The Well-Tempered Ear
This weekend, starting Friday night, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra finishes up its winter season of online chamber music
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By Jacob Stockinger
This is the time of the year when music groups generally announce their next season while finishing up the current one.
But of course the pandemic continues to shroud plans for the new upcoming season in uncertainty and whether it will be online or in-person.
Meanwhile, groups are in the final stretch of finishing up this season.
This Friday night, April 16, at 7:30 p.m., the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (WCO, below in photo by Mike Gorski) will debut the fourth and last online chamber music concert of its curtailed and substituted winter season.
The varied program includes works, both well-known and neglected, by four composers — from Italy, Russia, France and Austria — who come from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
The concert begins with the complete Concerto for Four Violins in B minor, RV 580, by Antonio Vivaldi (below). The string accompaniment will be scaled down.
Then comes the complete Septet for Winds, Strings and Piano by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (below).
The first and third movements of the Nonet by the rediscovered 19th-century French composer Louise Ferenc come next. (Here is the Wikipedia link to Ferenc (below):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Farrenc
The final music will be the first, fourth and fifth movements – including the famous theme-and-variations – of the famously tuneful “Trout” Piano Quintet by Franz Schubert (below).
In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear the namesake theme-and-variations movement — based on one of Schubert’s songs — played by Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Daniel Barenboim, Jacqueline du Pre and Zubin Mehta, with a graphical depiction of the score.
The concert lasts 60-75 minutes.
Tickets are $30.
Here is a link to program notes by WCO music director and conductor Andrew Sewell (below, in a photo by Alex Cruz) and to purchasing a ticket through the Overture Center box office.
The ticket is good for one viewing between Friday night and Monday night, April 19, at 7:30 p.m.
https://wcoconcerts.org/events/winter-chamber-series-no-iv
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Classical music: Two FREE chamber music concerts on Thursday and Friday nights at the UW-Madison feature quartets and quintets by Mozart, Boccherini, Schubert, Dvorak and Weinberg
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By Jacob Stockinger
Chamber music fans have something special to look forward to this week with back-to-back evening concerts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music that mix famous and well-known works with less familiar ones.
THURSDAY NIGHT
On Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, the Pro Arte Quartet will perform.
The program features six miniature “Evening Songs” (1865) – also called “Cypresses” — by Antonin Dvorak; the String Quartet No. 5 in B-Flat Major (1945) by Mieczyslaw Weinberg; and the String Quartet in B-Flat Major “Hunt,” K. 458 (1784), by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (You can hear one of Dvorak’s “Cypresses” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Members of the Pro Arte Quartet (below, from left, in a photo by Rick Langer) are: violinists David Perry and Suzanne Beia; violist Sally Chisholm; and cellist Parry Karp.
For more information about the unique and dramatic history of the critically acclaimed Pro Arte Quartet, the longest active string quartet in the history of music, go to:
https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/pro-arte-quartet/
FRIDAY NIGHT
On Friday night at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW-Madison cellist Uri Vardi (below) will be joined by several faculty colleagues, one of his students and his son for an evening of three quintets.
In addition to Uri Vardi, the performers include: clarinetist Amitai Vardi (below); pianist Christopher Taylor; violinists David Perry and Soh-Hyun Park Altino; violist Sally Chisholm; cellist James Waldo; and double bassist David Scholl.
The program includes: the Quintet in C major, assembled from other quintets by Johann Lauterbach, by Luigi Boccherini, a contemporary of Mozart; the famous Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the well-known “Trout” Quintet by Franz Schubert.
For more background, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/uri-vardi-quintets-students-friends-and-family/
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Classical music: This year’s Token Creek Chamber Music Festival will explore “Necessary Music” by Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Ravel, Harbison and other composers from Aug. 26 through Sept 3
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post about an annual event that puts on a lot of MUST-HEAR programs:
TOKEN CREEK, WIS. – In what way, and for whom, is a certain kind of music necessary?
Certainly the presenters of a chamber music festival would be presumptuous to offer a program as a sort of prescription for listeners. And at Token Creek we won’t.
So often the music we need arrives by chance, and we did not even know we needed it until it appears. And other times we know exactly what we are missing. And so we offer this year’s programs of pieces that feed the soul.
Saturday, Aug. 26, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 27, at 4 p.m., Program I: Continuo
Some works of art are so rich that they sustain a lifetime of inquiry and encounters, each time revealing fresh new insights only possible through sustained engagement, pieces so resilient they admit multiple interpretations, approaches, nuances, shadings.
We open the season with music of Johann Sebastian Bach (below), pieces we’ve played before and some we have not, music that continues to compel for the very reason that it can never be fully plumbed, music that rewards over and over again. In a concert dominated by Bach, the requirement of the other pieces is really only that they offer sufficient originality and integrity not to be dwarfed or rendered ephemeral by his authority.
