MSO's Rousing Whirlwind of Beethoven

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra's all-Beethoven season opener was a rousing success that balanced familiar and unusual choices. After a near miss with the opening adagio of the First Symphony, music director Edo de Waart opted for genial tempos. The gentle harmonies of Beethoven's maiden symphony, which has been called "a fitting farewell to the 18th century," were lovingly rendered by the symphony's warm string section.


The same could not be said of the "Grosse Fuge." Suddenly the symphony's string section attacked the craggy, perplexing work with stupefying, razor-sharp precision, despite a tad too much energy from the horn section. Originally intended as the finale to the 13th Quartet, Beethoven anticipated the 20th century with a fragmented work demonstrating his late-life expressionism. It was once deemed an "unplayable monster," hurling thematic variations at the listener's head "like a handful of rocks," but de Waart's amazing, lucid tempos moved poignantly toward what may well have been the hidden spirit of the composer's late inner life in this superbly riveting performance.

Beethoven's Fifth is a familiar and easily accessible monument to the indomitability of the human spirit, a cornerstone of Western culture that almost plays itself—provided the notes are in time and in tune. Many a conductor has stood aside and let Beethoven have his way with him after attacking the four-note signature opening movement. De Waart opted for a direct forward attack with rapid tempos evoking amazing ensemble dexterity from the orchestra, while sidestepping any undue reverence or mannerisms in this famous work. He played it straight, quick and urgent, saving the best for the last in a grand finale, resulting in a whirlwind performance that remains among the best in recent memory.

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How To Dance The Tango Like They Do In Argentina

It's time to tango! Few dances rival the passion and showiness of the tango, the dance that everyone associates with Argentina. Celebrity dancing shows like Dancing With The Stars and Strictly Come Dancing are popping up all over the world, showing us all that anyone can have a go, but where do you start? Try these useful pointers...


1) Listen to the music a lot to get the "feel"
Familiarity with music gets your body moving nicely to it, and feeling is everything with the tango; experts say that you must really learn to listen to the music before you start to dance. Do it whenever and wherever you can; in the car, at work, just before you go to sleep. If you find after a few weeks that you can't stop listening, you may have just found a life-long passion!

2) Get comfortable with the basic steps to find you dancing feet
Tango as a dance is very free-form, based in improvisation. However, before you can let your feet do the talking, you need to train yourself in the basic moves and steps. To get helpful pointers and be surrounded by others to keep you motivated, find a local dance school or, even better, dance with someone who already knows it. Failing either of these, don't let circumstances kill your passion; try finding instructional videos on the Internet, a much easier alternative to reading a list of foot movements or trying to decipher pictures.

3) Persevere...
Like everything in life, only regular practice will get you going smoothly, and tango is no exception. Beginners must devote lots of time to solo practice and it is widely acknowledged that big advances can, and must, be made in tango without a partner. As you "walk your miles", try to move like you are already an excellent dancer; the dance is as much about attitude and communicating yourself as anything else. You may find yourself more convincing than you think! Also try and make your practice a regular commitment; it is common knowledge that the successful dancers are those that book a month of classes and show up to every one.

4) It takes two; find a partner
Once you've put in the time with your own steps, it's time to get someone else involved. Even though tango isn't a subtle way to meet people, make sure you dance with lots of different partners so that you don't get lazy being accustomed to the way one other person dances; everyone is different, and if you are improvising you should be ready for that!

5) More practice; get out there and enjoy your dancing!
Hopefully if you've dedicated yourself regularly to the previous steps, you'll have a group of people with whom you can go out and dance for fun, as well as knowing some good spots. The free-flowing aspect of the dance will come easier with time, as moves need to come automatically from "body memory" and not from actively thinking about them; this naturally only comes with a lot of practice.

Which style to learn?
Tango evolved in Argentina as a melting pot of cultural influences from world-wide immigrants that flooded into Argentina at the beginning of the 19th century. Lonely and looking for company in their new surroundings, the arrivals developed tango as a means to mix and express themselves beyond language. Thus, tango is a portrayal of Buenos Aires and its people. Over the last 100 years many different styles have evolved, including Ballroom, Social and Stage. Many consider the styles to be so drastically different that if you have learnt one, it won't form a basis to help you learn another.

True or not, the best way to learn Argentinian tango is to follow it to the source. Numerous companies run entire tours based around exploring Buenos Aires through learning to dance the tango. As well as an unforgettable adventure, you'll be sure of learning a pure-blooded form of the passionate, dramatic and beautiful dance that everyone wants to be good at.

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Milwaukee's Night of Tango

“I am Maria, Maria tango, slum Maria, Maria night, Maria fatal passion, Maria love of Buenos Aires, that's me.”

