Bo Huang
Incendiary cellist Joseph Johnson.
Though the predominant image of Beethoven shows him with a scowl, it seems he had a sense of humor — it shows up in his Kakadu Variations. The theme for the variations is based on an aria from a light opera performed on the Viennese stage. The variations repeat on several levels until they sound like a broken record. But Beethoven is having fun with this, teasing us from across the centuries.
Beethoven is one of more than 40 composers that Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Madison’s top-tier chamber music group, will present at its June festival that often takes a teasing approach to intriguing works. The festival runs for three consecutive weekends, from June 7-23. All concerts take place in Hamel Music Center’s Collins Recital Hall and Mead Witter Concert Hall on the UW-Madison campus. And as always, the programs combine witty titles with adventurous combinations of music.
BDDS’s co-artistic directors Stephanie Jutt (flute) and Jeffrey Sykes (piano) chose “High Fidelity” as this year’s festival’s title. Jutt points to the phrase’s multiple meanings: “It’s a reference back to the 33-1/3 LPs, and it’s our 33rd anniversary. We’re also thinking of the fidelity of our audience and the loyalty they’ve shown to our festival over the years.”
On Friday nights of each week, the festival begins with the Incendiary Artist Spotlight. “The Incendiary Artist is one person that we choose from our longtime artists, and they get to pick the program they will play,” says Jutt. The artist will also have an interview on stage with Jutt and Sykes. These are one-hour programs with no intermission and a reception afterward.
The Incendiary Artist for June 7 is Stas Venglevski in a program titled “Stas ’n Stripes Forever.” Venglevski is an award-winning virtuoso on the bayan, a Russian instrument like the accordion but with buttons instead of a keyboard along one side.
Venglevski is originally from the Republic of Moldova. “Stas is a star who happens to live in Milwaukee, but he travels constantly playing the bayan,” says Jutt. The concert features some of his own compositions as well as works by Spanish and Eastern European composers. Venglevski is also very funny, according to Jutt, and there will be some jokes.
The June 8 concert, “Set the Record Straight,” will feature classical music, tangos, and other dances. The centerpiece of the program is Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Trio, Op. 120, featuring Sykes, longtime BDDS violinist Carmit Zori, and cellist Parry Karp of the Pro Arte Quartet.
The June 9 concert title, “Broken Record,” references Beethoven’s Kakadu Variations and stars Sykes at the piano. “Kakadu” is German for cockatoo, a parrot with a squawk that is irritating when repeated. “Beethoven uses the repeated notes of the theme to brilliant, gleeful, annoying effect throughout the variations,” says Sykes.
Also in this concert is Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Four Folk Songs” for piano trio. Frank is a proponent of multiculturalism in classical music. Like Beethoven, she has hearing loss and assists others who have this challenge, including helping kids who rap in sign language.
Matt Dine
Clarinetist Alan Kay is featured June 14.
Clarinetist Alan Kay is the Incendiary Artist on June 14 in a program called “Kay Será, Será.” He is principal clarinet of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. His playing will add character and charm to late Romantic and modern composers and to Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes performed later in the week.
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote the poem “Fern Hill” in 1945 as World War II was ending. In 1960, the award-winning American composer John Corigliano set the poem to music for chorus, mezzo-soprano and orchestra. On his website, Corigliano writes that he first encountered Thomas’s poetry in 1959. “Both the sounds and structures of Thomas’s words were astonishingly musical,” he says.
Thomas’s poem recalls the “lamb white days” of childhood on his aunt’s farm in Wales. Corigliano’s nostalgic leitmotif evokes images of sunshine and happiness as it lilts. But repeated two-note motifs suggest the sound of a ticking clock, reminding us that childhood doesn’t last forever, as the poem ends: “Time held me green and dying/Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
In the June 15 concert, titled “One for the Record,” BDDS will collaborate with the Madison Choral Project, led by Albert Pinsonneault, and the Madison Youth Choirs, led by Michael Ross, in Corigliano’s evocative setting of Thomas’s masterpiece.
Opening this concert is Mozart’s charming Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, with Sykes at the piano. “This is one of Mozart’s greatest concertos, and the slow movement is pure gorgeous,” says Sykes.
On June 16 the program “In Record Time” explores the ways time passes. Because of the quiet ambiance in Carlos Simon’s trio “Be Still and Know,” time seems to stand still. But it moves quickly in Copland’s jazzy Sextet and Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes.
The Incendiary Artist for the final week of the season is cellist Joseph Johnson, principal cellist for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, in a concert titled “Cuppa Joe” on June 21. Pianists Sykes and UW-Madison’s Christopher Taylor will collaborate with Johnson in this French and American program.
The June 22 concert, titled “B-Side,” highlights composers that we don’t hear on stage much, including British composer Rebecca Clarke, whose music is sometimes reminiscent of Debussy, and Luigi Boccherini, a contemporary of Mozart. This program ends with Brahms’ monumentally challenging Piano Quartet in G Minor starring Taylor at the piano.
The festival’s final concert, “Track Record,” on June 23, is a multimedia event that begins with music by Rebecca Clarke and Franz Schubert and ends with a showing of the Buster Keaton silent film Seven Chances with music by American composer Stephen Prutsman.
Prutsman is an award-winning composer with eclectic interests. He has scored 20 silent films, played keyboard in rock bands and jazz clubs, and also won a medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition. His score for Seven Chances, in which Buster Keaton must find someone to marry in a hurry, is strong in storytelling — the viewer can sense the action even with eyes closed.
To order tickets, go to tinyurl.com/BDDS2024, or call Campus Arts Ticketing at 608-265-2787 Monday-Friday, 2-6 p.m. Tickets are also available at the venue.