Flutist Dawn Lawler (below top), cellist Sara Sitzer (below second) and pianist Jeffrey Stanek (below third join the artistic directors composer-pianist John and violinist Rose Mary Harbison (below bottom) for this opening program.
Works:
BACH Sonata in E minor for violin and continuo, BWV 1023
HAYDN Trio in F major for flute, cello and piano XV:17
BACH Two Fugues, from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080
HARBISON Mark the Date, for flute and piano (pre-premiere)
BACH Sonata in G major for violin and continuo, BWV 1021
BACH Three-Voice Ricercar, from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079
BACH Sonata in C minor, from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079
Wednesday, Aug. 30, at 7:30 p.m. Program II: Schubert
A sequel to last year’s all-Schubert program, which offered Die Schöne Müllerin and the “Trout” Quintet, this season we offer two late masterworks by Schubert (below): the song cycle Schwanengesang (Swan Song) and the solo piano set of six Moments Musicaux (Musical Moments).
In structure, ingenuity and invention these two large works offer an eloquent counterpoint and complement to one another. We are pleased to welcome back pianist Ya-Fei Chuang (below top), and to introduce tenor Charles Blandy (below middle) with pianist Linda Osborn (below bottom).
Works:
SCHUBERT Andante, from Sonata in C for Piano Four Hands (“Grand Duo”), D.812
SCHUBERT Moments Musicaux, D.780
SCHUBERT Schwanengesang, D.957
Saturday, Sept. 2, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 3, at 4 p.m. Program III: Waltz
This program explores the familiar form of the waltz as an unexpectedly flexible and diverse musical type, with uncommon approaches from a wide variety of composers from Schubert through Sur.
We conclude the season with Schumann’s splendid Piano Quartet, whose third movement offers one of the greatest of slow waltzes of all time. (You can hear it performed by the Faure Quartet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
We are pleased to introduce violist Becky Menghini (below top) and cellist Kyle Price (below bottom).
Works:
FRITZ KREISLER Three Old Viennese Melodies for Violin and Piano
DONALD SUR Berceuse for Violin and Piano
SCHUBERT Waltz Sequence
RAVEL Valses nobles et sentimentales
GEORGE CRUMB Sonata for Solo Cello
SCHUMANN Quartet in E-flat for Piano and Strings, Op. 47
The Token Creek Festival has been called a gem, a treasure nestled in the heart of Wisconsin cornfields, a late-summer fixture just outside of Madison.
Now in its 28th season, the Festival has become known for its artistic excellence, diverse and imaginative programming, a deep engagement with the audience, and a surprising, enchanting and intimate performance venue in a comfortable refurbished barn.
The 2017 festival offers five events to close the summer concert season, Aug. 26–Sept. 3.
Performances take place at the Festival Barn (below), on Highway 19 near the hamlet of Token Creek (10 minutes north of Madison, near Sun Prairie) with ample parking available.
The charmingly rustic venue—indoors and air-conditioned with modern comforts—is invitingly small, and early reservations are recommended.
Concert tickets are $32 (students $12). Reservations can be secured in several ways:
- Online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/token-creek-chamber-music-festival-2017-necessary-music-tickets-36091343179
- Website: www.tokencreekfestival.org (a link to our online ticketing, or a printable order form)
- Phone: 608-241-2525 (voicemail only, please leave a message)
- Email: info@tokencreekfestival.org
- U.S. mail: P.O. Box 5201, Madison WI, 53705
More information about the Token Creek Festival and all events and artists can be found at the website, www.tokencreekfestival.org or by calling 608-241-2525.
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Classical music: The founders and co-artistic directors of the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival explain the origins of the upcoming “water music” programs
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By Jacob Stockinger
In the essay below, John and Rose Mary Harbison (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot), the founders and co-artistic directors of the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, explain the origins of the upcoming “water music” programs that mark the 27th festival.
You can hear that famous “trout” theme of the original song used in Franz Schubert‘s “Trout” Piano Quintet, which will be performed at the festival, in the YouTube video at the bottom.
Here is a link to a posting earlier this week with much more information about the concerts, the programs and the performers:
ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION: THE BROOK AT TOKEN CREEK — WHY NOW?
By John and Rose Mary Harbison
In 1932 Dan and Alice Pedersen, Rose Mary Harbison’s parents, came from Chicago to Madison and purchased a small farm on State Highway 19, then a seldom travelled dirt road. (Below is a photo by Jess Anderson of a more recent barn built on the farm property.)
The farm eventually became a producer of organic vegetables for sale, and a place of contemplation, leading to Dan’s life as a Swedenborgian pastor, wartime fireman and early sustainable farmer; and Alice’s as a Sunday school teacher and eventually a much published anti-Vietnam War activist. (Below is a photo by Jess Anderson of a field on the farm.)
But it was just three years into their tenure on the farm that the State of Wisconsin came up with a plan to raise carp for New York markets, and by eminent domain seized four acres of land from the Pedersen farm, building a 400-foot carp pond, and routing the tributary trout stream on the Pedersen farm into it. (Historic photos are from the Token Creek Watershed Association.)
