The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society again brings its surefire summery approach to serious classical chamber music when it starts its 28th annual series this weekend
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By Jacob Stockinger
It’s not just the calendar that makes the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society the official start of the increasingly busy summer classical musical season in Madison.
The real reason is that the summer chamber music series, about to start its 28th annual summer this Friday night, June 14, is downright summery in its approach.
Say “summer,” and you think of lightness, of fun, of playfulness. And those are the very same qualities – along with serious, first-rate performances of great music by outstanding musicians – that BDDS brings to its six programs spread out in 12 concerts over three weekends and three venues during the month of June.
By now both the performers (below, in a photo by Dick Ainsworth for BDDS) and the audiences know that the formula works, however finely tuned or slightly changed it is from one summer to the next.
WHAT’S THE SAME
This year much remains.
There are still door prizes, spoken introductions and stories, mystery guests and a colorful art installation by UW-Madison designer Carolyn Kallenborn.
The titles of the six programs for 12 concerts over three weekends still have groan-inducing puns — “Name Dropping” in the theme for this summer — that are based on the musicians’ names like “Founteneau of Youth” after the San Francisco cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau (below top) and “Quadruple Axel” after the Montreal-based violin virtuoso Axel Strauss (below bottom).
There are still the usual venues: the Playhouse in the Overture Center (below top); the Stoughton Opera House (below middle); and the Hillside Theater at Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright compound in Spring Green.
There are still the many distinguished and accomplished musicians among the many imported guest artists and the many local musicians, including the co-founders and co-artistic directors flutist Stephanie Jutt and pianist Jeffrey Sykes (below). The Ear can’t recall ever hearing a bad BDDS performance, even of music he didn’t like.
And there is a mix of older well-known and classic repertoire along with newer and neglected composers and works.
WHAT’S NEW
But some things are different too.
The first concert this Friday will have a post-concert reception with free champagne and dessert to celebrate the 28th season.
This summer, unlike recent ones, there is no vocal music. All music is instrumental.
At both Stoughton and Spring Green, you can get food. Go to the home website for details.
Especially new and noteworthy is that the Russian virtuoso accordion player Stas Venglevski (below), from Milwaukee, will also perform on programs. Venglevski performs on the bayan, a Russian-style accordion noted for its deep bass sound and range and purity of tone.
Venglevski will be featured in works that range from polkas and heart-on-the-sleeve tangos by Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla, Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky; down-and-dirty original works by Russian master Tatyana Sergeyeva and arrangements of favorite pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach and others.
This Wednesday night, June 12, from 7 to 9 p.m., Venglevski and Jutt will perform “Bayan-o-rama” at the Arts and Literature Lab, 2021 Winnebago Street. Tickets are $10 at the door. Refreshments will be served.
Here is a summary of the first weekend:
WEEK ONE
The elegance, charm, and finesse of French cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau is displayed in a program called “Fonteneau of Youth.”
It includes music written by great composers in their youth, including the ravishing Elegy for cello and piano of French composer Gabriel Fauré; the rhythmically exciting Trio for flute, cello and piano of living American composer Ned Rorem; and the astonishing D’un soir triste (One Sad Evening) and D’un matin de printemps (One Spring Morning), both for piano trio, of 21-year old Lili Boulanger (below), who was the Prix de Rome-winning composer sister of famed teacher Nadia Boulanger and who died very young. (You can hear both pieces by Lili Boulanger in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The great Franz Joseph Haydn—always the most youthful of composers, even into his late years—is represented by the masterful Piano Trio no. 28 in E major, in honor of BDDS’ 28th season.
“Fonteneau of Youth” will be performed at The Playhouse in the Overture Center for the Arts on this Friday, June 14, at 7:30 p.m. A free champagne and dessert reception will be held following the performance to celebrate the 28th season opener. It will also be performed in Spring Green at the Hillside Theater on Sunday, June 16, at 2:30 p.m.
Audience favorite Axel Strauss—not just a virtuoso violinist, but a virtuoso musician and artist of the highest distinction—will brave gravity-defying musical heights in “Quadruple Axel.” Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s Trio Sonata in D minor for violin, flute, cello and piano starts the program on an elegant note. Johannes Brahms’ fiery Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor, Op. 101, raises the temperature significantly. And all sorts of hijinks are on display in Maurice Ravel’s extraordinary and ravishing Sonata for Violin and Piano.
“Quadruple Axel” will be performed at The Playhouse in the Overture Center for the Arts on Saturday, June 15, at 7:30 p.m. and in Spring Green at the Hillside Theater, Sunday, June 16, at 6:30 p.m.
For more information about the full BDDS season and how to purchase tickets ($43 and $49), go to: https://bachdancing.org
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Classical music: Violinist Axel Strauss and pianist Trevor Stephenson will recreate a historic concert of Beethoven, Debussy and Bartok this Friday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
On this coming Friday night, Sept. 14, at 7:30 p.m. at West Middleton Lutheran Church, the prize-winning and internationally acclaimed violinist Axel Strauss (below) — a Madison favorite through his many wonderful concerts with the San Francisco Trio for the Bach, Dancing and Dynamite Society — and pianist Trevor Stephenson, artistic director of the Madison Bach Musicians, will collaborate on a program of masterpieces by Beethoven, Bartok and Debussy.
