The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Here are 10 tips from NPR on how to improve your practicing.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear is willing to bet that 90 percent of having successful and satisfying music lessons boils down to knowing how to practice.
That takes a long time and a lot of experience. And you know how hard it is when so many actual lessons turn into guided practice sessions, no matter whether it is a question of the voice, the piano, strings like the violin an cello, brass and woodwinds,
But NPR’s outstanding classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” recently offered 10 tips, culled from various sources, for improving how you practice. I find them useful and suspect so will you.
Here is a link:
Use the COMMENT space on this blog to let all of us know how these practice tips work for you and if you have any special tips for practicing of your own.
Thank you, NPR. And you can also find some useful practice videos for various instrument at YouTube (at bottom).
So spread the word and share these tips by passing them along to others with this blog post.
Now, let’s all go make music!
Classical music: Iraq war veteran and writer Brian Castner will see “The Long Walk,” his memoir of his own experience with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), turned into an opera that will premiere in 2014 in New York City.
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By Jacob Stockinger
After a decade or more of Americans fighting wars, it seems almost inevitable.
Lots of people have talked about PTSD – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
But not too many people have sung about it.
That could change soon.
Iraq war veteran and writer Brian Castner (below) will soon see his memoir “The Long Walk,” about his experience in dealing with war and PTSD, turned into an opera that is scheduled to receive its world premiere in 2014 at the American Lyric Theater in New York City which has commissioned the work.
The composer is Jeremy Howard Beck and the librettist is Stephanie Fleischmann. They are pictured in the photo below with Brian Castner in the center.
Recently NPR’s terrific classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” featured a piece on the collaboration and subject matter. It included an overview with interviews and background plus an audio snippet that is also worth listening to
Here is a link:
And here is a link to another story about the project on Opera Pulse, an online website specializing in opera;
http://www.operapulse.com/opera-news/2013/02/12/american-lyric-theater-commissions-the-long-walk/
The Ear likes the idea. It is certainly is a different and more contemporary take on war and armed conflict than the romanticized and melodramatic versions one often finds in grand opera or even a lot of classic literature.
It seems more realistic and more in keeping with the current way that veterans wage armed conflict and then return home to a different, more personal and more difficult war.
We’ll have to see how good it is. (See the YouTube video at the bottom for the creators discussing the new opera.)
But if it holds up as a work of musical and theatrical art, it sure would seem a natural choice for Madison – perhaps the Madison Opera, which next season will stage Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking” or at least the University Opera at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which can afford to be more experimental and controversial.
What do you think of the idea or inspiration?
The Ear wants to hear.
Classical music: NPR’s “Deceptive Cadence” blog about The Great American Symphony generates a lot of responses from readers and musicians. They say there are many candidates. But how many have you know of, or have actually heard? Why don’t we hear more American classical music performed? Is the “industry” too Euro-centric?
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By Jacob Stockinger
A while ago, around American Independence Day on the Fourth of July, NPR’s outstanding classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” asked if The Great American Symphony – like The Great American Novel – already exists, or has yet to be written.
It also asked both readers and professional performers to name some of the greatest American music, symphonies or other genres, that deserve a wider hearing and more performances.
The posting got well-deserved responses from readers and professional musicians. And the answers are still pouring in.
Here is what The Ear wants to know: Why don’t we hear more about these candidates for The Great American Symphony? In fact, we don’t we get to hear them in performance.
Is it because they are inferior? Or overlooked?
Or is classical music subject to a bias that favors Europe over American, the Old World over the New World?
We hear Samuel Barber’s Violin concerto often enough. So, why not his symphonies? (You can hear part of Barber’s Symphony No. 1, performed by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and conductor Leonard Slatkin in YouTube video at the bottom.) And the same applies to many other composers.
Here is a link to my original post, with stories featuring links to NPR blogger Tom Huizenga and to “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel’s interview with American conductor JoAnn Falletta (below) about this:
Here are some other important links to follow-up, with audio samples, to other candidates for The Great American Symphony. Be sure to read the enlightening reader COMMENTS in all of them:
Here is one that includes offerings by that American-born and American-trained champion of American music conductor Marin Alsop (below):
And the masterful cultural historian Joseph Horowitz (below), who spoke so engagingly in Madison two seasons ago during the centennial of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet offered these thoughts:
And here are three of the more recent ones:
Here is one that features the opinions of Robert Spano (below), the conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the music director of the Aspen Music Festival:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/07/26/205806474/americas-unsung-symphonies
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/07/22/204586780/3-NEW-AMERICAN-SYMPHONIC-ALBUMS
Do you have candidates for The Great American Symphony that the others haven’t mentioned? What is it?