This was a loss from which the couple never really recovered, since it cost the stream, which had originally flowed into Token Creek, much loss of vitality, swiftness and natural flow.
Within a decade the State had lost interest in the original project, but the Pedersens were never able to persuade the necessary agencies to undertake restoration of the trout stream and repair the damage.
The 2012 Token Creek Festival season included a forum, “Listen to the Land,” with an eminent group of ecologists commenting on our attempt to redevelop as prairie a large set-aside field.
As it turned out, the best outcome of this gathering, in spite of the expensive and to this point discouraging track of that project, was the unanimous view of that forum that the restoration of the tributary trout stream, and the elimination of the carp pond, would dynamically and radically upgrade the entire ecology of the area, one that is an extremely important component of the Cherokee Marsh and Lake Mendota watershed. (below is a picnic by Token Creek.)
This year’s festival, “Water Music,” celebrates the unlikely achievement of that goal. Unable to find civic partners, the transformation was a private initiative, brilliantly realized by the river restoration firm Inter-Fluve, and spearheaded by the participants in our opening forum. (Below is a mill on the creek.)
Art and Nature are already familiar partners; Art and Technology increasingly so. One common impulse seems to be to increase harmony and invention; to limit pointless destruction; and to preserve enhance and develop, positively, some of the forces we cannot control, or fully understand.
Tags: Art, Arts, bass, carp, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, ecology, essay, festival, Franz Schubert, harmony, invention, Jacob Stockinger, John Harbison, lieder, Madison, mill, Music, nature, photo, photograph, Piano, quintet, restoration, Rose Mary Harbison, singer, song, technology, Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, Trout, Trout Quintet, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, vocal music, water, watershed
Classical music: This year’s Token Creek Chamber Music Festival celebrates local ecological restoration with “water music”
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By Jacob Stockinger
Here is an overview of the upcoming 27th Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, which starts this Saturday, Aug. 27, and runs through Sunday, Sept. 4.
TOKEN CREEK, WIS. – Years in the planning, summer 2016 marks the completion of a major ecological restoration project on the Token Creek Festival property in the northeast corner of Dane County, part of the watersheds vital to the hydrology of Madison and southeastern Wisconsin.
During the 1930s, one of the most important feeder streams in the area, and its only cold-water trout stream, was ruined when it was widened to support short-lived commercial interests and development. Now, decades later, in a monumental effort, that stream has at long last been relocated, restored and rescued.
Festival-goers will be able to experience the project firsthand on the opening weekend, when each concert is preceded by an optional stroll along the new stream, with conversation guided by restoration ecologists and project managers.
Celebrating this monumental ecological project, the season theme of this year’s Token Creek Chamber Music Festival is: Water Music. Virtually all of the works programmed evoke brooks and streams and rivers and water in its many forms, with its ritual meanings, associations, allusions, and as metaphor.
In keeping with the theme, the Festival has adopted Franz Schubert (below) as the summer’s featured composer. His poetic, melancholic, ultimately organic and inevitable relationship to the natural world was expressed in composition after composition, wedded to his intense involvement with the poetry of his era, itself so infatuated with birds, fields, clouds and streams.
The second program emphasis continues the festival’s most persistent theme: the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Three strands of Bach’s music previously explored at Token Creek will be taken up again. We will present our third complete cantata performance, O heiliges Geist und Wasserbad, a mysterious and poetic piece from early in the composer’s career, with soloists from the Madison Choral Project (below).
We will conclude our survey of the three Bach violin concertos, this year the E major, co-artistic director Rose Mary Harbison (below top) again as soloist. And we take up our sequence of fugues from The Art of Fugue, co-artistic director and composer John Harbison (below bottom), who has won the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur “genius grant,” adding three more to his personal odyssey with this work, due to conclude in 2030.
NEW ARTISTS
Token Creek is pleased to introduce several new artists this season, including Grammy Award-nominated mezzo-soprano Margaret Lattimore, who has been praised for her “glorious instrument” and dubbed an “undisputed star…who has it all – looks, intelligence, musicianship, personality, technique, and a voice of bewitching amber color.”
Ms. Lattimore will offer works of Franz Schubert and John Harbison on the Festival’s opening concerts, By the Brook (August 27 and 28), where she will be joined by pianist Molly Morkoski.
Ms. Morkoski (below), who last appeared at Token Creek in 2013, consistently garners praise for her refined virtuosity and “the bold confidence and interactive grace one wants in a devoted chamber music maker.” In addition to the opening program, Morkoski will also be heard on the season finale in Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet (Sept. 2 and 4).
