The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The Madison Symphony Orchestra is offering an unlimited, season-starting single ticket sale with 20 percent off, through this Saturday

August 28, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

For the first time ever, the Madison Symphony Orchestra (below, in a photo by Peter Rodgers) is offering a sale on tickets to the first three concerts this season.

You will get 20 percent off if you buy tickets through the Overture Center box office in person, by phone (608 258-4141) or online at https://www.overture.org/events

The discount code to say or use is FIRST3SYMPHONY.

Be forewarned: You will NOT find the ticket sale on the MSO website.

There is no limit of how many tickets you can buy, says MSO marketing director Peter Rodgers who also said the traditional holiday ticket sale, with two-tiered discount pricing, will take place as usual from Dec. 16 through Dec. 31.

The season-starting sale runs through this coming Saturday, Aug. 31. You can get discounted single tickets to the concerts on Sept. 27-29, Oct. 18-20 and Nov. 8-10 with performances on Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 2:30 p.m.

Ticket prices range from $19-$95, up about 2 percent from last year to keep up with inflation, Rodgers added.

Why isn’t the sale on the MSO website?

“We did it digitally and in a printed brochure that we mailed out just to try and reach out to either season subscribers or people who have already bought single tickets before and have already been to the symphony,” says Rodgers. “We just wanted to give some people a little nudge. But anyone can take advantage of the sale.”

Rodgers also said that the inaugural sale is not being held because ticket sales are slow. “Ticket sales for this season are competitive with last season’s,” he said, adding that some buyers might use the sale to get tickets as birthday gifts or for other special occasions.

Although there is no limit to the number of single tickets an individual can buy, Rodgers said that once you get to 10, you are better off going with the usual 25 percent off group rate.

MSO music director John DeMain (below, in a photo by Greg Anderson) will conduct all performances of the first three concerts.

The September concerts open the season with MSO organ soloist Greg Zelek (below) and features the Overture to the opera “Tannhauser” by Richard Wagner; the “Toccata Festiva” by Samuel Barber; the tone poem “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” by Claude Debussy; and the Symphony No. 7 by Antonin Dvorak.

The October concerts feature guest violinist Rachel Barton Pine. The all-Russian and all-20th century program includes the Violin Concerto by Aram Khachaturian; the Symphony No. 9 by Dmitri Shostakovich; and the Suite from “Lieutenant Kije,” for trumpet and orchestra, by Sergei Prokofiev.

The November concerts feature guest pianist Joyce Yang. The program is the Symphony No. 2 by Robert Schumann; the Piano Concerto No. 3 by Sergei Prokofiev; and “Newly Drawn Sky” by the Pulitzer Prize-winning and Grammy Award-winning contemporary American composer Aaron Jay Kernis, who teaches at the Yale University School of Music. (You can hear “Newly Drawn Sky” in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

For more details about the three opening concerts and the entire 2019-20 season, including complete programs, go to: https://madisonsymphony.org/concerts-events/2019-2020-symphony-season-concerts/


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Classical music: The UW-Madison School of Music will NOT have a complete brochure for the new season. Use the website and sign up for an email newsletter. The 40th Karp Family Labor Day Concert is Sept. 3

August 19, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

Summer is almost over and the new concert season is about to begin in just a couple weeks.

Just about all the groups in the Madison area, large and small, have announced their upcoming seasons.

But it you are wondering why the brochure for the hundreds of events that will take place at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music hasn’t arrived yet, here is the answer.

There isn’t one this year.

For many years the UW-Madison’s SOM  — as the School of Music is often abbreviated – has issued a handsome season brochure (below) with names and dates, if not always complete programs.

In the past couple of years, the brochure has been particularly informative with background about performers and events at the school as well as about students and alumni.

But due to a variety of factors, there will be no season brochure although there will be a special brochure for the opening weekend on the new Hamel Music Center (below), which is Oct. 25-27.

A variety of reasons has caused the lack of a brochure, says Publicist and Concert Manager Katherine Esposito. But the familiar full-season brochure will return for the 2020-21 season.

It the meantime, Esposito recommends that you go to the Concert and Events calendar, which has been updated and made more user-friendly, on the website for the school of music. It also features information about faculty and staff as well as news about the school. Here is a link:

https://www.music.wisc.edu/events/

On the right hand side is a menu that allows you to view the calendar as a running list or by the month, week or day with maps or photos.

On the left hand side is another menu that allows you to search by musical category (performers and ensemble) as well as concert date, time, venue and admission cost, if any.

Esposito always recommends that you subscribe to the email newsletters. You can see past ones and sign up to receive future ones if you go to this part of the home website: https://www.music.wisc.edu/recent-newsletters/

As usual, the season at the UW-Madison will open with 40th FREE Karp Family Labor Day Concert, which now takes place the day after the holiday, on Tuesday, Sept. 3, at 7:30 p.m. in Mills Hall.

Over four decades, the Karps (below are the brothers pianist Christopher Karp with cellist Parry Karp, who will team up again this year) have never repeated a piece on the the Labor Day concerts.

