The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Music from Schubert’s last year of life is the focus of this year’s UW-Madison’s Schubertiade this Sunday afternoon when a world-famous Schubert scholar will share her insights
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NEWS UPDATE: The UW-Madison is offering FREE ADMISSION to Sunday afternoon’s Schubertiade, discussed below, to furloughed federal workers, who just have to show their federal identification to an usher.
By Jacob Stockinger
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s sixth annual Schubertiade – a re-creation of the historical and informal celebration of his music that Franz Schubert (1797-1828) used to hold with friends – will take place this Sunday afternoon, Jan. 27, at the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music.
The focus this year is the music composed in the last year of Schubert’s life, before his death at 31.
A schedule of events and information about tickets are below.
This Schubertiade will feature a world-famous Schubert scholar. Susan Youens, recently retired from the University of Notre Dame, has one of the most impressive musicology resumes in the world, and will share her insights about the late style of Franz Schubert (below) in her pre-concert lecture.
Youens has won four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. She has published eight books, hundreds of articles, essays and chapters, and lectured all over the world.
“Dr. Youens (below) will explore the rich relationship of Schubert’s music to the poems he chose to set and the emergence of new directions in Schubert’s style,” says co-organizer William Lutes. “The influence of Beethoven had loomed large throughout Schubert’s music, and in the year following Beethoven’s death, the 31-year-old composer wrote works of homage to this great master, as he saw his own music becoming more widely recognized, published and performed.”
Highlights of the Schubertiade will be a complete performance of Schubert’s 14 final songs, published after his death as Schwanengesang, or “Swan Songs” — among the composer’s richest and most forward-looking works. (You can hear the famous “Serenade” from “Swan Songs” sung by Angela Gheorghiu in the YouTube video at the bottom,)
Also on the program are the humorous and risqué Refrain-Lieder; the slow movement of the great Piano Trio in E-flat major; the enchanting Rondo in A major for piano four-hands; and the beautiful song Auf den Strom for voice, horn and piano, composed for a concert commemorating the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death, and filled with subtly haunting references to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica.”
In addition to pianists and singers Martha Fischer and William Lutes (below), guest performers will include voice faculty members Mimmi Fulmer, Julia Rottmayer and Paul Rowe, voice students Sarah Brailey, Wesley Dunnagan, and Benjamin Hopkins, graduate hornist Joanna Schulz, and guest singer Cheryl Bensman-Rowe.
Also participating is the Perlman Trio (Mercedes Cullen, violin; Micah Cheng, cello; and Kangwoo Jin, piano).
The School of Music also thanks donors Ann Boyer and Kato Perlman for their longtime support of the Schubertiades, the Perlman Trio and other musicians and events.
2019 SCHUBERTIADE SCHEDULE
Pre-concert lecture: 2 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 27, Morphy Hall. (Free.)
Concert: 3 p.m., Sunday, Jan. 27, Mills Hall. (Ticketed.)
Post-concert reception, included with ticket purchase: Sunday, Jan. 27, at the nearby University Club, 5:30 p.m.
TICKETS: $17 for adults, $7 for all age students/children; free to music majors, faculty and staff. To avoid long lines, we suggest arriving 30 minutes early or buying tickets ahead of time, either in person or online. Please see the link below.
Purchase options (online, by telephone and in person) here: https://www.music.wisc.edu/about-us/tickets/
To buy tickets directly online, click here.
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Classical music: The Middleton Community Orchestra and solo flutist Iva Ugrcic turn in polished performances of a fun program to kick off the new season
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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 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. He also took the performance photo.
By John W. Barker
The opening concert on Wednesday night by the largely amateur Middleton Community Orchestra (below top), under the baton of Steve Kurr (below bottom), was a relatively brief but pithy one, with only three short works on the program.
The opener was Autumn, the most frequently played section of the ballet The Seasons, Op. 67 (1899), by Alexander Glazunov (below) and one of the composer’s most frequently heard pieces. It is a rondo-like sequence of varied dance movements, full of lyricism and bright colors. The Middleton players dug into it with gusto.
Second came the Flute Concerto in D Major, Op. 283, by the prolific 19th-century German composer Carl Reinecke (1824-1910, below). He was conservative as a teacher and as a prolific composer.
Among his concertos, this one was his last, written just two years before his death. It is an engaging work, not notable for great ideas, but amiable, with a good virtuosic workout for the soloist.
