The Well-Tempered Ear
Classical music: Chamber versions of symphonies and piano concertos by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven helped secure the composers’ reputations back when they were new music
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By Jacob Stockinger
Perhaps you heard one at Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society concerts (below), where they have become a kind of signature.
Or perhaps you heard one at a concert by the Ancora String Quartet or the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet.
What we’re talking about are scaled-down chamber versions of symphonies and piano concertos by Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Today they seem like curiosities, perhaps programmed to keep budgets smaller and use fewer performers.
But historically those same arrangements were more than conveniences or compromises. They proved vital in securing the works and reputations of those composers for posterity up until today.
Recently, The New York Times published a record review by Zachary Woolfe that provides valuable background about these rearranged works.
Here is a link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/arts/music/mozart-jupiter-hyperion.html
If you would like to experience one for yourself, you have the chance this Saturday and Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. at the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival.
That’s when and where pianist and Harvard University professor of musicology Robert Levin (below) will perform a chamber version of the Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58, by Beethoven. It is part of a program by Levin and pianist Ya-Fei Chuang that explores the piano and concludes this year’s 30th anniversary festival. (You can hear the opening movement of the Beethoven piano concerto in the version with string quartet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Here is a link with more information about tickets ($32) and the festival:
http://tokencreekfestival.org/2019-season/programs/
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Classical music: This Saturday and Sunday, the Token Creek Festival explores how an unrequited love for Clara Schumann helped make Brahms and his music autumnal
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By Jacob Stockinger
Johannes Brahms (below) remains the only composer whose complete catalogue of chamber music is still in constant use. This is due to his fastidiously high standards, and to his ideal temperament for music played by smaller groups of players.
His music is universally admired for its combination of sheer craft and deep emotional impact, ranging from the most muted private conversation to the most passionate and revealing passages he ever composed.
But putting aside his own personal temperament as well as his melancholy melodies, his bittersweet harmonies, and his masterful use of strings and woodwinds, what gives Brahms’ music that quality of sadness that so many listeners and critics describe as “autumnal”?
No discussion of Brahms can take place without engaging with the most important person in his life — Clara Schumann (below, in a Getty photo), who was born Clara Wieck and became a virtuoso pianist and a composer whose 200th birth anniversary is being celebrated this year.
Brahms was deeply in love with Clara. But unfortunately she was married to Robert Schumann (below right with Clara), one of Brahms’ closest friends and most loyal promoters. Even after a mentally ill Robert Schumann died of suicide at 46, Clara remained loyal to his memory. For the rest of her long life, she performed, edited and promoted his music and rejected Brahms as a lover or second husband.
Almost overnight, Clara’s rejection seemed to cause Brahms to turn from a handsome young man (below top) to the more familiar figure of an overweight, cigar-smoking, bearded and prematurely old curmudgeon (below bottom).
Clara Schumann’s hidden presence is involved with all of the pieces on the Token Creek Festival program, which will be performed at 4 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 24 and 25, in the festival’s refurbished barn (below) at 4037 Highway 19 in DeForest.
The program includes the Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major, illustrated with a performance of Brahms’ “Regenlied” (the “Rain Song” that precedes it and introduces the theme of the sonata); the Sonata No. 1 for Cello and Piano in E minor; and the Piano Quartet No 3 in C minor, a piece that retains its distinctive charge of unresolvable emotion. (You can hear that unresolved emotion in the beautiful slow movement of the Piano Quartet No. 3 in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Performers are violinist Rose Mary Harbison, co-artistic director of the Token Creek Festival; violist Lila Brown; cellist Rhonda Rider; pianist Janice Weber; and Edgewood College mezzo-soprano Kathleen Otterson.
THE REST OF THE FEST
Upcoming programs include “Words & Music,” a belated 80th birthday tribute to artistic co-director John Harbison, on Wednesday night, Aug. 28 at 7:30 p.m. The intimate program will include readings by poet Lloyd Schwartz, the premiere of new Harbison songs, plus works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Arnold Schoenberg.
The festival closes with “The Piano” program on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, both at 4 p.m. The festival welcomes back pianists Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chuang, playing together and as soloists.