The program this year includes the sublime Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-Flat Major, K. 493, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (you can hear the first movement with a visual schematic in the YouTube video at the bottom); the late Sonata No. 10 for Violin and Piano in G major, Op. 96, by Ludwig van Beethoven, which has been transcribed by Parry Karp for cello and piano; and lesser known works by Robert Schumann and Antonin Dvorak.

For more about the program and the performers, who include guest violinist Suzanne Beia of the Pro Arte Quartet, the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/40th-karp-family-concert/


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Classical music: A busy Sunday at the UW is highlighted by a FREE band concert and a public reception to mark the retirement of legendary band master Mike Leckrone

April 26, 2019
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ALERT: The Madison-based Avanti Piano Trio will give two FREE public concerts this weekend. The first one is TONIGHT at 7 p.m. at Capitol Lakes Retirement Community, 333 West Main Street, off the Capitol Square; the second one is on Sunday at 1 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church, 302 Wisconsin Avenue. Members of the trio are violinist Wes Luke, cellist Hannah Wolkstein and pianist Joseph Ross. The program includes works by Leon Kirchner, Ernest Bloch, Claude Debussy and Johannes Brahms.

By Jacob Stockinger

As the semester and academic year come to a close, concerts usually get packed into the schedule.

This coming Sunday, April 28, is no different – except that one event is clearly the headliner.

Mike Leckrone (below, in a photo by UW Communications)  – the legendary and much honored director of bands and athletic bands at the University of Wisconsin-Madison – is retiring after 50 years.

Sunday marks a last appearance. He will conduct the UW Concert Band one last time and then be honored with a public reception.

The athletes and athletic fans love him. The students and band members love him. The alumni love him.

And, yes, the School of Music loves him. After all, not many band directors do what he did when he asked the late UW-Madison violin virtuoso Vartan Manoogian to perform the popular Violin Concerto by Felix Mendelssohn with a band instead of an orchestra. But Manoogian agreed — and said he loved the experience.

Also, not many band directors could start an annual spring concert in Mills Hall with an audience of some 300 and then saw it grow decades later into a three-night extravaganza that packs the Kohl Center with some 50,000 people and gets seen statewide on Wisconsin Public Television.

One time years ago, The Ear — who was then working as a journalist for The Capital Times — interviewed Leckrone. It was a busy year when he and the Marching Band were going with the football and basketball teams to the Rose Bowl and the March Madness tournament.

Mike Leckrone was charming and humorous, open and candid. The interview was so good, so full of information and human interest, that it was picked up by the Associated Press and distributed statewide and nationally.

That’s how big Mike Leckrone’s fan base is. Other schools and bands envied him.

All honor, then, to this man of action and distinction who was also creative and innovative.

Here is more information – but, alas, no program — about the FREE band concert on Sunday at 2 p.m. in Mills Hall:

https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/uw-concert-band-spring-concert-2/

For really detailed biographical background about Mike Leckrone and his achievements, go to:

https://news.wisc.edu/mike-leckrone-a-legendary-career/

And here is a statement by Leckrone himself about his approach to teaching and performing as well as his plans for retirement. (You can hear an interview Leckrone did with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

http://ls.wisc.edu/news/hitting-the-high-notes

Now you may think Leckrone can’t be followed.

But just this past week, the UW-Madison announced that Corey Pompey (below) is Leckrone’s successor. Here is a link to the official announcement, with lots of background about Pompey:

https://news.wisc.edu/new-marching-band-director-to-take-the-baton/

What else is there to say except: Thank you, Mike!

On, Wisconsin!

As for other events at the UW on Sunday:

At 4 p.m., in Mills Hall, University Bands will perform a FREE concert.  Darin Olsen, O’Shae Best and Cole Hairston will conduct. No program is listed.

At 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, the Madrigal Singers (below top) will perform a FREE concert. Bruce Gladstone (below bottom, in a  photo by Katrin Talbot) will conduct. No word on that program either.


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Classical music: Personal experience, artistic excellence and historical importance drew pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel into planning next year’s centennial season at the Wisconsin Union Theater

March 30, 2019
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By Jacob Stockinger

Now that Spring Break is over and subscription tickets are available for the Wisconsin Union Theater’s special centennial celebration next season – which includes superstar soprano Renée Fleming and pianist Emanuel Ax — here is an email interview that pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel (below, in a photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco), the wife-and-husband consultants and planners of that season, granted to The Ear.

For more about the season and tickets, go to two websites:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2019/03/04/classical-music-superstar-soprano-renee-fleming-and-pianist-emanuel-ax-headline-the-100th-anniversary-of-the-wisconsin-union-theaters-concert-series-next-season/

https://union.wisc.edu/visit/wisconsin-union-theater/seasonevents/concert-series/

Could you briefly introduce yourselves to readers and tell them both your past and current activities?

We have been performing on the world’s many concert stages for almost our entire lives. In addition to our careers as concert performers, we serve as the founding Artistic Directors of Music@Menlo, the premier chamber music festival in Silicon Valley, as well as the Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) in New York City.

