The Well-Tempered Ear
This ‘body percussion” version of Beethoven will make your day!
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By Jacob Stockinger
Here is something that easily outdoes Bavarian thigh-slapping in Lederhosen!
It features 157 school children playing the opening theme of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony using “body percussion.”
That is, they use their hands, feet, knees and chests with various pressures and degrees of loudness, rhythm, speed and dynamics.
It is a performance practice and method of music education that has roots in folk music.
It was performed in 2020 — hence the covid masks — and was recently posted on Instagram by ClassicFM.
Here is a fuller definition from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_percussion
The kids are amazing. They are so synchronized and precise.
It took five months of practicing and rehearsing, so the persistent music teacher who organized and executed this must be amazing too.
It all seems very French in its combination of the physical and the emotional.
Take a look and listen. Here is a link to the one-minute video:
Does anybody else wonder if an American parent might have protested or even filed a lawsuit alleging inappropriate touching by classmates?
What do you think of this “body percussion” Beethoven?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Will the public pay for online virtual concerts? Will you? Consider the fate of newspapers
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By Jacob Stockinger
More and more local classical musicians and music presenters are moving concerts and music-making to virtual online events, at least for the fall and early winter – and quite possibly for the rest of the season. (Below is Shannon Hall in the Wisconsin Union Theater.)
And although we are still waiting for details, it seems all but certain that many of them will be pay-per-view and require tickets.
True, the move from free streaming to pay-for-view might be very useful in helping performers earn a much-needed living.
But it could also be disastrous – or at least extremely disruptive and disappointing.
Anthony Tommasini (below), the senior music critic for The New York Times, recently wrote a long story defending the move from being free to becoming paid for both livestreams and pre-recorded music concerts.
Tommasini — whose profession demands that he follow wherever the music goes — thinks it will, or should, work.
Here is a link to his story that includes concerts at The Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere with international stars such as soprano Renée Fleming (beow top) and pianist Daniil Trifonov (below bottom).
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/arts/music/classical-music-livestream.html
But The Ear isn’t so sure.
For one thing, many listeners might find alternatives. They might like watching outstanding performances of the same works by great and even historical performers on YouTube for free.
They might like exploring their own collections of recordings, or listening to the radio and watching TV, or even making more music as amateurs.
The Ear also suspects that now that the habit of going to live concerts has been interrupted, many people will simply find that they miss going to live performances much less than they thought they would – or than various arts groups hoped they would. (Below is the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra in a photo by Mike Gorski.)
In addition, even since the coronavirus pandemic lockdown last March, listeners have become used to the free events that many organizations offered if only to keep a presence in the public’s mind.
The strategy was understandable and made sense at the time.
But The Ear thinks of what happened with newspapers.
In the early days of the internet, newspapers offered online stories for free, as a kind of extra attraction or added benefit to secure subscribers.
But as the newspapers lost both advertisers and subscribers and tried to “monetize” their online editions, they found that the horse was already out of the barn.
Many viewers did indeed subscribe to digital editions, but many others abandoned newspapers and instead turned to free online media for their news.
So what will happen in cases less prestigious than what Tommasini describes?
What do you think?
Will local pay-per-view concerts, perhaps with bigger volume if lower individual ticket prices, be successful?
Will you pay to “attend” such virtual online events?
The Ear wants to hear.
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Classical music: The Karp family turns in a memorable and moving 40th annual Labor Day concert that also took listeners back in time
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By Jacob Stockinger
If you missed the free 40th annual Karp Family Labor Day Concert on Tuesday night in Mills Hall, you missed more than music. You missed the kind of event that makes for long and precious memories.
Sure, you can nitpick the program and the performers, who also included daughter-in-law violist Katrin Talbot (below right) and guest violinist Suzanne Beia (below left), who performs with the Pro Arte Quartet, the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra.
You could ask, for example, which cello transcription worked better – the Violin Sonatina, Op. 100, by Dvorak or the Violin Sonata No. 10, Op. 96, by Beethoven. (The Ear votes for the Dvorak.)
And you could also ask which performer stood out the most. (The Ear thinks that is the great-grandmother and matriarch pianist Frances Karp playing in a Mozart piano quartet. At 90, Frances still possesses beautiful tone, the right volume and balance, and the necessary technical chops. They say there is nowhere to hide in Mozart, but Frances Karp did need any place to hide. Her Mozart was, simply, sublime.)
