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Art, commerce and that pesky star system
on 11/20/09 at 9:00 am | Those who regularly attend Madison Symphony Orchestra concerts must frequently look at the program and wonder, "Why did they choose this piece?" or "Why don't they ever play that piece?" A full season of orchestral programs must, of course, be planned as a totality. So how is repertoire chosen? Who makes the decisions — one person, a group of them, a committee? And what are the factors to be taken into account? |
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Sir James Galway goes for laughs with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra
on 11/15/09 at 9:43 am | For its 50th anniversary concert, Saturday night in Overture Center's Capitol Theater, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra presented three works of the twentieth century, and one not. |
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Emotional power in Madison Opera's vividly staged Carmen
on 11/07/09 at 10:33 am | Friday night the Madison Opera opened this season with a lavish production in Overture Hall of the perennial crowd-pleaser, Bizet's Carmen. And a production to please it surely was. |
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Madison Symphony Orchestra is relentless with violin soloist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
on 10/24/09 at 10:13 am | Friday night in Overture Hall, the Madison Symphony Orchestra opened its second concert program with the ebullient overture to Glinka's opera Ruslan and Ludmilla. The well-drilled string players brought off their fiendishly fast parts triumphantly. |
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WCO performs splendid opener to its post-strike season
on 10/10/09 at 10:03 am | How wonderful to approach this new season with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra thankfully freed of the labor disputes that disrupted the last one. Friday night at Overture Center's Capitol Theater, there was a palpable mood of festivity as the reinvigorated ensemble offered its first concert of the season. |
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The Metropolitan Opera is in HD at Point Cinema
on 10/09/09 at 9:00 am | On Saturday Marcus Theatres begins the fourth season of "The Metropolitan Opera: Live in HD." Now a welcome annual fixture at Point Cinema, these high-definition video transmissions parallel the familiar radio broadcasts. |
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DeMain and Serkin are not quite in sync at Madison Symphony Orchestra's opener
on 10/03/09 at 10:11 am | Friday night in Overture Hall, the Madison Symphony Orchestra opened its 2009-10 season with a distinguished guest, Peter Serkin, one of our finest pianists. |
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Mozart program kicks off Token Creek Chamber Music Festival
on 08/30/09 at 10:25 am | Pianist Robert Levin is an old friend of the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival, held annually at the refurbished DeForest barn of John and Rose Mary Harbison. As he did last year, Levin opened this 2009 festival with an all-Mozart program on Saturday. |
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Operatic highlights, Broadway trivialities at Madison Opera in the Park 2009
on 07/26/09 at 11:29 am | With the rain holding off virtually to program's end, this year's Opera in the Park benefited from beautifully mild weather, drawing another audience of enthusiastic thousands gathered at Garner Park. |
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Madison Savoyards bring flair to The Yeomen of the Guard
on 07/20/09 at 10:40 am | In its 47th summer presentation, Madison Savoyards again mounts a Gilbert and Sullivan production of professional quality. Notably so, too, in perhaps the richest, both musically and dramatically, of the 13 G & S collaborations, The Yeomen of the Guard. |
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Rhapsodic Russians open Concerts on the Square 2009 season
on 06/25/09 at 10:59 am | Madison's Concerts on the Square are a far cry from the small-town concerts at the village bandstand of a century ago. But they have become an institution, now in its 26th season. |
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Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society seeks Haydn
on 06/15/09 at 12:00 pm | Every season of the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society has a punning theme to unite its programs. This year's is "Haydn Seek," combining the idea of children's games with marking the 200th anniversary of the great 18th-century Austrian master's death. Each program will contain a chamber work of his. |
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Ancora String Quartet plays final recital of season with Smetana, Griffes, and Hindemith
on 06/01/09 at 10:00 am | The Ancora String Quartet played its final concert of the season on Saturday, May 30 -- at their home base, the First Unitarian Society -- nicely filling a yawning gap between the end of spring's formal music-making and the stirring of busy summer activities in Madison. |
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Flaws in Madison Opera's crowd-pleasing Faust
on 05/18/09 at 10:59 am | Gounod's Faust endures as a sure-fire audience-pleaser, whether because of or despite any given production. After 150 years, however, there is still no definitive edition of the score, while performances offer jumbled versions of an inherently corrupt tradition. |
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Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra stages joyful return for Masterworks V
on 04/27/09 at 11:06 am | Having the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra back with us again, in their scheduled season finale, was enough reason for joy. The more so in that they had lost none of their tight ensemble and confident sonority during their recent absence over contract disputes. |
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Madison Bach Musicians perform magnificent 'St. Matthews Passion'
on 04/13/09 at 12:00 pm | Last spring, Trevor Stephenson's Madison Bach Musicians climbed the musical slopes with the B-minor Mass, period style. This spring they reached a summit with the "St. Matthew Passion." I can recall past Madison performances of the work in 1963 and 1980, but this was the very first here to follow period conventions and instrumentation. |