The event is something of a re-creation of a legendary concert given by famed violinist Joseph Szigeti (below top) and pianist-composer Bela Bartok (below bottom) at the Library of Congress on April 13, 1940 when Bartok, fleeing Europe and World War II, had been in the U.S. only a couple of days.
You can hear a recording of their historic performance of the Rhapsody by Bartok in the YouTube video at the bottom.
At the Sept. 14 concert, Strauss — who now teaches at McGill University in Montreal, Canada — and Stephenson will perform three major works that Szigeti and Bartok also played that April evening in 1940: Beethoven’s Sonata in A major Op. 47 (“Kreutzer”), Bartok’s Rhapsody No. 1 and Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano, the last completed major work by Debussy (below) finished less than a year before his death in 1918. (You can find more about the impressive biography of Axel Strauss at http://www.axelstrauss.com and at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Strauss on Wikipedia.)
Stephenson will bring his 1855 Boesendorfer concert grand piano (both are below in a photo by Kent Sweitzer). Although heavily strung like a modern piano, this mid 19th-century Boesendorfer piano has no metal plate to alleviate the tension of the strings, but relies instead upon an ingenious wooden frame design.
The resonance of the sound is thus carried entirely by the wood, resulting in a complex and dark tone wonderfully suited to the sensibility of 19th- and early 20th-century music.
The West Middleton Lutheran Church (below top and bottom) is at 3763 Pioneer Road — the intersection of Mineral Point Road and Pioneer Road, just 10 minutes west of West Towne Mall.
It has superb acoustics for chamber music. The seating is very comfortable. The sight-lines are terrific. And there is plenty of parking.
Concert tickets are $25 available at the door (credit card, check and cash) or in advance (check only). Seating is limited to 225.
To reserve tickets, email trevor@trevorstephenson.com
Find more information at www.trevorstephenson.com.
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Classical music: UW’s Pro Arte Quartet and new UW clarinet professor Alicia Lee perform a sublime all-Mozart program
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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.
By John W. Barker
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s acclaimed Pro Arte Quartet has begun its 2017-18 season amid uncertainties.
The most notable one is the current indisposition of cellist Parry Karp, whose injury to two fingers of his left hand has prevented him from playing for the immediate future.
Quartet members (below in a photo by Rick Langer) are, from left, David Perry and Suzanne Beia, first and second violins; Sally Chisholm, viola: and Parry Karp, cello.
But the group has pressed on bravely, offering an all-Mozart concert last Sunday night in Mills Hall.
The first of two works was the buoyant but challenging String Quartet in G Major, K. 387. Replacing Karp was a guest cellist, Jean-Michel Fonteneau (below right and bottom), who is familiar to Madison audiences from his many appearances with the San Francisco Trio for the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society’s summer concerts.
Fonteneau played elegantly and fitted into the ensemble quite smoothly. And the other three players performed with their accustomed precision and style.
But just one personnel change makes a difference. Clearly missing was the robust tone and firm foundation that Karp has imparted to the ensemble’s playing for so long.
If the G major Quartet is a Mozartean model of its kind, we move to Olympian heights with the Quintet in A for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581 — a chamber work (below) with only the tiniest number of peers in this scoring.
Joining the quartet this time was a new UW-Madison faculty member, clarinetist Alicia Lee (below).
Petite but totally confident, Lee brought to the string ensemble not the edgy aggressiveness so often heard from clarinetists but rather a glowing mellowness that balanced neatly with the string sounds.
The loveliest moments seemed to me to be the slower passages, and the exquisite slow movement was truly ethereal. (You can hear the Larghetto slow movement, played by clarinetist Anthony McGill and the Pacifica Quartet, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Preceding the concert was an announcement by Linda Graebner of the consolidation of the Pro Arte Quartet Forward Fund, which is seeking to raise an major endowment for the quartet.
Bolstered by that effort, then, the PAQ is some five years into its second century, determined from many sides to cope with its uncertainties.
NOTE: The Pro Arte Quartet’s next performance is this coming Thursday: a FREE performance at NOON in Mills Hall of the String Quintet No. 1 in G Major, Op. 111, by Johannes Brahms. Jean-Michel Fonteneau will again be the cellist and the guest artist is the internationally renowned violist Nobuko Imai (below). Imai will also give a FREE and PUBLIC master class in strings and chamber music on Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m. in Morphy Recital Hall.
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Classical music: Starting this Sunday night, the next month is busy for the UW-Madison’s acclaimed Pro Arte Quartet with FREE concerts of music by Mozart, Brahms and Schubert
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By Jacob Stockinger
The opening concert of the new season of the Pro Arte Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer) is this coming Sunday night, Sept. 24, at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall.