On that same concert, tenor William Hite and pianist Kayo Iwama join forces in Schubert’s devastating and tragic song cycle, Die Schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Miller’s Daughter), in which a brook functions prominently as the protagonist’s confidante. (You can hear the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sing “The Miller and the Brook” from the flowing song cycle in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini has called Hite (below) a “breathtaking communicator of spoken nuance” for his ability to reveal the meaning and emotion embodied in the text and the music, solidifying his reputation as an engaging and expressive artist.
http://www.williamhitetenor.com/
Kayo Iwama (below) is associate director of the Bard College Conservatory of Music graduate vocal arts program, the master’s degree program for classical singers, and she also coordinates the vocal studies program at the Tanglewood Music Center. Her frequent concert partners include Dawn Upshaw and Lucy Shelton.
http://www.bard.edu/academics/faculty/details/?action=details&id=1838
VIOLS AND WILLIAM WARTMANN
Finally, the “technically faultless and consistently sensitive and expressive,” consort of viols, Second City Musick (below), based in Chicago, will offer a guest recital on Tuesday, Aug. 30, anchored by John Harbison’s The Cross of Snow.
Craig Trompeter, Russell Wagner, Anna Steinhoff at the Planetarium, Chicago, May 30, 2013
Commissioned by local businessman and philanthropist William John Wartmann (below) in memory of his wife, mezzo-soprano Joyce Wartmann, this evocative new piece, on texts of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, blends the ethereal lushness of violas da gamba with the haunting clarity of the countertenor voice, here Nathan Medley (below bottom), to explore the emotions of grief, loss and love.
At its first performance in Chicago last May, a local critic praised both the work and the musicians: “The Chicago-based ensemble was ideally suited to premiere this profoundly affecting work, and the shared sensibility between composer and performers was noticeable.”
Tuesday’s program will also include works of Henry Purcell, William Byrd, John Jenkins and Johann Sebastian Bach.
Other festival artists this season include vocalists Rachel Warricke, Sarah Leuwerke, Daniel O’Dea, and Nathan Krueger; violinists Rose Mary Harbison, Laura Burns, and Isabella Lippi; Jen Paulson, viola; Karl Lavine, cello; Ross Gilliland, bass; Linda Kimball, horn; and John Harbison, piano.
HERE ARE FESTIVAL PROGRAMS AT A GLANCE:
Program 1: By the Brook – Schubert, Bach and Harbison
Saturday, Aug. 27: 6:45 p.m. – optional guided stream stroll*; 8 p.m. – concert
Sunday, Aug. 28: 2:45 p.m. – optional guided stream stroll*; 4 p.m. – concert
*(The stream stroll is free, but reservations are recommended)
Program 2: Music for Viols, Then & Now
Tuesday, Aug. 30, at 7:30 p.m.
Program 3: Water Colors = Two Schubert Masterworks
Friday, Sept. 2 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 4 at 4 p.m.
Concert tickets are $32 (students $12). The preview stream stroll on opening weekend is free to concertgoers, but advance reservations are recommended.
Reservations can be made in several ways:
- Online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/token-creek-chamber-music-festival-2016-tickets-26070692142
- Website (printable order form): www.tokencreekfestival.org
- Phone: 608-241-2525 (voicemail only, please leave a message)
- Email: info@tokencreekfestival.org
- U.S. mail: P.O. Box 5201, Madison WI, 53705
Performances take place at the Festival Barn, on Highway 19 near the hamlet of Token Creek (10 minutes north of Madison) with ample parking available. The venue, indoors and air-conditioned, is invitingly small—early reservations are recommended.
More information about the Token Creek Festival and all events and artists can be found at the website, www.tokencreekfestival.org or by calling 608 241-2525.
Tags: accompaniment, accompany, allusion, Art of Fugue, Arts, association, Bach, Bard College, baritone, Baroque, bass, birds, Byrd, Cantata, Cello, Chamber music, Chicago, choral music, Classical music, clouds, commission, composer, concerto, countertenor, Dane County, Dawn Upshaw, development, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Early music, ecology, fields, Franz Schubert, fugue, genius grant, Grammy, grief, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horn, Jacob Stockinger, Jenkins, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Harbison, John Jenkins, Kayo Iwama, lieder, loss, Love, Lucy Shelton, MacArthur Fellow, Madison, Madison Choral Project, Margaret Lattimore, metaphor, Mezzo-soprano, Molly Morkoski, Music, natural world, nature, New York Times, organic, Piano, poetic, Poetry, premiere, Pulitzer Prize, Purcell, restoration, Rose Mary Harbison, Second City Musick, sing, singer, solo, Sonata, song, song cycle, stream, streams, Tanglewood Festival, tenor, Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, Trout, Trout Quintet, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viol, Viola, Violin, vocal music, vocalist, water, Water Music, watershed, William Hite, William Wattmann, Wisconsin, YouTube
Classical music: The third annual Schubertiade at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music was so popular and so successful, it should serve as a model for other collaborative concerts featuring other composers. Plus, a FREE concert at noon on Friday offers music of Philip Glass, Zoltan Kodaly and others
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale, held from 12:15 to 1 p.m. at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features Danielle Breisach, flute; Jeff Breisach, horn; Peter Miliczky and Clare Bresnahan, violins; Josh Dieringer, viola; Andrew Briggs, cello; and Jana Avedyahn, piano in music by Philip Glass, Jonathan Russ, Robert Ward and Zoltan Kodaly.