The opera tango Maria de Buenos Aires is a rich story of dance, death and desire, with music by Astor Piazzolla and text by Horacio Ferrer. The story revolves around the character Maria, who is born from a goblin summoning her from the pavement of an Argentinean street. She leaves the goblin and wanders to Buenos Aires. The beautiful Maria is seduced by the concertina, into the tango culture. She gives herself to it, and it leads to her death. Her shadow does not succumb to the underworld, and searches Argentina for anyone who knew Maria. The shadow then comically encounters Freudian psychiatrists, who attempt to exorcise her memories. The goblin, saddened by Maria's demise summons three marionettes to un-immaculately conceive in Maria's shadow a daughter—named Maria. The cycle may continue. If the tale sounds crazy, it is. Maria de Buenos Aires was presented by Danceworks Performance Company, the Milwaukee Opera Theatre, the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, and the UWM dance department at Calvary Presbyterian Church.


Really only one word can accurately describe the performance: passionate. The set was remarkably simple, a table with chairs and lights cast on white curtains hanging from the church ceiling. The red, pink and magenta cast over the dancers and singers made the whole space confined and intimate, much like tango. However, the lighting also brought an element of fantasy, as green and blue were used to disturb the otherwise pretty set.

The dancers were excellent. The choreography seemed like a mix between possession and ballet; one could argue it was tango taken to an extreme. The cast of dancers was used to express perhaps Maria's emotions of love and fear, and to act as Argentinean vices. Dancers entered the floor from beneath the seats of audience members, while the orchestra played some beautiful tango music.

There was dialogue, all in distinctly common and informal Argentinean street Spanish. There were loose translations cast on walls to help the English speakers follow.

Catalina Cuervo played Maria. She was matchless, embodying the ardor and sadness of Maria. Her voice hit the low alto notes and then medium soprano notes with ease. Her movement was sultry, to act as a foil to the disturbing movements of the Danceworks dancers. Simon Eichinger, the sole male dancer, was exciting to watch, and brought a nice balance to the mostly female cast.

The whole work was like a dream, that weird and passionate dream you can't wait to have again.

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Early Music Now Visits 14th-Century Italy

Where else would one hear a concert of music from 14th-century Italy except at Early Music Now (EMN)? At the Cathedral of All Saints on Saturday, guest artists Margriet Tindemans and Shira Kammen played vielle (a forerunner of the violin), harp and rebec (a three-string bowed instrument), and occasionally sang. The duo was joined on some pieces by percussionist Danny Mallon, a last-minute substitution for a player prevented from travel by a family emergency.


In general, the program alternated dance music and laments. Some of the pieces were imbued with compositional complexity; others had strong echoes of folk music. As with much early instrumental music, some arranging is often required. Tindemans took this a step further in composing two original, engaging pieces in the style of the period.

Tindemans and Kammen play with easy precision, fluency and style. They phrase with the long experience of seasoned veterans in this period music. Expressive, almost vocal playing was heard at times, such as in the free melody of “Ballata i'voi che tu ritrovi Amore” by Gherardello da Firenze. Technically impressive, nimble and lively jigs were not entirely unlike the fiddling of a Bluegrass master. Mallon lent subtle but tasty touches on the drum. On the few sung numbers, Tindemans and Kammen sang with the clarity of instrumentalists.

If there was an aesthetic danger in this likable and more than pleasant program, it was the sameness of sound and the limited dynamic range inherent with these instruments, though my attention was effortlessly held throughout.

Since September I have spent 14 weeks working in Europe, and attended various performances in Italy, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, marveling at the intently quiet listening of the audiences, especially in Germany. American audiences in general are much more restless. (The coughing and jittering at MSO, for instance, can sometimes reach an annoying level.) It was a happy discovery, attending my first American concert in several weeks, to find this capacity audience silent, still and attentive, and certainly no less engrossed than European audiences. Much credit goes to EMN for cultivating this devoted audience with consistent, high-quality concerts.

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Effect of Classical Music on the Brain

Classical music affects the brain’s organization and abilities, through its melody and rhythm. The rhythm raises the level of serotonin produced in your brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, involved in the transmission of nerve impulses that helps maintaining joyous feelings. When the brain produces serotonin, tension is eased. In fact depression is a consequence of the scarce production of this hormone. Serotonin is released when the brain is “positively shocked”. For instance: if we look at a splendid painting, smell a delicious scent, feel an extraordinary sensation, eat something delicious or listen to some charming music, then the brain lets off a certain amount of serotonin which arouses and maximizes pleasant feelings. Music’s rhythm can also stimulate other natural cadencies of the body, resembling the heartbeat, or the Alfa-rhythm of the brain, and this effect is used to counter the development of clinical depression. The melody instead, is the “sparkle” that catalyses the creative process in our minds.


The peculiarity of music is that while poetry and the literature must rely on the rational transport to inspire an emotion, since they are mediated from words, music omits this stage and points directly to stage of communicating emotions. Music does not pass through rationality to express its essence, it crosses right to our emotions.

Through generating a sequence of different emotions, listening to certain music can give a different base to your thoughts, words, and actions. It will intensify enjoyment and alleviation, encourage the crestfallen spirits, and assuage the turbulent ones. Depending from the listener and the music, this effect will last for how long you want it to last.

The known effects of music on the brain are varied: music affects from humans’ and animals’ brains to plants’ development. In humans, music enhances spatial IQ, by increasing the short and long - term memory. In fact, musical trained musicians perform better on word memory tests than other adults. Children benefit from classical music’s virtues even more than adults; they experience advantages in cognitive skills. Animals and plants as well have proven a certain predisposition towards classical music. Just listening to this musical style enhances the brain’s ability; playing it, results even in a major brain development.