Their program explores the question of the composer-performer, here composers who were also formidable pianists: Mozart, Maurice Ravel and Franz Liszt. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, arranged by the composer for chamber ensemble, and excerpts of John Harbison’s Sonata No. 2, written for Levin, complete the program.
For tickets ($32) and more information, go to www.tokencreekfestival.org or call (608) 241-2525.
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Classical music: The Token Creek Chamber Music Festival starts this Friday and marks 30 years with jazz plus music by Bach, Mozart, Liszt, Brahms, Ravel, Schoenberg and John Harbison
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By Jacob Stockinger
Starting this coming Friday, Aug. 16, and running through Sept. 1, the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival will mark its 30th anniversary with the theme of “Sanctuary.” (The festival takes place in a refurbished barn, below, at 4037 Highway 19 in DeForest.)
Add the festival directors: “The term ‘sanctuary’ attempts to capture in a single word something essential about what the festival has meant to players and listeners over all these years. From the start it aspired to offer something of retreat, an oasis, a place of refreshment and nourishment in art, both for musician participants who find a welcoming environment to “re-charge” their work, and for audience attendees who engage in and become a part of it.”
“In our small country barn,” writes prize-winning composer John Harbison (below top, in a photo by Tom Artin) who co-directs the festival with his violinist wife Rose Mary Harbison (below bottom, in a photo by Tom Artin), “we have always remained devoted to the scale and address of much chamber music, which speaks as often in a whisper as in a shout.
“Where larger musical institutions have been habitually frustrated by trying to live in the business model of growth, we have remained devoted to the intensity of the experience, which explains why the music never goes away, rather than to claims of numbers, which begs the music itself to change its very nature.
“Our conviction is that today’s composers, just like Schubert and Mozart, are still striving to embody daily experience, to connect to the natural world, and to ask philosophically and spiritually unanswerable questions, surrounded and interrupting silence, asking only for our most precious commodity — time. We continue to look for valuable ways to offer this transaction to our listeners, and are grateful for their interest over so many years.”
The first two concerts, at 5 p.m., on Friday and Saturday nights, feature the return of a jazz cabaret featuring standard works in the Great American Songbook. For more information about the program and performers, as well as tickets, go to: www.tokencreekfestival.org or call (608) 241-2525.
Tickets for the two jazz concerts are $40 for the balcony and $45 for cafe seating. Tickets for the other concerts are $32 with a limited number of student tickets available for $12.
HERE IS THE LINEUP FOR THE REST OF THE FESTIVAL
Program 2: Music of Brahms at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 24, and Sunday, Aug. 25
Johannes Brahms is the only composer whose complete catalogue of chamber music is still in constant use. This is due to his fastidious high standards, and to his ideal temperament for music played by smaller groups of players. His music is universally admired for the astounding combination of sheer craft and deep emotional impact.
The program includes the Regenlied (Rain Song), Op. 57 no. 3; Sonata for Violin and Piano in G major, Op. 78; the Sonata for Cello and Piano in E minor, Op. 38; and the Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 60. (The “Rain Song” is used as the theme of the last movement of the violin sonata. You can hear it performed by violinist Leonidas Kavakos and pianist Yuja Wang in the YouTube video at the bottom, which also features the score so that you can follow along.)
Performers are Edgewood College mezzo-soprano Kathleen Otterson (below top); violinist Rose Mary Harbison; violist Lila Brown (below second); cellist Rhonda Rider (below third, in a photo by Liz Linder); and pianist Janice Weber (below bottom).
Program 3: Then and Now, Words and Music – An 80th Birthday Tribute to John Harbison. Wednesday, Aug. 28, at 7:30 p.m.
Last February, when Madison launched a citywide celebration of co-artistic director John Harbison’s 80th birthday, bitter cold and deep snow made it impossible for the festival to open up The Barn and join in the festivities.
The Wednesday program – an intimate concert of words and music curated by the Harbisons — is the festival’s belated birthday tribute. Harbison will read from his new book about Johann Sebastian Bach, and Boston poet Lloyd Schwartz (below top) will offer a reading of his poems that are the basis of a song cycle to presented by baritone Simon Barrad (below bottom). The evening will include a discussion on setting text, “Poem to Song,” and the world premiere of new Harbison songs, still in progress, on poems of Gary Snyder.