The Pro Arte Quartet will give an all-Mozart program, featuring Alicia Lee (below), the new clarinet professor at the UW-Madison. The works to be performed are the G Major “Haydn” String Quartet, K. 387, called the “Spring” Quartet, and the famed late Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581. (You can hear the sublime slow movement of the Clarinet Quintet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Here is a link to biographies of new faculty members at the UW-Madison School of Music, including that of Lee:
http://www.music.wisc.edu/2017/06/20/new-faculty-hires-at-the-school-of-music/
In early October, the internationally celebrated violist Nobuko Imai (below) returns to the UW-Madison campus, on her way from Europe to a concert in Minneapolis.
Her master class on viola and chamber music will be on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 7:30 p.m. Morphy Recital Hall. It is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
The following day, Thursday, Oct. 5, at NOON in Mills Hall, Imai will perform a FREE public concert with members of the Pro Arte Quartet and guest cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau (below).
The program is a single work, a masterpiece: the Brahms G Major Viola Quintet, Op. 111. It is legendary for the first viola part, according to a member of the quartet, and Imai would herself be legendary in this role.
Cellist Fonteneau is a member of the San Francisco Trio, and is familiar to Madison audiences through his many acclaimed appearances with the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society.
Adds Pro Arte violist Sally Chisholm: “This particular concert is another gesture to all the long-time supporters of the Pro Arte and the Madison community who remain part of our legacy.”
The Pro Arte’s second concert, also FREE and open to the public, is Saturday night, Oct. 28, in Mills Hall. It is will be all Schubert – the flute and piano theme and variations, and the Schubert Octet, featuring members of both the Wingra Wind Quintet and the Pro Arte Quartet.
Says Chisholm: “The Schubert Octet has been much discussed up and down the fourth floor of the School of Music for several years, and suddenly, we said “Let’s do it!”
“We checked calendars, and the Wingra was free to join us on Oct. 28. Whether this is a first performance of the Schubert, or one of many, the feeling is always that we never have the chance to perform it often enough. We hope it brings us all together with hope and joy.”
The Pro Arte Quartet’s longtime cellist Parry Karp continues to teach and coach chamber musicians, but he has been sidelined by a finger injury and will not yet be back to perform these concerts. He is scheduled to return to performing in November, according to Chisholm.
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Classical music: The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society offers an clever program that mixes outstanding performances of “primitivistic” modern music with rarely heard cabaret songs
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By Jacob Stockinger
This review is by guest contributor Kyle Johnson (below), who also took the performance photographs. As a pianist since elementary school, Kyle Johnson has devoted most of his life to music. Born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, he is now a doctoral candidate in piano performance at the UW-Madison, where he studies with Christopher Taylor and specializes in modern and contemporary music. He participates in many festivals and events around the U.S. and Europe. Recently, he co-founded the Madison-based ensemble Sound Out Loud, an interactive contemporary music ensemble. For more information, visit: www.kyledjohnson.weebly.com
By Kyle Johnson
If the rule of real estate is “location, location, location,” perhaps the rule for concert planning is “programming, programming, programming.”
Until the finale of Friday night’s Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society performance, the directors lived up to that mantra.
The first half of the program was primarily devoted to greats of the modernist chamber music repertoire: Chansons madécasses (Madagascan Songs) by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and the Contrasts by Bela Bartok (1881-1945).
For the former, Emily Birsan, a Chicago-based soprano who was educated at the UW-Madison, provided a dynamic, sensuous rendition even in the score’s most economical, lithe moments.
At the end of the work, Ravel’s inclusion of piccolo (played by Stephanie Jutt) and cello harmonics (played by Jean-Michel Fonteneau at a much higher than the fingered pitch) created an evocatively primitive effect, as the songs detail life in newly colonized Madagascar.
The final line of the piece, “The evening breeze rises; the moon begins to shine through the trees of the mountain. Go, and prepare the meal,” received nervous chuckles from several audience members.
(You can hear the Ravel songs performed by Christa Ludwig in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The effect was also a transition to the Contrasts (1938), a trio for clarinet, violin and piano that was commissioned by jazz great Benny Goodman. As the title aptly describes, the three-movement work cycles between jovial, intense and playful moods.
Most striking in this rendition — played by Axel Strauss on violin, Alan Kay on clarinet and Christopher Taylor on piano (below) — was the second movement, entitled “Relaxation.” Moments of hushed and moody tones created an atmosphere that historians have referred to as Bartok’s “night music.”
The audience responded with excitement, applauding through two curtain calls, to the climactic and frenzied close of the piece.
The theme this year is “Alphabet Soup” for the 26 letters marking the BDDS’ 26th anniversary. So after intermission, BDDS directors Jutt and pianist Jeffrey Sikes introduced the audience to Madison’s four-time Spelling Bee Champion, Martius Bautista).
The soon-to-be eighth-grader at Edgewood Campus School tested his spelling of a variety of musical terms like crescendo (growing louder) and sforzando (marked emphasis) while Jeffrey Sykes played the theme from Jeopardy on the keyboard. Bautista (below) was successful and, when given a paper crown, turned to place it on the head of Samantha Crownover, who is celebrating her 20th year as executive director of the BDDS.
