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By Jacob Stockinger
This coming Wednesday, Feb. 19, features two noteworthy concerts, one by Just Bach at noon and the other by the Middleton Community Orchestra at 7:30 p.m.
Here are details:
JUST BACH
For this month’s FREE one-hour Just Bach concert (below, in a photo by John W. Barker) on this Wednesday at noon in Luther Memorial Church, 1021 University Avenue, attention will turn from father to son.
The concert features music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (below), the eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach.
The concert opens with a movement from the Sonata in A Minor, Wq. 70/4, H. 85, performed by organist Mark Brampton Smith.
The program continues with a recently rediscovered Cantata, “Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Stande” (I Am Content with My Station), featuring bass-baritone Professor Paul Rowe, and the Just Bach period-instrument players led by Kangwon Kim.
Just Bach co-founder and soprano Sarah Brailey (below) will lead the chorale sing-along, a beloved audience-participation feature of these programs.
The program concludes with eight selections from the “Geistliche Oden und Lieder ‘Gellert Lieder’” (Sacred Odes and Songs ‘Gellert Songs’), performed by students of Paul Rowe (below, in a photo by Michael R. Anderson), accompanied by organist Mark Brampton Smith.
This will also be the first concert with a mother and daughter performing, with violinist Leanne League in the Just Bach players, and soprano Cecilia League in the Paul Rowe studio.
Performers are: Sarah Brailey, soprano; Paul Rowe, baritone; Kangwon Kim, violin 1 (below); Leanne League, violin 2; Katrin Talbot, viola; Anton TenWolde, cello; Mark Brampton Smith, organ; Allyson Mills, Cecilia League, Carly Ochoa and Ella Anderson, sopranos; and Jack Innes, Jake Elfner, Nick Schinner and Chase Kozak, baritones.
The concert is free and open to the public, with a goodwill offering collected.
Other Just Bach concerts this spring, all Wednesdays at noon are on: March 25, April 15 and May 20.
MIDDLETON COMMUNITY ORCHESTRA
At 7:30 p.m., the mostly amateur and critically acclaimed Middleton Community Orchestra (below) will perform its winter concert as part of its 10th anniversary season.
The concert takes place in the comfortable and acoustically pleasing Middleton Performing Arts Center (below, in a photo by Brian Ruppert) that is attached to Middleton High School, 2100 Bristol Street.
The program, under conductor-composer Steve Kurr, includes the “Lachian Dances” by Leos Janacek; “Finlandia” by Jean Sibelius; and the Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor by Max Bruch with guest soloist Paran Amirinazari (below). (You can hear the finale of the violin concerto, played by Sarah Chang, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Tickets are $15 for adults. Students are admitted free.
The box office opens at 6:30 p.m. and auditorium doors open at 7 p.m.
There will be a meet-and-greet reception (below) with the orchestra players and audience members after the concert.
For more information about upcoming concerts, how to join the orchestra and how to support it, call (608) 212-8690 or go to: http://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
You might recall that this Friday night, July 12, at 6 p.m., the critically acclaimed Willy Street Chamber Players will open their fifth summer season at Immanuel Lutheran Church at 1021 Spaight Street on the near east side. (Tickets are $15.)
Core members of the Willys (below, from front left) are: violist Rachel Hauser, violinist Eleanor Bartsch, cellist Lindsay Crabb, cellist Mark Bridges and violinist Paran Amirinazari.
Rachel Hauser will not play. But the others will be joined by two guest violists and University of Wisconsin-Madison alumni: prize-winning Danny Kim (below top) of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; and Nicholas Jeffery (below bottom) of Chicago’s Ursa Ensemble. Here are links to more information about each of them:
https://www.bso.org/strings/danny-kim-viola.aspx
For more information and biographies of the local performers, go to the website: http://www.willystreetchamberplayers.org/2019-summer-series.html
Put your cursor first on ABOUT and then on PLAYERS.
But The Ear has now received word that the Willys will also perform a FREE concert that is open to the public on Saturday night at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Oakwood Village West (now called University Woods) retirement center, 6205 Mineral Point Road. The concert is sponsored by Kato Perlman (below), a well-known and generous supporter of classical music in Madison.