The soloist was the Serbian-born flutist Iva Ugrcic, an absolute whiz of a player, and, among other things, a product of the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music doctoral program. She played with super-precision and confidence, giving her instrument great personality.
Without intermission, the concert ended with the Symphony No. 100, known as the “Military,” by Franz Joseph Haydn (below). It was first played in 1794 among the composer’s “London” Symphonies during his second visit to England. But it may well have been begun while he was in Vienna, for it reflects a particular fad popular there.
This was the use in orchestral writing of an adaptation of the sounds of the Turkish Janissary band. In the second movement, whose tune was taken from an earlier chamber work of his, Haydn introduced recurrently the “Turkish” instruments (two clarinets, triangle, cymbals, bass drums) with startling effect.
At the movement’s end, a trumpet call brings these novelties back for a crashing conclusion. And then, in the fourth movement’s ending, the “Janissary” instruments return for another razzle-dazzle finish. (You can hear the fourth movement in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
It’s all great fun, and the orchestra players seemed to find their own enjoyment in it.
The MCO continues its steady growth as a polished and reliable ensemble — all 98 players!
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Classical music: NPR explores Opus 1 works to mark Jan. 1 and New Year’s Day
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By Jacob Stockinger
Each year, the media look for new ways to mark the holidays and especially New Year’s Day.
One of the best and most original The Ear has seen and heard in a long time came from National Public Radio (NPR).
On Morning Edition, the radio network consulted Miles Hoffman (below), a violist, conductor and educator, about the first works – the Opus 1 works – that various composers published.
Hoffman’s remarks touch on quite a few young composers and prodigies, including Ludwig van Beethoven (below top), Felix Mendelssohn (below middle) and Ernst von Dohnanyi (below bottom).
Here is a link to the story, which should be listened to, and not just read, for the sake of the music and sound samples:
And from YouTube here are two more Opus 1 works that The Ear would add.
The first is the Rondo in C Minor, Op. 1, by a young Frédéric Chopin (below, in a drawing from Getty Images) and performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy. It shows just how early Chopin had found his own style and his own distinctive voice:
And here are the “Abegg” Variations by critic-turned-composer Robert Schumann (below), played by Lang Lang:
Can you think of other Opus 1 works to add to the list?
Please leave the composer’s name, the work’s title and a YouTube link to a performance, if possible, in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: Art Works, Arts, Beethoven, best, Cello, Chamber music, Chopin, Classical music, Compact Disc, composer, conductor, critic, educator, Ernst Dohnanyi, Feix Mendelssohn, fistinctive, Getty Images, Holiday, Jacob Stockinger, Lang Lang, link, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, media, Miles Hoffman, Morning Edition, Music, Music education, new, New Year, New Year's Day, NPR, opus, original, performance, prodigies, prodigy, rondo, Schumann, Sound, Teacher, title, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, voice, Wisconsin, wisconsin public radio, work, young, YouTube
Classical music: Middleton Community Orchestra and cellist Andrew Briggs succeeded beautifully in music by Rossini, Dvorak and Mendelssohn but a public reading of short essays by Matt Geiger seemed out of place
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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. He also took the performance photos for this review.
By John W. Barker
Despite nasty weather and icy conditions, a quite substantial audience turned out for the concert Wednesday night by the Middleton Community Orchestra (below).
There was an unusual element to the program.
The mostly amateur orchestra opened with an exuberant performance of Rossini’s overture to his opera Il turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy).
Then the normal procedures were interrupted by a local writer, Matt Geiger (below), reading two of his short essays from a recently published collection, which was sold in the lobby.
This appearance was based on his long and valiant boosting of the orchestra in his journalism, but it would have been more appropriate at some community festival than in the midst of an orchestra concert. His essays were not without wit, but had absolutely nothing to do with music.
Back to business with guest soloist Andrew Briggs (below), a young cellist who played two miniatures for his instrument, with orchestra, by Antonin Dvorak.
Silent Woods, Op. 68, No. 5, is sometimes heard as a foil or filler for the composer’s great cello concerto, especially in recordings. Still less familiar is a Rondo in G minor for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 94. It is a work of charm and imagination.
Briggs played both of these with affectionate sensitivity. Currently finishing his doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, he is an artist with an already expanding reputation and a great future.
