The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Personal experience, artistic excellence and historical importance drew pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel into planning next year’s centennial season at the Wisconsin Union Theater
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By Jacob Stockinger
Now that Spring Break is over and subscription tickets are available for the Wisconsin Union Theater’s special centennial celebration next season – which includes superstar soprano Renée Fleming and pianist Emanuel Ax — here is an email interview that pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel (below, in a photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco), the wife-and-husband consultants and planners of that season, granted to The Ear.
For more about the season and tickets, go to two websites:
https://union.wisc.edu/visit/wisconsin-union-theater/seasonevents/concert-series/
Could you briefly introduce yourselves to readers and tell them both your past and current activities?
We have been performing on the world’s many concert stages for almost our entire lives. In addition to our careers as concert performers, we serve as the founding Artistic Directors of Music@Menlo, the premier chamber music festival in Silicon Valley, as well as the Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) in New York City.
Our main responsibility as concert performers is to give the best concerts we possibly can, and we are constantly striving to achieve the highest possible level of artistry in our performances.
In our roles as artistic directors, our responsibilities lie in the programming, casting and designing of concert series and chamber music projects for our organizations. At CMS, this includes designing the programming for our seven different satellite series around the country, plus international partnerships in Taiwan, Korea and Europe.
We are also involved in chamber music programming endeavors beyond Music@Menlo and CMS, having just completed a first-ever chamber music residency at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Florida. Furthermore, Wu Han is serving as Artistic Advisor to Wolf Trap Chamber Music at the Barns, which entails thematically programming eight concerts per season for the 2018–19 and 2019–20 seasons.
As artistic directors, we spend much of our time putting ourselves in the shoes of our listeners, measuring their experience and receptivity to chamber music of all periods and styles, and putting together the best programs and artists who will move our audiences forward into ever-increasing engagement with and love of the art.
David was the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet for 34 seasons, and we have been performing together as a duo for about 35 years, and continue to do so as one of our main performance activities.
What are your personal relationships to the Wisconsin Union Theater, and what do you think of it as a concert venue?
Our engagement with the Wisconsin Union Theater goes back quite a few years, but certainly not even close to the beginning of the Theater’s distinguished history. For any performer setting foot on its stage, there’s a sense of slipping into an ongoing tradition of artistic excellence that makes us feel both privileged and obligated to do our best.
The Wisconsin Union Theater and its story in American cultural life is larger than any of us; only the music we play rises above and beyond it all, and as performers, our lucky moment is to represent that incredible literature in a venue as significant and storied as the Wisconsin Union Theater. (Below is the theater’s main venue, the renovated and restored Shannon Hall.)
Why did you agree to be artistic advisors and artists-in-residence for the centennial season? Did your personal experiences in Madison play a role in that decision?
As seasoned artists, we deeply admire and respect the very special place in the classical music tradition and history that the Wisconsin Union Theater (below) inhabits, and the invitation to participate in the Theater’s 100th anniversary was an honor for us to receive. Our experiences playing on this distinguished stage and forming a relationship with the local audience have made our pursuit of the common goal of artistic excellence in the centennial season incredibly fulfilling.
Of course, having performed there in the past gave us a hint of confidence through our familiarity with the place, but we must say we have learned perhaps double what we knew originally through this planning process. Without interfering, but at the same time sharing our uncompromised commitment to artistic excellence, we hope that our presence during the process has been useful, and we know that we look so much forward to seeing the careful thought and hard work of all involved come to fruition.
Is there a unifying or guiding principle to the season you have put together?
The guiding principle behind our work on this historic season is artistic excellence, which in our opinion is what most inspires audiences and best serves the art form of classical music.
Our area of expertise is chamber music, and, as we wanted to share the best of what we can do with the Theater, our focus has been on ensuring that the chamber music offerings during this historic season, and hopefully beyond, reflect the best of the world of chamber music.
In our suggestions, we looked for variety of instrumentations, of composers and periods—in other words, giving as much of an overview of the art as we could within a season.
What would you like the public to know about the Wisconsin Union Theater and the upcoming centennial season?
In the Theater’s centennial season, the audience will have the opportunity to savor a variety of different genres of chamber music, from solo piano to vocal music, as well as a sampling of the very best works of the chamber music canon. Between these various genres, the great composers left a wealth of chamber music that could sustain the art form on its own, but that’s still only the tip of the iceberg.
Our chamber music offerings will include the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, which has a long history of performing for the Madison audience. Their December program will include celebrated cornerstones of the piano trio repertoire, including Mendelssohn’s D minor Trio and Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio. (You can hear the opening of the Archduke Trio in the YouTube video at the bottom.) Both pieces have achieved monumental historical significance through their influence in propelling the art form forward from the Classical period to the Romantic period.
The Escher String Quartet performance in January represents the best of the next generation of young string quartets. Their program includes a quartet by Franz Joseph Haydn—the father of the string quartet genre—and the sole quartet of none other than revered violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler, who performed in the Wisconsin Union Theater nearly a century ago. Kreisler set foot on the Theater’s stage numerous times, and his rarely heard string quartet nods to the Theater’s long, distinguished history. David will join the Escher Quartet for the beloved Schubert Cello Quintet, which is the “desert island” must-have piece for many music lovers.
