The Well-Tempered Ear

Should you keep practicing at 90? Ask famed cellist Pablo Casals

October 11, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

Do you ever get old enough and accomplished enough to stop practicing?

Just ask the legendary Catalan cellist Pau (Pablo) Casals (below).

That’s the same Pablo Casals (1876-1973) who spent his entire life learning and performing, as you can read in his Wikipedia biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Casals.

That’s also the same pioneering Pablo Casals who also first discovered, recorded and popularized the solo cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach, which you can sample in the YouTube video at the bottom. It was recorded in 1954 when Casals was 77.

What do you think about his remark?

Do you agree with Casals?

Would you still practice at 90?

The Ear wants to hear.

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Classical music: During the COVID-19 pandemic, hosts at Wisconsin Public Radio suggest music that expresses gratitude and hope

May 13, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

The various hosts of Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) — an indispensable companion during self-isolation at home — listen to a lot of music and think a lot about it, especially about its meaning and appeal to the public.

So it comes as no surprise that they have once again suggested music to listen to during the coronavirus pandemic and the mounting toll of COVID-19.

Almost two months ago, the same radio hosts suggested music that they find calming and inspiring. They did so on the WPR home page in an ongoing blog where they also included YouTube audiovisual performances.

Here is a link to that earlier posting, which is well worth reading and following: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/?s=Wisconsin+Public+Radio

This time, the various hosts – mostly of classical shows but also of folk music and world music – suggest music that inspires or expresses hope and gratitude. (Below is Ruthanne Bessman, the host of “Classics by Request,” which airs at 10 a.m. on Saturdays.)

Here is the genesis of the list and public service project:

“At a recent WPR music staff meeting, we talked about the many ways music can unite us and about how music can express the gratitude we feel for people and things that are important to us, often much better than words.

“That discussion led to this collection of music, which we wanted to share with you. It’s eclectic and interesting, just like our music staff.”

The composers cited include some familiar names such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Benjamin Britten and John Williams.

But some new music, based on historical events and written by contemporary or modern composers, is also named. It includes works by the American composer Daniel Gawthrop (b. 1949, below top) and the Israeli composer David Zehavi (1910-1977, below bottom). Here are links to their biographies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_E._Gawthrop

https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/zehavi-david

Sound-wise, it is quite an eclectic list that runs from solo harpsichord music to orchestral and choral music as well as chamber music.

Many of the performers have played in Madison at the Overture Center, with Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, at the Wisconsin Union Theater, at the UW-Madison and on the Salon Piano Series at Farley’s House of Pianos.

They include: the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; cellist Amit Peled and pianist Eli Kalman, who received his doctorate from the UW-Madison and now teaches at the UW-Oshkosh; conductor-composer John Rutter and the Cambridge Singers; and superstars violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo Ma along with Venezuelan pianist-improviser Gabriela Montero in a quartet that played at the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Here is a link to the new WPR suggestions: https://www.wpr.org/wpr-hosts-share-music-gratitude-and-hope

Happy listening!

If you read the blog or listen to the music, let us know what you think in the Comment section.

The Ear wants to hear.

Posted in Classical music
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Classical music: World-famous Japanese violist Nobuko Imai will teach and perform two FREE concerts with students and the Pro Arte Quartet during her UW residency today and Thursday

October 30, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

Think of it as Viola Week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Mead Witter School of Music — a chance to celebrate the gorgeous, mellow sound of a frequently but unjustly maligned instrument (below) the range of which falls between the higher violin and the lower cello.

The world-famous Japanese violist Nobuko Imai (below) is returning to the UW-Madison campus this week for a two-day residency where she will give master classes and perform.

Imai will be joined by two other distinguished guest violists, both Taiwanese: Wei-Ting Kuo (below top, in a photo by Todd Rosenberg) now of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and formerly the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra; and En-Chi Cheng (below bottom), a prize-winning, concertizing student of Imai now studying at the Juilliard School.

For detailed biographies of all three violists go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/nobuko-imai-with-wei-ting-kuo-and-the-uw-madison-viola-studio/

The violists will give two FREE concerts in the new Hamel Music Center, 740 University Avenue.

At 7 p.m. TONIGHT, Wednesday, Oct. 30, in Collins Recital Hall, Nobai and the two other guest artists will perform with viola students at the UW-Madison Mead Witter School of Music. No program has been given for them. Nobuko will also perform a chorale by Johann Sebastian Bach with UW-Madison collaborative pianist Martha Fischer (below).

