The Well-Tempered Ear
Today’s Just Bach concert starts the 10-day Bach Around the Clock festival that runs through March 26. All events are free and online. Here are the lineups
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today — Wednesday, March 17 – brings the free monthly Just Bach concert that is online for 30 minutes.
This year that concert will also serve as the opening event of the annual Bach Around the Clock (BATC) festival to celebrate the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Here is a link to the lineup of the Bach Around the Clock events. As of this writing, many of the special morning and evening guests and events are listed. But the daytime programs and performers are listed only for today, tomorrow and the final concert. The Ear understands the rest of the listings will be up by the end of today: https://bachclock.com/concert-schedule
There might be frequent additions, changes and updates, so it is best to check back often.
The Ear has heard that, as usual, the festival will include students, amateurs and professionals; young people and adults; individuals, smaller chamber music ensembles and larger groups; and many well-known and neglected works from many genres.
Those genres include vocal and choral music; keyboard music for clavichord, harpsichord, piano and organ; string music for violin, viola and cello; wind and brass music; and much more.
Daily festival concerts will be posted starting at 8 a.m. Central Daylight Time and evening segments will begin at 7 p.m CDT. All events and concerts will be posted and available during the entire festival.
As for today’s Just Bach concert, here is the announcement from Marika Fischer Hoyt (below), the artistic director of Bach Around the Clock and a co-founder and co-director of Just Bach:
Greetings from Just Bach! We hope this finds you well, and ready to experience more of the timeless beauty of Bach, this month in music for organ and strings.
Our concert TODAY opens with a welcome and program overview from me. We figure when Just Bach and Bach Around The Clock join forces, the Master himself (below, in a cutout, in a photo by Barry Lewis) is summoned.
Today’s program opens with organist Mark Brampton Smith (below) playing two Sinfonias from Cantata 35.
These are arrangements of two dramatic organ concerto movements, and Mark brings off the virtuosic passages with flair, while the strings provide a spirited accompaniment.
Then the strings take center stage – in arrangements for string quartet — bringing a yearning melancholy to the slow Andante movement of Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, BWV 1047, and energy and excitement to Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, BWV 1048.
The program closes with our popular chorale sing-along, “Befiehl du deine Wege” (Commend Your Ways), BWV 271. I will introduce the piece and the text, and my sister, soprano Barbara Fischer, will sing it — with Mark on the organ.
We encourage viewers to sing along by following the chorale sheet music, which will be displayed on the computer screen.
Do you have a question for the performers? Would you like to listen in as they chat about the program? Please join us for a half-hour live Zoom post-concert reception tonight, March 17, at 7 p.m. The link is posted on the Just Bach website: https://justbach.org/concerts/
As regular performers on Luther Memorial Church’s weekly “Music at Midday” concert series, Just Bach presents half-hour programs starting at 8 a.m. on the third Wednesday of each month and then remain posted. Remaining dates this semester: March. 17, April 21, and May 19. Our concerts are posted on the Just Bach and Luther Memorial YouTube Channels: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcyVFEVsJwklHAx9riqSkXQ
Viewing the concerts is free, but we ask those who are able, to help us pay our musicians with a tax-deductible donation at: https://justbach.org/donate/
Today’s performers include members of the Madison-based early music group Sonata à Quattro (below in photo by Barry Lewis) and are: Christine Hauptly Annin and Aaron Yarmel, violin; Marika Fischer Hoyt, viola; Charlie Rasmussen, cello; Mark Brampton Smith, organ; and Barbara Fischer, guest soprano.
Dave Parminter is the videographer and Barry Lewis is the photographer.
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Bach Around the Clock 2021 will incorporate many new aspects – including more audiences and artists of color — into the 10-day free virtual festival that runs March 17-26
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following update about Bach Around the Clock (BATC), the annual March free event to celebrate the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (below). Like last year, the year’s will be virtual and online and spread out over 10 days, from March 17 to March 26.
The BATC 2021 Festival is shaping up brilliantly. We have about 50 participants signed up so far, with musical selections totaling more than eight hours.
As always, it has a nice mix of ages and levels of performers, from young students to seasoned professionals. It also runs from traditional instruments like the violin, viola, cello, oboe, bassoon, piano and organ as well as the human voice to more unusual instruments like the clavichord, 6-string electric bass and a saxophone quartet.
