The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music education: Brother and sister alumni return to play cello and conduct in the fall concerts by Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras. Plus, hear a free concert of three solo cello suites by Bach on Friday at noon
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ALERT: This week’s FREE Friday Noon Musicale at the First Unitarian Society of Madison 900 University Bay Drive, features cellist Leonardo Altino playing Suites Nos. 1, 5 and 6 for unaccompanied cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. The concert runs from 12:15 to 1 p.m.
By Jacob Stockinger
WYSO will kick-off its 51st season with the Evelyn Steenbock Fall Concerts on this Saturday, Nov. 12, and next Saturday, Nov. 19. Nearly 500 young musicians will display their talents to the community during the concerts, which are dedicated to music teachers.
The Youth Orchestra concert on Nov. 19 will be performed at the River Arts Center in Prairie du Sac, where WYSO will welcome back two alumni guest artists: Kenneth Woods and Cynthia Woods.
Kenneth will be playing cello and Cynthia will be conducting in the Cello Concerto by British composer Philip Sawyers. (You can hear Kenneth Woods conduct the opening movement of the cello concerto in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
The Youth Orchestra, under the direction of James Smith, will also be playing Symphony No. 2 by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Overture to the opera “Der Freischuetz” by Carl Maria von Weber.
Cynthia Woods (below) is currently the Music Director of the Cambridge Symphony Orchestra and the conductor for the Youth Preparatory Orchestra at the New England Conservatory, where she serves on the violin, chamber and conducting faculty.
Along with her conducting activities, Ms. Woods is also a frequent speaker and writer. She has been a guest lecturer at institutions such as MIT and the Longy School of Music of Bard College, a panelist for radio shows such as WGBH’s Callie Crossley, and a frequent contributor to The Boston Herald’s State of the Arts blog. Cynthia was a member of WYSO from 1984–1989 in Concert, Philharmonia and Youth Orchestra.
For more background about Cynthia Woods, go to:
http://www.wysomusic.org/guest-artists/cynthia-woods/
Kenneth Woods (below) is currently the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra. As a cello soloist and chamber musician, Wood’s collaborators have included members of the Toronto, Chicago and Cincinnati symphonies, the Minnesota, Gewandhaus and Concertgebouw orchestras and the La Salle, Pro Arte, Tokyo and Aubudon String Quartets.
He also is currently cellist of the string trio Ensemble Epomeo, with whom he performs regularly in the UK, Europe, and the USA. He writes a popular blog, “A View From the Podium.” Kenneth was a member of WYSO from 1980–1986 in Concert, Philharmonia and Youth Orchestra. He also studied cello at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music with Parry Karp, of the Pro Arte Quartet.
For more background and an interview with Kenneth Woods, go to:
http://www.wysomusic.org/guest-artists/kenneth-woods-cellistconductor/
Schedule and Programs
November 12, 2016 – 1:30 P.M., Mills Hall
Philharmonia Orchestra
- Rimsky- Korsakov: Procession of the Nobles from Mlada
- Shostakovich: Finale from Symphony No. 5, Op. 47
- Prokofiev: Montagues and Capulets from Romeo and Juliette, 2nd suite
- Shostakovich: Six Pieces from the First Ballet Suite Op. 84
November 12, 2016 – 4 P.M., Mills Hall
CONCERT ORCHESTRA (below)
- Jack Bullock: Okeanos
- James Curnow: Phoenix Overture
- Jaromír Weinberger: Polka from the Opera Schwanda, the Bagpiper
- Albert O. Davis: Moonlight Masquerade
- Richard Strauss: Allerseelen (All Souls’ Day) Op. 10 No. 8
SINFONIETTA
- Domenico Gallo: Sinfonia in G
- Grieg: A Nordic Lullaby Op. 68, No.5
- Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings
- Robert S. Frost and Mary Elledge: Tales from Sherwood Forest
- Brian Balmages: Wood Splitter Fanfare
- Norman Leyden: Serenade for String Orchestra
- Michael Korb and Ulrich Roever: Highland Cathedral
- William Owens: Carpathia
- Sebastian Yradier: La Paloma
November 19, 2016 – 7 P.M., River Arts Center
YOUTH ORCHESTRA (below)
- Symphony No.2– Ralph Vaughan Williams
- Overture to the opera “Der Freishuetz”– Carl Maria von Weber
- Cello Concerto– Philip Sawyers with Kenneth Woods – Cello, Cynthia Woods – Conductor
The Evelyn Steenbock Fall Concerts will be held in Mills Concert Hall in the UW Humanities Building, 455 N. Park Street, Madison, and at the River Arts Center, 105 Ninth St. Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin.