The program is the same as the previous night’s except for the contemporary work “Study for String Instrument No. 1” (2007) by Simon Steen-Andersen: the String Quintet No. 1 in A minor (1826), Op.18, by Felix Mendelssohn (1826), and the String Quintet No. 2 in C minor (1787), K. 406/516b by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (You can hear the first movement of the Mozart quintet, played by the Dover Quartet, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Now in their fifth season, the Willy Street Chamber Players (WSCP) has become an established part of the vibrant Williamson Street neighborhood on Madison’s east side.
Recently recognized in Madison Magazine’s prestigious “Best of Madison” reader poll in the category of “Best Classical Music Group,” WSCP has received numerous accolades for its accessible and exciting performances, intelligent and fun programming, and community partnerships.
By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who hosts an early music show once a month on Sunday morning on WORT-FM 89.9 FM. For years, he served on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
At Immanuel Lutheran Church last Friday night, the Willy Street Chamber Players ended the 2018 summer season – their fourth — with a concert full of fascinating variety.
Four works were performed, each introduced by one of the players. Personnel shifted according to the scorings.
To begin, a core group of the organization (below, from left) — violinists Eleanor Bartsch and Paran Amirinazari, cellists Lindsay Crabb and Mark Bridges, and violist Beth Larson — played Luigi Boccherini’s Cello Quintet in C major (G. 324), which has the Italian title translatable as “Night Music of the Streets of Madrid.” (The piece, which has military or martial aspects to it, was featured in the soundtrack to the popular film “Master and Commander,” which you can hear in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Typical of the composer’s prolific writing for string quintets, it is unique in offering in its seven movements a dusk-to-dawn evocation of Madrid’s street life in Boccherini’s day. This delightful work was performed with relish.
Next came a contemporary work by American composer Andrew Norman (below top). Written in his 20s, Night Screens (2002),for flute and string quartet, is a playful work inspired by the asymmetrical stained glass windows designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
The music is quite tonal, but very episodic in its succession of tempos and rhythms. For this work, Amirinazari, Larson and Crabb were joined by a friend of the composer, flutist Timothy Hagen (below), now a faculty member of the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music.
Rarely heard in concert, but a really fascinating novelty is Sergei Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes, Op. 34. This was composed in 1919, during the composer’s stay in the U.S. It is based on two melodies whose actual Jewish origins are in doubt, but their juxtaposition and elaboration are fascinating to follow.
The colorful scoring is for clarinet, piano, and string quartet, so this drew other guest artists, Alicia Lee (below top) also of the UW faculty, and pianist Thomas Kasdorf (below bottom) to join Bartsch, Amirinazari, Larson and Bridges.
Finally came a rare opportunity to encounter Johann Strauss II collaborating with Arnold Schoenberg, or rather vice-versa. For a fund-raising concert on behalf of his radical atonal ensemble in Vienna in 1925, Schoenberg made a chamber arrangement of the great waltz master’s Kaiser-Walzer or “Emperor Waltz.”
He scored it for flute, clarinet, piano and string quartet — perfectly allowing seven of the eight performers (less Crabb) to offer a triumphant grand finale. Even in such a lean and reduced format, Schoenberg faithfully conveyed Strauss’s melodic genius, and brought the large audience enthusiastically to its feet.
The Willys continue to match great enterprise in programming with superb artistry in playing, all in a summer season that leaves us hungering for the next one.
ALERT: This Friday’s FREE Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features violinist Tyrone Greive, retired UW-Madison Professor and former Madison Symphony Orchestra concertmaster, with pianist Michael Keller in the Sonata in E Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the Sonata in G Major by Johannes Brahms. The concert runs from 12:15 to 1 p.m.
By Jacob Stockinger
Want to see where music and social justice meet?
WYSO Music Makers (below) will give its inaugural concert as a part of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras on this Sunday, Nov. 19, at UW-Madison Music Hall, 925 Bascom Mall on Bascom Hill, at 4 p.m.
