The Well-Tempered Ear
Starting TODAY, the First Unitarian Society of Madison offers three free, online mini-concerts at noon on Fridays to celebrate Women’s History Month
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post about three free, online mini-concerts to celebrate Women’s History Month through the Friday Noon Musicales at the First Unitarian Society of Madison.
The concerts start today:
UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
• To celebrate Women’s History Month, the First Unitarian Society of Madison will present three Friday Noon Musicales during March.
• All three will be guest produced by Iva Ugrcic.
• Iva Ugrcic (below) is Founding Artistic Director of the Madison-based LunART Festival, which supports, inspires, promotes and celebrates women in the arts.
• Each program will feature highlights from past LunART Festival performances.
• Each program will be approximately 45 minutes long.
DATES AND PROGRAMS
Each video will become available at noon on the indicated date, and will remain available for viewing in perpetuity.
This Friday, March 12 — Works by living composers Jocelyn Hagen, Salina Fisher and Missy Mazzoli (below top), as well as Romantic-era composer Clara Schumann (below bottom, Getty Images). Specific titles are not named.
Performers include: Iva Ugrcic, flute; Matthew Onstad, trumpet; Tom Macaluso, trombone; Elena Ross and Todd Hammes, percussion; Kyle Johnson, Jason Kutz, Satoko Hayami and Yana Avedyan, piano; Beth Larson and Isabella Lippi, violin; Karl Lavine, cello (below); ARTemis Ensemble.
Friday, March 19 — Works by living composers Linda Kachelmeier, Elsa M’bala, Doina Rotaru (below top) and Eunike Tanzil, as well as Medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen (below bottom) and Romantic-era Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel. Specific works are not named. (In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear flutist Iva Ugrcic play Doina Rotaru’s haunting “Japanese Garden.”)
Performers include: Iva Ugrcic, flute; Jose Ignacio Santos Aquino, clarinet; Midori Samson, bassoon; Breta Saganski and Dave Alcorn, percussion; Satoko Hayami (below), Jason Kutz and Eunike Tanzil, piano; ARTemis Ensemble
Friday, March 26 — Alexandra Olsavsky, Edna Alejandra Longoria, Kate Soper and Jenni Brandon as well as post-Romantic era American composer Amy Beach (below bottom). Specific pieces are not named.
Performers include: ARTemis Ensemble; a string quartet with violinists Isabella Lippi and Laura Burns, violist Fabio Saggin, and cellist Mark Bridges (below); Jeff Takaki, bass; Vincent Fuh and Kyle Johnson, piano; Jennifer Lien, soprano; Iva Ugrcic, flute.
THREE OPTIONS FOR ATTENDING
• Website — https://www.fusmadison.org/musicales
• Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/fusmadison
• YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/fusmadison > “Playlists” > “Music at FUS”
ABOUT THE “FRIDAY NOON MUSICALES” RECITAL SERIES
• The Friday Noon Musicales at First Unitarian Society is a free noon-hour recital series offered as a gift to the community.
• Founded in 1971, 2020-2021 is the series’ 50th season.
• The series has featured some of the finest musicians in the Midwest, who flock to perform in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Landmark Auditorium.
• The music performed is mostly classical, but folk, jazz and musical theater styles are presented on occasion.
• During the pandemic, the Musicales have largely been on hiatus.
JUSTICE AND MUSIC INITIATIVE (JAM)
• The Justice And Music Initiative (JAM) at the First Unitarian Society of Madison represents a commitment to more socially equitable and earth-friendly music practices.
• This commitment includes music performed on our campus, both for worship and non-worship events.
• To help achieve our goal, we recognize and celebrate recognition days and months with our musical selections, such as Hispanic Heritage Month (9/15–10/15), LGBT History Month (October); Native American Indian Heritage Month (November), Black History Month (February), Women’s History Month (March), and African-American Music Appreciation Month (prev. Black Music Month; June).
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Classical music: The Ancora String Quartet welcomes back first violinist Leanne Kelso League and turns in an outstanding performance of an unusual program to kick off its new season.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to a technical glitch, a post about the Madison Symphony Orchestra principal clarinet Joseph Morris was mistakenly released earlier today. It was and is scheduled to appear tomorrow, getting posted tonight at midnight. The Ear regrets the mistake and any inconvenience.
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 Ancora String Quartet opened its new season at the First Unitarian Society of Madison on Saturday night. An immediate feature of the event was the return of Leanne Kelso League as the group’s first violinist.