Then at NOON tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 31, in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall, the UW’s Pro Arte Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer) will perform the melodious “American” Viola Quintet by Antonin Dvorak with Imai. (You can hear the second movement of the Dvorak quintet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

In addition to a viola arrangement of the “Song of the Birds” by Pablo Casals, Imai will perform the Adagio movement from Beethoven’s Trio in C Major for Two Oboes and English Horn, Op. 87, with Wei-Ting Kuo and Pro Arte Quartet violist Sally Chisholm (below, second from right).

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Classical music: Cellist Amit Peled and pianist Daniel del Pino open the Salon Piano Series this Friday and Saturday nights. TODAY the Edgewood College Chamber Orchestra opens its new season in a new hall

September 29, 2019
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ALERT: The Edgewood Chamber Orchestra opens its new season TODAY at 2:30 p.m. in the new McKinley Performing Arts Center at Edgewood High School, 2219 Monroe Street. Blake Walter will conduct the program that features Beethoven’s “King Stephen” Overture, composed to celebrate the opening of a new theater ; Handel’s “Water Music”; and Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 in C Major “Linz,” K. 425. Admission is $5 for the general public, FREE with an ID for Edgewood College or Edgewood High School.

By Jacob Stockinger

The Salon Piano Series will open its new and expanded season with a recital by cellist Amit Peled (below top, in a photo by Lisa Mazzucco) and pianist Daniel del Pino (below bottom) on this coming Friday and Saturday nights, Oct. 4 and 5, at 7:30 p.m.

The concerts, which are being dedicated to retired critic John W. Barker, will be held at Farley’s House of Pianos, 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.

Each artist has performed individually at Farley’s before, but this will be their first joint recital in Madison.

The program is:

John Eccles – Sonata in G Minor (1720)

Ludwig van Beethoven – Sonata No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 5, No. 2 (1796)

Gaspar Cassadó – Sonata in Old Spanish Style, G Minor, (1925)

Richard Strauss – Sonata in F Major, Op. 6 (1883)

A reception will follow the performances.

Tickets are $45 in advance and $50 at the door. Student tickets are $10 and can only be purchased online and are not available the day of the event.

You can buy tickets online, where service fees may apply, at: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/producer/706809

You can also call Farley’s at (608) 271-2626 to purchase tickets.

After hearing the Israeli-American Peled, The New York Times reported that he has “a glowing tone, a seductive timbre and an emotionally pointed approach to phrasing that made you want to hear him again.”

Daniel del Pino is a leading Spanish concert pianist on the international scene. He has performed in prestigious venues on five continents.

In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can watch a special concert preview and an enthusiastic message about specifically performing in Madison from Amit Peled.

You can also hear and see past performances from Peled and del Pino at the Salon Piano Series on YouTube:

From February 2016, Amit Peled performs on Pablo Casals’ cello: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yb-SE80eDg

From November 2015, Daniel del Pino performs Chopin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tnvbk_v2Xk

For more information about this concert and the full season of six concerts, including subscription tickets, go to: https://salonpianoseries.org

This concert is supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Classical music: This Friday night, the Wisconsin Union Theater presents a world-class Spanish string quartet and will also announce the special concerts to mark its centennial anniversary next season

February 28, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

Think of it as a two-fer, and then some, at the Wisconsin Union Theater this Friday night, March 1.

The main event is the Madison debut of a world-class string quartet from Spain.

The other event is the announcement of the schedule for the Concert Series’ 2019-2020 season — the series’ 100th season.

The first event is the concert by Cuarteto Casals (below) at 7:30 p.m. in Shannon Hall.

Prices for the event are: the general public, $25-40; for Union members, $25-36; for UW faculty and staff members, $25-38; for young people, $20; and for UW-Madison students, $10. Tickets can be bought online, by phone at 608-265-ARTS (2787) or in person. See locations and hours here.

The program includes the String Quartet in C Major “The Bird,” Op. 33, No. 3, by Franz Joseph Haydn; the String Quartet No. 3 by Bela Bartok; selections from the Fantasies for String Quartet by Henry Purcell; and the String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10, by Claude Debussy. (You can hear the Cuarteto Casals play a movement of a different Haydn string quartet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

Cuarteto Casals was founded in 1997 at the Escuela Reina Sofia in Madrid. They are named after great 20th-century Catalan cellist Pau (Pablo) Casals (below). Members of the quartet are Vera Martinez Mehner and Abel Tomas, violins; Jonathan Brown, viola; and Arnau Tomas, cello.