But, in the end, those kinds of questions and critiques really seem beside the bigger point.
What mattered most was the sheer enjoyment of hearing a family perform live some wonderful music by Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak and Schumann (the passionate Adagio and Allegro in A-flat Major, Op. 70, played by Lynn Harrell in the YouTube video at the bottom).
And what mattered more as The Ear thought about it was the kind of time travel the concert involved.
There were two kinds, really.
One had to do with having watched the various performing Karps – clearly Madison’s First Family of Music – over four decades. It was touching to realize that The Ear has seen cellist Parry Karp, to take one example, evolve from son to husband to father to grandfather. And through it all, the music remained.
In today’s culture of short attention spans, that kind of constancy and persistence — through the inevitable ups and downs of 40 years — is something to celebrate, admire and cherish.
Time travel happened in another way too.
The Ear first watched Frances Karp accompany her son Parry (below top), then watched son Christopher Karp accompany his older brother Parry (below bottom). And it called to mind the days when – before radio or recordings – families made music together in their homes.
Historically, that’s how many great composers and much great music got started. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Felix Mendelssohn played piano duets with their gifted sisters, Nannerl and Fanny, respectively. Jean Sibelius played duets with his sister. And there were surely many more. Hausmusik, or “house music,” played a vital role.
And this is how it felt at the traditional Karp family concert. We felt invited into a loving, close and gifted musical family who were performing as much for each other as for the audience.
We could use more of that.
The musical and the familial mixed so beautifully, so convincingly, that all one can say after the event is “Thank you” with the ardent wish to hear them again next year.
Tags: #AntoninDvorak, #AttentionSpan, #BlogPost, #BlogPosting, #BlogReview, #ChamberMusic, #ChristopherKarp, #FacebookPost, #FacebookPosting, #FannyMendelssohn, #FelixMendelssohn, #FirstFamily, #FrancesKarp, #HouseMusic, #JeanSibelius, #KarpFamily, #KatrinTalbot, #LaborDay, #LiveMusic, #LudwigVanBeethoven, #LynnHarrell, #MadisonSymphonyOrchestra, #MillsHall, #MusicReview, #NannerlMozart, #ParryKarp, #PianoAccompaniment, #PianoAccompanist, #PianoQuartet, #ProArteQuartet, #RobertSchumann, #SuzanneBeia, #ThankYou, #TheEar, #TimeTravel, #UniversityofWisconsin-Madison, #UpsandDowns, #ViolinSonata, #WisconsinChamberOrchestra, #WolfgangAmadeusMozart, #YouTubevideo, accompanist, accompany, adagio, admire, allegro, annual, Antonín Dvořák, ardent, ask, attention span, audience, balance, beautiful, Beethoven, blog, brother, celebrate, cellist, Cello, Chamber music, cherish, Christopher Karp, close, Concert, constancy, convincing, convincingly, critique, culture, daughter-in-law, decade, downs, duet, Dvorak, enjoyment, event, evolution, evolve, exposure, Facebook, familial, Family, Fanny Mendelssohn, father, Felix Mendelssohn, first family, forward, Frances Karp, free, gifted, grandfather, grandmother, Haus Musik, hausmusik, hide, historical, History, Holiday, Home, house music, husband, Jean Sibelius, Karp Family, Katrin Talbot, kind, Labor Day, like, link, listener, live, live music, long, Love, loving, Ludwig van Beethoven, Lynn Harrell, Madison Symphony Orchestra, matriarch, matter, memorable, memories, Mills Hall, miss, Mother, moving, Music, music review, musical, Nannerl Mozart, nitpick, nowhere, older, other, Parry Karp, Passion, passionate, performer, persistence, Pianist, Piano, Piano accompanist, Piano Quartet, place, play, Point, post, posting, precious, Pro Arte Quartet, program, Quartet, question, Radio, reader, recording, Recordings, Robert Schumann, share, short, sister, son, Sonata, sonatina, sublime, subscriber, Suzanne Beia, tag, technical, technique, thank you, The Ear, time, time travel, today, tone, tradition, traditional, transcription, travel, University of Wisconsin–Madison, ups, video, Viola, Violin, violinist, violist, volume, vote, watch, wish, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, wonderful, year, YouTube
Classical music: The Middleton Community Orchestra and conductor Kyle Knox brightened a soggy spring with early Beethoven and Elgar. On Tuesday night, an organ and cello concert takes place in Overture Hall.
