The Well-Tempered Ear

Should the 1812 Overture be played this Fourth of July?

May 2, 2022
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By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear recently noticed that the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra has once again scheduled the 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky (below) as part of the finale of its Fourth of July concert on the evening of July 6, 2022.

The performance is part of this summer’s FREE Concerts on the Square (COS) by the WCO that run on six consecutive Wednesday nights from June 29 through Aug. 3. Concerts start at 7 p.m. on the King Street corner of the Capitol Square in downtown Madison, and will be conducted by Andrew Sewell.

For more information about the series and individual performers and programs, go to: https://wcoconcerts.org/concerts-tickets/concerts-on-the-square

An asterisk says programs are subject to change.

Which got The Ear to thinking: Should Tchaikovsky’s perennial favorite, the flashy and loud  1812 Overture, be played again this year?

It is a tradition that was started on Independence Day in 1974 by Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops, according to reputable sources. 

But this year might be a very different case because of a quandary that might cause organizers, including PBS’ “A Capitol Fourth,” to rethink the program. 

It is a choice that will confront many musical groups across the U.S., given the current unprovoked brutality and and war crimes being committed by Russia against Ukraine.

After all, many music groups, including the Metropolitan Opera, have already banned Russian performers who support Russian President Vladimir Putin and his unjustified war in Ukraine (below).

So here’s the question: Is it appropriate to play a favorite work celebrating a Russian military victory while Ukraine, the United States and Western allies, including NATO, are desperately trying to defeat Russian forces?

As you may recall, the overture was inspired by Russia’s victory over the invading forces of Napoleon who was attempting go conquer Russia. Like Hitler and the Nazis, Napoleon failed and the Russians prevailed. That is why, in the work, you hear the French national anthem “La Marseillaise” overcome by the chimes and cannons of the Russian victory hymn. (There was no Russian national anthem until 1815.)

Here is a link to more background in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_Overture

Will the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra or other orchestras as well as radio and TV stations around the U.S. find a substitute piece? Perhaps it could be the Ukrainian national anthem that is performed (as in the BBC Proms concert in the YouTube video at the bottom and as many other orchestras around the world, including the Madison Symphony Orchestra and John DeMain, have done).

What else could the WCO and other groups play — especially since Sousa marches are already usually featured on The Fourth?

Do you have a suggestion?

The Ear will be interested to see how the quandary is solved — with explanations and excuses, or with alternative music?

Meanwhile, as comedian Stephen Colbert likes to say: What do you think?

Should the “1812 Overture” be played on this Fourth of July?

Why?

Or why not?

The Ear wants to hear.

 


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It’s Thanksgiving Day. Conductor Marin Alsop, NPR, WQXR, WFMT and Wisconsin Public Radio offer music suggestions. What piece would you choose to mark the holiday?

November 26, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

Today – Thursday, Nov. 26, 2020 — is Thanksgiving Day.

Right now, the U.S. has had more than 12 million cases of COVID-19 with more than 260,000 deaths plus all the alarming signs and conditions that many more cases and deaths are coming in the next several months.

We might be sad that we can’t be with the family and friends we usually celebrate with. But we nonetheless have many things to give thanks for during this strange and tragic time.

We can thank the vaccine researchers; the doctors and nurses; and the other health care workers who take care of Covid patients, even those who don’t observe precautions and bring on their own illness.

We can thank all kinds of people on the front lines — food and transportation workers, for example — who help protect us and care for us.

We can thank the friends, family and others who stay in touch and help get us through these trying times.

And we can thank technology that makes isolating a lot less unbearable because we have telephones, radios, TVs, CD players, computers, cell phones and virtual online ZOOM meetings and gatherings and various other events including live-streamed concerts.

For The Ear, music has never meant more or brought more comfort than during this difficult year. He is giving thanks for that as well as for the other people and things just mentioned.

So what music should we celebrate this year’s emotionally complicated and mixed Thanksgiving holiday with?

Well, you can Google sources and go to YouTube to find compilations of music appropriate to the holiday. (See one playlist lasting 90 minutes in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

Famed classical radio station WQXR in New York City has five suggestions for being musically grateful: https://www.wqxr.org/story/top-five-expressions-thanks-classical-music/

And WFMT in Chicago is offering 20 suggestions based on holiday food: https://www.wfmt.com/2019/11/25/a-complete-thanksgiving-feast-in-20-food-inspired-pieces/

But here are a couple of other suggestions, some local.

Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) is always a reliable source. And tomorrow is no exception.

If WPR programming stays true to past patterns, music by American composers will be emphasized.

Plus, starting at 10 a.m. WPR will broadcast performances from the Honors Concerts (below) by middle and high school students around the state and who participate in the Wisconsin School Music Association. This year, for the first time, the performances will be virtual. But as in past years, they are sure to be moving and even inspiring.

Other fine suggestions from the world-famous conductor Marin Alsop  (below), a Leonard Bernstein protégée, who recently spoke for 7 minutes to NPR Weekend Edition host Scott Simon. 

Here is a link, but you should listen rather than just read the transcript if you want to hear the musical samples: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/21/937448472/this-thanksgiving-put-on-some-music-to-soothe

Do you like any of those suggestions? Were any new to you?

What piece of music would you choose to express gratitude on this particular Thanksgiving?

The Ear wants to hear.

 


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Classical music: Here are many more FREE online and streamed concerts to follow and listen to as you quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic

April 25, 2020
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By Jacob Stockinger

During the COVID-19 public health crisis and coronavirus pandemic, live streaming of concerts has taken off. It started with daily broadcasts of past productions by the Metropolitan Opera and the Berlin Philharmonic.

Local organizations have followed suit. They include the Madison Symphony Orchestra; the “couchertos” of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra; the twice weekly “tiny desk concerts” by the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society sent to email newsletter subscribers and other recorded audiovisual performances; and local recordings made by Rich Samuels and aired on WORT-FM 89.9.

Here is a compilation, from the British radio station Classic FM with many other FREE listings that also get updated: https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/live-streamed-classical-music-concerts-coronavirus/

Here is another listing of FREE live streams and archived performances from Minnesota Public Radio (MPR): https://www.classicalmpr.org/story/2020/03/16/free-online-classical-concerts

And below are several more that The Ear has checked out and recommends:

CARNEGIE HALL LIVE

Carnegie Hall (below), America’s premier concert venue, has started a series of live streams that include world music, jazz and of course classical music.

The format includes conversation and remarks from homes as well as first-rate live performances from the past. (You can also hear many of the concerts on radio station WQXR in New York City: https://www.wqxr.org)

This past week, The Ear heard an outstanding concert with three pianists, all of whom appeared in Madison last season: Emanuel Ax, who performed an all-Beethoven recital at the Wisconsin Union Theater, played the piano and acted as host; Orion Weiss, who performed a Mozart concerto with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra; and Shai Wosner, who gave a terrific master class and a memorable recital on the Salon Piano Series at Farley’s House of Pianos. If you missed it, it is still archived and accessible.

On this Thursday, April 30, at 1 p.m. CDT you can hear violinist Joshua Bell with pianist Jeremy Denk and cellist Steven Isserlis.

Here is a link: https://www.carnegiehall.org/Explore/Watch-and-Listen/Live-with-Carnegie-Hall?sourceCode=31887&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsYigzumB6QIVjIbACh061Qz2EAAYASABEgJE3fD_BwE

DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON

Deutsche Grammophon, the world oldest record label, which was established in 1898, has several online series of live streams and archived concerts.

They include “Moment Musical” (Musical Moment) by Daniel Barenboim and guest artists, broadcast from the Pierre Boulez Saal (concert hall) in Berlin.

Barenboim, who started as a child prodigy pianist and ended up being a world-class conductor who once headed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, has done solo piano and chamber music concerts with the Piano Quintet and two solo pieces by Robert Schumann; the epic Diabelli Variations by Beethoven; and an all-Chopin program of encores. You can also find individual ones on YouTube.

Along more promotional lines, DG also offers a “Best of” series that features movements and excerpts from their newer recordings by some of the best known artists – including pianists Lang Lang, Danill Trifonov, Yuja Wang, Vikingur Olafsson, Jan Lisiecki and Seong-Jin Cho; conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Andris Nelsons; opera singers Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca.

Here is a link to DG’s homepage from where you can get to the various series: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC34DbNyD_0t8tnOc5V38Big

MILWAUKEE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Closer to home, every Friday you can listen to weekly concerts by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra called “Musical Journeys.”