Furthermore, in March, we will bring two of the most fantastic musicians in the world to join us for a program of Antonin Dvorak, Josef Suk and Johannes Brahms. This multigenerational cast of musicians includes the incredible young French violinist Arnaud Sussmann (below top, in a photo by Matt Dine) as well as the most important violist of our generation, Paul Neubauer (below bottom). This program is all about the passing down of the baton and the continuous investment in the next generations of artists: Brahms was the one who discovered Dvorak, and Dvorak in turn discovered Suk.
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Classical music: Avery Fisher Hall will be renamed. Is there no end to the shameless egos of Big Money and the desperation of those who pursue it? What’s next? The Walmart States of America? Plus, this afternoon is your last chance to see the Madison Opera’s production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” which gets rave reviews.
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ALERT: Today at 2:30 p.m. in Overture Hall of the Overture Center is your last chance to see the Madison Opera‘s production of Ludwig van Beethoven‘s only opera “Fidelio.” The production has drawn high praise from local critics. (Below, in a photo by James Gill, are the lead singers tenor Clay Hilley as the imprisoned Florestan and soprano Alexandra LoBianco as his wife Leonore.) For tickets, call the Overture Center box office at (608) 258-4141.
Here is a review by John W. Barker for Isthmus:
http://www.isthmus.com/daily/article.php?article=44067&sid=39e0add1db8c192442a2b8defe5ff286
And here is a review by Greg Hettmansberger for Madison Magazine’s blog “Classically Speaking”:
http://www.madisonmagazine.com/Blogs/Classically-Speaking/November-2014/Fidelio-Rings-True/
By Jacob Stockinger
It reads like something right out of a novel by Charles Dickens or Honore de Balzac or Emile Zola.
Did you hear about Avery Fisher Hall (below)? They want to rename it!!!!
It needs major work and expensive upgrading.
The stakes only get higher and more expensive, of course. But Big Money is no doubt up to the challenge.
Some you may remember the comments I recently posted about the renaming of the Wisconsin Union Theater as Shannon Hall (below) because of generous donations. A plaque would have sufficed, like at Camp Randall Stadium.
It shouldn’t be too hard for Big Money to follow the more modest and more respectable examples of local philanthropists Jerry Frautschi and Pleasant Rowland, who funded the Overture Center for the Arts without plastering their names all over it.
But no! The rich need to splash their names all over the buildings so that we honor wealth more than public service or history.
Well, now I see that a renovation of famed Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City is seeking some deep pockets by offering naming rights.
Or should I say “re-naming rights.”
Officials will even pay the Fisher family millions of dollars to allow the renaming of the legendary hall where so many great careers have started and been put on display for the public.
That’s tacky, and even outdoes the University of Wisconsin-Madison when it asked the Elvehjem (pronounced LVM) family if it could rename the Elvehjem Museum of Art to the Chazen Museum of Art.
The Ear didn’t like that, either. But at least the UW-Madison didn’t pay for the family’s permission, didn’t buy back the honor and then turn around and give it to someone else.
Maybe that is the reality of financing projects in today’s income disparity and wealth gap plus lower taxes on the rich that Trickle-Downers want to lower even more.
But it is nonetheless shameful.
What’s next? Avery Fisher Hall becomes David H. Koch Hall?
When do we become the Wal-Mart States of America?
Here is the story that appeared in The New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/arts/music/lincoln-center-to-rename-avery-fisher-hall.html?_r=0
Tell us what you think of it.
The Ear wants to hear.
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: The amateur, acclaimed and affordable Middleton Community Orchestra suspends its new season until further notice
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PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, 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
At a time when many concert schedules are getting complicated due to virtual online concerts and other alternatives because of the coronavirus pandemic and Covid-19, the message couldn’t be simpler.
The Middleton Community Orchestra (below) has suspended its new season until further notice.
You can check for additional information by going to the website: https://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
There it says: “Concerts are postponed until further notice. Check back here and join our email list for updates to the season.”
It’s too bad.
The season took a lot of organizing. It was going to take place in alternative venues because the Middleton Performing Arts Center, attached to Middleton High School, is undergoing renovations. (In the YouTube at the bottom, you can hear the MCO performing the Overture to Wagner’s opera “Die Meistersinger.”
It was also to feature new soloists including violinist David Perry of the UW-Madison Pro Arte String Quartet, and two guest conductors from Edgewood College and the UW-Whitewater.
It could also mean another cancellation of the new teenage concerto competition and concert as well as the cancellation of conductor Kyle Knox’s inaugural season as the MCO’s new music director (below).
Here is the largely amateur, well planned, unquestionably ambitious and very affordable season that was scheduled: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/03/30/classical-music-the-middleton-community-orchestra-announces-an-ambitious-2020-21-season-with-new-soloists-and-conductors-but-with-no-middleton-venue-for-the-season/
Do you have comments for the MCO?
The Ear wants to hear.
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