The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: This Sunday afternoon, the Pro Arte Quartet and the Hunt Quartet team up for chamber music masterpieces by Mendelssohn and Schubert at the Chazen Museum of Art. You can hear the FREE concert live or stream it
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By Jacob Stockinger
This weekend, on Sunday at 12:30 p.m., the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art offers monthly Sunday chamber music concert with two masterworks featuring the ensemble-in-residence at the museum for more than 30 years: the Pro Arte Quartet.
The program is, in essence, a showcase for master and apprentice ensembles.
This weekend’s “Sunday Afternoon Live From the Chazen” will feature the UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet in the last string quartet – No. 15 in G major, D. 887 — by Franz Schubert.
That’s the same quartet the opening of which was used so effectively by Woody Allen in the soundtrack of the great film “Crimes and Misdemeanors.” (You can hear the opening movement, played by the Juilliard String Quartet, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
For more about the dramatic historical background of the Pro Arte Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer) — now the oldest surviving string quartet in history — go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/pro-arte-quartet/
Then, after intermission, together with the graduate student Hunt Quartet, the Pro Arte Quartet will perform the wonderful Octet in E-Flat Major, Op. 20, by Felix Mendelssohn, who composed this masterpiece at 16.
The Hunt Quartet is the graduate string quartet for the Mead Witter School of Music. As project assistants within the School of Music, the quartet performs concerts at the School of Music, University events, as well as community outreach.
Members work closely with faculty, including the Pro Arte Quartet, and with cello Professor Uri Vardi as their principal coach. Other artists who have worked with the Hunt Quartet include violist Nobuko Imai, violist Lila Brown and members of the Takacs String Quartet.
The quartet is also the integral part of the Madison Symphony Orchestra’s “Up Close and Musical” program, visiting area schools to teach students about fundamentals of music and the string quartet. This fall, the Hunt Quartet visited Lindbergh Elementary, Stoner Prairie Elementary, Blessed Sacrament School, Sauk Trail Elementary, Thoreau Elementary and Shorewood Hills Elementary.
The Hunt Quartet is sponsored by Kato Perlman and the Madison Symphony Orchestra.
This year’s members (below, from left, in a photo by Katrin Talbot) are Kyle Price, cello; Vinicius “Vinny” Sant’Ana, violin; Blakeley Menghini, viola; Chang-En Lu, violin.
The concert starts at 12:30 p.m. CDT in Brittingham Gallery 3 and will runs until about 2 p.m. It is free and open to the public. You can attend in person. But you can also live-stream the concert.
Here is a web page with more information about the groups, the program, attendance and a link for streaming:
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Classical music: Which are the most famous and most popular string quartets? And which ones are your favorites?
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By Jacob Stockinger
Does The Ear ever love chamber music!
And it has been a good few days for him and for other Madison fans of string quartets.
On Saturday night, The Ear heard the Ancora String Quartet (below) in outstanding performances of the “Dissonance” Quartet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the late String Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, “Rosamunde,” by Franz Schubert.
Then on Monday night, the Ear heard the terrific Rhapsodie Quartet (below top, in a photo by Greg Anderson), made up of players in the Madison Symphony Orchestra, perform the “American” String Quartet by Antonin Dvorak followed by the sublime and profound Cello Quintet by Franz Schubert. UW-Madison and Pro Arte Quartet cellist Parry Karp (below bottom) sat in as the extra cellist.
At the Ancora concert, cellist Benjamin Whitcomb, who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, made the case that Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet is well known for its apt nickname and is probably the best known or most popular of Mozart’s string quartets.
That got The Ear to thinking:
What are the most well-known and most popular string quartets?
And which string quartets are your favorites that you would recommend to other chamber music fans?
The Ear drew up a list of candidates of the first honor of being well-known.
He suspects that the “Emperor” Quartet — with its famous and infamous slow movement theme that was turned from an homage to the Austrian emperor into an anthem for Nazi Germany — by Franz Joseph Haydn, the “Death and the Maiden” Quartet of Schubert and the “American” Quartet of Dvorak all rival or surpass the public reputation of the Mozart’s “Dissonance,” although that one is certainly and deservedly famous to the general public.
As to The Ear’s favorite quartets: The Ear is especially partial to the six early Op. 18 string quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven (below), which often take a back seat to the same composer’s middle quartets and late quartets. But of the famous last ones, The Ear loves the very last one, Op. 135, with its return to classical structure and clarity.