Our main responsibility as concert performers is to give the best concerts we possibly can, and we are constantly striving to achieve the highest possible level of artistry in our performances.

In our roles as artistic directors, our responsibilities lie in the programming, casting and designing of concert series and chamber music projects for our organizations. At CMS, this includes designing the programming for our seven different satellite series around the country, plus international partnerships in Taiwan, Korea and Europe.

We are also involved in chamber music programming endeavors beyond Music@Menlo and CMS, having just completed a first-ever chamber music residency at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach, Florida. Furthermore, Wu Han is serving as Artistic Advisor to Wolf Trap Chamber Music at the Barns, which entails thematically programming eight concerts per season for the 2018–19 and 2019–20 seasons.

As artistic directors, we spend much of our time putting ourselves in the shoes of our listeners, measuring their experience and receptivity to chamber music of all periods and styles, and putting together the best programs and artists who will move our audiences forward into ever-increasing engagement with and love of the art.

David was the cellist of the Emerson String Quartet for 34 seasons, and we have been performing together as a duo for about 35 years, and continue to do so as one of our main performance activities.

What are your personal relationships to the Wisconsin Union Theater, and what do you think of it as a concert venue?

Our engagement with the Wisconsin Union Theater goes back quite a few years, but certainly not even close to the beginning of the Theater’s distinguished history. For any performer setting foot on its stage, there’s a sense of slipping into an ongoing tradition of artistic excellence that makes us feel both privileged and obligated to do our best.

The Wisconsin Union Theater and its story in American cultural life is larger than any of us; only the music we play rises above and beyond it all, and as performers, our lucky moment is to represent that incredible literature in a venue as significant and storied as the Wisconsin Union Theater. (Below is the theater’s main venue, the renovated and restored Shannon Hall.)

Why did you agree to be artistic advisors and artists-in-residence for the centennial season? Did your personal experiences in Madison play a role in that decision?

As seasoned artists, we deeply admire and respect the very special place in the classical music tradition and history that the Wisconsin Union Theater (below) inhabits, and the invitation to participate in the Theater’s 100th anniversary was an honor for us to receive. Our experiences playing on this distinguished stage and forming a relationship with the local audience have made our pursuit of the common goal of artistic excellence in the centennial season incredibly fulfilling.

Of course, having performed there in the past gave us a hint of confidence through our familiarity with the place, but we must say we have learned perhaps double what we knew originally through this planning process. Without interfering, but at the same time sharing our uncompromised commitment to artistic excellence, we hope that our presence during the process has been useful, and we know that we look so much forward to seeing the careful thought and hard work of all involved come to fruition.

Is there a unifying or guiding principle to the season you have put together?

The guiding principle behind our work on this historic season is artistic excellence, which in our opinion is what most inspires audiences and best serves the art form of classical music.

Our area of expertise is chamber music, and, as we wanted to share the best of what we can do with the Theater, our focus has been on ensuring that the chamber music offerings during this historic season, and hopefully beyond, reflect the best of the world of chamber music.

In our suggestions, we looked for variety of instrumentations, of composers and periods—in other words, giving as much of an overview of the art as we could within a season.

What would you like the public to know about the Wisconsin Union Theater and the upcoming centennial season?

In the Theater’s centennial season, the audience will have the opportunity to savor a variety of different genres of chamber music, from solo piano to vocal music, as well as a sampling of the very best works of the chamber music canon. Between these various genres, the great composers left a wealth of chamber music that could sustain the art form on its own, but that’s still only the tip of the iceberg.

Our chamber music offerings will include the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, which has a long history of performing for the Madison audience. Their December program will include celebrated cornerstones of the piano trio repertoire, including Mendelssohn’s D minor Trio and Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio. (You can hear the opening of the Archduke Trio in the YouTube video at the bottom.) Both pieces have achieved monumental historical significance through their influence in propelling the art form forward from the Classical period to the Romantic period.

The Escher String Quartet performance in January represents the best of the next generation of young string quartets. Their program includes a quartet by Franz Joseph Haydn—the father of the string quartet genre—and the sole quartet of none other than revered violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler, who performed in the Wisconsin Union Theater nearly a century ago. Kreisler set foot on the Theater’s stage numerous times, and his rarely heard string quartet nods to the Theater’s long, distinguished history. David will join the Escher Quartet for the beloved Schubert Cello Quintet, which is the “desert island” must-have piece for many music lovers.

Furthermore, in March, we will bring two of the most fantastic musicians in the world to join us for a program of Antonin Dvorak, Josef Suk and Johannes Brahms. This multigenerational cast of musicians includes the incredible young French violinist Arnaud Sussmann (below top, in a photo by Matt Dine) as well as the most important violist of our generation, Paul Neubauer (below bottom). This program is all about the passing down of the baton and the continuous investment in the next generations of artists: Brahms was the one who discovered Dvorak, and Dvorak in turn discovered Suk.


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