By Jacob Stockinger
Last Saturday night, The Ear attended the third annual Schubertiade in Mills Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.
In case you aren’t acquainted with what a Schubertiade is, you should know that it is patterned after the kind of informal soirees, held in private homes and salons, where the early Romantic composer Franz Schubert (below, 1797-1828) often premiered to friends his latest songs, piano works and chamber music. The UW-Madison Schubertiades celebrate the composer’s Jan. 31 birthday and usually kick off the second semester of concerts.
Below is a link to a previous posting — with the complete program and list of performers — about this year’s Schubertiade.
It featured an informative interview with pianist and singer Bill Lutes (below right). Lutes, along his wife Martha Fischer (below left) – a professor of collaborative piano at the UW-Madison who also sings – co-founded and co-directs the event. Both of them also performed throughout the event:
And you can use the search engine on this blog to check out the Schubertiades in 2014 and 2015.
Kudos and bravos are in order. There were so many things to like about the Schubertiade.
Here are a few:
- It remained an informal and very listener-friendly event with great pacing. The idea of sitting people on the stage (below top) to recreate a salon gathering is inspired. What’s more, it works and puts the audience in exactly the right mood. Plus, there was exactly the right amount of commentary — not too little or too much.
- The program, organized this year around the theme of nature, cohered. It also proved convincing as a vehicle for so many different kinds of Schubert’s music, mostly shorter works – solo songs, larger choral works, piano duets and chamber music.
- The quality of the performances was amazingly even and amazingly engaging. The audience was so quiet, you could tell that it was wholly absorbed and not distracted.
- The musical works were extremely well matched to the performers, and played to their strengths and temperaments.
- The imported guest artist – soprano Jamie-Rose Guarrine (below bottom, in a photo by Peter Konerko), a graduate of the UW-Madison who sings opera and is now a professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst – proved a complete success in both her charming presentation and her first-class performances.
- Despite the overall evenness and consistency, there were some standout moments. Judging from the applause, the audience clearly loved the song ”The Trout” followed by the theme-and-variations movement, based on the song, from the famous “Trout” Piano Quintet (below):
Another show-stopper was the superb rendition, both highly dramatic and subtly lyrical, of “Lebensstürme” (Life’s Storms) for piano, four hands, played by Lutes and Fisher.
And the closing number, the famous “Shepherd on the Rock” for soprano, clarinet and piano, brought the house to a standing ovation. (The Ear hopes that this and other moments were recorded and get posted for streaming from the UW School of Music’s website or SoundCloud.) In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear this sublime late work in a performance by soprano Barbara Bonney, clarinetist David Shifrin and pianist Andre Watts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
In short, the third annual Schubertiade proved a completely enjoyable and thoroughly persuasive evening of performances that attested to the quality, empathy and variety of the music that Franz Schubert created in his short life of 31 years.
But perhaps the best, most memorable part of the event was to see the collaboration and cooperation that was so evident.
The Schubertiade featured an impressive lineup of faculty members, students and alumni. The many performers came from various departments: piano, voice, strings, brass, winds and opera.
We see and hear far too little of that cooperation, it seems to The Ear.
And when he talked to another loyal fan of UW music and of the Schubertiade, that fan agreed that such single-composer events are popular with the public and should take place more often. They serve as samplers with both familiar and unfamiliar works.
So maybe the Schubertiade could serve as a model for similar events with other composers whose body of work is, like Schubert’s, both first-rate and very varied.
Some composers who come immediately to mind are Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms. And there are no doubt others who could be featured.
Such collaborative events would also prove popular with the public, The Ear surmises. After all, this third Schubertiade seemed to draw the biggest audience yet – a two-thirds house of about 500 – even on the night when a UW-Madison hockey game was competing for attention.
If you didn’t go, it was your loss. But there will be another Schubertiade next January, one presumes. Don’t miss it!
And if you did go to this year’s Schubertiade, leave whatever you care to say in the COMMENTS section.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: alto, Arts, Bach, Barbara Bonney, baritone, bass, Brahms, Cello, Chamber music, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, choral music, clarinet, Classical music, David Shifrin, double bass, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Franz Schubert, Horn, Jacob Stockinger, Jonathan Russ, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Mozart, Music, opera, Philip Glass, Piano, Robert Ward, Schubert, Schubertiade, Schumann, song, soprano, tenor, Trout, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, video, Viola, Violin, vocal music, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, YouTube, Zoltan Kodaly
Classical music: Why Schubert? Ask pianist-singer Bill Lutes and go to the UW-Madison’s third annual Schubertiade this Saturday night at 8 p.m.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The third time is the charm.
By then you know a tradition has been born.