We are so grateful to all the participants who have volunteered to share their talents. (Below is the Webb Trio playing last year from home.)
Last year’s virtual format forms the basis of this year’s festival, but we’ve expanded on that in some very exciting ways.
BATC board member Melanie de Jesus (below) is producing two mini-films aimed at making the festival more accessible to participants. For the tech-challenged among us, the “How to Film Yourself” video will make it easier for musicians to participate virtually.
This film will be available this THURSDAY, Feb. 25, in time to help participants film and submit their performances by the March 5 deadline. Would you like to perform? For information about signing up for slots. Click here to let us know!
Make your own recording or request a time slot at a BATC venue where a professional videographer will create a recording for you to keep. Harpsichord, piano and organ are available.
Melanie’s “Bach for Kids” film will be published during the festival, and will introduce basic musical concepts to the youngest participants. It will culminate in a sing-along, play-along, dance-along performance of some simple Bach tunes, as demonstrated by some (very) young students at the Madison Conservatory, where de Jesus is the director.
Another significant new element of this year’s festival will be our evening Zoom events, including receptions with performers, and guest artists giving special performances, lecture/demos, master classes and panel discussions.
In keeping with this year’s theme of “Building Bridges Through Bach,” we will celebrate and feature musicians and guest artists of color.
We are thrilled to announce Wisconsin Public Radio music host Jonathan Overby (below) as our keynote speaker. Overby’s work to research and demonstrate how music, especially sacred music, serves as a cultural bridge, has taken him all over the planet. His core values are in close alignment with the theme of this year’s festival, and his address will set the tone for the rest of the festival.
The virtual format enables us to bring in guest artists from afar. Lawrence Quinnett (below), on the piano faculty of Livingstone College, a private, historically black college in Salisbury, North Carolina, will perform all six French Suites, and give a brief talk on his approach to ornamentation. (You can hear Quinnett performing French Suite No. 1 by Bach in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Clifton Harrison (below, in photo by Stephen Wright), violist in the Kreutzer String Quartet, in residence at Oxford University in England, will give a master class for interested BATC participants. Information on how to audition for this opportunity will be shared very soon.
We are extremely pleased that Trevor Stephenson (below), artistic director of the Madison Bach Musicians, will give an evening lecture and demonstration on the Goldberg Variations.
Through his performances, interviews and extremely popular pre-concert lectures, Trevor has served as a very important builder of bridges to the music of J.S. Bach in Madison and beyond. It would be hard to overstate the impact of Trevor’s work to make Bach’s music accessible to local audiences of all ages and backgrounds. We’re sure viewers will enjoy this event.
An astonishing new development resulted from BATC’s outreach efforts to local high schools: Steve Kurr (below), orchestra director at Middleton High School and former conductor of the Middleton Community Orchestra, decided to incorporate BATC into his curriculum this semester.
Fifteen of his students will perform for BATC, filmed by four other students, and then the students will all view the performances and write essays about them.
BATC is delighted with this creative initiative, looks forward to receiving the videos from this cohort of students, and hopes to expand on this kind of outreach in future years. Maybe we can include the final essays on our website, if the students agree.
There are a few other ideas still under construction; perhaps a panel discussion with educators, or one with local musical bridge-builders (aka “Angels in our Midst”)?
Please help us keep this festival free and open to all.
Bach Around The Clock is a unique program in our community. It offers everyone the opportunity to share their love of the music of Bach. There is no charge to perform or to listen.
But the festival is not free to produce! BATC provides venues, instruments, videographers, editors, and services for performers and audience.
We need your support!
Click on there link below to donate securely online with a PayPal account or credit card: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=WU7WWBW5LBMQJ
Or you can make a check out to Bach Around The Clock and mail it to: Bach Around The Clock, 2802 Arbor Drive #2, Madison, WI 53704
Bach Around The Clock is a 501(c)(3) organization; your donation is tax-deductible as allowed by the law. Donors will be listed on the acknowledgments page of the BATC website .
For the latest updates, please visit our website, bachclock.org, or our Facebook page, facebook.com/batcmadison.
We hope you will join us.
Marika Fischer Hoyt, Artistic Director, Bach Around The Clock, (608) 233-2646
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Library of Congress streams UW pianist Christopher Taylor’s online Liszt-Beethoven symphony recital for free this Thursday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
This Thursday night, Dec. 17, from 7 to 9 p.m. CST, University of Wisconsin-Madison virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor (below) will close the celebration of the Beethoven Year, marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, at the Library of Congress. After the concert’s premiere, it will stay posted online.