The group achieved international recognition after winning First Prizes at the London and Brahms-Hamburg competitions. After receiving the prestigious Burletti-Buitoni Trust award designed to assist young musicians, the quartet acquired a matching set of Baroque and Classical period bows, used to distinguish between musical styles.

The year 2017 marked the 20th anniversary of the quartet, and also the start of a commemorative project: a six-concert series of the complete Beethoven quartets, accompanied by six commissioned works from great composers since the 17th century.

The quartet was selected as ambassadors of Catalan culture by the Generalitat of Catalunya, and accompanies the King of Spain on diplomatic visits.

It is the quartet-in-residence at the Spanish Royal Palace through 2020 and the quartet-in-residence at the Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya in Barcelona.

Carol Carlson (below) will offer a free pre-concert lecture at 6 p.m. Carol holds both Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees in violin performance from the UW-Madison.

Carlson dedicates herself to music education as co-founder, co-director and teacher of Music con Brio, a non-profit organization that provides affordable violin lessons and equipment for students at Emerson Elementary School in Madison. Music con Brio (below, in a photo by Scott Maurer) will perform on the stage of Shannon Hall from 7 to 7:20 p.m.

This program was supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts. The media sponsor is WORT 89.9 FM.

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Classical music: Famous and historic cellist Pablo Casals and his 1733 cello come alive again through the artistry of Amit Peled. Plus, the Quey Percussion Duo gives a FREE recital Thursday night at the UW-Madison

March 1, 2016
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ALERT: This Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall, guest artists the Quey Percussion Duo – Gene Koshinsky and Tim Broscious – will perform an eclectic combination of original and existing repertoire for percussion duo. Sorry, no word about specific works on the program.

By Jacob Stockinger

Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker, who also took the performance photos. 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 for 12 years hosted an early music show every other Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. He serves on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.

By John W. Barker

Once again, Farley’s House of Pianos has shown what a unique outpost it is for classical music in Madison.

On last Saturday night, it presented the brilliant young Israeli-American cellist Amit Peled (below), with his working accompanist, Noreen Cassidy-Polera, having snared them along the line of their current national tour.

Peled will be recalled from his performance of the Schumann Cello Concerto with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra in March of 2015.

For this visit, he brought with him not only his own talents, but a remarkable instrument. This was a cello made in 1733 by Matteo Gofriller, once owned and played on by no less than Pablo Casals (below). Two years ago, it was entrusted to Peled on loan by Marta Casals Istomin, the great cellist’s widow.

For the recital at Farley’s, Peled played a program that Casals had presented himself back in 1915. Thus, listeners heard a century-old program, played on an almost 300-year old instrument, accompanied on a hundred-year-old (1914) Mason and Hamlin piano restored by the Farley workshop.

Before the program began, the history of this cello and its maker was discussed by Dan Hendricks (below), a local maker and repairer of string instruments.

The cello (below) is a handsome playing-piece of burnished color. It underwent serious restoration after a long period without being played. It has an extraordinarily rich sound through its entire range—a fact that Peled has been learning to exploit, on his own terms. In effect, he played on it as if making love to it, bringing out sound ranging from almost thunderously bold to exquisitely delicate.

That range of playing technique was, indeed, the image of Peled’s own remarkable artistry. And the 1915 program was his revival of what used to be typical of a concert menu, in the form of a veritable dinner.

The appetizer was an adaptation of an Oboe Sonata by George Frideric Handel, followed then by the “steak”, the Third of the Sonatas for Unaccompanied Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. After an intermission, the “salad” was Beethoven’s witty variations on Mozart’s “Bei Männern” duet from The Magic Flute opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Then followed an array of “desserts”: three short pieces by Gabriel Fauré, an aria by Bach in transcription, and an aptly titled “Allegro appassionato” by Camille Saint-Saëns. (You can hear Peled play a Faure piece, “Elegy,” on the Goffriller cello in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

All this music was presented with sensitivity, power and endlessly moving nuance by Peled (below). As if his musical artistry were not enough, however, he talked about the “dessert” pieces with the audience, showing fine historical perspective, wittily presented. He even took questions from the house.

Beyond that, he and Cassidy-Polera stayed on after the concert to talk at length with any audience member interested—following, as he pointed out, a practice of Casals himself in his appearances.

