Milwaukee Musaik Refined Essence 2024
Milwaukee Musaik’s season opener will take place Sunday at Wauwatosa Presbyterian Church. You will be delighted with the wonderful acoustics in the church which will enhance the pastoral tones of the music.
The concert opens with Mozart’s Divertimento for Strings in F major, K138 performed by Jeanyi Kim and Alex Ayers (violins), Robert Levine (viola), Scott Tisdel (cello) and Paris Myers (contrabass). This short composition, composed in Salzburg in 1772 after Mozart returned from his second Italian tour, is in three movements similar to the Italian symphonies popular at that time. Musaik offers a version here perhaps closer to his original intentions adding a bass to the traditional string quartet.
“Le Tombeau de Couperin” is a piano suite composed by Maurice Ravel between 1914 and 1917 to honor six friends who died in World War I. The suite's movements are dedicated to his friends; the piece is meant to be a tribute rather than a lament. Ravel’s goal was to capture the essence of his friends through a baroque sound world, in the style of François Couperin, a composer in the employ of the French King Louis XIV. In 1919, the year of its premier, Ravel transcribed four of the movements for orchestra. The version this afternoon was transcribed by Paul Dean, a clarinetist, composer, and educator who lives in Queensland, Australia. It is true to Ravel’s aesthetics.
Alexander Mandl will conduct the ensemble of Kim, Ayers, Levine, Tisdel and Myers along with Heather Zinninger (flute), Margaret Butler (oboe), William Helmers (clarinet), Rudi Heinrich (bassoon) and Krystof Pipal (French horn).
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The oboe was a prominent solo instrument during the Baroque era and the transcription honors that tradition especially in the Prélude, Menuet and Rigaudon. In the Rigaudon, the oboe introduces a reflective melody in the middle of the faster outer sections.
After the intermission, Kim, Levine, Scott Tisdel, Myers, Zinninger, Butler, Helmers, Heinrich and Pipal, return to offer Johannes Brahms’ Serenade No. 1 in D major. Mandl will conduct the ensemble.
Brahms’ composition has an interesting history, composed over several years while he was in the employ of Prince Leopold III at the suggestion of Clara Schumann. Thought to have been originally composed for a string and wind octet, the original version(s) were either lost or destroyed by Brahms. What remains is the traditional full orchestral version of 1860, one that Clara Schumann insisted upon. The version here has been faithfully reconstructed by clarinetist/scholar Chris Nex.
In Mandl’s program notes you’ll find extensive comments pointing out connections to Haydn’s late symphonies and Mozart’s wind serenades. You’ll find musical hints of pastoral themes in Brahms’ Second Symphony and of the Hungarian Dances composed decades later. Indeed, this composition is almost an encyclopedia of classical music.
The concert will be held 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 17 at Wauwatosa Presbyterian Church, 2366 N. 80th St. Free admission for children 12 and under.
For more information visit milwaukeemusaik.org.