Sykes and Birsan served the audience a collection of cabaret songs by English composer Benjamin Britten, American composer William Bolcom and Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg. The only thing missing from this portion of the program was chinking wine glasses and swirling smoke.
The programming of cabaret songs with the musical “primitivism” of Ravel and Bartok was a clever idea, and one that had similar roots at a recent concert at the UW-Madison, in which the Chansons madécasses were paired with Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire (while some consider Pierrot a feat of highbrow expressionism, a strong case can be made for its cabaret nature – however grotesque and dark it may be).
Anyone weary of Arnold Schoenberg’s oftentimes deterring development of 12-tone and atonal music need only look as far as his own cabaret songs, which are as melodious and lush as music heard in the great black-and-white musicals of early film.
The programming of the final work, Johannes Brahms’s Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, Op. 87 (1880-1882) – played by the San Francisco Trio (below) — was problematic in a number of ways.
The monolithic nature of the work – a staple of high Romanticism you can hear in the YouTube video at the bottom – seemed off-putting, after the intimacy of works such as the Ravel songs, the Bartok Contrasts, and especially the cabaret numbers.
In a perfect world, Friday evening’s concert would have foregone an intermission and ended with the cabaret hodgepodge. The quirky and understated close would have certainly left the audience charmed and ever-enticed to attend the remainder of BDDS’s programs – the final weekend, of which, runs June 23-25.
For more information about the concluding BDDS weekend and its dates, times, venues, programs and performers, go to:
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Classical music: The 26th season of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society chamber music festival opens this weekend with two programs in three locations
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society (BDDS) presents its 26th annual summer chamber music festival — Alphabet Soup — starting this weekend.
It will run from this Friday, June 9, through Sunday, June 25. The festival features 12 concerts over three weekends, and each weekend offers two different programs.
Concerts will be performed in The Playhouse at the Overture Center in Madison, the Stoughton Opera House in Stoughton and the Hillside Theater at Taliesin in Spring Green.
In the three-weekend festival, you can hear great classical masterpieces and fine contemporary works. A roster of musicians with national and international reputations will perform.
The venues are suitably intimate for chamber music: The Playhouse (below top) at the Overture Center at 201 State St.; the jewel box historic Stoughton Opera House (below middle) at 381 East Main St.; and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hillside Theater (below bottom) at Taliesin on County Highway 23 in Spring Green.
Added attractions include stories about the music, mystery guests and even door prizes. As BDDS puts it, “It’s chamber music with a bang!”
BDDS is led by co-artistic directors and performers flutist Stephanie Jutt (below right), who is principal flute with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and who just retired from the UW-Madison faculty; and pianist Jeffrey Sykes (below left), who graduated from the UW-Madison and teaches in Berkeley, California, where he is a member of the San Francisco Trio. Nineteen guest artists will also perform in the festival.
This season’s theme is Alphabet Soup, because it’s the 26th year and there are 26 letters in the alphabet. Each program is named after a combination of letters used in everyday language. Sometimes the musical interpretation of those letters is literal and sometimes it’s quite loose.
Musicians for Week One include three veteran string players: Naumberg Award-winning violinist Carmit Zori (below top); Madison’s very own violist Sally Chisholm (below middle) of the Pro Arte Quartet; and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s principal cellist Joseph Johnson (below bottom).
They will be joined by young artists who are participants in the newly formed Dynamite Factory, a BDDS program for nurturing and furthering the talents of three exceptional young musicians — violist Jeremy Kienbaum, violinist Misha Vayman and cellist Trace Johnson.
In one of two “sandwich” programs this weekend, PB&J, Carmit Zori will play the haunting Violin Sonata in F minor by Sergei Prokofiev and the program includes the heavenly Piano Quartet in A Major of Johannes Brahms.
The Dynamite Factory artists are featured in the emotional String Trio by Gideon Klein (below), a work he wrote at the Auschwitz concentration camp shortly before his death. (You can hear the trio by Gideon Klein in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
PB&J will be performed at the Stoughton Opera House on Friday, June 9, at 7:30 p.m.; and in Spring Green at the Hillside Theater, Sunday, June 11, at 2:30 p.m.
A second “sandwich” program, BLT, features the emotionally complex Cello Sonata (featuring Joseph Johnson) by Benjamin Britten (below top); all of the artists working together in the great “London” Symphony by Franz Joseph Haydn as arranged by Haydn’s contemporary and impresario Johann Peter Salomon (below bottom); and the beautiful string sextet “Souvenir de Florence” by Peter Tchaikovsky.
BLT will be performed at The Playhouse, Overture Center for the Arts, on Saturday, June 10, at 7:30 p.m. and at the Hillside Theater, Taliesin, Spring Green, on Sunday, June 11, at 6:30 p.m.
For the seventh year, BDDS will perform two FREE family concerts, interactive events intended for all ages.