It was, in all, a remarkable musical evening, teaching us much about fine old instruments, delighting us with wide-ranging selections, and revealing a superb musical artist who is also a warm and wonderful human being.

Classical music: Cellist Amit Peled will recreate a Pablo Casals concert from a century ago using Casals’ own cello. He performs on Saturday night at Farley’s House of Pianos.

February 26, 2016
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By Jacob Stockinger

These days, the gifted Israeli-born cellist Amit Peled is touring the country and recreating a concert given by Pablo Casals (below) from a century ago using Casals’ own cello, a 1733 Goffriller cello that was loaned to him by Casals widow Marta Casals Istomin.

Peled teaches at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and has performed several times with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and at other local venues.

Here is a link to his web site:

http://www.amitpeled.com

Peled (below) will perform the centennial program this Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. in Madison during his third appearance at Farley’s House of Pianos. He will be accompanied by a restored 1914 Mason and Hamlin piano, which was his preference. Farley’s is located at 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west side not far from the West Towne Mall.

The program includes music by George Frideric Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Gabriel Faure and Camille Saint-Saens.

Contrary to the rumor The Ear heard, the concert is NOT sold out, though Farley’s says that tickets are indeed selling briskly.

Advance tickets are $45; $50 at the door. Full-time students get in for $15, but those tickets must be purchased in advance and on-line, and are NOT available at the door. Service fees not included. For reservations, you can call 608 271-2626.

Amit Peled discusses the Casals cello and the story behind it in a YouTube video at the bottom.

For more information including the specific program and background, visit:

http://salonpianoseries.org/concerts.html

Classical music: The Ear turns matchmaker – and helps amateur musicians to connect

January 8, 2016
2 Comments

By Jacob Stockinger

It started out simply as a desire to help.

But now The Ear has turned out to be a matchmaker.

You may recall that a University of Wisconsin-Madison bacteriology professor Kenneth Hammel is an amateur baroque bassoonist. He asked if The Ear might have suggestions for his finding a chamber music partner.

So The Ear suggested posting his request, and he agreed.

Here is the original link:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/classical-music-an-amateur-baroque-bassoon-player-wants-to-play-who-can-help-make-that-happen/

Now it turns out the experiment worked and was a success.

So The Well-Tempered Ear now serves as a sort of online dating service for classical musicians who seek musical partners to play with. And as a fierce advocate of amateur music-making, he likes that role!

Here is the follow-up letter that Hammel sent to The Ear:

“Hi Jake:

“I wanted to let you know that it worked. Two people contacted me after you posted my letter and picture. One of them you certainly know — Paul Baker. He and I played together on cello and bassoon this weekend.

“The other person, named Betty Cohen, is a recorder player who says she’ll contact me shortly to arrange a session.

“So, many thanks to you for getting the word out on your blog.”

“In case you want to hear a sample of baroque bassoon playing, I’ve attached an mp3 (not for dissemination!) of me playing a short fantasia by Jean Daniel Braun, ca. 1730.

“Best wishes for the new year,

“Ken”

“PS: The music, and an interesting commentary on it (at the end of the score) is at:

http://conquest.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/b/bf/IMSLP349300-PMLP564250-Tel41a4fag-cel.pdf

The bass line for the sonata was long thought to be lost, but was then discovered in a different library than the one that holds the original solo part.

A very good YouTube performance on baroque bassoon (4 separate links for the 4 movements) is at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO9l1PYJZEY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_ZyJp-avc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKNtxgEoatg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2IyM3pKR6A

A quick search for the ensemble, Concordi Musici, indicates that their bassoonist is named Josip Casadella.

And The Ear also heard about success from the other chamber music partner, Paul Baker (below), who wrote with his usual sense of self-deprecating humor.

Paul Baker, you might recall, is a jazz fan in addition to being a radio host for WSUM, the student radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He hosts a program and writes a blog called Only Strings:

Here is a link to his blog:

https://onlystringswsum.wordpress.com

“My friend:

“I thank you for posting Ken Hammel’s request for baroque practice buddies. We are now working independently on sections of a Sonatina in A Minor, TWV 41, by Georg Philipp Telemann and will meet soon to begin rehearsing.

“Yo-Yo Casals”

Forgive The Ear’s pride.

But now he may have to seek out a violinist or cellist or another pianist for himself, as an avid amateur pianist, to play with.

Anyone interested in playing with The Ear?

Anyone else want to find a different music partner?

Leave word in the COMMENT section.

Or maybe it should be called the PERSONALS?