Performers include the MSO’s new music director Ken-David Masur as well as guest conductors like Jeffrey Kahane and the past conductor Edo de Waart.

You can hear the past five episodes, and join new ones. You can also hear past concerts by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra (below) on Wisconsin Public Radio. Broadcast time is Sunday at 2 p.m.

Here is a link to Musical Journeys: https://www.mso.org/about/music/mso-musical-journeys-5/

VIOLINIST DANIEL HOPE AT HOME

British violinist Daniel Hope – who has performed with the Madison Symphony Orchestra — has been streaming chamber music concerts from the living room of his home in Berlin.

A prolific concert artist and 25 recordings and four Grammy Award nominations to his credit, Hope (below) has many invited guests and offers a wide range of repertoire.

Here is a link with past episodes. You can also click in upcoming episodes: https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/RC-019356/hope-home/

Are there other sites and streamed performances that you recommend?

Please leave the name and a link in the Comment section.

The Ear wants to hear.

 


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Classical music: Starting this Sunday, radio station WORT-FM 89.9 will air recordings that Rich Samuels made of many live performances in the Madison area

March 21, 2020
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ALERT: The Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO) will be suspending the remainder of its spring season until further notice. Music director Kyle Knox and executive director Bridget Fraser says they are hopeful that an adjusted end-of-year schedule might be possible. Many ideas are under consideration. But they say they have no idea at this point what might be possible given the restrictions currently in place at the UW-Madison. “All we can do is explore possible scenarios and be ready to react if the restrictions are lifted,” they add.

By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear has received the following note from Rich Samuels (below), a retired Chicago reporter and broadcaster who is often seen at concerts with microphones and a laptop computer. His public service is especially commendable and useful during the current coronavirus pandemic when almost all live concerts in music-rich Madison have been canceled or postponed for the foreseeable future.

Jake:

WORT (89.9 FM and at wortfm.org) will shortly start to air recordings of past public performances by Madison area classical musicians within its regularly scheduled classical music broadcasts.


This should help keep our local musician friends in the public ear even though their local venues have been shuttered and their gigs canceled.

I’ve had the good fortune to record hundreds of hours of local performances since 2012. I’m now editing them into segments that can be inserted into the shows of WORT’s classical music hosts.

The first segment to air, if all goes well, will be part of the “Musica Antiqua” early music program, hosted by Carol Moseson, this Sunday, March 22, from 8 to 11 a.m.

It will feature Eric Miller on viola da gamba and Daniel Sullivan on harpsichord performing a suite by French Baroque composer Louis Couperin. I recorded the concert (below) last Oct. 11 in the Landmark Auditorium of the First Unitarian Society of Madison (FUS).

Other such segments will follow on the weekday classical music shows that air from 5 to 8 a.m. We are still working on the details.

Additionally, I’ll be pre-recording three-hour broadcasts that can be run in place of the regularly scheduled classical music shows, assuming the host, for whatever reason, is unable to make it to the station.

These will hopefully include complete concert performances from the FUS Friday Noon Musicale, Grace Presents (in the YouTube video at the bottom) and Willy Street Chamber Players (below) series.

I gave up my own Thursday morning WORT show about a year ago after my wife developed some health issues. But I’ve continued to record local musicians whenever possible. (My wife, by the way, is presently in good shape).

Hopefully, this WORT effort will benefit both local musicians and their audiences. (Below is Samuels recording at Bach Around the Clock, which has been canceled this year.)

Please join The Ear in thanking Rich Samuels and WORT for their service to the community by leaving word in the Comment section.

What do you think of his project?

 


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Classical music: Famed radio station WQXR names the best 100 recordings of 2019. Listen to samples of them here

December 28, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

Did you get a gift card for the holidays?

Are you looking how to spend it by either purchasing CDs or subscribing to a streaming service?

Help and guidance are available.

Few names in the airing of classical music carry more prestige than the famed radio station WQXR in New York City.

To check out the radio station’s choice of the best recordings of 2019 is also to see where the worlds of recording and concertizing are heading.

Such trends include rediscovering neglected composers and championing new music as well as women composers, such as Clara Schumann, and composers of color, such as the American composer Florence Price (below), who has often been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio this past year.