The program includes: Selections from the Violin Sonata in B minor, with violinist Rose Mary Harbison, and “The Art of Fugue” by Johann Sebastian Bach; “Four Songs of Solitude” and “Nocturne” by John Harbison; the Violin Sonata in G Major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; the “Phantasy” for violin and piano by Arnold Schoenberg; the “SchwartzSongs” and “Four Poems for Robin” by John Harbison.
Program 4: The Piano , at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 31, and Sunday, Sept. 1.
The closing program welcomes back husband-and-wife pianists Robert Levin and Ya-Fei Chuang, playing together and as soloists.
Chuang (below top) is acclaimed by critics in the U.S. and abroad for performances of stunning virtuosity, refinement and communicative power. Levin (below bottom, in a photo by Clive Barda), who teaches at Harvard University, is revered for his Mozart completions and classical period improvisations.
Their program explores the question of the composer-performer — that is, composers who were also formidable pianists: Mozart, Ravel and Liszt.
Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto, arranged by the composer for chamber ensemble, and excerpts of Harbison’s Piano Sonata No. 2, written for Levin, will be performed. Also on the program are Mozart’s Allegro in G Major, K. 357 (completion by Robert Levin); Maurice Ravel’s “Gaspard de la Nuit”; and Franz Liszt’s “Reminiscences of Don Juan.”
Other performers are: violinists Rose Mary Harbison and Laura Burns, of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and Rhapsodie String Quartet; violists Jen Paulson and Kaleigh Acord; cellist Karl Lavine, who is principal cello of both the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra as well as the Chamber Music Director of the Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras (WYSO); and double bassist Ross Gilliland.
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Classical music: Pianist James Giles will replace Ya-Fei Chuang for TONIGHT’s recital at Farley’s House of Pianos
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the followed announcement from Farley’s House of Pianos about its solo recital tonight.
“We are sad to announce that pianist Ya-Fei Chuang has sustained an injury that will prevent her from performing for us TONIGHT and teaching a master class on Sunday. It is our intent to reschedule her as soon as her health and schedule permit.
“In the meantime, we are very fortunate that James Giles (below), of Northwestern University, is able to step in and perform for us, and we are excited about the program and repertoire he has shaped for us.
“We apologize for this last-minute change, but are excited to introduce James Giles to our Salon Piano Series audience, and look forward to seeing you TONIGHT at 7:30 p.m. at 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.”
His recital at Salon Piano Series will include works of Johannes Brahms, Franz Schubert, Isaac Albeniz, Ignaz Jan Paderewski, Leopold Godowsky and others.
An artist’s reception will follow the concert.
Tickets are $50 in at the door ($10 for tickets) and $45 in advance at:
https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3499200
For more information about the master class, including participants and repertoire, call Farley’s at (608) 271-2626 or go to:
Giles has been praised as “a technically polished, elegant pianist” (Sibelius Academy, Helsinki), “with a riveting intelligence given to everything he play[s],” (Wigmore Hall, London), a “distinctive interpretive persona [and] beautiful pianism … direct and unmannered” (Alice Tully Hall, New York). His Paris recital at the Salle Cortot in 2004 was hailed as “a true revelation, due equally to the pianist’s artistry as to his choice of program.” (You can hear Giles playing the Humoresque by Robert Schumann in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Giles regularly performs in important musical centers in America, Europe, and Asia, in solo and chamber recitals and as concerto soloist. A native of North Carolina, he studied at the Manhattan School, the Juilliard School, Eastman School of Music, and at Oberlin College. He was awarded a Fulbright Grant to study in Italy with the legendary Russian pianist Lazar Berman.
Coordinator of the Piano Program and Director of Music Performance Graduate Studies at Northwestern University, Giles is director of the Amalfi Coast Music Festival during the summers, and was director of the 2017 American Liszt Society Festival.
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Classical music: Acclaimed pianist Ya-Fei Chuang plays works by Schubert, Liszt and Ravel this Saturday night at Farley’s House of Pianos
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By Jacob Stockinger
The critically acclaimed pianist Ya-Fei Chuang (below) will return to Madison this weekend to perform a solo recital and give a master class for the Salon Piano Series at Farley’s House of Pianos, 6522 Seybold Road, on Madison’s far west side near West Towne Mall.