One event takes place 11–11:45 AM, on Saturday, June 10, in The Playhouse of the Overture Center. The other will be at the Central Library Bubbler on this Thursday afternoon, June 8, from 4 to 5 p.m.
This is a performance for families with children of all ages and seating will be first come, first served. CUNA Mutual Group, Pat Powers and Thomas Wolfe and the Overture Center underwrite these performances.
Photos by Dick Ainsworth of BDDS performances and behind-the-scenes are on exhibit in The Playhouse Gallery through July 9.
Single general admission tickets are $43. Student tickets are always $10.
Tickets can also be purchased at Overture Center for the Arts, (608) 258-4141, www.overturecenter.org (additional fees apply). Tickets are available at the door at all locations.
For more information about the group, performers and programs, including audiovisual clips, go to: http://bachdancing.org
Tags: Adolf Hitler, alphabet, alphabet soup, artist, Arts, audiovisual, Auschwitz, Auschwitz concentration camp, award, Bach, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, BDDS, Brahms, Britten, California, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, concentration camp, Extermination camp, festival, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gideon Klein, guest, Haydn, Hillside Theater, international, interpretation, Jacob Stockinger, Jeffrey Sykes, Jews, Johann Peter Salomon, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, language, letters, library, London, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Music, Music of Russia, national, Naumberg, New Music, New York City, Orchestra, Overture Center, photo, photograph, Piano, Piano Quartet, principal, Pro Arte Quartet, Prokofiev, public library, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Quartet, San Francisco, San Francisco Trio, sandwiches, sextet, Sonata, soup, Souvenir de Florence, Stoughton Opera House, strings, symphony, Taliesin, Tchaikovsky, The Holocaust, Toronto, Toronto Symphony, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, United States, University of California-Berkeley, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society announces its upcoming summer season of “Alphabet Soup” this June
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By Jacob Stockinger
The time for announcing new seasons has arrived.
Pretty soon, over the next several weeks and months, The Ear will hear from larger and smaller presenters and ensembles in the Madison area, and post their new seasons.
First out of the gate is the critically acclaimed and popular summer group, the Madison-based Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society. (You can see a short promo video about BDDS on the YouTube video at the bottom.)
It has just announced its upcoming summer season this June, and sent out brochures with the season’s details.
This will be the 26th annual summer season and it has the theme of “Alphabet Soup.”
The concept is explained online and in a brochure newsletter (also online) in an editorial essay by BDDS co-founder and co-artistic director flutist Stephanie Jutt (seen below with co-founder and co-director pianist Jeffrey Sykes).
By the way, Jutt is retiring from the UW-Madison this spring but will continue to play principal flute with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and to work and perform with BDDS.
In many ways it will be a typical season of the eclectic group. It will feature local and imported artists. Many of both are favorites of The Ear.
His local favorites include UW-Madison pianist Christopher Taylor; violist Sally Chisholm of the UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet; UW violinist Soh-Hyun Park Altino (below top, in a photo by Caroline Bittencourt); and Pro Arte cellist Parry Karp (below bottom).
Among The Ear’s favorite guest artists are violinist Carmit Zori, clarinetist Alan Kay, the San Francisco Piano Trio (below top); UW alumna soprano Emily Birsan; pianist Randall Hodgkinson; and baritone Timothy Jones (below bottom).
As usual, the season features 12 concerts of six programs over three weeks (June 9-25) in three venues – the Playhouse in the Overture Center (below top), the Hillside Theater (below middle) at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin compound in Spring Green and the Stoughton Opera House (below bottom).
In addition, there is a FREE family concert in the Overture Playhouse on June 10.
What does seem somewhat new is the number of unknown composers and an edgier, more adventurous choice of pieces, including more new music and more neglected composers.
Oh, there will be classics by such composers as Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Luigi Boccherini, Franz Schubert, Johannes Brahms, Peter Tchaikovsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartok, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and others. These are the ABC’s of the alphabet soup, according to BDDS.
But also represented are composers such as Philippe Gaubert, Czech Holocaust victim Gideon Klein (below), Guillaume Conneson, Carl Czerny, Paul Moravec and Franz Doppler. These are the XYZ’s of the alphabet soup.
In between come others. Contemporary American composer, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Kevin Puts (below) is a BDDS favorite and is well represented. You will also find less performed works by Ned Rorem, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Gerald Finzi.
