A Journey Through Madison's Classical Music Scene
Classically Speaking |
06/25/12Bach Dancing and Dynamite Says “We’ll Take Manhattan”BDDS continues its 21st season with four NY composers served straight up. |
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05/11/12Madison Symphony Season Closes with Gobs of GershwinDeMain leads all the greatest hits, and then some — and the listenin’ is easy |
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05/07/12Serkin Gives Union Theater Its Last (for now) Curtain CallPianist Peter Serkin caps the current chapter of the Union Theater with touches sublime and historic |
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04/30/12Lights…Camera…Rossini!Madison Opera takes Cinderella to Tinseltown — Rossini would probably approve |
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04/26/12Pro Arte Finale: Echoes of a World PremiereSecond performance of Harbison’s String Quartet No. 5 works on radio, too |
04/17/12Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra Surprises with “Low-fat” BeethovenAndrew Sewell’s bold gamble pays off — thanks to some marvelous playing and singing |
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03/31/12Madison Symphony Wins the BattleDeMain’s orchestra survives Strauss, and occasionally dazzles |
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03/26/12Pro Arte Party Resumes, with Expanded Guest ListPro Arte Quartet centennial season’s third concert features a pair of quintets, one new, one old |
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03/22/12Sweating It Out: University Opera’s Don Giovanni Has More Than the Usual SizzleDirector Farlow and hardy young troops give us a “Giovanni” to believe in. |
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03/19/12Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra Proves All of Us Are Lucky This St. Patrick’s DayAndrew Sewell plays the role of leprechaun in assembling a memorably Irish-tinged program |
Years before I contributed my first classical review to the Los Angeles Times in 1988, I started a class in music appreciation for adults that had one aim: to put a few cracks in the “ivory tower elitism” I found pervasive in the classical music world since my boyhood days. Whether as a critic, program annotator or band director, that goal has never changed. After all, Mozart and Beethoven and the gang wrote their music for people like you—not critics or professors!