Advance tickets are $45 (students $10) or $50 at the door
You can purchase tickets at: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3499200
Service fees may apply. Tickets are also for sale at Farley’s House of Pianos by calling 608 271-2626. Student tickets can only be purchased online and are not available the day of the event.
An artist’s reception will follow the concert.
For more information, go to: https://salonpianoseries.org
RECITAL
The recital by Chuang, who appears at festivals and concert halls around the world, is this Saturday night, April 6, 7:30 p.m. at Farley’s House of Pianos.
She comes with high praise from the famed Alfred Brendel, who said: “If you want to listen to Chopin and Liszt with different ears, Ya-Fei Chuang’s ecstatic performances cannot leave you cold, and her pianism is staggering.”
The program will include:
Maurice Ravel – Sonatine (1905) – Moderate; Menuet; Animated
Franz Schubert – “Moments Musicaux” (Musical Moments), D. 780/Op. 94
No. 2 in A-flat Major (1827); No. 3 in F Minor (1823) – played by Vladimir Horowitz in the YouTube video at the bottom; No. 6 in A-flat Major (1824)
Franz Liszt – “Reminiscences of Bellini’s ‘Norma,’” S. 394 (1831)
INTERMISSION
Maurice Ravel – “Jeux d’eau” (Fountain, or Play of Water) (1901)
Franz Liszt – “Reminiscences of Mozart’s ‘Don Juan,’” S. 418 (1841)
MASTER CLASS
On this Sunday afternoon, April 7, at 2 p.m., Ya-Fei Chuang will teach a master class at Farley’s House of Pianos, where she will instruct local students.
This is a FREE event that the public is invited to observe.
The master class program will include:
- Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Sonata No. 8 in C minor (”Pathetique”), Op. 13, Third Movement; performed by Angelina Chang whose teacher is Julie Chang
- Franz Liszt – “Liebestraum” (Dream of Love) No. 3 in A-flat Major “Notturno” (Nocturne); performed by Antonio Wu whose teacher is Shu-Ching Chuang
- Sergei Rachmaninov – Prelude Op. 3 No. 2, in C-sharp Minor; performed by Alexander Henderson whose teacher is Vlada Henderson
The master classes for the 2018-19 season are supported by the law firm of Boardman and Clark LLP.
This concert is 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, with additional support from Jun and Sandra Lee.
Another year of exceptional artists is planned for the 2019-20 season. Subscribe to the series’ e-newsletter, and check the website and social media sites Instagram and Facebook for the season announcement in June.
For more information, go to: https://salonpianoseries.org
To become a sponsor of Salon Piano Series, contact Renee Farley. Salon Piano Series is a nonprofit organization founded to continue the tradition of intimate salon concerts, including solo recitals and chamber music with piano, featuring exceptional artists.
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Classical music: The Token Creek Festival splendidly captures the poignancy and intimacy of late Schubert through songs and smaller piano works
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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 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. He also took the performance photographs.
By John W. Barker
The Token Creek Chamber Music Festival for this year is presenting three concert programs of what the directors consider “Necessary Music” — as MacArthur “genius,” Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and festival co-artistic director John Harbison (below) puts it, “We did not even know we needed it until it appears.”
Of the resulting concerts, the first, on last Saturdays night and Sunday afternoon, featured music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Joseph Haydn, plus Harbison, suggesting their interaction.
The third program, to come on this coming Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. explores various works in waltz form, old and new. (For more information about the program and tickets, go to www.tokencreekfestival.org.)
And in between, on this past Wednesday night, came Franz Schubert. That was the concert I caught.
Three performers were involved.
To begin with, the two pianists, Ya-Fei Chuang (below foreground) and Alison D’Amato, played the slow movement from Schubert’s so-called “Grand Duo,” D. 812.
That full-length, four-movement work has been claimed by some commentators to be the surviving bit of Schubert’s supposed “Gastein” Symphony. It is splendid music in its own right, and I rather wished it had been played complete, especially with two such polished performers at hand. (You can hear it in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
Next, Chuang played the six pieces that constitute the collection known as the Moments Musicaux, D. 780. These pieces, mostly in ABA form, bring Schubert’s inherent lyricism into a range of moods that go far beyond mere entertainment. Chuang played them with deeply probing intensity.