The second half of the concert was devoted to Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5, the “Reformation.” Composed to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, it was offered here as a gesture to this year’s 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s launching of his Reformation movement with the posting of his 95 Theses. This is a score full of Lutheran symbolism, particularly with the prominent use of Luther’s chorale, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A Mighty Fortress is our God”).
NOTE: You can hear how Mendelssohn uses the Luther hymn in the symphony’s final movement by listening to the YouTube video at the bottom.
Commentators have sometimes shrugged off this work, and it has been overshadowed in audience favor by the composer’s popular third and fourth symphonies. But it is a well-wrought score, full of fine musical interest. Conductor Steve Kurr (below) led the orchestra through a sturdy and solidly played performance, ending the concert on a triumphant note.
Tags: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, amateur, American Record Guide, Andrew Briggs, anniversary, Arts, Augsburg Confession, Cello, charm, Chorale, Classical music, Concert, critic, Dvorak, Early music, essay, History, hymn, imagination, instrument, Isthmus, John W. Barker, lecture, Lutheran, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Martin Luther, Matt Geiger, Medieval, Mendelssohn, Middleton Community Orchestra, miniature, Music, opera, Orchestra, Overture, performance, photo, program, Reformation, review, rondo, Rossini, Silent Woods, Steve Kurr, symbolism, symphony, The Turk in Italy, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin, wit, WORT-FM 89.9, Writer, YouTube
Classical music: Middleton Community Orchestra and UW-Madison cellist Andrew Briggs perform music by Mendelssohn, Rossini and Dvorak this Wednesday night. Also, University Opera’s David Ronis discusses Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw” at noon on Wisconsin Public Radio
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ALERT: Today at noon on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Midday,” host Norman Gilliland will interview artistic director David Ronis about the University Opera’s production of Benjamin Britten’s “The Turn of the Screw,” which will be performed this Friday night, Sunday afternoon and next Tuesday night.
By Jacob Stockinger
The mostly amateur Middleton Community Orchestra (below, in a photo by William Balhorn), under the baton of Steve Kurr, will perform the winter concert of its seventh season on this Wednesday night, March 1, at the Middleton Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m.
The Middleton PAC is attached to Middleton High School and is attached to Middleton High School.
General admission is $15. Students are admitted free of charge. The box office opens at 6:30 p.m. and the auditorium doors open at 7 p.m.
The program includes the “Turk in Italy” Overture by Gioachino Rossini; “Silent Woods” and Rondo in G minor, two rarely performed cello pieces by Antonin Dvorak; and the Symphony No. 5 (“Reformation”) by Felix Mendelssohn. (You can hear Dvorak’s “Silent Woods,” with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Cello soloist Andrew Briggs (below), is returning to perform with the MCO for a second time.
You can hear last season’s performance of the Dvorak cello concerto by Briggs with the MCO here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wc1WLWhtb4
Briggs (below) is completing his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this spring, so this may be your last chance to hear him in Madison.
SOMETHING NEW
This concert will open with a special guest, Middleton Tribune writer, Matt Geiger who will read two short stories from his new book (below).
Here is a sample from the cover of this book collection: “His little sister joins the circus. His parents buy a nerdy horse. He’s surrounded by hundreds of men dressed up as Ernest Hemingway. He tries to order a monkey through the mail. And now his baby is eating dog food.”
Matt Geiger’s award-winning stories reveal the sublime in the mundane and the comical in the banal. There is existential dread. There is festivity amid detritus. There are moments of genuine introspection on what it means to be human. And it’s all laugh-out-loud funny when told by a humorist who is determined to live an examined life, even if he’s not always entirely sure what he’s looking at.
Matt Geiger (below) was born in Brunswick, Maine, in 1979. He studied philosophy and religion at Flagler College and went on to write for newspapers and magazines in Florida, Wisconsin and the United Kingdom. He is the winner of numerous journalism awards. He currently lives in Wisconsin with his wife, his daughter, two dogs, a cat and a flock of chickens.
As always, there will be a FREE reception for the musicians and the audience after the concert.
For more information about the Middleton Community Orchestra, including its upcoming concerts and review as well as how to join it and support it, go to: http://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
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Classical music: A world premiere and outstanding performances bode well for the 25th anniversary season of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society.
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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. Performance photos are by Margaret Barker.