For the third year in a row, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is holding a Schubertiade at the end of January, near the birthday of Austrian composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828, below). Can there be a better way to kick off the second semester of concerts and music-making?
The event, which was founded by and now is organized by and performed by the wife-and-husband team of UW-Madison collaborative piano professor Martha Fischer and piano teacher and former music director for Wisconsin Public Radio Bill Lutes, takes place this Saturday night at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall.
Admission is $15 for adults, free for students of all ages. A post-concert reception is included.
ALSO, BE ADVISED THAT THERE IS A UW HOCKEY GAME THAT NIGHT, SO FINDNG PARKING WILL BE MORE CHALLENGING THAN USUAL. ALLOW FOR EXTRA TIME TO GET TO THE CONCERT. THE HALL WILL OPEN AT 7:30 P.M., IF YOU WANT TO COME EARLY AND GET TO YOUR FAVORITE SEATS.
What is it about Schubert that makes him special to the many performers and listeners who will take part?
One answer can be found in a press release from the UW-Madison:
http://www.music.wisc.edu/2015/12/17/third-schubertiade/
More can be found in a story written by Sandy Tabachnick for Isthmus:
http://isthmus.com/music/third-annual-schubertiade-franz-schubert/
But Bill Lutes also agreed to talk about Schubert (below) and the Schubertiade in an email Q&A with The Ear:
This is the third consecutive year of the UW-Madison Schubertiades that you have presented in honor of his birthday on Jan. 31, this year being the 219th. What is it about Schubert that draws audiences and performers to his music?
Probably the most obvious thing we love about Schubert is the endless stream of glorious, memorable melody – melodies that we can only call “Schubertian.” Who can forget a tune like “The Trout” or “Ave Maria” or the famous “Serenade”? These are part of our cultural DNA.
Then there is Schubert’s rich harmonic vocabulary, and his expansiveness and generosity of form. Although he fashioned innumerable miniatures of exquisite perfection – short songs and piano pieces – he also wrote some of the biggest works of the time, including some of the songs we are performing.
They are big in every way, the “heavenly length” that Robert Schumann wrote about and loved, the sense of adventure and the unexpected and the sheer spaciousness of his musical paragraphs — and the long passages of rhythmic obsession that seem to anticipate today’s Minimalist composers.
Above all, his music is unique in the ways it explores the most joyful and the most tragic aspects of our experience, often interwoven, and ambiguously overlapping.
Those of us who are attracted to Schubert feel that he is our friend, our consoler, our guru and our guide to something that shines beyond the travails of our earthly life. He left us such a rich and varied body of music. The amount he composed in his 31 years is absolutely incredible. But also the level of inspiration is so high throughout so much of it.
Your program has a lot of variety. Is there some overarching “theme” that ties the program together?
This year, the pieces we are doing are all inspired by Schubert’s exploration of the sounds and imagery of nature. We’re calling it Schubertian “Naturescapes: Water, Winds and Woodlands.” Schubert came along at a time when the Romantic poets, painters and musicians began to think of nature in a new way.
Like Frank Lloyd Wright, Schubert and his poets spelled Nature with a capital N. The poetry he set to music often evokes the grandeur and sublimity of Nature, and the ways that we humans experience transcendence by observing mountains, forests, lakes and seas, and rushing winds or gentle breezes. All of the lieder that we have selected for this program reflect this almost religious attitude toward Nature (depicted below in the painting “Summer,” with a couple embracing amorously under a tree, by the Romantic German artist Casper David Friedrich.)
What are some of the challenges that Schubert’s music poses to pianists in particular?
Schubert’s piano style is unique, and calls for an ability to sing on the instrument, and to play with an array of orchestral colors.
Playing his songs of course means that you understand something about what it takes to sing them, and you have to completely get into the poetry and the ideas being explored.
He was a very social and sociable composer, and so a lot of playing Schubert involves playing nicely with others. That includes of course playing duets by two pianists at one keyboard.
Schubert was probably the greatest composer for this medium and wrote some of this greatest works for piano duet.
The two pianists must play the same instrument, and sound as one. It is harder than you might think! The issue of playing in such close proximity to your partner invites a level of physical intimacy that can be quite pleasant or quite awkward, depending on the music in question.
The great pianist Artur Schnabel (below) spoke of “music that is better than it can be played.” He included most of Schubert in this category.
The idea for the Schubertiades originated in Schubert’s lifetime — social gatherings devoted to hearing Schubert’s music, but also to having a good time with friends. How do modern performers recreate this informal atmosphere?
Part of it is the variety of the music, and the large number of performers who will be joining us, most of whom will be seated around the piano on stage during the concert (below top). We will also have seating on stage for audience members who want to have a bit of the intimate feeling of those first legendary Schubertiades (below bottom) held in salons in Vienna.