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ALERT: On this Tuesday night, April 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Overture Hall, organist Greg Zelek and guest cellist Thomas Mesa will close out the season of Concert Organ performances sponsored by the Madison Symphony Orchestra. The program includes music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Claude Debussy and Charles-Marie Widor. For tickets ($20) and more information about the program with detailed biographies of the performers, go to: https://madisonsymphony.org/event/thoms-mesa-greg-zelek/
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 veteran and well-known classical music critic who writes for Isthmus and the American Record Guide, and who hosts an early music show once a month on Sunday morning on WORT FM 89.9 FM. For years, he served on the Board of Advisors for the Madison Early Music Festival and frequently gives pre-concert lectures in Madison.
By John W. Barker
The early spring concert on last Wednesday night by the Middleton Community Orchestra (below, in a photo by Brian Ruppert) at the Middleton Performing Arts Center that is attached to Middleton High School was comparatively short – it had no intermission — and was devoted to only two composers.
The first was Edward Elgar (below, in 1910), whose early orchestral works included a good deal of music drawn from his youthful sketchbooks. Notable in that category were two suites, given the joint title of The Wand of Youth.
From the eight sections of the First Suite (1907), six were played, and from the six sections comprising the Second Suite (1908), four were given. All these movements are colorful and evocative little miniatures, reflecting early imagination, often touching, but many quite boisterous.
The other composer was Ludwig van Beethoven (below), as represented by his Symphony No. 2. This shows the young composer moving quite distinctly beyond the stylistic world of Haydn and Mozart into the rambunctious new symphonic idiom he would go on to create. (You can hear Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic play the opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The guest conductor this time, Kyle Knox – the recent University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who is the music director of Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras and the associate conductor of the Madison Symphony Orchestra — chose to give the music a “big orchestra” approach.
For both the suites and the symphony, the lighter and cleaner textures of a chamber orchestra would seem best. But with an orchestra totaling some 91 players, Knox chose to go for volume and sonority.
His tempos, especially in the Beethoven were notably fast. As the largely amateur orchestra followed loyally, there was some raw playing at times.
Still, the MCO asserted strong character, which made a very happy impression on the audience and brightened an evening of soggy weather.
Tags: #AmateurMusician, #AmericanRecordGuide, #BaroqueMusic, #BeethovenSymphony, #BlogPost, #BlogPosting, #BrassSection, #CelloMusic, #ChamberMusic, #ChamberOrchestra, #Charles-MarieWidor, #ClaudeDebussy, #EdwardElgar, #EmeritusProfessor, #FacebookPost, #FacebookPosting, #FranzJosephHaydn, #FranzSchubert, #GregZelek, #IsthmusNewspaper, #JohannSebastianBach, #JohnW.Barker, #KyleKnox, #LeonardBernstein, #LudwigVanBeethoven, #MadisonEarlyMusicFestival, #MadisonSymphonyOrchestra, #MeadWitterSchoolofMusic, #MedievalHistory, #MiddletonCommunityOrchestra, #MiddletonHighSchool, #MiddletonPerformingArtsCenter, #MusicalStyle, #MusicCritic, #MusicReview, #OrganMusic, #OvertureCenter, #OvertureHall, #PercussionSection, #PeterIlyichTchaikovsky, #Pre-concertLecture, #SpringWeather, #StringMusic, #StringSection, #TheWandofYouth, #ThomasMesa, #UniversityofWisconsin-Madison, #ViennaAustria, #ViennaPhilharmonic, #WisconsinYouthSymphonyOrchestras, #WolfgangAmadeusMozart, #WoodwindSection, #WORT-FM89.9, #YouTubevideo, amateur, American Record Guide, April, Arts, audience, Austria, Bach, Baroque, Baroque music, Beethoven, big, biography, blog, boisterous, brass, category, cellist, Cello, Chamber music, chamber orchestra, character, Charles-Marie Widor, Classical music, Claude Debussy, clean, colorful, composer, Concert, concerto, conductor, critic, early, Early music, Edward Elgar, emeritus professor, evocative, Facebook, fast, forward, Franz Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, graduate, Greg Zelek, guest, happy', Haydn, idiom, imagination, impression, intermission, Isthmus, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, John W. Barker, joint, Kyle Knox, lecture, Leonard Bernstein, lighter, like, link, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Madison Symphony Orchestra, Mead Witter School of Music, Medieval history, Middleton Community Orchestra, Middleton High School, Middleton Performing Arts Center, miniature, movement, Mozart, Music, music critic, music review, night, opening, Orchestra, organ, organist, Overture Center, Overture Hall, percussion, performer, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, players, professor, program, raw, recent, review, Season, Serenade, share, short, sketchbooks, soggy, sonority, sping, string section, strings, style, Suite, symphony, tag, Tempo, texture, The Wand of Youth, Thomas Mesa, title, touching, Tuesday, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, UW-Madison, Vienna, Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Viola, Violin, volume, weather, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, woodwind, WORT-FM 89.9, Writer, youthful, YouTube
Classical music: On Saturday night, UW-Madison pianist Christopher Taylor continues his virtuosic Liszt-Beethoven symphony cycle along with music by Kapustin and Schubert
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following press release, researched and written by Katherine Esposito, concert manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, about a noteworthy upcoming concert:
Franz Liszt (below, 1811-1886) was a superstar pianist. He was a virtuoso who invented the orchestral tone poem, taught 400 students for free, conducted and composed.