The commonly known “Mozart effect” is a phenomena that suggests the improvement on the performance of spatio-temporal reasoning and short- term memory through the listening of complex music, such as Mozart’s two-piano concertos. Music, especially the one from the “baroque” period with 60 beats per minute beat pattern, affects the amplitude and frequency of brain waves, measurable through and electro – encephalogram. Music also affects breathing rate and electrical resistance of the skin, as result of the influence on the Hormone system. This brings the pupils to dilate, and an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. This allows the brain to concentrate more easily, and to assimilate more information in less time. This happens because music stimulates the left and right hemispheres of the brain at same moment. The contemporaneous activation of the two lobes boosts learning and information intake, therefore augmenting cognitive skills. It has been proven that learning may be increased to at least fivefold, through the using of this musical style. It is for this reason that story tellers in the middle ages sang out their tails; in order to remember the narrations consisting of more than a thousand of lines. Greek dramatists based their selves on the same principle to memorize long soliloquies.



Melody and rhythm are the two essential components of music that work in very different ways: melody is the essence that boosts creative reasoning, while rhythm synchronizes these emotions with the vital patterns. Human beings have since long been tied to particular musical cadences. The rhythms in the heart-beat, walking, jumping, speaking, chewing, and breathing all represent essential regular patterns in our quotidian life. It is this particular musical rhythm that increases the level of serotonin produced in the brain, therefore enhancing critical thinking. What makes this music so valuable is the rigorous mathematical order it complies.



We can describe the effect of classical music on the brain being composed of two effects that act in synergy. The first is due to rhythm, that synchronizes with the body’s vital rhythms, already mentioned, and produces the proper mood for increased cognitive and creative capabilities. The second effect that acts in synergy with the first is melody, that gets along with thoughts resolutions and gives to the person the warm feeling that he or she is able to tackle new challenges, by setting a path in the invention of new solutions and providing the ability to make the correct choice among possible solutions. Melody and rhythm, together, act in synergy with the brain; it “opens” the auditory and sensorial channels that conduct to the brain, thus benefiting your cerebral skills.


The rigorous order of the music from the baroque and classical periods causes the brain to experience more serotonin release, letting the body and mind perform better when listening to these logical compositions. This order includes specific patterns in rhythm and pitch, character contrast, repetitions, and alterations of the theme. Modern music doesn’t provide the right balance of rhythm and melody, thus not sorting the correct effect on a person’s brain.



It is the beat that establishes the crucial effect of music on our body, together with the enhancement of cognitive and creative functions of the brain, supported from the right melody. For instance, when an autistic boy is asked to tie his shoes, this task results very difficult and perhaps impossible. But when he is asked to do it with classical music in the background, he is successful in achieving his task. According to the Mozart Effect, children who take music lessons will experience advantages in cognitive skills.



Music affects different people in diverse manners: while Handel’s Water Music will totally displace a particularly cognizant musician’s thoughts, it might only be pleasant to someone else who isn’t a musician nor music enthusiast. An observing person is more keen to discern all the sensations that the composer (and orchestra/musician) transmits through his music, than an idle listener. The level of musicianship of the listener is crucial; so the same piece could appear absolutely different to two listeners, and this is how two opinions of a piece contradict their selves.



Effects of music have been proven on animals and plants as well. The right balance of rhythm and melody help hens lay more eggs, cats to relax, and cows to produce more milk. An experiment on laboratory rats revealed that mammals have a natural predisposition towards music. The experiment consisted in placing two boxes, connected by a tube, playing Bach’s Air on the G string in one box, and rock music in the other. Most rats chose to go in the box with Bach’s music, even when the music switched from a box to another. Later, the rats were placed in a maze, and the ones which chose Bach’s music, found the exit before, and more easily than the ones which were exposed to rock music. When scientists then observed the rats’ brains, they could see that the ones being frequently exposed to classical music, had a physically more developed brain than the ones who were not being exposed to the particular music. Experiments on plants proved that plants growing with the 60 beats per minute pattern, grew faster and more efficiently than the ones growing with rock music in the background; the ones being exposed to rock music withered and died. Plants are living but not thinking organisms, therefore what matters for their development is not the melody, but the rhythm of the music.


The powerful effects of music are fundamental in life, and its beneficiaries always appear to perform better in life. Most of the greatest minds in history were musicians, or compelled music’s power. Einstein, one of the most brilliant minds in history was a violinist, and admitted that one of the reasons why he was so smart was because he played the violin. He found solutions to complex equations and problems by improvising on the violin. When Thomas Jefferson couldn’t find the correct wording for a passage in the Declaration of Independence, he played his violin, and found the correct wording. Music helped him to project the words from mind to paper. Conan Doyle made his superlative character Sherlock Holmes play the violin when he was to solve a particularly complex case. Great men of history, from Shakespeare to Napoleon were in some way dedicated to music, and this is what made the difference; music.

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