For the past several years, Taylor has been performing the solo piano transcriptions by Franz Liszt of Ludwig van Beethoven’s nine symphonies both in Russia and at the UW-Madison.
Here is more from the website of the UW-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music:
“It takes extraordinary skill as an orchestrator to condense an entire symphony by Beethoven (below top) into a version for a solo instrument, but that is just what Franz Liszt (below bottom) accomplished in his piano transcriptions. (You can hear a sample, along with a visual representation, of the Fifth Symphony transcription in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
“Hear virtuoso pianist Christopher Taylor perform three of these transcendent symphony transcriptions, works he describes as a “new perspective on something familiar.” (The Ear, who has heard Taylor’s impressive performances of almost all nine symphonies, finds that comparing the two versions is like looking at the same photograph in color and then black-and-white. Color emphasizes details while black-and-white emphasizes structure. You hear new things by comparing the two.)
The performance was pre-recorded in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall of the Hamel Music Center.
The program is:
BEETHOVEN/LISZT
Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
You can find more details at: https://loc.gov/concerts/christopher-taylor.html
You can Register on Eventbrite
Hailed by critics as “frighteningly talented” (The New York Times) and “a great pianist” (The Los Angeles Times), Taylor has distinguished himself throughout his career as an innovative musician with a diverse array of talents and interests.
He is known for a passionate advocacy of music written in the past 100 years — Messiaen, Ligeti and Bolcom figure prominently in his performances — but his repertoire spans four centuries and includes the complete Beethoven sonatas, the Liszt Transcendental Etudes, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and a multitude of other familiar masterworks.
Whatever the genre or era of the composition, Taylor brings to it an active imagination and intellect coupled with heartfelt intensity and grace.
Taylor has concertized around the globe, with international tours taking him to Russia, Western Europe, East Asia and the Caribbean.
At home in the U.S. he has appeared with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, the Madison Symphony and the Milwaukee Symphony. As a soloist he has performed in New York’s Carnegie and Alice Tully Halls, in Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Ravinia and Aspen festivals, and dozens of other venues.
In chamber music settings, he has collaborated with many eminent musicians, including Robert McDuffie and the Borromeo, Shanghai, Pro Arte, and Ying Quartets.
His recordings have featured works by Liszt, Messiaen and present-day Americans William Bolcom and Derek Bermel.
Throughout his career, Taylor has become known for undertaking memorable and unusual projects. Examples include: an upcoming tour in which he will perform, from memory, the complete transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies by Liszt; performances and lectures on the complete etudes of Gyorgy Ligeti; and a series of performances of the Goldberg Variations on the unique double-manual Steinway piano (below) in the collection of the University of Wisconsin.
Numerous awards have confirmed Taylor’s high standing in the musical world. He was named an American Pianists’ Association Fellow for 2000, before which he received an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1996 and the Bronze Medal in the 1993 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. In 1990 he took first prize in the William Kapell International Piano Competition, and also became one of the first recipients of the Irving Gilmore Young Artists’ Award.
Taylor lives in Middleton, Wis., with his wife and two daughters. He is a Steinway artist.
For more biographical information — including his piano teachers and his education as well as his interest in mathematics and engineering — go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/christopher-taylor-concerts-from-the-library-of-congress/
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The third LunART Festival celebrates Black women in the arts with FREE streaming concerts and events this Saturday night, Oct. 10, and next Saturday night, Oct. 17
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post:
The LunART Festival is back for its third season, continuing its mission to support, inspire, promote and celebrate women in the arts, with a special presentation, “Human Family,” available via two FREE video livestreams on LunART’s website and Facebook page on Saturday, Oct. 10, and Saturday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. CDT.
The events will be co-hosted by LunART founder and flutist Iva Ugrcic (below top), and by vocalist and art administrator Deja Mason (below bottom).
In response to the most recent and ongoing racial inequality and in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, LunART will present the “Human Family” virtual festival featuring art created by Black women.
These FREE streamed events will feature a palette of emerging and established artists drawn from Madison’s rich arts scene, while also celebrating those who have paved the way for generations to come.