By John W. Barker
The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society is now into its 25th anniversary season, its Silver Jubilee. It opened last Friday at the Stoughton Opera House with a program of Kevin Puts, Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Maurice Ravel and Gabriel Fauré.
I attended the second program, given at the Overture Center’s Playhouse on Saturday night.
The distinctive feature of that program was the official world premiere of a song cycle by Kevin Puts, the American composer with whom the BDDS folks have been forging a close friendship. Indeed, the ensemble is a co-commissioner of this cycle.
The work in question is In at the Eye: Six Love Songs on Yeats’ Poetry. The composer himself (below) was on hand to introduce this.
It was then performed by bass-baritone Timothy Jones, with a quartet of flute (Stephanie Jutt), Violin (Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio), viola (Sally Chisholm), cello (Kenneth Olsen), and piano (Jeffrey Sykes).
The poems are varied in character, most of them in free form, and Puts has responded to them with a flexibility of vocal line that closely inflects the words. Only the last poem is in rhyming strophes, and there Puts is able to develop a lyricism that brings the cycle to a warm conclusion. The instruments add a mixture of accompaniment and commentary, and their work was done handsomely.
Jones himself (below, with the quartet), who has a suave and mellow voice, showed notable sensitivity to words and diction in an ideal performance. This cycle’s future is still to be seen, but it holds good prospects for being taken up by singers and players around the country, especially given Puts’ enhanced reputation as a recent Pulitzer Prize winner.
The concert opened with a transcription of a Mozart piano sonata (K. 570) for transcribed flute, violin, viola and cello (below). It was a strange choice, since Mozart left us four flute quartets of his own devising. Still, it was delivered with flair and polish.
The grand finale was the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, for violin, viola, cello and piano by Johannes Brahms. (Much was made of the appropriateness of an Op. 25 masterpiece to mark the silver anniversary.)
Like so much of Brahms’ music, this is brawny, muscular stuff. The four players (below) responded with appropriate energy, matched by a wonderful intensity of feeling.
The fast sections of the “Hungarian Rondo” finale — which you can hear with pianist Leif Ove Andsnes in a YouTube video at the bottom — were brought off at a truly breakneck speed, without missing a note.
I must say, too, that, as I listened to Sykes in his role, it struck me that the piano part in the slow (third) movement could almost be played by itself as an independent keyboard piece. Brahms was, after all, a strong hand at the piano, and had himself in mind in what he wrote for the instrument.
This was a performance that allowed you to get so much out of this score at just one sitting.
As always, the BDDS programs are stimulating and wonderfully brought off. The concerts this coming weekend feature music by Franz Schubert, Joseph Haydn, Maurice Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg, and Astor Piazzolla, among others.
For details, visit:
http://www.bachdancinganddynamite.org/schedule.php
And there is a third week after that — of which, more to follow.
Tags: American Record Guide, Arnold Schoenberg, Arts, Astor Piazzola, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, Baroque, bass-baritone, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, Faure, flute, Franz Schubert, Haydn, Hungarian, Isthmus, Jacob Stockinger, Johannes Brahms, John W. Barker, Kevin Puts, Love, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Medieval history, Mozart, Music, Overture Center, Piano, Piano Quartet, poem, Poetry, Pulitzer Prize, Quartet, Ravel, rondo, Schubert, Singing, Sonata, Stoughton Opera House, tango, transcription, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, vocal music, William Butler Yeats, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, WORT-FM 89.9, YouTube
Classical music: The UW-Madison Concert Choir performs a FREE concert of three contemporary works this Sunday afternoon. Plus, here are the winners and works of the Beethoven piano competition’s FREE concert on Sunday
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ALERT: The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music has announced the winners of the 31st annual Beethoven piano competition. The FREE winners’ concert is this Sunday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall. Oxana Khramova will play the Polonaise in C Major, Op. 89, and Two Rondos, Op. 51; Kyle Johnson will play the Sonata in F minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata“; and Shuk-Ki Wong will play the late Sonata in E Major, Op. 109. There will be a reception after the concert. The judge for the competition was Dan Lyons, a UW-Madison graduate and the pianist of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. Here is a link to more information about the winners and their teachers:
http://www.music.wisc.edu/event/31st-annual-beethoven-piano-competition-honors-concert/
By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following message:
This Sunday, April 17, at 2 p.m. in Mills Hall the UW-Madison Concert Choir (below top) will perform a FREE concert under its director and conductor Beverly Taylor (below bottom).