WYSO concerts generally run about an hour and a half in length, providing a great orchestral concert opportunity for families.
Tickets are available at the door, $10 for adults and $5 for youth 18 and under.
This project is supported by Dane Arts with additional funds from the Evjue Foundation, Inc., the charitable arm of The Capital Times. This project is also supported in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Tags: alumni, Arts, Audubon, Bach, ballet, Bard College, blog, British, brother, Cambridge Symphony Orchestra, Carl Maria von Weber, Cello, Chamber music, Chicago, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati, Classical music, Compact Disc, composer, Concertgebouw, concerto, conductor, Cynthia Woods, Dane Arts, Dmitri Shostakovich, English Symphony Orchestra, Europe, Evjue Foundation, fall, First Unitarian Society of Madison, Gewandhaus, Great Britain, Grieg, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ka Salle Quartet, Kenneth Woods, lullaby, Madison, Minnesota, MIT, moonlight, Music, Music education, music teachers, National Endowment for the Arts, NEA, New England Conservatory, opera, Orchestra, Overture, Philip Sawyers, Phillip Sawyers, polka, Prairie du Sac, Pro Arte Quartet, Radio, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Richard Strauss, Rimsky-Korsakov, River Arts Center, Romeo and Juliet, Serenade, Sergei Prokofiev, sinfonia, sister, solo, String Orchestra, strings, Suite, suites, symphony, Tchaikovsky, Teacher, The Capital Times, Tokyo String Quartet, Toronto, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, UK, United Kingdom, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, US, Viola, Violin, WGBH, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Arts Board, Wisconsin Youth Symhony Orchestras, WYSO, YouTube
Classical music: JFK was assassinated 51 years ago today. He loved Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” In his memory, here it is – in two forms.
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By Jacob Stockinger
Today is Nov. 22, 2014.
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (below) was killed in Dallas, Texas, 51 years ago to the day.
The Ear remembers the deep sadness and immense sense of frustration that surrounded the assassination. American politics has never seemed the same since his death.
He also remembers hearing broadcasts of the Requiem by Gabriel Faure and the “German” Requiem by Johannes Brahms – both fitting choices to honor the dead president.
But since then, The Ear has learned that JFK -– whose own family was well acquainted with tragedy and loss — especially liked the saddest of all music, the “Adagio for Strings” by American composer Samuel Barber. Barber (below) had arranged it from the slow movement of his String Quartet No. 1 in B Minor to a String Orchestra at the request of the world-famous conductor Arturo Toscanini.
By the way, in the original string quartet form, the work was given its world premiere by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Pro Arte Quartet in Rome in 1936. And the original quartet form seems somehow less lush and self-indulgent, more restrained and dignified or even complex, while the string orchestra version seems more overpowering and Romantic.
Compare the two versions for yourself by listening to both of them on YouTube.