Radical inclusivity has been part of LunART’s mission from its conception. While women have historically been underrepresented in the arts, we cannot deny that there are segments of women that have been doubly marginalized, including women of color, women in the LGBTQIA+ community, older women and women with disabilities.
Part of creating a more just, inclusive world means recognizing that even within the space of underrepresentation, there remain disparities.
Works from the past include Florence Price’s “Five Folksongs of Counterpoint” for string quartet (heard in the YouTube video at the bottom), which is deeply rooted in the African-American spiritual tradition; Margaret Bonds’ Spiritual Suite for solo piano, written in a neo-Romantic classical style infused by jazz harmonies and rhythms; Afro-American Suite for flute, cello and piano by Undine Smith Moore, based on authentic spiritual songs used to express and record everyday life of slaves in America.
Florence Price (below), Margaret Bonds and Undine Smith Moore all fought against both racial and gender discrimination throughout their lives. To be a woman composing classical music in the mid-20th century was unusual; to be a Black woman composer was even more so. And yet, these women forged ahead, making history and paving the way for the women who would follow them.
Along with these pioneers of the past, LunART will also celebrate contemporary Black women who are making a big impact in the world of arts, culture, advocacy and activism, following the footsteps of their predecessors.
“Voodoo Dolls” for string quartet by Jessie Montgomery (below in a photo by Jiyang Chen) is influenced by West African drumming patterns that are interwoven with lyrical motifs in the improvisatory style.
“Fanmi Imen,” a work for flute and piano by Valerie Coleman (below) — LunART’s 2019 Composer-in-Residence) — is based on a powerful poem by Maya Angelou, “Human Family.” Angelou calls for peace and unity, while acknowledging differences due to ethnic and cultural background in her famous refrain: “we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”
The chamber music will be performed by Madison’s finest musicians: Isabella Lippi, Karl Lavine, Peter Miliczky, Magdalena Sas, Marie Pauls, Satoko Hayami, Yana Avedyan and Iva Ugrcic.
Celebrating women’s creativity across many art forms has been a core component of LunART’s artistic mission from its inception, and this year is no exception. While music will create a sound painting, “Human Family” will also feature women who use words and movement to tell their story.
Enter a world of phenomenal talent with emerging singer-songwriters Danielle Crim and Akornefa Akyea performing their most recent original songs; magically moving poems and spoken-word pieces by Jamie Dawson and Shasparay Lighteard; and join dancer and choreographer Kimi Evelyn in self-exploration of what happens when the body and the soul are left in complete solitude through her powerful piece “Body, Sweet Home.”
To commemorate the Festival events, LunART has commissioned digital artwork (below) by local artist and activist Amira Caire, which is inspired by the “Human Family” concept. This stunning piece of art will be available for purchase in printed form on LunART’s website.
We are calling our community to eat local, drink local and support local. By supporting LunART, you are also supporting local nonprofits and small businesses.
This project would not be possible without the generosity of Madison’s creative media agency Microtone Media, The Piano Gal Shop from Sun Prairie, Dane Arts and a grant from the Madison Arts Commission at https://www.cityofmadison.com/dpced/planning/madison-arts-commission/1580/, with the additional funds from the Wisconsin Arts Board.
Events are free and available for anyone to watch online, and donations are welcomed. For more details about the artists, events, programs and links, and donation methods, please visit https://www.lunartfestival.org
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Classical music: Today is the Summer Solstice. What music best greets summer during this odd year? Plus, here is information about Make Music Madison this Sunday
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today – Saturday, June 20, 2020 – is the Summer Solstice.
Summer officially arrives this afternoon at 4:43 p.m. CDT.
Is The Ear alone in thinking that the time since the winter solstice has passed both more slowly and also more quickly than usual, thanks to the pandemic?
And now the days will start getting shorter. Can that be possible? Is the year really half over?
Well, it has been an unusual spring and promises to be an unusual summer, to say the least.
So how about some unusual Vivaldi?
If you listen to Wisconsin Public Radio, chances are good that today or sometime soon you will hear the hyper-popular original version of “Summer” from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.”
But The Ear finds this unusual contemporary version a welcome change from the over-programmed and too familiar original version, and more appropriate to the special summer that will follow the special spring.