We aim for an atmosphere of spontaneity and informality, as we have in the past two Schubertiades. We are thrilled this year that our concert is underwritten by a generous donor, Ann Boyer, whose gift has allowed us to include opera singer Jamie-Rose Guarrine (below, in a photo by Peter Konerko) as our featured guest artist and alumna.
We both worked a lot with Jamie-Rose when she was a student here and she’s a wonderful singer who will be travelling to us from New England where she is a new voice faculty member at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
And of course we are delighted to be making music with so many of our UW-Madison School of Music faculty, other alumni and friends.
Anything else you want to add?
We will be performing all the songs in their original German. However, you’ll find full German texts and translations at the door. We encourage people to come early and read the poetry before the concert begins. It’s a nice way to familiarize yourself with the gist of the poems without having to be glued to your program while the songs are being sung.
Here is the impressive and appealing complete list of works and performers:
Schubertian Naturescapes – Water, Winds and Woodlands
Jamie-Rose Guarrine (JRG), Mimmi Fulmer (MF), Sara Guttenberg (SG), Marie McManama (MM), Daniel O’Dea (DO), David Ronis (DR), Paul Rowe (PF), Benjamin Schultz, (BS), singers
Soh-hyun Park Altino (SP), violin
Sally Chisholm (SC), viola
Parry Karp (PK), cello
Ben Ferris, (BF), double bass
Daniel Grabois (DG), horn
Wesley Warnhoff (WW), clarinet
Bill Lutes (BL) and Martha Fischer (MF), piano
Program
Wanderers Nachtlied (II), D. 768 Wayfarer’s Night Song (MF, BL) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Der Fluss D. 693 The River (JRG, BL) Friedrich von Schlegel
Widerspruch, D. 865, Contrariness (DO, DR, BS, PR, MF) Johann Gabriel Seidl
Auf dem Wasser zu Singen, D. 774, To Be Sung on the Water (SG, MF) Friedrich Leopold, Graf zu Stolberg-Stolberg
Fischerweise D. 881, Fisherman’s Ditty, (BS, MF) Franz Xaver von Schlechta
Die Forelle, D. 550, The Trout (MM, BL) Christian Friedrich Schubart
Piano Quintet in A major “Trout,” D. 667 (SP, SC, PK, BF, MF) Movement IV: Theme and Variations (heard in a YouTube video at the bottom)
Suleika I, D. 720 (JRG, BL); Suleika II, D. 717 (JRG,MF) Marianne von Willemer, rev. Goethe
Auf dem Strom, D. 943, On the River (DO, DG, MF) Ludwig Rellstab
INTERMISSION
Frühlingsglaube, D. 686, Faith in Spring (DR, BL) Ludwig Uhland
Im Walde “Waldesnacht,” D. 707, In the Forest “Forest Night” (PR, BL) Friedrich Schlegel
Dass sie hier gewesen, D. 775, That She has Been Here (MF, BL) Friedrich Rückert
Allegro in a minor ”Lebensstürme,” D. 947, Life’s Storms (MF, BL)
Der 23 Psalm, D. 706, (MM, SG, MF, MF, BL) The Bible, trans. Moses Mendelssohn
Der Hirt auf dem Felsen D. 965, The Shepherd on the Rock (JRG, WW, MF) Wilhelm Müller/Karl August Varnhagen von Ense
An die Musik, D. 547 To Music. Franz von Schober. Everyone is invited to sing along. You can find the words in your texts and translations.
Tags: adventure, alumni, Amherst, art song, artist, Arts, Artur Schnabel, Austria, Ave Maria, baritone, bass, Bible, birthday, Boston, breeze, Casper David Friedrich, Cello, Chamber music, choral music, clarinet, Classical music, Deutsch number, DNA, double bass, duet, faculty, forest, Frank Lloyd Wright, Franz Schubert, German, Germany, Goethe, harmony, hockey, Horn, Jacob Stockinger, Jamie-Rose Guarrine, lake, landscape, lider, lieder, Madison, melody, Mezzo-soprano, minimalism, minimalist music, mountain, Music, nature, New England, opera, painter, painting, Piano, piano duo, poem, Poetry, quintet, river, Romantic, Romantic art, Romantic music, Romanticism, salon, Schlegel, Schubert, Schubertiade, Serenade, shepherd, singer, song, soprano, stream, summer, tenor, text, The Trout, tradition, translation, Trout, Trout Quintet, tune, United States, University of Massachusetts, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Vienna, Viola, Violin, vocal music, voice, water, Wind, Wisconsin, wisconsin public radio, woodland, Woods, YouTube
Classical music: What classical music goes best with the NFL’s Super Bowl 48 football championship today? Plus, University of Wisconsin-Madison singers and instrumentalists movingly celebrate Franz Schubert in death as he was in life – with a “Schubertiade” birthday party.
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READER POLL: The Ear wants to know what piece of classical music — if any — goes well with today’s NFL Super Bowl 48 national football championship between the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks? Maybe Aram Khachaturian‘s “The Gladiators” from “Spartacus”? Leave your suggestions, with a link to a YouTube video if you can, in the COMMENTS section.