For the complete programs and schedules as well as the list of performers, some YouTube videos and ticket prices, both for season tickets ($109.50, $146, $182 and $219) and for individual concerts ($43), and other information, go to:
http://bachdancinganddynamite.org/concerts/festival-concerts/
Tags: ABC, Alan Kay, alphabet soup, Arnold Schoenberg, Arts, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, baritone, Bartok, BDDS, Benjamin Britten, Boccherini, Carl Czerny, Carmit Zori, Cello, Chamber music, Christopher Taylor, clarinet, Classical music, composer, Czech, Emily Birsan, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Frank Lloyd Wright, Franz Doppler, Gerald Finzi, Gideon Klein, Guillaume Conneson, Haydn, Hillside Theater, Holocaust, Jacob Stockinger, Jeffrey Sykes, Johannes Brahms, Kevin Puts, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Mozart, Music, Ned Rorem, New Music, opera, Orchestra, Overture Center, Parry Karp, Paul Moravec, Philippe Gaubert, Piano, Piano Trio, Pro Arte Quartet, Pulitzer Prize, Randall Hodgkinson, Ravel, Sally Chisholm, San Francisco Piano Trio, San Francisco Trio, Schubert, Season, Sergei Prokofiev, Soh-Hyun Park Altino, Sonata, soprano, soup, Spring Green, Stephanie Jutt, Stoughton Opera House, summer, symphony, Taliesin, Tchaikovsky, Timothy Jones, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, victim, Viola, Violin, vocal music, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, XYZ, YouTube
Classical music: What makes the 25th anniversary season of the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society special? The three-week annual summer season opens this Friday night and runs for the next three weekends in Madison, Stoughton and Spring Green.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The big classical music event this week is the opening of the 25th anniversary season of the Madison-based Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society.
It was co-founded and is still co-directed by pianist Jeffrey Sykes, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music and now teaches at the University of California-Berkeley; and by Stephanie Jutt, professor of flute at the UW-Madison School of Music who is also principal flute of the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
Here is a link to the BDDS website with information about tickets, programs, venues and performers:
http://www.bachdancinganddynamite.org
Recently, Jutt (below) spoke to The Ear about the upcoming season, which runs June 10-26:
“This silver anniversary season has something for everybody, and we’ve made it extra special in every way, with personnel, with repertoire and with audience favorites that we’re bringing back.
“In the first week, we have two short pieces by our featured composer, Kevin Puts “Air for Flute and Piano” and “Air for Violin and Piano,” and the world premiere of “In at the Eye: Six Love Songs on Yeats’ Poetry,” a piece we co-commissioned, with several other participating festivals, from the American composer Kevin Puts (below).
We commissioned him just before he won the Pulitzer Prize, luckily for us! We have performed several works by him in the past (“Einstein on Mercer Street,” “Traveler” and “Seven Seascapes”), and he will be here for the premiere performances at the Overture Playhouse and the Hillside Theater at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesen compound in Spring Green.
(NOTE: Composer Kevin Puts will speak about “How Did You Write That?” at the FREE family concert on this coming Saturday, to be held 11-11:45 a.m. in The Playhouse of the Overture Center.)
“In Week 2, we have three crazy, inspired works by Miguel del Aguila (below), a Uruguayan composer from Montevideo, who now lives in Los Angeles, that we commissioned and premiered. We’ll be performing “Salon Buenos Aires,” the piece that we commissioned, along with “Presto II” and “Charango Capriccioso.”
During Week Two, we are also bringing back the amazing pianist, arranger and raconteur Pablo Zinger (below), also originally from Uruguay and a longtime New Yorker, to perform his arrangements of movie music by Nino Rota, Henry Mancini and others, as well as some of Pablo’s brilliant arrangements of tangos by Astor Piazzolla.
“In Week 3, we are bringing back the “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” by Astor Piazzolla and the “Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi. People have begged us to repeat this program for years. It’s one of the most thrilling programs we’ve done, and this seems like the perfect time to return to this beloved repertoire. (You can hear the Summer section of Piazzolla’s Four Season of Buenos Aires in the youTube video at the bottom.)
“In the same Week Three, you will also hear some favorite works, the Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 by Johann Sebastian Bach and, in Week 1, Franz Schubert’s final song cycle, “Schwanengesang” (Swan Songs”) with one of our favorite artists, bass-baritone Timothy Jones (below top). That third week also features the Ravel Piano Trio with the San Francisco Trio (below bottom), comprised of Axel Strauss on violin, Jean-Michel Fontaneau on cello, and JeffreySykes on piano.
“We wanted to repeat special things and also do new pieces. Some of the music has links to the number 25 for our 25th anniversary – like Opus 25 for the Piano Quartet by Johannes Brahms or the Piano Concerto No. 25 by Mozart.
“We’re spending a lot more on artist fees this summer – it increases our budget by a lot, but it makes for a very special 25th season. We will have special mystery guests and special door prizes, as we love to do, and some special audience participation activities. (Below is a standing ovation from the audience at The Playhouse.)
“Did we think we would reach 25 years when we started? Of course not! We didn’t even think we’d reach two. It was started on such a lark.
“But the festival resonated with the summer audience and has every single year. I think we’ve been a success because listeners love to approach serious music with a light touch. You don’t have to behave very seriously to play serious music in a serious way. Artists from all over the United States come to play with the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society and it’s what draws them back year after year.
“We make a huge effort to make the music approachable, for ourselves as well as the audience. We talk about the music itself, about what it is like to learn it, and what it’s like to be together in such an intense way during the festival.
“We try to share the whole experience with the audience, and it’s something you just don’t find anywhere else. The concert doesn’t just go on in front of you, presented on a fancy plate. It surrounds you and you are a part of it.”