The “Three for Free” program, features three wonderful contemporary works that have something delightful for everyone.
We’ll begin with “The Hope of Loving” by Jake Runestad – for chorus with a string quartet — a warm, and Romantically phrased work that was premiered by the ensemble Seraphic Fire last year.
It will feature three fine Concert Choir soloists: Kenny Lyons, Talia Engstrom and Eliav Goldman.
Runestad recently received the ASCAP award for composers.
The second work on our program is the 2016 edition of “Llorona,” written for the Concert Choir and guitar by UW-Madison composition Professor Laura Schwendinger (below), who has won numerous awards for her works.
It’s based on a famous Mexican song and tale of a woman who dies with her children; her voice can be heard on the wind.
Our final work is “The World Beloved” by Minnesota composer Carol Barnett (below). It is a “Bluegrass Mass,” which features many Concert Choir soloists and blue grass instruments. (You can hear it in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
The Mass combines parts of the usual mass forms of Kyrie and Agnus Dei with folk hymn ballads presented both by themselves and used to replace part of the usual mass text.
The program will be approximately 75 minutes long, including a short intermission.
Tags: Agnus Dei, Appassionata, Arts, ASCAP, Beethoven, blue grass, Carol Barnett, Chamber music, choral music, Classical music, Competition, composer, Concert Choir, folk, folk song, guitar, hymn, Jacob Stockinger, Jake Runestad, judge, Kyrie, Laura Schwendinger, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, mass, Mexico, Minnesota, Music, polonaise, rondo, Sonata, String quartet, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, vocal music, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: Michael Keller and Martha Thomas will perform a FREE recital of music for piano-four hands this Sunday afternoon.
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By Jacob Stockinger
On this coming Sunday, Sept. 27, at 3 p.m. pianists Michael Keller and Martha Thomas (below) will be presenting a FREE piano, four-hand program at Christ Presbyterian Church, 944 East Gorham Street, in downtown Madison.
Martha Thomas is faculty member of the University of Georgia Hodgson School of Music.
Michael Keller is a retired professor of piano at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point who is now based in Madison.
The program includes music by Johann Sebastian Bach (“Sheep May Safely Graze”); Muzio Clementi (Sonata No. 1); Franz Schubert (Rondo in A Major); Johannes Brahms (Waltzes, Op. 39) and the “Gazebo Dances” by the contemporary American composer John Corigliano. (You can hear the Overture to the “Gazebo Dances” in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
The program is FREE and open to the public.
Both pianists were students of the late Howard Karp at the UW-Madison School of Music. When they reunited at his memorial last fall, they planned this program.
Tags: Arts, Bach, Baroque, Chamber music, Classical music, Clementi, four-hands, Franz Schubert, Gazebo Dances, Georgia, Howard Karp, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, John Corigliano, Music, Overture, Piano, rondo, Sheep May Safely Graze, Stevens Point, University of Georgia, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, UW-Stevens Point, Waltz, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: Pianists Peter Serkin and Julia Hsu will play works for piano-four hands by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms this Saturday night at Farley’s House of Pianos.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Our friends at Farley’s House of Pianos write to the blog with news of a noteworthy piano concert this Saturday night:
Renowned American pianist Peter Serkin (below top) and Julia Hsu (below bottom) will perform piano, four-hand pieces by Schumann, Bizet, Mozart and more, as part of the Salon Piano Series concerts held at Farley’s House of Pianos at 6522 Seybold Road on Madison’s far west side near West Towne.
The concert is at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday night, April 4 and will include an introduction by Karlos Moser (below), a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of music and former longtime director of the University Opera at the UW-Madison School of Music.
The program includes: Six Etudes in the Form of Canons for Pedal-Piano, Op. 56, by Robert Schumann; Three Pieces from “Jeux d’Enfants” (Children’s Games) by Georges Bizet; the Sonata in B flat Major, K. 358, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the Allegro ma non troppo in A minor (the dramatic and lyrical “Lebenssturme” or “Lifestorms” that you can hear in a live performance in a YouTube video at the bottom), D.947, and the Rondo in A Major, D.951, by Franz Schubert; and Four Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms.