The second half of the program was entirely devoted to Schubert’s final collection of Lieder, his Schwanengesang, or “Swan Song,” as the publisher titled it.
It is not a true cycle, but a gathering of 14 songs on which Schubert had been working in his last years, published after his death. One can, to be sure, find common themes among them of longing, loss, isolation, loneliness and apprehension — themes that preoccupied the composer at the end of his all-too-brief life.
The singer, Charles Blandy (below), joined D’Amato in a deeply involving performance. His lyric tenor voice is flexible, with particularly fine German diction and a capacity for subtle variations in the moods of the individual songs. The pianist was a sensitive partner whose careful support offered a musical dimension of its own. The texts and translations were provided to the audience, allowing full immersion in these songs.
All of this music came from Schubert’s later years, when the composer, knowing that he was soon to die, concentrated his thinking so poignantly.
In bypassing the larger of the final works, too, this program stressed personal intimacy and demonstrated that Schubert’s reflections on the human condition do, indeed, make his music “necessary.”
Tags: American Record Guide, Arts, Bach, Cello, Chamber music, Charles Blandy, Classical music, composer, Concert, diction, Early music, Entertainment, four-hands, Franz Schubert, Gastein Symphony, genius, German, Grand Duo, Haydn, History, Isthmus, Jacob Stockinger, Johann Sebastian Bach, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, John Harbison, John W. Barker, lecture, lyricism, MacArthur Fellow, Madison, Madison Early Music Festival, Medieval, Moments Musicaux, Music, necessary, performance, photo, photograph, Piano, professor, Pulitzer Prize, Sonata, symphony, tenor, Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, United States, University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison, vocal music, Waltz, Wisconsin, WORT-FM 89.9, Ya-Fei Chuang, YouTube
Classical music: You can hear Schubert’s last songs at the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival TONIGHT at 7:30
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has been informed that seats still remain for tonight’s all-Schubert concert at the popular Token Creek Chamber Music Festival.
Half of the concert will be piano music, including the six Moments Musicaux and a work for piano, four-hands, a genre that Schubert often composed in and performed with friends. Ya-Fei Chuang (below) is the featured piano soloist.
Also on the program is “Swan Song” – sung by tenor Charles Blandy (below top) with pianist Alison D’Amato (below bottom) of the Eastman School of Music and the University of Buffalo.
Here are program notes by the festival’s co-artistic director and prize-winning composer John Harbison about the work:
Schwanengesang is not a planned cycle. Instead it is a collection of Schubert’s last songs, as serious and searching as the two great cycles Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise.
Thematically and musically, the songs have much in common and, taken together, they are unequalled in plumbing the emotional depths of the soul, heart-wrenching and heartwarming.
We can’t be certain whether Schubert (below) ever intended them to be performed as a unity.
When they were published early in 1829, after his death at 31, it was the first publisher, Tobias Haslinger, who named the collection Schwanengesang (Swan Song), presumably to emphasize that these were the last fruits of the composer’s genius.
The sequence consists of settings of seven poems by Rellstab, six by Heine and, as an encore, Seidl’s “Taubenpost,” quite likely the very last song Schubert ever wrote. (You can hear “Taubenpost,” sung by the famed German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
For more information about the festival, the remaining concerts and tickets, visit www.tokencreekfestival.org
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Classical music: This year’s Token Creek Chamber Music Festival will explore “Necessary Music” by Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Ravel, Harbison and other composers from Aug. 26 through Sept 3
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By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has received the following announcement to post about an annual event that puts on a lot of MUST-HEAR programs:
TOKEN CREEK, WIS. – In what way, and for whom, is a certain kind of music necessary?
Certainly the presenters of a chamber music festival would be presumptuous to offer a program as a sort of prescription for listeners. And at Token Creek we won’t.
So often the music we need arrives by chance, and we did not even know we needed it until it appears. And other times we know exactly what we are missing. And so we offer this year’s programs of pieces that feed the soul.