It is a version that has been “recomposed” by British composer Max Richter (below top) with violin soloist Daniel Hope (below bottom), a protege of the legendary Yehudi Menuhin, who performed several years ago with the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
The Ear finds the entire work very appealing, but here is the YouTube video of just the Summer section as it was being recorded.
If you don’t like this music, what music would you choose to listen to as you celebrate the coming of summer?
And if you like this excerpt, here is a link to the complete version of “Vivaldi Recomposed”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJnxPgT83rw
MAKE MUSIC MADISON
Today may be the Summer Solstice, but this year’s Make Music Madison will take place this Sunday, which also happens to be Father’s Day.
The eight annual Make Music Madison – which includes classical music but also rock, jazz, folk, blues, hip-hop and country — is part of Make Music Day, an international celebration of the Summer Solstice that this year will take place in some 1,000 cities in 120 countries.
Here is a helpful listing with locations, time, performers and programs as well as form (virtual and online, with links, or real): http://www.makemusicmadison.org
Here is a story with more background about the event: http://www.makemusicday.org
If you attend or hear some of the events, let us know what you thought.
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: On this Memorial Day, The Ear honors not only soldiers but also civilians, COVID-19 victims and all those responders and workers who serve the public
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is Memorial Day 2020.
It is of course a largely military holiday. Most of the planned public events will be to honor those who died in service to their country. That usually means fallen soldiers and deceased veterans.
It also means that military cemeteries – like Arlington National Cemetery, below — will be decorated with American flags.
But The Ear doesn’t think we should forget that there are many ways to serve your country and protect the public, many kinds war and self-sacrifice.
Let’s not forget civilians, especially since worldwide more than twice the numbers of civilians died in World War II than did members of the armed forces. Lives are taken as well as given.
A larger definition of “national service” also seems especially timely since this weekend the U.S. is likely to surpass 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 during the coronavirus pandemic. They include many first responders and frontline workers (below) as well as grocery store workers and delivery drivers. Even “small” occupations have big heroes. There is no reason not to be more inclusive.
There are traditional kinds of music to honor the dead. They include requiems and elegies, military marches and funeral marches. And in the comment section you should feel free to suggest whatever music you think would be appropriate.
But The Ear found a piece he thinks is both unusual and ideal.
It is called “Old and Lost Rivers” by the contemporary American composer Tobias Picker (below). It is a beautiful, moving and contemplative piece, based on an actual place in Texas, that you can hear in the YouTube video at the bottom.
But you should know this about the work’s title.
With rivers, “lost” doesn’t mean forgotten or misplaced.
One dictionary defines it as “a surface stream that flows into an underground passageway” – and eventually often becomes part of a larger body of water such as a lake or the ocean.
It can also mean rivers that appear during heavy rain and then disappear when they evaporate during a drought.
Somehow, those images serve as fitting metaphors for our losses and that music seems a very appropriate way to honor those who sacrifice themselves and disappear in service to others.
The Ear hopes you agree.
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Classical music: This Friday at noon, technology meets Beethoven when UW-Madison pianist Kangwoo Jin plays a FREE concerto performance
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By Jacob Stockinger
This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale — tomorrow, March 6 — at the First Unitarian Society of Madison, 900 University Bay Drive, features an unusual concert in which classical music meets high technology.
Kangwoo Jin (below, in a photo by Steve Apps for the Wisconsin State Journal), a gifted and prize-winning pianist from South Korea, will perform the second and third movements of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58.
But instead of a second piano or a full orchestra, Jin will be accompanied by a newly developed interactive app that adjusts to Jin and allows him to play his solo part flexibly with a real orchestra accompaniment that has been recorded minus the piano part.
Jin is studying for his doctorate with UW Professors Christopher Taylor and Jessica Johnson. He will graduate this May.
Next week Jin — who has won the UW-Madison Concerto and Beethoven Competitions and who teaches at Farley’s House of Pianos, the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and the UW Continuing Education program– will open and close the UW-River Falls Piano Festival with two performances of the same Beethoven concerto with the St. Croix Valley Symphony Orchestra
Jin suffers from hemophilia and has to be careful about injuring himself from over-practicing and over-playing. He has a fascinating and inspiring personal story to tell. Here is a link to a story about him in the Wisconsin State Journal: https://madison.com/wsj/entertainment/uw-pianist-shares-musical-gift-despite-health-challenge/article_fdba6f0f-9245-5816-a97c-c4f3a6e2d0ed.html
You can follow his Facebook page. And here is a link to Jin’s own website, which has more biographical information and videos: https://www.pianistkangwoojin.com
Jin says that, in addition to the two concerto movements, he will also play several short pieces: “Clair de Lune” (Moonlight) by Claude Debussy; the “Raindrop” Prelude by Chopin; and two song transcriptions by Franz Liszt — Schubert’s “Litany” and Schumann’s “Widmung” (Dedication).