But you will also find noteworthy recordings of such classics as Johann Sebastian Bach – and two of his rarely heard cousins instead of his sons – and well as outstanding recordings of symphonies and piano sonatas (below, the set by Igor Levit) for the upcoming Beethoven Year to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of the composer.

And you will also find names of outstanding performers you may not have heard of — such as the exceptional Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang (below), a Van Cliburn Competition gold medalist whom The Ear would like to see perform here.

Here is a link to 25 picks with commentaries– plus another 75 titles and samples, without commentary, to round out a Top 100.

Happy listening!

https://www.wqxr.org/story/best-classical-recordings-2019/


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Classical music: Artificial Intelligence will complete Beethoven’s 10th Symphony

December 20, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

The timing of the announcement and project couldn’t be more perfect as we are now about the enter The Beethoven Year.

2020 will see the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven (below).

And word is that hi tech in the form of AI will come to rescue of art through a powerful computer program.

That is, artificial intelligence will be used to complete the drafts and sketches of an unfinished 10th symphony by Beethoven. (Below is Beethoven’s manuscript for the opening of the iconic Fifth Symphony.)

It will not be the first time. You can hear a well researched if less rigorous and less technological version of Beethoven’s 10th, assembled by Barry Cooper, in the YouTube video at the bottom.

Whether we end up with a piece of music that can be performed or that we want to hear remains to be seen. After all, how many times do you hear — or want to hear — live performances of completed versions of Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony or Mahler’s unfinished 10th?

So Beethoven’s 10th may end up being more a curiosity than a work of art.

But at least we may get an idea of where Beethoven was headed after his unconventional and revolutionary Ninth Symphony that influenced so many later composers.

You can learn more about it by going to the homepage of Classical FM, an important British radio station. Here is a link:

https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/news/computer-completes-unfinished-tenth-symphony/

 


Classical music: Legendary Austrian pianist and scholar Paul Badura-Skoda dies at 91. In the 1960s, he was artist-in-residence at the UW-Madison School of Music

September 28, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

Paul Badura-Skoda, the celebrated Austrian pianist who was equally known for his performances and his scholarship, and who was artist-in-residence at the UW-Madison in the mid-1960s until 1970, died this past Tuesday at 91.

A Vienna native, Badura-Skoda was especially known for his interpretations of major Classical-era composers who lived and worked in that city including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

He was the only pianist to have recorded the complete sonatas by those composers on both the modern piano and the fortepiano, the appropriate period instrument.

If memory serves, Badura-Skoda’s last appearances in Madison were almost a decade ago for concerts in which he played: the last piano sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert; a Mozart piano concerto with the UW Chamber Orchestra; and a solo recital of Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Chopin at Farley’s House of Pianos.

But he also performed and recorded Bach, Chopin and Schumann among others. And Badura-Skoda was also renowned as a conductor, composer, editor and teacher.

You can find many of his recordings and interviews on YouTube. Normally, this blog uses shorter excerpts. But the legendary Paul Badura-Soda is special. So in the YouTube video at the bottom  you can hear Badura-Skoda’s complete last recital of Schubert (Four Impromptus, D. 899 or Op. 90), Schumann (“Scenes of Childhood”, Op. 15) and Mozart (Sonata in C Minor, K. 457). He performed it just last May at the age of 91 at the Vienna Musikverein, where the popular New Year concerts take place.

Here are links to several obituaries:

Here is one from the British Gramophone Magazine:

https://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/pianist-paul-badura-skoda-has-died-at-the-age-of-91

Here is one from WFMT radio station in Chicago, which interviewed him:

https://www.wfmt.com/2019/09/26/pianist-paul-badura-skoda-dies-at-age-91/

Here is one, with some surprisingly good details, from Limelight Magazine:

https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/paul-badura-skoda-has-died/

And here is his updated Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Badura-Skoda

But you will notice a couple of things.

One is that The Ear could not find any obituaries from such major mainstream media as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. But each had many other feature stories about and reviews of Badura-Skoda’s concerts over the years in their areas.

The other noteworthy thing is that none of the obituaries mentions Badura-Skoda’s years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music in the 1960s, where he helped to raise the profile and prestige of the School of Music. Getting Badura-Skoda to join the university was considered quite an unexpected coup.