Classical music: Farley’s House of Pianos announces its Salon Piano Series for this season and offers subscription tickets for the first time. It opens on Sunday, Oct. 4.

September 17, 2015
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear’s friends at Farley’s House of Pianos write:

The Salon Piano Series offers inspiring performances in an intimate salon setting. Each concert is followed by an artist’s reception and some performances include introductions by music scholars and commentators.

Season tickets are being offered for the first time this year and they provide substantial savings as well as the assurance that you won’t be left out. You can buy tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com

Here is the lineup:

DANIEL DEL PINO – Sunday, Oct. 4, 2015, 4 p.m.

Daniel del Pino (below) returns to play music by Felix Mendelssohn, Cesar Franck‘s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, and Twelve Etudes, Op. 10, by Frederic Chopin. (You can hear him perform a transcription of the “Ritual Fire Dance” by Manuel de Falla during a concert at Farley’s House of Pianos in January of 2013.)

ALESSIO BAX and LUCILLE CHUNG (below) – Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, 4 p.m.

This concert will include pieces for one piano-four hands and for two pianos. The two-piano pieces will be played on rare “twin” pianos restored by Farley’s House of Pianos: a 1914 Mason & Hamlin CC and a 1914 Mason & Hamlin BB.

CELLIST AMIT PELED (below) – Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, 7:30 p.m.

Hear the exact program that famed cellist Pablo Casals performed 100 years ago, played on Casals’ own 1733 Goffriller cello with Noreen Polera accompanying on a 1914 Mason and Hamlin piano restored by Farley’s House of Pianos.

DICK HYMAN, Jazz Clinic-Lecture, Saturday, May 7, 2016, 4 p.m.

Jazz legend Dick Hyman presents his third clinic at Salon Piano Series.

Dick Hyman – Jazz Concert – Sunday, May 8, 2016, 4 p.m.

Dick will play solo piano for half the concert. Then bassist John Schaffer and drummer John Lombardo will join Dick in a jazz trio.

Since he began his career in the early 1950s, Dick Hyman has been a pianist, organist, arranger, music director and composer while recording over 100 albums under his own name.

Hyman is a masterful improviser with a unique style of piano that spans from early jazz such as Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton to George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and beyond. He is one of the first people to record on the Moog synthesizer and his track “Minotaur” landed on the Billboard magazine’s US Top 40.

Hyman has served as composer, arranger, conductor and pianist for 12 Woody Allen films. He also won an Emmy for his original score to the daytime drama “Sunshine’s on the Way” and for musical direction of a PBS special on Eubie Blake. His recording, Dick Hyman’s “Century of Jazz Piano” is an encyclopedic series of solo performances that covers the last 100 years in jazz over the course of 121 performances.

All concerts are held at Farley’s House of Pianos, 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west wide near West Towne.

See complete concert programs and more at www.salonpianoseries.org

Salon Piano Series Tickets Available Online at www.brownpapertickets.com

Tickets cost $45 in advance, $50 at the door. The Jazz Clinic is $20.

Buy the series for $160, and save $40. Tickets are also available at Farley’s House of Pianos and Orange Tree Imports. Service fees may apply.

Classical music: The Ear gives shout-outs to guest University Opera director David Ronis – who should be hired permanent full-time by the UW-Madison — and longtime Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra conductor Andrew Sewell because they both know how to make Mozart our contemporary. Plus, here are the results of The Final Forte.

March 26, 2015
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ALERTS:

1) In case you don’t already know them, here are the results of last night’s Final Forte: First Prize went to violinist Julian Rhee; Second Prize went to pianist Vivian Wilhelms; and Honorable Mentions went to harpist Maya Pierick and pianist Isabella Wu.

Here is a link to a complete story about the high school concerto competition:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/classical-music-education-this-wednesday-night-the-annual-the-final-round-of-the-bolz-young-artist-concerto-competition-with-the-madison-symphony-orchestra-will-be-broadcast-live-on-wisconsin-public/

2) This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, to be held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. in the Landmark Auditorium of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Meeting House of the First Unitarian Society of Madison at 900 University Bay Drive, will feature soprano Consuelo Sanudo (below) and pianist Jeff Gibbens who will perform music by Henri Duparc, Claude Debussy, Arnold Schoenberg and Franz Schubert.

By Jacob Stockinger

It has really been a busy past couple of weeks, with so many concerts that The Ear couldn’t even preview all of them. So it’s time to catch up and offer some critical appraisals of what I heard.

