Music

In 1875 audiences at the Opéra-Comique in Paris were among the most conservative in Europe, and so it was probably too much to hope that they would take kindly to the novel production they were seeing and hearing on the night of March 3.

The day had begun auspiciously for...

Simply Folk Pledge Edition

March 2, 2014 - 5:00pm

Simply Folk's Steph Elkins, Sile Shigley and Jeff Durkee

It's the winter pledge drive edition of Simply Folk, with favorites from Americana to bluegrass, Celtic, and more. (Plus, there's a new blue Simply Folk T-shirt and a Punch Brothers concert package available as a thank-you gift!)

Who Were Wisconsin's First People?

March 2, 2014 - 4:00pm

Archaeologist Sissel Schroeder fills us in on the latest discoveries about the earliest Americans. Where did they come from? How quickly did they spread across the continent? And what was Wisconsin like when the first people arrived?

The Downside

March 2, 2014 - 11:00am

Wealth, fame, and acclaim–Joseph Haydn enjoyed them all during a sojourn in London arranged by Johann Peter Salomon. But there was a downside according to a letter he wrote to Maria von Genzinger in Vienna on March 2, 1792:

I must confess to Your Grace that this is very embarrassing...

Everything is in Order

March 1, 2014 - 11:30am

Could it happen today? In the early years of the twentieth century, pianist Harold Bauer was touring in Spain, traveling with a tuner, who was responsible for having Bauer’s Erard pianos sent from one venue to the next.

Toward the end of the tour, illness forced the tuner to...

The Charge

February 28, 2014 - 11:30pm

Ludwig van Beethoven spent a good deal of his time concerned with music and money. A letter that he wrote to composer Ferdinand Ries on February 28, 1816, dismisses both matters quickly in order to take up a new preoccupation:

Quite some time ago I wrote to let you know...

Respect Me!

February 28, 2014 - 12:45pm

By the time the Venice debut of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera Beatrice di Tenda finally took place, it was a month overdue, and winning over an impatient audience was not easy.

Librettist Felice Romani was part of the problem. He was slow to deliver and, apparently, stood Bellini up at least...

Box Set Reveals Legacy Of Wisconsin's Paramount Records

February 27, 2014 - 3:06pm

It’s a fair question. In the early 20 th Century, how did a furniture company from Wisconsin create a record label that managed to develop one of the greatest musical rosters of all time? The answer? The desire to make a few bucks and a whole lot of luck. The...

Curious Wisconsin - The Rise And Fall Of Paramount Records

February 27, 2014 - 3:06pm

How did a Wisconsin chair company end up creating a record label that boasted one of the most impressive line-up of artists of all time? In today's Curious Wisconsin, two brothers discuss the rise and fall of Paramount Records.

The Shaky Collaborators

February 27, 2014 - 12:30pm

Composer Mily Balakirev had scraped up enough money for his Free Music School to put on a series of four concerts in St. Petersburg during the winter of 1879. Colleague Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was to direct them, and before they were over, he was a nervous wreck.

One of the concerts...

Spectrum West for February 27

February 27, 2014 - 10:00am

Chris Terski, owner of Northwest Pianoworks in rural Colfax, talks about the art and science of piano tuning and his recent restoration of University of Wisconsin-Barron County’s 1891 Steinway B piano. Other guests on the show include Sean Dooley, director of Vinegar Tom presented at University of Wisconsin-River Falls and Tony Zammit, the new executive director of the Chippewa Valley Symphony Orchestra. The show includes information about upcoming presentations by Eau Claire Chamber Orchestra and Flambeau Valley Arts Association.

Special Correspondent Jim Oliver talks with Dooley about the production Vinegar Tom. The play opens February 27 and runs through March 8...

Feb. 27, 2014: Blues guitarist, Paul Filipowicz

February 27, 2014 - 10:00am

Wisconsin blues guitarist Paul Filipowicz performs live on Route 51 and discusses his role in the Blues in the Schools program. Filipowicz will be at D.C. Everest High School in Weston to conduct workshops with students this Friday, teaching them about the influence and cultural significance of this uniquely American art form. Filipowicz was the winner of the 2006 Best Blues Song and 2005 Best Blues Album in the Madison Area Music Awards. In Madison Magazine, he was described as “a true treasure, the real deal, and… perhaps the finest blues player to ever come out of Madison.” The Route...

Fantasia

February 26, 2014 - 11:30pm

Paul Hindemith was a distinguished composer and music theorist whose works were banned in Germany by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1936. Like many of his colleagues, Hindemith went to the United States looking for a way to earn a living. By the end of February 1939 he was...

The Pauper

February 25, 2014 - 11:45am

Young André Gretry led the life of a character from Dickens. He was the son of a poor church musician in the city of Liège, Belgium. About 1750, at the age of nine, he became a choir boy, a position that required him to walk a mile each way to...

The Payoff

February 25, 2014 - 11:45am

Felix Mendelssohn conducted the Düsseldorf revival of Luigi Cherubini’s opera The Water Carrier. A letter that he wrote to his father on March 4, 1834, shows how hard he worked to get the performance right:

A good performance in the Düsseldorf theater does not find its way to the general...

Circumstances Beyond My Control

February 24, 2014 - 11:30pm

February 24, 1876, brought the debut of a collaboration between Norway’s greatest playwright and Norway’s greatest composer. Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, with more than an hour of music by Edvard Grieg, became a classic, but in a letter he wrote almost thirty years after the premiere in Christiania, Grieg...

The Peril You Overlooked

February 23, 2014 - 11:30pm

Albert Spalding was sixteen years old at the time of his Paris debut. He played the Violin Concerto in B minor by Saint-Saëns, the Bach Chaconne, the Romance in F by Beethoven, and the flashy Zigeunerweisen by Pablo de Sarasate. The audience, mostly invited, had nothing but compliments for the...

A Revolutionary Wedding

February 22, 2014 - 11:30pm

In the politically charged year of 1848 César Franck was a twenty-five-year-old pianist and composer living in Paris. When his father took him to task for wasting his time dedicating a song to one of his female students, he and his father exchanged harsh words and his father retaliated by...

Joshua Roman

February 21, 2014 - 12:00pm

Norman interviews cellist Joshua Roman who will be performing Haydn's Concerto No. 2 in D major with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra on February 21, 2014 in the Capital Theater in Madison

For the Record

February 20, 2014 - 12:15pm

The new decade called for a new technology. So in 1920 Adrian Boult agreed for the first time to conduct a performance for a gramophone record. Boult had been signed by the American manager of His Master’s Voice, who had liked Boult’s performance at the Russian Ballet and asked him...

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Simply Folk Pledge Edition

Who Were Wisconsin's First People?

The Downside

Everything is in Order

The Charge

Respect Me!

Box Set Reveals Legacy Of Wisconsin's Paramount Records

Curious Wisconsin - The Rise And Fall Of Paramount Records

The Shaky Collaborators

Spectrum West for February 27

Feb. 27, 2014: Blues guitarist, Paul Filipowicz

Fantasia

The Pauper

The Payoff

Circumstances Beyond My Control

The Peril You Overlooked

A Revolutionary Wedding

Joshua Roman

For the Record

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