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André Watts brings fireworks, delicacy to Madison Symphony Orchestra performance
on 04/06/09 at 1:00 pm | I have long had reservations about André Watts: undeniable technique, but, I felt, a certain superficiality in repertoire and interpretation. His latest guest appearance with the Madison Symphony Orchestra in Overture Hall last weekend swept aside past doubts, however. |
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Madison Symphony Orchestra looks ahead to 2009-2010 season
on 03/25/09 at 11:09 am | The established pattern of three performances of each program over a weekend (Friday and Saturday evenings, Sunday afternoon) will be maintained. Six of the eight programs will be conducted by maestro DeMain, the other two by guests. There will be 10 visiting soloists: some new talents but mostly established stars. |
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Madison Opera stages funny, thought-provoking Così fan tutte by Mozart
on 03/16/09 at 11:00 am | Madison Opera's production of Mozart's Così fan tutte ("All women are like that"), was a musical feast and a visual delight, ideally fitted to Overture Center's Capitol Theater. The performances last Friday and Sunday were shared with the Sarasota Opera, typical of today's company collaborations. |
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Exuberant Yoav Talmi conducts Madison Symphony Orchestra with violinist Julian Rachlin
on 03/09/09 at 1:00 pm | It was clear from the start of this past weekend's Madison Symphony program at Overture Hall that visiting conductor Yoav Talmi meant to make a strong impression. In that respect he was joined by the other guest, violin soloist Julian Rachlin. Lithuanian-born, still very young-looking at age 35, Rachlin chose as his vehicle not a traditional 19th-century workhorse but the prickly and unconventional "Concerto in D" by Igor Stravinsky. |
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Stirring performances on period instruments by Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble
on 03/02/09 at 12:00 pm | Madison has become a surprisingly lively center of early music performance, for a city of its size. More and more, singers and instrumentalists have not only been discovering a rich literature of Renaissance and Baroque music, but they have been learning how to bring it to vibrant life in its own period styles. |
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Madison Symphony Orchestra excels with Olga Kern and three from Beethoven
on 02/09/09 at 1:00 pm | An all-Beethoven lineup is pretty much a guaranteed formula for success with today's audiences. That is what the Madison Symphony Orchestra could count on in its concerts last weekend. Not content with choosing three surefire hits for the program, Maestro John DeMain then threw more fuel on the fire with exuberant and assertive direction. |
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Ancora String Quartet comes into its own with Haydn, Beethoven, Shostakovich
on 02/02/09 at 11:00 am | For the latest of its concerts this season the Ancora String Quartet, resident at the First Unitarian Society, chose to play in the original meeting house, rather than in the Society's new and larger auditorium. |
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Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra is back in action with Masterworks II
on 01/26/09 at 11:43 am | Belated but joyful was the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra's first full Masterworks concert of the season on Saturday, January 24. Transcending ongoing contract negotiations, the strike that scotched the first concert last October has been suspended so that the scheduled concerts remaining can be given. Appropriately, high spirits were evident, expressed in a program in which two avian delights framed an exciting local solo debut. |
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Madison Symphony Orchestra: Daniel Hege, Henning Kraggerud, and James DeVita
on 01/19/09 at 10:00 am | Three guests brought a triple-treat at the Madison Symphony Orchestra concerts last weekend. Syracuse Symphony conductor Daniel Hege, making his second podium visit here, opened things with Mozart's "Paris Symphony", No. 31 in D, a frothy first treat. |
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Fine singing, problems elsewhere in Madison Opera production of Madama Butterfly
on 11/27/08 at 9:00 am | I feared Madison Opera's presentation of Puccini's Madama Butterfly would prove two incompatible productions running simultaneously, one musical and one visual. |
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Chang and Tali shine with the Madison Symphony Orchestra
on 11/14/08 at 9:00 am | Two visitors enlivened the latest Madison Symphony concerts. The hyped one was Sarah Chang, undeniably one of today’s top violinists, who appeared in the "Violin Concerto in D" by Brahms. I risk stereotypes and cliché when I say I have long thought of Brahms’ concertos as "masculine," reflecting his own burly playing style. Against that, Chang proposed a valid "feminine" perspective on this massive, challenging score. |
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Classical-era masters
on 08/29/08 at 9:00 am | The annual chamber music festival held in the Festival Barn on the property of John and Rose Mary Harbison near Token Creek has become one of our special summer treasures. This year it runs Aug. 23-31, with each of four programs given twice. The programs range from adaptations of Bach, to jazz, to music by Harbison himself. |
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Opera in the Park draws an appreciative crowd
on 08/01/08 at 9:00 am | Madison Opera's seventh annual Opera in the Park was a lively show that reportedly drew over 13,000 people. The generous, diverse program featured four singers, each with two or more solos. Their voices are attractive and strong, but strength was too often their primary aim. |
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Yum-Yum, Ko-Ko and friends: Madison Savoyards stage a fine Mikado
on 07/25/08 at 9:00 am | In their 46th season, the durable Madison Savoyards Ltd. places high in Madison's summer offerings. Addressing The Mikado; or The Town of Titipu -- perhaps the most popular of the "big three" Gilbert and Sullivan operettas (H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance being the others) -- the Savoyards achieve their most dazzling and consistently satisfying show in some years. |
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