Tickets are $45 and are expected to sell quickly. They are available online at www.salonpianoseries.org and http://www.brownpapertickets.com/profile/706809 or at Farley’s House of Pianos, (608) 271-2626.
For more information about the Salon Piano Series, visit: http://salonpianoseries.org
The distinguished American pianist Peter Serkin has performed with the world’s major symphony orchestras with such conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim, George Szell, Claudio Abbado, Eugene Ormandy and James Levine. A dedicated chamber musician, Serkin has collaborated with artists including violinist Pamela Frank and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
An avid exponent of the music of many contemporary composers, Serkin has brought to life the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Michael Wolpe, and others for audiences around the world. He has performed many world premieres written specifically for him, in particular, works by Toru Takemitsu, Oliver Knussen and Peter Lieberson. Serkin currently teaches at Bard College Conservatory of Music and the Longy School of Music. Serkin became friends with the Farleys in 1994 when he was in town for a concert and visited the Farley’s showroom (below).
Originally from Taiwan, Julia Hsu received scholarships to study at The Purcell School for young musicians at the age of 14. She has also studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London and at the Hannover Hochschule für Musik und Theater, Germany. Julia has collaborated with conductors Fabio Panisello, Lutz Koeler and cellist Ivan Moniguetti. She was a Festival Fellow at Bowdoin Music Festival, and a scholar at the Banff Centre, Canada before she became a Piano Fellow at Bard College Conservatory of Music in 2013.
The Salon Piano Series is a non-profit founded by Tim and Renée Farley to continue the tradition of intimate salon concerts at Farley’s House of Pianos.
Upcoming concerts include the internationally acclaimed Czech pianist Martin Kasík (below top), who will play the “Moonlight” and “Les Adieux” Sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven and Sonata No. 3 by Sergei Prokofiev, on Saturday, April 18, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. Jazz pianist Dick Hyman (below bottom) will perform on May 30 and 31, 2015, at 4 p.m. both days.
For ticket information and concert details see www.salonpianoseries.org.
All events will be held at Farley’s House of Pianos, 6522 Seybold Road, Madison, on Madison’s west side near the Beltline, and plenty of free parking is available. It is also easy to reach by bicycle or Madison Metro.
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: The Madison Symphony Orchestra announces its 2020-21 season to mark The Beethoven Year. Plus, this Sunday afternoon, the Edgewood Chamber Orchestra also celebrates The Beethoven Year
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ALERT: The Madison Symphony Orchestra has just announced its 2020-21 season, which is heavy on works from Beethoven’s mid-career “Heroic” period to mark the Beethoven Year celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of the composer (below).
Other composers to be featured include Haydn, Mozart, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Sibelius, Honegger, Grofé, Kabalevsky and the African-American composer George Walker.
Familiar soloists include pianists Olga Kern and Garrick Ohlsson; violinists James Ehnes and Gil Shaham. Also soloing are retired UW-Madison professor and MSO principal oboe Marc Fink and MSO concertmaster Naha Greenholtz.
The traditional Christmas Concert is in early December.
The “Beyond the Score” program in late January, with actors from American Players Theater in Spring Green, focuses on Stravinsky’s revolutionary “The Rite of Spring.” And the MSO Chorus will perform in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Choral” and “Missa Solemnis.”
All concerts will be conducted by John DeMain.
Here is a link to details about the season and how to subscribe: https://madisonsymphony.org/concerts-events/2020-2021-symphony-season-concerts/
Let The Ear know what you think of the new MSO season in the Comment section.
By Jacob Stockinger
This Sunday afternoon, Feb. 23, the Edgewood Chamber Orchestra of Edgewood College presents a special winter concert.
The performance is at 2:30 p.m. in McKinley Performing Arts Center of Edgewood High School, 2219 Monroe Street, on Madison’s near west side.
The conductor is Blake Walter (below, in a photo by John Maniaci) and the guest soloist is violinist David Huntsman.
The concert celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Chamber Orchestra will perform the Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36, by Beethoven, who seems influenced in this work by Mozart and especially his teacher Haydn but who moved beyond them in this symphony. (You can hear the innovative Scherzo movement, which replaced the traditional minuet, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Also on the program are Handel’s Overture to the opera “Semele” and the virtuosic Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saens, which features soloist David Huntsman (below).
Tickets are $5 for general admission, and admission is free with an Edgewood High School or Edgewood College ID.
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