Tags: Argentina, arranger, Arts, Bach, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, Baroque, BDDS, Brandenburg Concerto, Buenos Aires, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, composer, Concert, concerto, Family, film, flute, Four Seasons, Frank Lloyd Wright, Franz Schubert, Henry Mancini, Jacob Stockinger, Jeffrey Sykes, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Kevin Puts, Los Angeles, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, movie scores, Movies, Mozart, Music, Nino Rita, Orchestra, Overture Center, Pablo Zinger, Piano, Piano Trio, Piazzolla, poems, Poetry, professor, Pulitzer Prize, Quartet, Ravel, San Francisco Trio, Schwanengesang, Sonata, song cycle, Spring Green, Stephanie Jutt, Stoughton, Stoughton Opera House, summer, Swan Song, Taliesin, tango, Timothy Jones, trio, United States, University of California-Berkeley, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Uruguay, Viola, Violin, Vivaldi, vocal music, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Yeats, YouTube
Classical music: The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society will wind up its current summer season of masterful music-making with two MUST-HEAR programs this weekend.
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By Jacob Stockinger
If you needed more proof about why you should take in one or both of the final two programs – “Crooked Business” and “Highway Robbery” — by the Madison-based Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, you should have been at one or both of the BDDS concerts last weekend.
For this coming weekend of the 24th season: “Crooked Business” features the Sonata for Flute and Keyboard in B Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach; the chamber music reduction of the Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; and a chamber music arrangement version of the Serenade in D Major, Op. 11, by Johannes Brahms.
“Highway Robbery” offers the First Rhapsody for Clarinet by Claude Debussy; “Seven Seascapes” by the American composer Kevin Puts, who won the Pulitzer Prize; and the great Octet by Franz Schubert.
For more information about programs and performers, venues and tickets, visit: http://www.bachdancinganddynamite.org
The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society continues to be incapable of being boring, ordinary or mediocre. It’s just not in their genes or DNA.
Last Saturday night, The Ear took in the “Breaking and Entering” concert in The Playhouse of the Overture Center. The theme was meant to explore how composers broke new ground and violated boundaries.
The theme might seem a bit of a stretch — they often do — and when one of the two fake security guards frisked an audience member for a gun or weapon, it might have struck some audience members as uncomfortable or in questionable taste rather than amusing or funny, given the recent shootings in Charleston, South Carolina.
But humor and silliness aside, there is no question that the music received the superb performances it deserved.
The San Francisco Trio, veteran BDDS guest artists, delivered two masterful readings of two Romantic masterpieces. The trio opened the concert perfectly with the lovely and short “Notturno” (1827) by Franz Schubert. Then it closed the concert with the revised version of the substantial and even epic Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major (1854, revised in 1889), Op. 8, by Johannes Brahms. The trio is made up of pianist Jeffrey Sykes (a co-founder and co-artistic director of BDDS), violinist Axel Strauss and cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau.
Then came the somewhat eccentric Sonatina for Trio (1934) by the rarely performed French composer and eccentric music critic Florent Schmitt.
The players were an unusual combination of flutist Stephanie Jutt (the UW-Madison professor is a co-founder and co-artistic director of BDDS as well as principal flute of the Madison Symphony Orchestra); local pianist Thomas Kasdorf, who is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music; and the incredible clarinetist Alan Key from New York City who teaches at the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School, and who plays with the respected Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
Violinist Axel Strauss, who teaches at McGill University in Montreal, sure showed some impressive fiddling skills in two crossover pieces – “Pining for Betsy” and “Who Let the Cat Out Last Night?” — by Paul Schoenfield (b. 1947). It brought audible WOWs and cheers from the audience. (Listen for yourself to the virtuosic “Cat” piece in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
An unusual and rarely heard piece by the Venezuelan composer Paul Desenne (b. 1959) imagines Franz Joseph “Papa” Haydn and a South American composer discussing music at the Esterhazy estate where Haydn worked. The work was delivered with great panache by flutist Stephanie Jutt, clarinetist Alan Kay and cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau.
Both the variety of the repertoire and the players and the quality of the performances recommend the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society to any serious classical music fan as well as to beginners. The Ear says: Go have some classical fun!
Tags: A German Requiem (Brahms), Alan Key, arrangement, Arts, Bach, Baroque, Brahms, Cello, Chamber music, Charleston, clarinet, Classical music, DNA, Esterhazy, Florent Schmitt, flute, France, Franz Schubert, French music, genes, Haydn, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Juilliard School, Kevin Puts, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Manhattan School of Music, Mozart, Music, New York City, Octet, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Overture Center, Paul Desenne, Paul Schoenfield, Piano, Piano concerto, Romantic music, Romanticism, San Francisco, San Francisco Trio, Schubert, shooting, Sonata, sonatina, South Carolina, transcription, trio, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Venezuela, Violin, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Classical music: The Beethoven Year in Madison will include complete cycles of string quartets and piano trios as well as many other early, middle and late pieces. Here is a partial preview
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By Jacob Stockinger
As you may have already heard, 2020 is a Beethoven Year. It will mark the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. (He lived from mid-December of 1770 to March 26, 1827. Dec. 17 is sometimes given as his birthday but it is really the date of his baptism. No one knows for sure the actual date of his birth.)