The orchestral accompaniment for the Beethoven concerto is performed by MusAcc — an iPad app. It is an app that can customize and manipulate the audio, much like an actual instrument, in real time. Think of it as an orchestra in a box that you can use anywhere.
Jin explains the reasons for his FUS concert, which starts at NOON (not 12:15 p.m., as it used to be) and goes to about 1 p.m.:
“Playing a concerto is not possible in that venue, so I am using a recorded file for the orchestra part,” Jin says. “My friend Yupeng Gu, who developed this audio controlling device, will conduct and control the pacing of the recording so that the sound synchronizes with my playing. It is quite incredible and will be a very interesting concert.”
“I hope this breaks the barrier of having to have a big venue and other difficulties for performing concertos, and lets local people enjoy a more accessible and diverse repertoire,” he says. “If people like it, I would like to play the whole concerto and maybe more concertos — hopefully, all five Beethoven piano concertos — this way. This is something I have not tried before, so I am excited about it.”
“People have much easier access to solo performances, but not to concertos due to many limitations,” Jin adds. “So I expect them to have a novel experience with this concert.”
In the YouTube video at the bottom, you can hear a similar performance, done with the same device, featuring a different pianist playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15.
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Classical music: This Sunday afternoon at Farley’s, pianist Shai Wosner performs sonatas by Beethoven, Schubert, Scarlatti and Rzewski. On Saturday afternoon, he gives a FREE public master class
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ALERT and CORRECTION: Earlier this week, The Ear mistakenly said the concert by UW Concert Band is Wednesday night. He apologizes for the error.
It is TONIGHT at 7:30 p.m. in the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall of the new Hamel Music Center, 740 University Ave. In addition, the School of Music website has updated information about the program to be played under director and conductor Corey Pompey. Go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/uw-concert-band-3/
By Jacob Stockinger
This coming Sunday afternoon, one of the today’s most interesting and creative concert pianists will return to Madison to make his solo recital debut.
His name is Shai Wosner (below, in a photo by Marco Borggreve) and he is an Israeli-American who is acclaimed for his technique, his tone and his subtle interpretations.
But what also makes Wosner especially noteworthy and one of the most interesting musical artists performing today is his eclectic, thoughtful and inventive approach to programming.
For more information about Wosner, go to his home website: http://www.shaiwosner.com
Wosner returns to Madison to perform his first solo recital here at 4 p.m. this coming Sunday afternoon, Feb. 23, on the Salon Piano Series at Farley’s House of Pianos, at 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.
Born in Israel and now teaching in Boston while touring, Wosner will play sonatas by Beethoven, Scarlatti, Rzewski and Schubert.
He has performed with orchestras throughout the U.S. and Europe, and records for Onyx Classics. “His feel for keyboard color and voicing is wonderful,” said The Washington Post.
The Madison program is: Beethoven’s Sonata No. 15 in D Major (“Pastoral”), Op. 28; Scarlatti’s Sonata in D minor, K. 141, Allegro, with Rzewskis’ Nanosonata No. 36 (“To A Young Man”); Scarlatti’s Sonata in D minor, K. 9, Allegro, with Rzewski’s Nanosonata No. 38 (“To A Great Guy”); Scarlatti’s Sonata in C minor, K. 23, with Rzewski’s Nanosonata No. 12; and Schubert’s last Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960.
An artist’s reception will follow the concert.
Tickets are $45 in advance (students $10) or $50 at the door. Service fees may apply. Tickets are also for sale at Farley’s House of Pianos. Call (608) 271-2626.
Student tickets can only be purchased online and are not available the day of the event.