And is classical music in the U.S. the victim of a Euro-centric bias?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Cadence (music), Great American Symphony, Independence Day, Jacob Stockinger, JoAnn Falletta, Joseph Horowitz, Leonard Slatkin, NPR, Pro Arte Quartet, Robert Spano, Samuel Barber, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, United State, United States, University of Wisconsin–Madison, YouTube
Classical music: The Mostly Mozart Festival opens Wednesday night in New York City’s Lincoln Center with great music by Beethoven and Mozart and with changes that add new energy and vitality. But will PBS refuse to broadcast it?
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By Jacob Stockinger
I guess this summer The Ear will be hearing and especially SEEING a lot less Mozart.
Along with less Beethoven.
Here’s the reason: As far as I can tell, this summer PBS will NOT broadcast the opening of the popular annual summer Mostly Mozart Festival from Lincoln Center in New York City.
It is especially unfortunate to The Ear because this year’s opening night program on this Wednesday, tomorrow, features two of his favorite Beethoven works and a favorite pianist: the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, with French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet (below top, in a photo by Paul Mitchell); and the Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92, with the festival orchestra under its music director since 2002 Louis Langree (below bottom).
That same night, Bavouzet — an up-and-coming artist hghly acclaimed for his recordings of Franz Josef Haydn, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel –will perform Book 2 of Debussy‘s Preludes in the Kaplan Penthouse. (You can hear Bavouzet, who records on the Chandos Records, perform Debussy’s “Reflections in Water” in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
In addition, mezzo-soprano Alice Coote (below) will sing two arias by Mozart: :”Ch’io me scorda di te” and “Parto, parto ma ben mia” from the opera “La Clemenza di Tito.”
Perhaps I am wrong about not being broadcast. I hope so, because it seems exactly the kind of high quality, non-commercial event that public broadcasting was originally started for. In addition, the openings that used to be broadcast on PBS’ “Live From Lincoln Center” were always enjoyable, an artistic tie that bound many of us together for a couple of hours.
I mean, I have had my fill of PBS emphasizing Britty comedies and crime drama — I like them, but there is a limit — and I want to know more about the cultural scene in America that major commercial and network broadcasters usually ignore.
Here are links to the Mostly Mozart festival’s main website where you can find listings of artists, events and programs:
http://aboutlincolncenter.org/programs/program-mostly-mozart
http://aboutlincolncenter.org/events-and-tickets
Maybe you can at least listen to it as it is streamed via the Internet. I look more into it and let you know.
But perhaps the real stars of this year’s festival are the changes that have been made to add energy and revitalize the festival that once seemed dangerously on the decline.
That is exactly the story that New York Times senior music critic Anthony Tommasini (below) wrote about in “Mostly Mozart, Mostly Improved” that appeared on Sunday.
The changes include using smaller spaces, including new music, staging an opera, starting a new series and changing the old formula of composers to be performed.
Here is a link to Tommasini’s story:
Should PBS broadcast the opening concert – and maybe more – of the Mostly Mozart Festival?
What lessons should local classical music presenters draw from the Mostly Mozart Festival and how it has been restructured and revamped?
The Ear wants to hear.
Classical music: What does it feel like to hold, play and hear Mozart’s own violin and viola? America just had its first chance ever to find out. Here’s a report.
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By Jacob Stockinger
If you want some idea of what a prodigious talent the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791, below) was, you might recall not only his enormous amount of music in 35 years with such a high percentage of masterpieces, or his astonishing virtuosity as a keyboard player (he composed all and premiered most of his 27 piano concertos).
You might also recall that he was an outstanding violinist — his oppressively ambitious father Leopold said that his son could have become the best violinist in Europe with some more effort and work – and also a violist who loved to pay the viola in the same string quartet where fellow composer Franz Joseph Haydn played the violin.
Anyway, for more than 200 years Mozart’s instruments have been stored in a museum in Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg, Austria.
But the instruments were recently brought to the United State for the first time in history and appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival. (That is also where the University of Wisconsin-Madison duo Ensemble SDG, featuring keyboard John Chappell Stowe and baroque violinist Edith Hines, performed an all-Heinrich Bieber concert.)
Hearing about the unusual security measures taken for the trip to guarantee their security – including separate airplane flights — is fascinating.
But most fascinating of all is a first-person account of what it feels like to hold and play and listen Mozart’s own string instruments, which generally featured mellowness rather than brilliance.