He also loves all of the Op. 76 string quartets by Haydn (below top) and is especially partial to the “Sunrise” and the “Quinten” or “Fifths” quartets. He also loves Haydn’s earlier Op. 20 “Sun” quartets; and all six string quartets that Mozart (below bottom) composed for and dedicated to Haydn, generally considered the father or the modern string quartet who also played string quartets with himself on violin and Mozart on viola.
The Ear likes Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” well enough, but he is always blown away by Schubert’s last quartet in G major, which was used as a soundtrack in Woody Allen’s great movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
He also loves the lyrical quartets on Dvorak (below), especially the Op. 51 “Slavonic” as well as the “American.” (You can hear the opening of the “Slavonic” String Quartet in a YouTube video at the bottom.)
As for Johannes Brahms, The Ear prefers the string quintets and string sextets to the string quartets.
Francophile that he is, The Ear also loves the single string quartets by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
Among other modern string quartets, he loves the third and fifth of Bela Bartok, the second one by Sergei Prokofiev and the eight and 11th by Dmitri Shostakovich. He also adds the String Quartet No. 3 “Mishima” by Philip Glass.
Well, that’s enough for today and for this post.
What string quartet do you think is the most famous or most popular?
And which string quartets are your favorites?
Leave word, with a YouTube link if possible, in the COMMENT section.
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: American, Ancora String Quartet, anthem, Arts, Austria, Beethoven, Cello, Chamber music, Classical music, crimes, Death and the Maiden, Debussy, dissonance, Dvorak, Emperor, Fifths, film, Franz Schubert, Germany, Haydn, homage, Jacob Stockinger, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Madison, Madison Symphony Orchestra, misdemeanors, Mishima, movie, Mozart, Music, Nazi, Philip Glass, Pro Arte Quartet, Prokofiev, Quinten, Ravel, Rhapsodie Quartet, Rosamunde, Schubert, Shostakovich, Slavonic, soundtrack, String Quartet (Ravel), sunrise, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Viola, Violin, Wisconsin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Woody Allen
Classical music: Farley’s House of Pianos announces its Salon Piano Series for this season and offers subscription tickets for the first time. It opens on Sunday, Oct. 4.
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear’s friends at Farley’s House of Pianos write:
The Salon Piano Series offers inspiring performances in an intimate salon setting. Each concert is followed by an artist’s reception and some performances include introductions by music scholars and commentators.
Season tickets are being offered for the first time this year and they provide substantial savings as well as the assurance that you won’t be left out. You can buy tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com
Here is the lineup:
DANIEL DEL PINO – Sunday, Oct. 4, 2015, 4 p.m.
Daniel del Pino (below) returns to play music by Felix Mendelssohn, Cesar Franck‘s Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, and Twelve Etudes, Op. 10, by Frederic Chopin. (You can hear him perform a transcription of the “Ritual Fire Dance” by Manuel de Falla during a concert at Farley’s House of Pianos in January of 2013.)
ALESSIO BAX and LUCILLE CHUNG (below) – Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, 4 p.m.
This concert will include pieces for one piano-four hands and for two pianos. The two-piano pieces will be played on rare “twin” pianos restored by Farley’s House of Pianos: a 1914 Mason & Hamlin CC and a 1914 Mason & Hamlin BB.
CELLIST AMIT PELED (below) – Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, 7:30 p.m.
Hear the exact program that famed cellist Pablo Casals performed 100 years ago, played on Casals’ own 1733 Goffriller cello with Noreen Polera accompanying on a 1914 Mason and Hamlin piano restored by Farley’s House of Pianos.
DICK HYMAN, Jazz Clinic-Lecture, Saturday, May 7, 2016, 4 p.m.
Jazz legend Dick Hyman presents his third clinic at Salon Piano Series.
Dick Hyman – Jazz Concert – Sunday, May 8, 2016, 4 p.m.
Dick will play solo piano for half the concert. Then bassist John Schaffer and drummer John Lombardo will join Dick in a jazz trio.
Since he began his career in the early 1950s, Dick Hyman has been a pianist, organist, arranger, music director and composer while recording over 100 albums under his own name.