(In the photo below taken by John W. Barker, League is on the far left followed by violinist Robin Ryan, cellist Benjamin Whitcomb and violist Marika Fischer Hoyt.)
Her absence on sabbatical for the past two seasons has prompted some experimentation, last season with two different guest first violinists. Each was individual, and brought individual new qualities with each shift.
But it was good to have League back again, bringing her powerful and incisive qualities of playing and leadership once more to the group.
The program was an interesting venture in relative novelties.
The opening work was the penultimate string quartet by Felix Mendelssohn (below), his Op. 44, No. 3. Mendelssohn’s chamber works, especially his quartets, are often kept in the shadows; but they deserve attention, especially this one. In E-flat major, it offers first two movements marked by stormy assertiveness. The third movement is a thing of warm beauty and slightly sad nostalgia, while the final movement seemed to establish a balance between the contrasting moods of what preceded.
The performance was superb, certainly belying the idea many have that Mendelssohn was just a lightweight composer. This is powerful music. That the Ancora performance was so strong and passionately articulated certainly owed a lot to League’s renewed participation.
The surprise of the program, though, was the second of the three quartets by Ernst von Dohnanyi (1877-1960, below). The chamber music by this Late Romantic or Post-Romantic Hungarian master is not often performed and recorded, but the Ancora performance made it clear it should be heard more often.
In D-flat major, this quartet dates from 1906, and shows its roots well back in 19th-century traditions. Its three movements are filled with beautiful melodiousness amid busy aggressiveness, and the work is, in effect, a kind of debate between such opposed spirits. (You can hear the lovely third movement in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
The members of the Ancora — who also play with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra — gave it a superbly committed, convincing rendition. More, please!
Finally, the quartet played one of the few chamber works by the Viennese Hugo Wolf (1860-1903, below in 1902), famous for his German Lieder or art songs. The Italian Serenade is certainly his most recurrent concert work, a piece of durable froth that is always a pleasure to hear, and provides an upbeat way to end a program.
The Ancora String Quartet is scheduled to return on May 21.
Tags: Ancora String Quartet, art songs, Arts, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, Dohnanyi, First Unitarian Society of Madison, German, History, Hugo Wolf, Hungary, Italian Serenade, Italy, Jacob Stockinger, John W. Barker, Late Romantic, lieder, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Medieval, Mendelssohn, Music, Orchestra, post-Romantic, Quartet, Romantic, Serenade, String quartet, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Vienna, Viola, Violin, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, WORT-FM 89.9, YouTube
Classical music: Pianist Yuja Wang’s controversial and sexy micro-skirts are all part of her musical performance, says New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe in his rave review of Wang’s Carnegie Hall recital last week.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear recently wondered about the relative silence and quiet of the young pianist Yuja Wang.
No more.
Wang has own more than her fair share of rave reviews and Grammy nominations for her intense and virtuosic playing. But she has also sparked controversies with her sexy and minimalist fashion that some people deem inappropriate concert attire that distracts from the music-making.
Witness Wang’s performances in the Hollywood Bowl of Rachmaninoff’s man-eating Piano Concerto No. 3. Here are photos and also a link to another post I did about Wang — you can find many more about Yuja Wang by using the search engine on The Ear blog site –that drew a lot of responses and comments from readers:
But last week New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe (below op) found Wang’s controversial attire to go beyond marketing and hype to be an integral part of the effect of her terrific recital — a true “performance,” Woolfe says, in part precisely because of her short skirt and spiky heels attire . It was in Carnegie Hall (below bottom in a photo by Ian Douglas for The New York Times) and featured big and sexy post-Romantic works by Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Ravel, plus Chopin and other composers including Lowell Liebermann. (At bottom is a YouTube video of some shorter Scriabin works that Wang performed in Santa Fe.)
Here is a link to Woolfe’s review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/arts/music/yuja-wang-at-carnegie-hall.html?_r=0
The Ear also thinks that Yuja Wang’s taste in fashion not only helps her with PR and promotion or publicity, but also serves as a mirror of or natural accompaniment to her high-powered way of playing. She surely is a major pianist for a new century. (Below is another photo, by Ruby Washington of The New York Times, of Wang wearing a long black gown with a thigh-high slit for her Carnegie Hall debut, which also won a rave review from the Times’ senior music critic Anthony Tommasini.
What do you think of Woolfe’s point, his linking the fashion and the music? Are you convinced?
The Ear wants to hear.
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