To purchase tickets, go to: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/producer/706809
For more information about Wosner’s FREE public master class at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 22, including the names of local students and their teachers plus the titles of works by Mozart, Debussy and Ravel to be played, go to: https://salonpianoseries.org/concerts.html
Wosner (below) recently did an email Q&A with The Ear:
In concerts and recordings, you like to mix and intersperse or alternate composers: Brahms and Schoenberg; Haydn and Ligeti; Schubert and Missy Mazzoli; and Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Liszt, Dvorak, Ives and Gershwin. Why do you pair sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) and the American composer Frederic Rzewski (1938-) in this program?
I like to pair together composers from very different periods in ways that, hopefully, bring out certain things they have in common in spite of the differences.
Perhaps it is a way of looking for the underlying principles that make music work, for the ideas that go beyond styles and time periods and that stimulate composers across centuries.
In the case of Scarlatti (below top) and Rzewski (below bottom), it is the extreme conciseness of their sonatas and also their almost impulsive kind of writing with ideas and twists and turns kept unpredictably spontaneous, almost in the style of stream-of-consciousness.
Their sonatas are closer to the literal meaning of the word – “a piece that is played” as opposed to sung (which was more common in Scarlatti’s time perhaps). They are also very much about treatment of the keyboard and gestural writing rather than the more essay-type sonatas that were the dominant idiom for Beethoven and Schubert.
Why did you pick these particular sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert to bookend the program?
The sonata by Beethoven (below top) is quite unusual for him, without many contrasts and very lyrical, which perhaps is a certain parallel with the Schubert sonata. (You can hear Wosner playing an excerpt from another Beethoven sonata in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
But they are also very different. Beethoven’s sonata looks around it and is about idyllic nature — the title “Pastoral” isn’t by Beethoven but it is written in that kind of style — and the sonata by Schubert (below bottom) is more introspective, perhaps about human nature.
What would you like the public to know about specific works and composers on your Madison program?
I think it’s always stimulating to challenge preconceptions we have about composers.
Beethoven is often associated with a certain “heroic” style and bold, dramatic gestures while this piece is quite understated in many ways.
Schubert’s last sonata is often seen as a farewell to the world. But at the same time Schubert himself may not have been aware of his impending death as much as we think – he made some plans right near the end that may suggest otherwise.
I prefer to let everyone find in this music what they will, of course. But I think these works reveal other aspects of these composers that we don’t always think of. Is Schubert’s piece really about his own tragedy? It is probably much broader than that.
Now that your acclaimed Schubert project is completed, what are your current or upcoming projects?
I am currently working with five other composers on a project that is a collection of five short pieces written as “variations” for which the theme is a quote from a 1938 speech by FDR: “remember, remember always, that all of us… are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”
Each composer chose a figure of an immigrant — some famous, some not — to write about. The composers are Vijay Iyer, Derek Bermel (below top), Anthony Cheung, Wang Lu and John Harbison (below bottom).
These “variations” will be paired with Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations.
What else would you like to say about your career and, after several concerto appearances with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, about your solo recital debut in Madison?
Madison has a lovely audience that I was fortunate to meet in the past, and I certainly look forward to being back there!
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Classical music: The Ancora String Quartet will play several concerts of Beethoven and Randall Thompson over this coming weekend, including one at Olbrich Gardens on Friday night
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following information from the veteran Ancora String Quartet, which will play several performances of the same program over the coming weekend in several different cities.
Members of the Ancora String Quartet (below from left, in a photo by Barry Lewis), who also play with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, are: violinists Wes Luke and Robin Ryan; violist Marika Fischer Hoyt; and cellist Benjamin Whitcomb.
RECITAL PROGRAM:
String Quartet No. 2 in G Major by Randall Thompson
String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Op. 130, by Ludwig van Beethoven
CONCERT DATES:
Friday, Feb. 7, at noon
Interview with Wisconsin Public Radio host
Norman Gilliland on The Midday
WERN 88.7 FM
Friday, Feb.7, from 5 to 7 p.m.
Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Bolz Conservatory
3330 Atwood Ave., Madison
Tickets at the door: $5
Saturday, Feb. 8, at 7:30 p.m.
Park (“Freethinkers”) Hall
307 Polk Street, Sauk City
Tickets: $15 general, $12 children and seniors
Sunday, Feb. 9, at 2 p.m. (UPDATE: THIS CONCERT HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO AN OUTBREAK OF ILLNESS AT CHAI POINT. IT WILL BE RESCHEDULED.)