Hyman is a masterful improviser with a unique style of piano that spans from early jazz such as Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton to George Gershwin, Duke Ellington and beyond. He is one of the first people to record on the Moog synthesizer and his track “Minotaur” landed on the Billboard magazine’s US Top 40.
Hyman has served as composer, arranger, conductor and pianist for 12 Woody Allen films. He also won an Emmy for his original score to the daytime drama “Sunshine’s on the Way” and for musical direction of a PBS special on Eubie Blake. His recording, Dick Hyman’s “Century of Jazz Piano” is an encyclopedic series of solo performances that covers the last 100 years in jazz over the course of 121 performances.
All concerts are held at Farley’s House of Pianos, 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west wide near West Towne.
See complete concert programs and more at www.salonpianoseries.org
Salon Piano Series Tickets Available Online at www.brownpapertickets.com
Tickets cost $45 in advance, $50 at the door. The Jazz Clinic is $20.
Buy the series for $160, and save $40. Tickets are also available at Farley’s House of Pianos and Orange Tree Imports. Service fees may apply.
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Classical music: Music critics of The New York Times name their favorite recordings — historical and current — of Richard Wagner to celebrate this year’s bicentennial of the famous opera composer’s birth. What are your favorite Wagner works and recordings?
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By Jacob Stockinger
This year is the bicentennial of the birth of composer Richard Wagner.
Just about everything about Richard Wagner (below) is epic and titanic, dramatic and revolutionary.
Little wonder, then, that he is known especially for “The Ring of the Nibelung,” that 16–hour, four-opera mythological cycle that challenges the most resourceful singers, actors, stage directors, orchestras, conductors and opera companies. It took many complications and until the 1960s for conductor Sir Georg Solti to make the first complete recording of “The Ring” for Decca — and it still holds up to the best complete recordings since then.
Stop and think and consider this: In the time it usually takes to hear “The Ring” you could listen to all the symphonies and concertos of Beethoven, or all his string quartets and most of his piano trios.
True, some of Wagner’s vocal music is quite stirring and enthralling.
But only some of it — at least to my ears.
I share some of the sentiments of his detractors, who included some pretty good artists and discriminating musicians.
Take the composer Gioachino Rossini, who quipped “Wagner’s music has great moments but dull quarter hours.”
The American writer and humorist Mark Twain observed that “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”
The comedian and filmmaker Woody Allen remarked: “Every time I listen Wagner, I get the urge to invade Poland.”
If you like those, here is a link to some more quips about Wagner, including some by French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire and French composer Claude Debussy:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Wagner
I am probably a dissenter, but I think Wagner generally wrote better for instruments than he did for the voice. At least I generally find his orchestral music tighter and more enjoyable to listen to.
Indeed, I would like to hear the Madison Symphony Orchestra or the University of Wisconsin-Madison Symphony Orchestra do one of the various versions of “The Ring Without Words,” perhaps the orchestral anthology of highlights from “The Ring” and other operas that famed conductor George Szell (below) arranged and conducted with the Cleveland Orchestra (in a YouTube video at the bottom).
I love the overtures and preludes, and I don’t think they get programmed often enough these days. Same for the charming “Siegfried Idyll.”
I remember an old vinyl LP recording with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. How I loved, and found endlessly thrilling the Overture to “Tannhauser,” the “Prelude and Liebestod” to “Tristan und Isolde,” the Overture to “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg,” preludes from “Lohengrin,” and the magically static and haunting Prelude to “Parsifal.” They are terrific curtain-raisers.
So I was happy to see orchestral recordings by Herbert von Karajan and Otto Klemperer included on the list in The New York Times.
I also love “best moment” anthologies so it is also good to see choices like the new recording by the German tenor Jonas Kaufmann – a great choice since Kaufmann (below) seems a perfect Wagner singer who has a huge but subtle voice, stamina and the handsome good looks for the parts.
Anyway, here is a link to the Wagner discography in The New York Times:
What is your favorite Wagner recording? What piece and what performer?
And do you favor his vocal or instrumental music?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: Charles Baudelaire, Claude Debussy, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Eugene Ormandy, Georg Solti, Gioachino Rossini, Herbert von Karajan, Jacob Stockinger, Jonas Kaufmann, Lohengrin, Mark Twain, New York Times, Otto Klemperer, Parsifal, Richard Wagner, Siegfried Idyll, Tannhauser, Tristan und Isolde, Wagner, Woody Allen, YouTube
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