Let me begin with some background.

The supremely gifted, articulate and critically acclaimed American pianist Jeremy Denk, who has performed two solo recitals in Madison for the Wisconsin Union Theater, is fond of saying the he strives to make music sound as radical today as it was when it was first composed and first heard.

There is wisdom in that approach, which balances out the other great movement of the 20th-century that opened up our ears to another kind of difference. I am referring to the use of period instruments and historically informed performance practices to recapture how the music originally sounded.

But lately I had two examples that showed me just how exciting such an established “museum” composer as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (below) can be if made to sound and look contemporary and radical to our modern ears without going backwards.

The two examples I have in mind are from recent performances of late works, when Mozart was in full command of his art: The opera “The Magic Flute” as presented by University Opera under the guest stage director David Ronis, who hails from New York City and teaches at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College and the City University of New York as well as at Hofstra University; and the well-known penultimate Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, as performed by the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra under Andrew Sewell.

THE MAGIC FLUTE

The award-winning David Ronis did several things to The Magic Flute that The Ear really liked and found effective.

He made some judicious cuts in an otherwise overlong work.

He used surtitles for the German text.

He used spoken contemporary vernacular English for the dialogue. That not only made the opera understandable, but also lent drive to push it along and give it momentum as well as contemporaneity.

Most of all, Ronis also used cinematic Bollywood-like dance gestures and choreography (below, in photos by Michael R. Anderson) – along with the bright fusion of East-West hybrid costumes and sets that added such movement and energy, color and humor, to the score.

I mean, don’t we see enough of opera singers just standing still, arms outstretched, with only their mouths moving?

Of course, some people and critics did not like the changes, and found them downright treasonous and disrespectful or just plain wrong.

Silly them. The Ear says the updating worked just fine. Great art is there to experiment with, not just depict. Art lives in time. It is why director Peter Sellars is such a forceful and creative influence in the world of classical music. If only classical music could be less classical and more musical! Entertainment is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, after all, why the performing arts exist.

I also think the changes are one reason why there were four sold-out performances -– not just the usual three -– and why I saw so many young people in the audience. It was, in short, a fun production.

To my eyes and ears, this production — coupled with his production of Benjamin Britten‘s “Albert Herring” in the fall — showed what a smart move it would be to hire David Ronis (below, in a photo by Luke DeLalio) full-time to lead the University Opera. He clearly knows how to get the best out of students, has a very personal artistic vision and is willing to shake things up – which both we and The Great Artists such as Mozart can use.

THE BIG G-MINOR SYMPHONY

As for the Mozart symphony – the big late one in G minor not the little early one — it was just part of an outstanding concert turned in by Sewell and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra with the impressive guest cellist Amit Peled (below) and his unbelievably resonant cello that belonged to and was played by Pablo Casals. Together, man and instrument justifiably brought down the house.

But other parts of the program, which included works by Frank Bridge and David Popper, should not be overlooked or underestimated.

Conductor Andrew Sewell (below) has long demonstrated his ability to work with such Classical-era composers as Franz Joseph Haydn and Mozart as well as Franz Schubert and Ludwig van Beethoven. And here, in a very familiar work, you could hear why.

While Mozart was one of music’s great melodists, Sewell’s interpretation emphasized tempo, rhythm and repetitive motifs even as he brought out the various voices, counterpoint and melodic lines.

This Mozart had drive and pep. (You can hear the familiar first movement, with an interesting abstract graph profile, in a YouTube video at the bottom.)

In fact, the third Minuet movement sounded downright modern – a kind of percussive precursor to minimalism.

This was exciting Mozart, far from the genteel and primly elegant and blandly pleasant Mozart that The Ear refers to as Music-Box Mozart.

This playing by the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (below) was precise and dramatic. It made you sit up and take notice. It engaged you.

It also showed why Mozart was such an exception to his age –- why his contemporaries and those who followed him so revered his talent and music. He was a radical in his day but we often overlook how he pushed the boundaries of music closer to modernism.

So The Ear offers shout-outs and hearty thanks to both David Ronis and Andrew Sewell for helping us to hear Mozart once again as a contemporary — not just a statically beautiful blast from the past.

Both cases proved to be an exciting and unforgettable experience. The Ear hopes we are in for more of them, particularly in Mozart’s symphonies and piano concertos.

Did you hear the opera and/or the symphony?

What did you think of the approaches to Mozart?

The Ear wants to hear.

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