Musicologist Alan Walker wrote a definitive three-volume biography of Liszt, shedding light on all of Liszt’s work but especially his genius for transcription.
Writes Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times : “The best of these works are much more than virtuosic stunts. Liszt’s piano transcriptions of the nine Beethoven symphonies are works of genius. Vladimir Horowitz, in a 1988 interview, told me that he deeply regretted never having played Liszt’s arrangements of the Beethoven symphonies in public.”
Few pianists have tackled all nine Beethoven transcriptions.
UW-Madison professor and Van Cliburn Competition medal winner Christopher Taylor (below in a photo by Michael R. Anderson) is one of them. On this coming Saturday night, Feb. 9, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, Taylor will perform his sixth transcription — Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93.
Saturday’s concert will also include: six preludes (Nos. 19-24) from 1988 by Nikolai Kapustin (below), whose works span both classical and jazz; and the Fantasy in C Major, D. 760 (based on the song “The Wanderer”) of Franz Schubert, a piece so virtuosic that the composer himself had to give up playing it before finishing. (You can hear Kapustin’s Prelude No. 23, which Taylor will play, in the YouTube video at the bottom and can follow the intimidating-looking score to it.)
In 2020, Christopher Taylor will celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary with performances of the Franz Liszt transcriptions of Beethoven’s symphonies, in Madison and elsewhere.
In Boston, Taylor will perform the entire set of nine in five concerts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Tickets for Taylor’s Feb. 9 concert at the UW are $17 for adults, and $7 for children and students. They can be purchased online or in person.
Purchasing options are here: https://www.music.wisc.edu/about-us/tickets/
Or, purchase online directly at this link.
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Classical music: More chamber music should be performed at the Goodman Community Center on the east side. Are there other underused venues?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Last Saturday morning, The Ear headed off to the Goodman Community Center (below), on the near east side just off Atwood Avenue.
The reason was to hear a noontime concert by one of his favorite chamber music groups: The Willy Street Chamber Players.
The summer concert was part of the new and FREE Community Connect series by The Willys. And the terrific performances of works by Caroline Shaw, Daniel Bernard Roumain, Astor Piazzolla and Johannes Brahms seemed to draw in a good-sized crowd that was younger and even included some children.
Clearly, The Willys have indeed connected to the community in a different part of town than where they usually perform.
But another of the great things about The Willys is that they also explore new venues.
For the past two winters, they have performed a season preview concert in “A Place to Be” on Williamson Street.
What struck The Ear this time, however, was the Evjue Community Room (below) at the Goodman Center.
The handsomely rehabbed room sure seems an ideal venue for chamber music.
Why, The Ear wondered, was it the first time he was there for a concert?
The room seats about 100, making it ideal for intimate music.
It has lots of natural light, which the players (below) said they really like for reading music.
And the acoustics were superb, no doubt the result of the cream-colored brick, the dark wood, the glass windows and the metal ductwork – all hard surfaces that made for clarity and sufficient volume, even in the back rows. It is, as they say in the biz, a “live” space.
Take a look:
The Ear sure hopes the Goodman Center will see the return of The Willys.
More to the point, he also hopes that other chamber music groups will also use the center. It would be a wonderful spot for recitals and small groups of all kinds.
What do you think of the Goodman Center as a venue for classical music and other kinds of music?
Do you know of other underused performance spaces around the Madison area that you would recommend?
The Ear wants to hear.
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The Well-Tempered Ear 