Here is the original string quartet version done by the Cypress String Quartet in a live radio performance for WGBH in Boston, which was JFK’s hometown:
And here is the more familiar version for string orchestra in a version that has more than 3 million hits:
Which one do you like best and why?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: adagio, Adagio for Strings, Arts, Arturo Toscanini, assassination of JFK, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Barber, Boston, Brahms, Chamber music, Classical music, Compact Disc, Cypress String Quartet, Faure, German Requiem, Jacob Stockinger, JKF, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Leonard Slatkin, Madison, Orchestra, President Kennedy, Pro Arte Quartet, Requiem, Samuel Barber, String quartet, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, WGBH, YouTube
Classical music: NPR plays musical anthropologist and goes into the field to bring back a live recording of glam pianist Yuja Wang playing Prokofiev at the Steinway Factory in New York City.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has to hand it to NPR’s terrific classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” and to NPR’s “All Songs Considered.”
For quite some time now, NPR has featured “Tiny Desk Concerts” — classical, jazz, folk, roots music — during which major performers play live in the crowded NPR studio. They are easy to link to and stream over your computer or maybe even your TV set these days. (NPR books great guests, including, below bottom, superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma.)
You can also find NPR links to and archives of other live performances -– often through radios stations such as WQXR-FM in New York City and WGBH in Boston –- and include a recital of live music in major halls and venues, including one of Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy and Frederic Chopin by the acclaimed Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes at Carnegie Hall (below). And there are many, many others.
And now Deceptive Cadence seems to be acting like musical anthropologist. The time they went out “into the field” – that is, not in the usual venues and concert halls.
That’s not unheard of, of course. That is how the great composer Bela Bartok (below) started out as a musical anthropologist or ethnologist of Hungarian and Romanian folk music, and then used his research to morph into one of the pioneers of musical modernism. Chopin used Polish music like the mazurka to create a new Romanticism. And in American folk music, the musical anthropology of Alan Lomax is legendary.
Specifically, NPR went to the piano factory of Steinway and Sons in New York City and recorded the red-hot glam pianist Yuja Wang playing the fiercely difficult Toccata in D Minor, Op. 11, with all its hypnotic repetition of a single note, by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev on a brand new Steinway concert grand. (You can see and hear it in a YouTube video at the bottom. Don’t forget to click on the icon that is second from the right to enlarge the video image to fill your computer screen.)
The music and the physical virtuosity or dexterity is amazing to behold.
It is also kind of cute and informal to watch the diminutive figure of the glamorous Wang playing difficult cert music in a cold, wood-strewn and equipment-strewn warehouse in fingerless wool hobo gloves that go up her forearm –- but only after she uses the reflective fallboard above the keys to put on glossy lipstick and so complete her outfit of black fur-like boa, black stiletto heels and geometrically high fashion black-and-white dress.
Ah! Those tribal ceremonies and native attire!
Anyway, here is a link to the performance by Yuja Wang at the Steinway and Sons factory in the borough of Queens, not the usual Steinway showroom in Manhattan where most pianists test and choose pianos for their performances.
The Tiny Desk Concerts archive has lots of kinds of live performances.
For example, here is the famed Kronos Quartet (below) doing a recent Tiny Desk Concert featuring its latest recordings. Many other such concerts by other artists have been archived and are readily accessible:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/246393060/kronos-quartet-tiny-desk-concert
And here is a link to the archive, with links to other older archives, of music Live in Performance housed at NPR. It includes chamber music, orchestral music (below is the Mideast peace-promoting Palestinian-Israeli West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under co-founder and director Daniel Barenboim in Carnegie Hall), operas and recitals:
http://www.npr.org/series/10210144/classics-in-concert/?ps=sa
Tags: Alan Lomax, All Songs Considered, anthropology, Arts, Béla Bartók, Beethoven, Boston, Carnegie Hall, Chamber music, Chopin, Classical music, Daniel Barenboim, Debussy, enthnography, Folk music, Haydn, Hungary, Israeli, Jacob Stockinger, Kronos Quartet, Ludwig van Beethoven, MANHATTAN, mazurka, New York City, NPR, opera, Palestinian, Piano, Poland, Queens, Romania, Sergei Prokofiev, Steinway & Sons, Tiny Desk Concert, toccata, Wang, West-Eastern Divan Orchetsra, WGBH, WQXR-FM, YouTube, Yuja Wang
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