The program includes pieces by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Harold Arlen and more. (No specific titles were provided.)
Admission is FREE.
Free parking is available on Sundays in the nearby Grainger Hall garage.
The Madison Music Makers program was acquired by WYSO in July of 2017. Currently directed by accomplished violinist Paran Amirinazari (below), WYSO Music Makers aims to enrich and develop the music skills of children from all backgrounds in an inclusive, non-competitive environment. (You can hear more background about Music Makers in the YouTube videos below and at the bottom)
“We are proud of each of our students’ progress, their positive attitudes, the kindness they bring to class and show each other, and their openness to the changes this year,” said Amirinazari (below), a UW-Madison graduate who plays with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Willy Street Chamber Players and is the concertmaster of the Middleton Community Orchestra. “We are so proud they have chosen music as part of their voice.”
For more information about the program, call the WYSO office at (608) 263-3320, or e-mail Paran Amirinazari at paran@wysomusic.org.
WYSO Music Makers is supported by the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation
By Jacob Stockinger
Here is a special posting, a review written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker. Barker (below) is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who 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
The Willy Street Chamber Players (below) gave the second concert of their 2016 season on Friday night at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 1021 Spright Street, on Madison’s near east side.
The program might have been called the “three Sch-es” in view of the alphabetical incipits of the three composers involved.
The first item was titled The Violinists in My Life, composed in 2011 by Laura Schwendinger (below), the American composer currently on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.
The Belgian violin virtuoso and composer Eugène Ysaÿe set an example with his set of six Sonatas, Op. 27, for solo violin, each one a tribute to a great musician with whom he had worked. So Schwendinger composed five pieces for violin and piano, each one a kind of character piece about violinists with whom she has had fruitful contact.
The style can be sharp and abrupt, but there is a clear individuality to each piece, evoking the different personalities. The first of the five is dedicated to UW-Madison alumna Eleanor Bartsch (below), one of our Willys, and she played the whole set, deeply engaged in it, with pianist Thomas Kasdorf, also a graduate of the UW-Madison.
Kasdorf (below) joined another of the group’s violinists, Paran Amirinazari, who also graduated from the UW-Madison, in a rarely heard late work by Franz Schubert, the Fantasie in C Major (D.934).(You can hear it played by violinist Benjamin Beilman, who has performed with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Schubert’s compositions for violin and piano are rarely heard in concerts these days, but this one has particular interest in that its latter portion is another of the composers set of variations on one of his own songs—in this case, the beautiful Sei mir gegrüsst. The total piece has a lot of lively passage work, which Amarinazari played with a mix of flair and affection.
The crowning work was that extraordinary string sextet by Arnold Schoenberg (below), Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night). Composed in 1899 at the beginning of the composer’s career, it catches him still emerging from Late Romantic sensibilities, a good way before his radical move into the 12-tone idiom he created.
The score is just a trifle longish for the musical content, but its gorgeous chromatic richness is irresistible. It was inspired by a poem of Richard Dehmel, and both the original German text and an English translation were supplied to the audience, an interesting touch.
Above all, however, the performance was glowing, avoiding too much sentimental lushness, but conveying the emotionally charged writing with beautiful balance.
A clever touch, too, was the sitting pattern chosen, with the two violas facing the two violins and the two cellos in the rear—allowing the recurrent interaction between the first violin and first viola to emerge more clearly.
In sum, this was another wonderful session of first-class music-making by this remarkable assemblage of young talent.
NOTE: A program of music by Ludwig vanBeethoven, Philip Glass and Dmitri Shostakovich will be given next Friday at Immanuel Lutheran, but at NOON; and then that evening (at 8:30 p.m.) the group will participate in a special performance of George Crumb’s “Black Angels” — with an accompanying video — at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in the Overture Center.
The final Friday evening concert will be back at Immanuel Lutheran, at 6 p.m. on Friday, July 29, with music by Baroque composer Arcangelo Corelli (Concerto Grosso), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Clarinet Quintet), and George Enescu (Octet).
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