Saturday, Aug. 26, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 27, at 4 p.m., Program I: Continuo
Some works of art are so rich that they sustain a lifetime of inquiry and encounters, each time revealing fresh new insights only possible through sustained engagement, pieces so resilient they admit multiple interpretations, approaches, nuances, shadings.
We open the season with music of Johann Sebastian Bach (below), pieces we’ve played before and some we have not, music that continues to compel for the very reason that it can never be fully plumbed, music that rewards over and over again. In a concert dominated by Bach, the requirement of the other pieces is really only that they offer sufficient originality and integrity not to be dwarfed or rendered ephemeral by his authority.
Flutist Dawn Lawler (below top), cellist Sara Sitzer (below second) and pianist Jeffrey Stanek (below third join the artistic directors composer-pianist John and violinist Rose Mary Harbison (below bottom) for this opening program.
Works:
BACH Sonata in E minor for violin and continuo, BWV 1023
HAYDN Trio in F major for flute, cello and piano XV:17
BACH Two Fugues, from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080
HARBISON Mark the Date, for flute and piano (pre-premiere)
BACH Sonata in G major for violin and continuo, BWV 1021
BACH Three-Voice Ricercar, from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079
BACH Sonata in C minor, from The Musical Offering, BWV 1079
Wednesday, Aug. 30, at 7:30 p.m. Program II: Schubert
A sequel to last year’s all-Schubert program, which offered Die Schöne Müllerin and the “Trout” Quintet, this season we offer two late masterworks by Schubert (below): the song cycle Schwanengesang (Swan Song) and the solo piano set of six Moments Musicaux (Musical Moments).
In structure, ingenuity and invention these two large works offer an eloquent counterpoint and complement to one another. We are pleased to welcome back pianist Ya-Fei Chuang (below top), and to introduce tenor Charles Blandy (below middle) with pianist Linda Osborn (below bottom).
Works:
SCHUBERT Andante, from Sonata in C for Piano Four Hands (“Grand Duo”), D.812
SCHUBERT Moments Musicaux, D.780
SCHUBERT Schwanengesang, D.957
Saturday, Sept. 2, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 3, at 4 p.m. Program III: Waltz
This program explores the familiar form of the waltz as an unexpectedly flexible and diverse musical type, with uncommon approaches from a wide variety of composers from Schubert through Sur.
We conclude the season with Schumann’s splendid Piano Quartet, whose third movement offers one of the greatest of slow waltzes of all time. (You can hear it performed by the Faure Quartet in the YouTube video at the bottom.)
We are pleased to introduce violist Becky Menghini (below top) and cellist Kyle Price (below bottom).
Works:
FRITZ KREISLER Three Old Viennese Melodies for Violin and Piano
DONALD SUR Berceuse for Violin and Piano
SCHUBERT Waltz Sequence
RAVEL Valses nobles et sentimentales
GEORGE CRUMB Sonata for Solo Cello
SCHUMANN Quartet in E-flat for Piano and Strings, Op. 47
The Token Creek Festival has been called a gem, a treasure nestled in the heart of Wisconsin cornfields, a late-summer fixture just outside of Madison.
Now in its 28th season, the Festival has become known for its artistic excellence, diverse and imaginative programming, a deep engagement with the audience, and a surprising, enchanting and intimate performance venue in a comfortable refurbished barn.
The 2017 festival offers five events to close the summer concert season, Aug. 26–Sept. 3.
Performances take place at the Festival Barn (below), on Highway 19 near the hamlet of Token Creek (10 minutes north of Madison, near Sun Prairie) with ample parking available.
The charmingly rustic venue—indoors and air-conditioned with modern comforts—is invitingly small, and early reservations are recommended.
Concert tickets are $32 (students $12). Reservations can be secured in several ways:
- Online: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/token-creek-chamber-music-festival-2017-necessary-music-tickets-36091343179
- Website: www.tokencreekfestival.org (a link to our online ticketing, or a printable order form)
- Phone: 608-241-2525 (voicemail only, please leave a message)
- Email: info@tokencreekfestival.org
- U.S. mail: P.O. Box 5201, Madison WI, 53705
More information about the Token Creek Festival and all events and artists can be found at the website, www.tokencreekfestival.org or by calling 608-241-2525.
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