The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra opens its new winter season Friday night with masterpieces and rarities with guest violinist Rachel Barton Pine. Get there early, and check out the photographs of Paul Vanderbilt.

ALERT: If you have a chance before attending a concert at the Overture Center, be sure to check out the impressive show of black-and-white landscape photos by Paul Vanderbilt (below), the former curator of photography at the Wisconsin Historical Society. It is a stunning exhibit that features single shots and also couplings with poetic commentaries by Vanderbilt.

The images are on show in the James Watrous Gallery of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, on the top floor of the Overture Center. The show runs through Sunday, Nov. 2. A FREE panel discussion will be held on Saturday, Oct. 18, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the auditorium at the State Historical Society, 816 State Street (NOT the museum on the Capitol Square).

Here is a link to more information and other related events:

http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/gallery/current-exhibition

By Jacob Stockinger

The Ear is all excited.

One of the major players on the Madison music scene will open its new season this coming Friday night.

The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of its longtime music director and conductor, Andrew Sewell, will perform a concert of music by Henri Vieuxtemps, Camille Saint-Saens, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Benjamin Britten and Franz Joseph Haydn. It takes place at 8 p.m. in the Capitol Theater of the Overture Center.

The new WCO season is heavy with three fine pianists (Shai Wosner, Ilya Yakushev and Bryan Wallick)  -– which The Ear likes since he is himself an avid amateur pianist -– but the opening concert is special and an exception.

The guest soloist is Chicago violinist Rachel Barton Pine (below), who received a rave review when she performed the famous Violin Concerto by Johannes Brahms with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Symphony Orchestra last season for the Wisconsin Union Theater.

Here is a link to that review by John W. Barker:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/classical-music-the-wisconsin-union-theater-opens-its-new-season-with-a-winning-blockbuster-program-of-brahms-and-shostakovich-performed-by-native-son-conductor-kenneth-woods-chicago-violist-rachel/

Here is a link to a preview interview that The Ear did with Rachel Barton Pine:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/classical-music-qa-violinist-rachel-barton-pine-talks-about-music-education-her-new-projects-reaching-new-audiences-playing-rock-music-and-the-brahms-violin-concerto-that-she-will-perform-sat/

Rachel Barton Pine will perform the Violin Concerto No. 5 in A minor by the 19th-century Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps (below top) and also the showpiece “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso” by French composer Camille Saint-Saens (below bottom, at the piano circa 1900 in a Corbis photo). You can hear the flashy Saint-Saens piece at the bottom performed by Itzhak Perlman in a popular YouTube video.  

Then she will be joined by the young Juilliard School-trained violist Mathew Lipman in a performance of the early and rarely heard Concerto for Violin and Viola by the 20th-century British composer Benjamin Britten (below bottom).

Bookending the program are Mozart’s Overture to “The Marriage of Figaro” and Haydn’s late Symphony No. 96 in D Major, “The Miracle” -– so-called because a chandelier fell during the premiere performance in London but didn’t injure anyone in the audience.

The program is typical for Andrew Sewell (below), an avowed Francophile who likes to combine well-known works with rarely heard works. And it should be even more memorable because the Classical-era style of Mozart and Haydn plays to Sewell’s strong suit.

Tickets are $15 to $75. Call the overture box office at (608) 258-4141.

For more information, including audio-video clips and artist biographies, for this opening concert, visit:

http://wcoconcerts.org/performances/masterworks/76/event-info/

For more information about the entire WCO Masterworks winter season, including an all-Beethoven concert, visit:

http://wcoconcerts.org/performances/masterworks/