Chai Point Retirement Community
1400 N. Prospect Ave., Milwaukee
Free and open to the public
PROGRAM NOTES:
The program opens with an unusual work, the String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, by American composer Randall Thompson (below). Better known for his choral music, Thompson wrote this quartet in 1967 to celebrate the 130th anniversary of the Harvard Musical Association.
The quartet is joyous and optimistic in character, with thoughtful and creative part-writing. The first movement brims with youthful energy, contained in smoothly flowing triplets.
The simple, graceful folk melody that opens the second movement continually reinvents itself in a set of charming variations. The third movement’s heartfelt tune expresses a deep content, setting up the finale, whose explosive energy erupts in a good-natured, light-hearted romp.
Beethoven (below) wrote the second piece on our program, the String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Op. 130, 141 years before the Thompson and many centuries beyond it in subtlety, sophistication, intellectual rigor and emotional depth.
With six movements and lasting 40 minutes, it is the composer’s longest piece of chamber music, and it stretches limits in other ways as well. The original work, completed in 1825, contained the Grosse Fuge (Great Fugue) but Beethoven replaced that in 1826 with the Finale Allegro, the last full-scale movement he completed before his death in 1827.
Op. 130 bristles with contrasts, and juxtapositions of extremes, on the micro-level to the macro-level, all contained in movements ranging from a short, gnarly Presto, to a graceful Poco Scherzo, to a lyrical, innocent Alla Danza Tedesco (In the Style of a German Dance), to the fabled Cavatina, which, Beethoven wrote, moved him to tears when he even thought about it. (You can hear the Cavatina in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
In performing Op. 130, the Ancora String Quartet tackles its 14th of the 16 Beethoven string quartets. The ASQ plans to perform Op. 59, No. 3, and Op. 131, in the summer and fall, to complete the Beethoven cycle in this, the Beethoven Year when we celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth.
For more information, go to: facebook.com/ancoraquartet and www.ancoraquartet.com
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The Well-Tempered Ear 
NPR names relevant classical albums in a musical Diary of the Plague Year of the pandemic, racial protests, wildfires and hurricanes
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By Jacob Stockinger
For an unusual and difficult year, NPR (National Public Radio) and critic Tom Huizenga have found a new and unusual way to recommend this past year’s top classical music recordings.
On the “Deceptive Cadence” blog for NPR, Huizenga kept a personal month-by-month diary of “music and mayhem.”
For last February, for example, this ancient image of The Dance of Death inspired contemporary composer Thomas Adès to compose his own “Totentanz” or Dance of Death. (You can hear an excerpt from the work in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Some of the thematically-related music is modern or contemporary, some of it is from the Baroque or Classical era.
In June, as protests against the death of George Floyd (below top) flared up and spread worldwide, NPR names a recording of the “Negro Folk Symphony” by African-American composers William Dawson and Ulysses Kay (below bottom), thereby helping to rediscover Black composers whose works have been overlooked and neglected in the concert hall and the recording studio.
Devastating wildfires on the West Coast, Presidential impeachment and hurricanes on the Gulf Coast also found their way into the choices of music to listen to.
It is an unusual approach, but The Ear thinks it works.
See and hear for yourself by going to the sonic diary and listening to the samples provided.
Here is a link to the NPR album diary: https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2020/12/21/947149286/music-and-mayhem-a-diary-of-classical-albums-for-a-troubled-2020
But many roads, if not all, lead to Rome, as they say.
What is also interesting is that a number of the NPR choices overlap with ones listed by music critics of The New York Times as the 25 best classical albums of 2020.
Some choices also are found on the list of the nominations for the Grammy Awards that will be given out at the end of January.
In other words, the NPR diary can also serve as yet another holiday gift guide if you have gift cards or money to buy some new and notable CDs, and are looking for recommendations.
Here is a link to the Times’ choices, which you can also find with commentary and a local angle, in yesterday’s blog post: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/arts/music/best-classical-music.html
https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-new-york-times-names-the-top-25-classical-recordings-of-2020-and-includes-sample-tracks/
And here is a list to the Grammy nominations: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/11/28/for-holiday-shopping-and-gift-giving-here-are-the-classical-music-nominations-for-the-63rd-grammy-awards-in-2021/
What do you think of the NPR musical diary of the plague year?
Do you find it informative? Accurate? Interesting? Useful?
Would you have different choices of music to express the traumatic events of the past year?
The Ear wants to hear.
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