The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: FREE percussion, brass and wind concerts are featured this week at the UW-Madison
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By Jacob Stockinger
In the week before Spring Break, the Mead Witter School of music at the UW-Madison will feature FREE concerts of percussion, brass and wind music.
TUESDAY, MARCH 10
At 7:30 p.m. in the Collins Recital Hall of the new Hamel Music Center, 740 University Ave., the percussion department will give a FREE recital. No program is listed.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11
At 7:30 p.m. in Collins Recital Hall, guest percussionist-composer Mark Stone (below) will give a FREE solo recital of original compositions for mbira and gyil.
The program will include music for the newly invented array mbira, an American-made 120 key lamellaphone. Stone will also share music composed for the Dagara gyil, a xylophone from Ghana as well as mbira traditions of South Africa and Uganda.
Also on Wednesday night at 8 p.m. in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall, the acclaimed Wisconsin Brass Quintet will give a FREE faculty recital.
The program is:
Johann Sebastian Bach – Contrapunctus IV from “Die Kunst Der Fuge” (The Art of Fugue). You can hear Canadian Brass perform it in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Andre Lafosse – “Suite Impromptu”
Werner Pirchner – “L’Homme au marteau dans la poche” (Man With a Hammer in His Pocket)
Rich Shemaria – “Pandora’s Magic Castle”
Per Nørgård – “Vision”
The 2019-2020 Wisconsin Brass Quintet (below) is: Jean Laurenz and Gilson Silva, trumpets; Daniel Grabois, horn; Mark Hetzler, trombone; and Tom Curry, tuba.
Please note: In spring 2020, Mark Hetzler will be on sabbatical. His replacement will be Will Porter (below), instructor of trombone at Eastern Illinois University . Read about Porter here
THURSDAY MARCH 12
At 7:30 p.m. in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall, the UW Wind Ensemble will give a FREE concert.
The ensemble will perform under the batons of director Scott Teeple (below) and guest conductor Ross Wolf.
The program is:
Frank Ticheli: “Apollo Unleashed” from Symphony No. 2
Ching–chu Hu: In Memory Of…*
With special guest The Hunt Quartet
*World Premiere Performance/UW Band Commissioning Member
Morten Larudisen/Reynolds: “Contre Qui, Rose”
Beverly Taylor, guest conductor.
Jodie Blackshaw: Symphony, “Leunig’s Prayer Book”*
*Wisconsin Premiere
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Classical music: Autumn arrives today. The Ear thinks Richard Strauss’ poignant orchestral song “September” is perfect for greeting Fall. What music would you choose?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Fall officially arrives today.
The autumnal equinox takes place at 2:50 a.m. CST.
If you listen to Wisconsin Public Radio, it’s a certainty that you will hear music appropriate to the season. WPR does these tie-ins very well and very reliably — even during a pledge drive.
At the top of the list will probably be the “Autumn” section of three violin concertos from the ever popular “The Four Seasons” by the Italian baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi.
But there are lots of others, including late songs, piano sonatas and chamber music by Franz Schubert; slow movements from symphonies by Gustav Mahler; and many of the “autumnal” late works by Johannes Brahms, especially the short piano pieces and chamber music such as the Clarinet Trio, Clarinet Quintet and the two sonatas for clarinet or viola and piano.
Here is a link to a YouTube video with more than two hours of autumn music. You can check out the composers and the pieces, some of which might be new to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fddGrDV2gw
And if you want less music with some unusual choices, complete with individual performances, try this much shorter compilation:
http://www.classical-music.com/article/best-classical-music-inspired-autumn
Yet this time of year, when the days end earlier and the mornings dawn later, one work in particular gets to The Ear: It is “Four Last Songs” by Richard Strauss (below), one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century.
The second of the four songs is “September” and fits the bill very nicely.
In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear it sung by Renée Fleming, who will perform a recital next spring in Madison at the Wisconsin Union Theater. She is accompanied by the Houston Symphony Orchestra under conductor Christoph Eschenbach.
Here are the lyrics of the poem, in which summertime is the protagonist, by Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse:
The garden is in mourning
Cool rain seeps into the flowers.
Summertime shudders,
quietly awaiting his end.
Golden leaf after leaf falls
from the tall acacia tree.