So here are two links to UW-Madison press releases that discuss that chapter of his life and career.

Here is an archival story from 1966 when Badura-Skoda first arrived at the UW-Madison:

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/UW/UW-idx?type=turn&entity=UW.v67i8.p0011&id=UW.v67i8&isize=text

And here is a press release that came from the UW-Madison News Service eight years ago on the occasion of one of Badura-Skoda’s many visits to and performances in Madison:

https://news.wisc.edu/writers-choice-madison-welcomes-badura-skoda-again-and-again/

Rest in Peace, maestro, and Thank You.

It would be nice if Wisconsin Public Radio paid homage with some of Badura-Skoda’s recordings since a complete edition was issued last year on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

If you wish to pay your own respects or leave your memories of Paul Badura-Skoda and his playing, please leave something in the comment section.


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Classical music: A veteran reviewer bids farewell with a rave review of this summer’s last concert by the Willy Street Chamber Players and UW-Madison pianist Christopher Taylor

July 29, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

Here is a very special posting, the final review that will be written by frequent guest critic and writer for this blog, John W. Barker.

Barker (below), who is dealing with medical issues, is an emeritus professor of Medieval history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also is a well-known classical music critic who wrote for The Capital Times, Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who, until two weeks ago, hosted an early music show once a month on a Sunday morning on WORT-FM 89.9. For years, he served on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gave pre-concert lectures in Madison.

Please use the comment section to join The Ear in thanking Barker for his many years of public service and wishing him well.

By John W. Barker

I had to miss the first concert this summer by the Willy Street Chamber Players (below) on July 12; and the next one, on July 19, was cancelled because of power failures. But the final one, last Friday night, was well worth waiting for — one of the really memorable events of the year, I think.

The program, performed at the usual near East Side venue of the Immanuel Lutheran Church, 1021 Spaight Street, began with some short items.

First, there was a set of Three Nocturnes (1924) for piano trio — violin, cello and piano — by Ernest Bloch. They contain elements of the Hebraic sound that Bloch cultivated but also had their own individualities, the first two contemplative and the third marked “tempestuoso.” Interesting was Bloch’s alternating uses of muting the strings.

After this came an example of the short pieces for string quartet by the contemporary composer Jessie Montgomery, her “Voodoo Dolls” (2008). Much is packed into this five-minute piece. A few lyrical touches aside, it sounded like a hoedown gone crazy, full of quite novel sounds, including rhythmic thumping on the wood of the instruments.

All that was a curtain-raiser to the big event of the program: the Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major, Op. 81, by Antonin Dvorak. This 40-minute work is one of the composer’s best-known chamber music compositions, and one of the standouts in the whole chamber music literature.

The very opening notes of the first movement bring a flood of warm well-being.  (After hearing just that, I commented, “I haven’t felt such happiness in months.”)

The fecundity and richness of invention pervaded the entire work. For me, its high point is the second movement, in which Dvorak (below) used the Czech formula of the dumka, a kind of folk music lament that is paced slow-fast-slow-fast. (You can hear the Dumka movement, played by the Jerusalem Quartet and pianist Stefan Vladar, in the YouTube video below.)

Dvorak liked to play viola in chamber music, and so he always wrote some good things for himself. The sublime passages for viola in this movement were played with such transcendent beauty by Rachael Hauser (below) – who is leaving Madison for New York City — that I felt I was hearing the composer’s voice directly. Put simply, this was one of the greatest examples of chamber-music performance that I have ever heard.

All of the players, many of whom play in the Madison Symphony Orchestra,  of course matched remarkable skill with humane vitality and vibrancy.

And a measure of the Willys’ standards was the fact that they were able to draw as a partner no less than that magnificent UW-Madison music school pianist, Christopher Taylor (below), who also performed the same Dvorak Piano Quintet in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, where he won a bronze medal. Much of his excellence here was demonstrated by the fact that he did not play the star, but joined with the Willys in perfect collegial integration.

This ends the Willy Street group’s fifth summer season. As a symbol of vibrancy and fresh spirit, they are among the most important of Madison’s classical music world today. They have drawn steadily growing audiences, and the house was truly packed for this concert.  We can only hope that they will continue to brighten that world in the years ahead.

I am now ending my time as a music critic. I can think of no more satisfying a final review to write than of the Willy Street Chamber Players.


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