Beethoven, who this year overtook Mozart as the most popular composer in a British radio poll, clearly speaks to people — as you can see at the bottom in the YouTube video of a flash mob performance of the “Ode to Joy.” It has had more than 16 million views.
Locally, not all Beethoven events have been announced yet. But some that promise to be memorable are already taking shape. Many programs include early, middle and late works. And you can be sure that, although nothing formal has been announced yet, there will be special programs on Wisconsin Public Television and especially Wisconsin Public Radio.
Here is a partial round-up:
The UW’s famed Pro Arte String Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer), for example, will perform a FREE and complete cycle of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets in six concerts. It will start later this fall.
This is not the first time that the Pro Arte has done a Beethoven cycle. But it is especially fitting since that is the same Beethoven cycle that the Pro Arte was performing in Madison at the Wisconsin Union Theater in May of 1940 when World War II broke out and the quartet was stranded on tour in the U.S. after its homeland of Belgium was invaded and occupied by the Nazis.
That is when the ensemble was invited to become musical artists-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and accepted – thereby establishing the first such association in the world that became a model for many other string quartets.
The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society with the San Francisco Trio (below) plans on performing a cycle of piano trios next summer. No specific dates or programs have been announced yet.
The 20th anniversary of the Ancora String Quartet (below, in a photo by Barry Lewis) will coincide with the Beethoven Year. That is when the Ancorans will complete the cycle of 16 string quartets that they have been gradually programming over the years. Three quartets remain to be performed: Op. 59, No. 2 “Rasumovsky”, Op. 130 and Op. 131.
Adds violist Marika Fischer Hoyt: “We’ll perform Op. 130 in February (with the original final movement, NOT the “Grosse Fuge”), and we plan to do the remaining two quartets in the summer and fall of 2020.”
Here are some other Beethoven dates to keep in mind:
On Nov. 2 in Shannon Hall at the Wisconsin Union Theater, and as part of the WUT’s centennial celebration of its Concert Series, pianist Emanuel Ax (below, in a photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco), who since 1974 has played many solo recitals, chamber music recitals and piano concertos in Madison, will play Beethoven’s first three solo piano sonatas, Op. 2.
On Dec. 6 at the Wisconsin Union Theater, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Piano Trio will perform the famous “Archduke” Trio, Op. 97. Also on the program are works by Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann.
On Feb. 1, UW-Madison pianist Christopher Taylor, who has performed all 32 piano sonatas in Madison, will continue his cycle of Beethoven symphonies as transcribed for solo piano by Franz Liszt. He will perform Symphony No. 1 and the famed Symphony No. 9, the ground-breaking “Choral” Symphony with its “Ode to Joy.” No chorus will be involved, but there will be four solo singers. Taylor said he will then complete the cycle with Symphony No. 2 at some future time.
The Mosaic Chamber Players (below, in a photo by John W. Barker) will perform two all-Beethoven programs: on Feb. 21, a FREE program offers two sonatas for violin and piano (Op. 12, No. 3 and Op. 30, No. 2, and one sonata for cello and piano (Op. 5, No. 1); on June 13, a ticketed program features three piano trios (Op. 1, No. 1; Op. 70, No. 2; and Op. 121a “Kakadu” Variations).
On May 8, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (below top, in a photo by Mike Gorski), under conductor Andrew Sewell (below bottom, in a photo by Alex Cruz), will perform the popular Symphony No. 6 “Pastoral” – a pioneering piece of program music — to commemorate the Beethoven Year.
There is one very conspicuous absence.
You will notice that there is nothing by Beethoven programmed for the new season of the Madison Symphony Orchestra (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers).
But The Ear hears rumors that music director John DeMain (below, in a photo by Greg Anderson) is planning something special for the following season that might involve both symphonies and concertos, both original Beethoven works and perhaps “reimagined” ones.
(For example, pianist Jonathan Biss, who has just completed recording the piano sonata cycle and who performed with the MSO several years ago, has commissioned and will premiere five piano concertos related to or inspired by Beethoven’s five piano concertos.) Sorry, but as of now only rumors and not details are available for the MSO. Stay tuned!
The Ear would like to hear complete cycles of the violin sonatas and cello sonatas performed, and a couple of the piano concertos as well as the early symphonies and the famed Ninth Symphony with its “Ode to Joy” finale. He fondly remembers when DeMain and the MSO performed Symphonies Nos. 1 and 9 on the same program. Talk about bookending a career!
What Beethoven would you like to hear live?
What are your most favorite or least favorite Beethoven works?
Do you know of other Beethoven programs during the Beethoven Year? If so, please leave word in the Comment section.
And, of course, there is the inevitable question: Can you have too much Beethoven?
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