Summer smiles, astonished and feeble,
at his dying dream of a garden.
For just a while he tarries
beside the roses, yearning for repose.
Slowly he closes
his weary eyes.
Is the Ear the only person who wishes that the Madison Symphony Orchestra and maestro John DeMain, who has a gift for finding great young voices, would perform Strauss’ “Four Last Songs” some autumn?
With the right vocal soloist it could make for a memorable season-opening concert.
What music do you identity with the fall season?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: Co-artistic director Cheryl Bensman Rowe talks about early Eastern European music, which is the focus of this summer’s Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF). The festival starts this coming Saturday and runs through the next Saturday. Here is Part 1 of 2 parts.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The 16th annual Madison Early Music Festival opens this coming Saturday night and runs through the All-Festival Concert the following Saturday night. The topic is “Slavic Discoveries: Early Music from Eastern Europe.”
Here is a link to the home website, where you can find complete information about events, concerts, venues and prices:
http://artsinstitute.wisc.edu/memf/
Cheryl Bensman Rowe, who co-directs the festival with her husband, UW-Madison baritone Paul Rowe, agreed to talk about the festival and its lineup of workshops, lectures and concerts. Her interview will run in two parts. Today is Part 1.
How successful is this year’s festival compared to others in terms of enrollment, budgets, performers, etc.? How well established is MEMF now nationally or even internationally?
This year we are right on track with enrollment, budget and performers as we have been for the past several years. MEMF was “on the map” literally, as you will see from this article from the summer edition of the magazine Early Music America, a national publication that is read by all early music enthusiasts and professionals. We were honored to be included in this map of not-to-be-missed festivals.
Here is a sampling of Early Music Samplings this summer:
http://www.nxtbook.com/allen/EMAM/21-2/index.php?startid=8
Our faculty and ensembles come from all over the world:
The Rose Ensemble (below) is from Minneapolis. www.roseensemble.org
East of the River is based in New York City, although the performers are originally from Israel, Turkey, and the United States. www.eastoftherivermusic.com
Piffaro is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: www.piffaro.org
Ensemble Peregrina is based in Basel, Switzerland, and their members are originally from Poland, Finland, Switzerland and the U.S.: www.peregrina.ch
What is new and what is the same in terms of format, students, faculty members and performers?
Our biggest news is that we are now a part of The Arts Institute on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Our program director, Chelcy Bowles, retired from the Division of Continuing Studies at the UW, and she felt that MEMF would be a perfect fit for this relatively new initiative on campus.
Our new program director, Sarah Marty, has been a part of MEMF since she was a student, and has also been a participant in the MEMF workshops, and on our board. She knows a lot of the “behind the scenes “ information, which was really helpful when she took over for Chelcy.
The workshop format remains the same, but this year we have several new faculty members from some of the ensembles:
Daphna Mor, from East of the River (below), teaching recorder and Balkan music.
Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett and Kelly Landerkin from Ensemble Peregrina, teaching Polish medieval chant.
Michael Kuharski, http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Michael-Kuharski/9630833, a fantastic teacher of Balkan dance, will be leading the wonderful dance event with live music played by the local Balkan music ensemble Veseliyka.
https://veseliyka.wordpress.com/
The dance event will be on Wednesday, July 15, in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.
Why was the topic of the Early Eastern European music chosen for the festival? What composers and works will be highlighted?
There has been a lot of new musical discoveries over the past ten years of repertoire from Eastern Europe. John W. Barker brought up the idea of Polish Music, and Tom Zajac, a faculty member and performer who has been to MEMF for at least 12 years, has done a lot of research in this area, and was interested in sharing it with MEMF. We are always looking for new and interesting topics to present, and the time seemed right to bring this music to Madison.
Please look at the concerts link for more information about each individual concert:
http://artsinstitute.wisc.edu/memf/concerts.htm
Tomorrow: Part 2 — What makes early Slavic music different? What composers are being rediscovered? And what will the All-Festival concert feature?
Tags: Arts, Balkan, Baltic states, Baroque, Chamber music, choral music, Classical music, dance, Early music, East of the River, Eastern Europe, Europe, folk dance, Jacob Stockinger, Madison, Music, rose, Russia, The Rose Ensemble, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Violin, vocal music, Wisconsin, YouTube
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