You can hear about it all on NPR’s great classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” and through writer Anastasias Tsioulcas’ experience with Mozart’s own string instruments. (Below is a photo by Kathy Wittman of Amandine Beyer holding the violin backstage in Boston during the festival.)
Here is a link. Do yourself a favor listen to it — don’t just read the transcript. I hope that you enjoy it and that it enhance even further (deeper?) your opinion of Wolfie:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/06/14/190975113/playing-mozart-on-mozarts-violin
And here is a link to a live performance on Mozart’s own:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/191709140/mozarts-violin-comes-to-boston-live-in-concert
Of course, possessing a fine instrument doesn’t guarantee being a great composer. But Mozart could play his own works, including the Violin Concerto No. 3, which you can hear below with Hilary Hahn in a YouTube video that has had more than a million hits:
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
Going live! Here are some links to newly announced summer concerts and 2021-22 seasons
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PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
Get out your datebooks.
Now that the pandemic is fast abating, at least locally, music groups and music presenters in the Madison area have been announcing a return to live music and their new seasons and summer events in a relentless way.
The Ear had been out of commission since mid-May until this week. But in any case, The Ear was overwhelmed and just couldn’t keep up with a separate post for each one.
Still, he thought it might be helpful to be able to check the dates, performers, programs, tickets and other information in one place.
Remember that the Madison Early Music Festival is no more. It has been absorbed into the regular music curriculum at the UW.
Please know that many groups – including, but not limited to, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music (below is the UW Symphony Orchestra — masked, socially distanced and virtually streamed — during the pandemic), University Opera, Edgewood College, Just Bach, Grace Presents, the Salon Piano Series, the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Bach Around the Clock, the Festival Choir of Madison, the Wisconsin Chamber Choir and the Madison Bach Musicians – have not yet released details of their new seasons.
But most of their websites say that an announcement of their new season is coming soon.
There are also some trends you may notice.
Many of the groups are raising prices and persistently seek donations as well as subscribers, no doubt to help make up for the loss of revenue during the pandemic.
The Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra have reduced the number of concerts or start later.
Some have simply rescheduled events, like the Wisconsin Union Theater closing its season with soprano Renée Fleming. And the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s new season is largely the same one they were planning to have to celebrate the Beethoven Year in 2020-21.
The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the Middleton Community Orchestra and the Willy Street Chamber Players all have pop-up concerts and scheduled outdoor concerts in parks. Some have also scheduled individual mini-concerts or personal sessions.
If you look at programs, you will see an emphasis on Black composers and performers by almost all groups. (The Madison Symphony Orchestra has scheduled “Lyric for Strings” by George Walker, below. You can hear it performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
What is most disappointing is that no group seems to have announced a special concert or event to pay homage to the public ordeal, health care workers and victims of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Ear keeps thinking a performance of a suitable requiem (by perhaps Mozart, Faure, Brahms, Verdi or Britten) or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony would have been an appropriate way to start the in-person season and, at the same time, acknowledge the more than 7,000 deaths in Wisconsin and almost 600,000 deaths in the U.S. and almost 4 million worldwide as of now. Maybe even Barber’s overplayed Adagio for Strings would suffice.
Finally, very few groups seem to be offering online virtual concert attendance as a possibility for those listeners who found that they actually enjoyed at least some the music in their own homes and at their own times.
IN ANY CASE, HERE IS WHAT HAS ALREADY TAKEN PLACE OR IS STILL ON TAP. CHECK IT OUT!
Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society in free live and for-pay recorded concerts: https://bachdancing.org
Middleton Community Orchestra’s summer concerts at Fireman’s Park (below) in Middleton: https://middletoncommunityorchestra.org
Madison Bach Musicians summer workshops (below): https://madisonbachmusicians.org/2021-summer-chamber-music-workshop/
Concerts on the Square with limited paid admission at Breese Stevens Field (below): https://wcoconcerts.org/concerts-tickets/concerts-on-the-square
Madison Symphony Orchestra (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers): https://madisonsymphony.org/concerts-events/madison-symphony-orchestra-concerts/
Madison Opera and Opera in the Park (below): https://www.madisonopera.org/oitp21/; and https://www.madisonopera.org/21-22/
Wisconsin Union Theater: https://union.wisc.edu/visit/wisconsin-union-theater/seasonevents/concert-series/
Willy Street Chamber Players (below) at Orton Park: http://www.willystreetchamberplayers.org/2021-summer-concert-series.html
If you know of more entries or have observations to make about these, please leave word and, when possible, a link in the comment section.
The Ear wants to hear.
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