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 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.
By John W. Barker
January 31, 1797 was the birthdate of Franz Schubert (below), who died at only 31 on Nov. 19, 1828. So Friday night, January 31, 2014, was the 217th anniversary of his birth.
With her opportunity of giving a faculty recital, University of Wisconsin-Madison pianist (and singer) Martha Fischer (below, in a photo by Karin Talbot) decided to do a very Schubertian thing to mark the anniversary: Have a party. (Event photos are by The Ear.)
In the last years of his short life, Schubert was sustained socially as well as financially by a devoted circle of friends, drawn from the cultural classes of Vienna in his day. Their spontaneous parties, which they came to call “Schubertiades” (depicted below, with Schubert at the piano, in a painting by Julius Schmid) were lively social gatherings with their focus on Schubert’s latest compositions.
Accordingly, backed by her pianist husband, Bill Lutes, Fischer invited a number of colleagues from the UW School of Music to pay tribute to the beloved composer with a facsimile of a Schubertiade,
And so, the stage of Mills Hall (below) was fitted out with a large carpet, a standing floor lamp and circles of chairs welcomed members of the audience, to be close presences to the fun. (Alas, though, no free beer was included!)
The constantly shifting lineup of singers involved four voice-faculty members (sopranos Mimmi Fulmer and Elizabeth Hagedorn (below top), tenor James Doing, baritone Paul Rowe) and three graduate students in voice (soprano Sarah Richardson, below bottom on the left), tenor Thomas Leighton (below bottom on the right) and baritone Jordan Wilson).
Assuming her mezzo-soprano hat, Fischer sang two items herself, and she and Lutes rotated as piano accompanists, each demonstrating the talent and skill it takes to be a fine collaborative musician. Both of them tightly controlled the balance between voice and modern concert grand piano, never allowing the piano to drown the singers. And both pianists also matched the moods of the songs and the singers. That’s important because this concert had a lot of high-quality vocal talent, and it must be said that the student singers held their own splendidly with their faculty partners.
When one thinks about it, a great proportion of Schubert’s compositions is social music, meant for parlors and domestic music-making rather than concert situations.
That is most particularly true of his songs, and part-songs, with piano. The program offered 14 songs (with each singer having at least two solo assignments), one duet, and two part songs. The program was divided into two halves, with the general themes of “Night and Dreams” and “Love and Death.” While a couple of the songs were among Schubert’s more familiar ones (like the famous “Die Forelle” or The Trout, below as sung by baritone Jordan Wilson and also heard at the bottom in a YouTube video with baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and pianist Gerald Moore) most were chosen artfully from among the less often-heard ones.
Fulmer (below top) was particularly expressive in her two solos. She was, in fact, absolutely gripping in Der Zwerg (The Dwarf), a Gothic-horror scene in which a court dwarf, betrayed by his former lover, the queen, kills her and sails into oblivion. (I unashamedly admit this grim masterpiece, so compellingly designed by Schubert, is one of my favorites among his songs.) James Doing (below bottom) had just the right range of gestures and expressions to make Lachen und Weinen (Laughter and Tears) a casual expression of ironic bafflement.
And Paul Rowe (below) gave Totengräbers Heimweh (Grave-Digger’s Longing) a quality of dark probing into the very prospects of human mortality that Schubert himself was learning to fear when he wrote it. But perhaps it is unfair to single out individual performances, since they were all so lovely.
Each of the program’s two halves had its own instrumental intermezzo.
In the first half, it was the simple but moving Notturno (Nocturne) for violin, cello, and piano (below) — a discarded movement from one of Schubert’s piano trios, in which violin student Alice Bartsch and cello professor Parry Karp joined Fischer in a beautiful performance.
For the second half, the dynamic duo of Fischer and Lutes plunged into the ambitious and late Fantasy in F minor for piano-four hands — surely among the supreme masterpieces of all music for piano duet.
There was one added song, however, as the finale. All the singers gathered together to sing the sublime An die Musik (To Music), but with the audience invited to join in—sustained by a reproduction of the score on the back of the texts handout — and responded with a standing ovation for all the performers (below).
This kind of sing-along trick could have been cheap, but in fact it worked beautifully, with many in the audience adding their voices, obviously caught up in the spirit of that most social, most lovable and most astounding of great composers, Franz Schubert.
Tags: American Record Guide, Aram Khachaturian, art songs, Arts, Cello, Chamber music, Denver Broncos, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Early music, Franz Schubert, Gerald Moore, Jacob Stockinger, John W. Barker, Julius Schmid, lieder, Madison, Mimmi Fulmer, NFL, Paul Rowe, Piano, Piano Trio, Sarah Richardson, Schubert, Schubertiade, Seattle Seahawks, songs, Super Bowl 48, Super Bowl XLVIII, Trout, University of Wisconsin School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Violin, vocal music, WORT FM, YouTube
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