A Healthy Orchestra in Strong Hands

Kenneth Woods takes the podium of the Madison Symphony, and unleashes all its gifts   One couldn’t be certain Friday night if the empty seats in Overture Hall had to do with the recent warnings about the corona virus, or the fact that this weekend’s Madison Symphony Orchestra concerts were without John DeMain or a…

In Case You Hadn’t Heard…Middleton Community Orchestra Opens Its Tenth Season

Season is dedicated to John Barker, recently retired critic emeritus   Of course if you are one of my regular readers, you know that the Middleton Community Orchestra was about to commence on their tenth season of adding a unique experience to the greater Madison music scene. I finally got around to blogging about their…

Madison Symphony Celebrates Its Own

DeMain gives three players a chance to step out as soloists   For many years now, Madison Symphony Orchestra music director John DeMain devotes one subscription program to highlighting a player from his ensemble as the soloist. Often it is the first concert of the season, but this year scheduling needs necessitated a change. This…

John DeMain Launches His 25th Madison Symphony Season

Five years have flown; shall we shoot for 30?   I hadn’t thought about it until I sat down to write this review, but five years can really fly by at my age…2013 marked John DeMain’s 20th anniversary as music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, and I was favored with penning an article for…

A Belated Bravo for the Savoyards

Yes, I was at opening night….don’t ask!   The Madison Savoyards decided to celebrate their 55th season by departing from the tried and true Gilbert and Sullivan format and put the spotlight on a contemporary operetta from another country, the justly beloved Die Fledermaus of Johann Strauss II (seen above in the famous Stadtpark monument…

Olga Kern And DeMain Deliver Again

A touch of new(er) and old classics from Madison Symphony   If the opening concert of John DeMain’s 24th season with the Madison Symphony Orchestra eschewed a major guest soloist (a DeMain tradition—and not a bad one!), it also stayed far away from major warhorse repertoire. The first of three performances of the season’s second…

Madison Symphony Goes Well “Beyond the Score”

Scheherazade gets the multi-media treatment When the Madison Symphony Orchestra offered Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony in the “Beyond the Score” format in 2014, many people were left wanting more. The presentation is one of about 30 works that the Chicago Symphony has produced and rents to other organizations. The basic premise is to take a…

John DeMain “Launches” His 23rd Season with Madison Symphony

With an assist from NASA, the MSO’s first program is literally “out of this world” From a personal standpoint, watching an HD NASA video of our solar system while hearing the Madison Symphony play Gustav Holst’s The Planets brought to mind the first line of Psalm 19 (so gloriously set by Haydn in The Creation),…

Madison Symphony Dealt a Pair of “4s”—and Makes It a Winning Hand

Pianist Emanuel Ax takes us to heavenly heights, then DeMain and Mahler lead us through the celestial gates Just about a year ago at this time we were excited to see the announcement for the current season that Emanuel Ax would be returning to appear with the Madison Symphony Orchestra and play one relative and…

What’s New for the Madison Symphony Next Year?—Only A Dozen Things or So!

The 2016-2017 season offers a dozen major works being performed by the MSO for the first time   If there was ever a season to get down to the Overture Center to hear the Madison Symphony Orchestra—and bring a friend or two—this is it. Launching his 23rd season as music director, John DeMain (pictured above,…