Classical Music; Briefing

By TOM STRINI

Luncheon, lecture kick off MacDowell centennial

The MacDowell Club of Milwaukee will open a year of centennial celebration events with its annual fall luncheon and lecture at 1 p.m. on Sept. 14. Timothy Noonan, lecturer in music history and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee since 1996, will speak on “The European Origins of Edward MacDowell’s American Style.”

The luncheon will take place in the lobby of the Nancy Kendall Theater of Cardinal Stritch University, 6801 N. Yates Road, Fox Point. Reservations are $25, due Friday, Sept. 5. Checks should be payable to the MacDowell Club and sent to: c/o Mariann Landa, 5928 W. Michigan St., Wauwatosa, 53213-4248.

Recital to benefit commissioned work

Photographer Larry D’Attilio, formerly a bassoonist with the Milwaukee Symphony, and violinist Pamela Foard have commissioned a tuba concerto for their son, Aubrey D’Attilio Foard. Aubrey, 26, is a professional tuba player.

The D’Attilio Foards, of Brookfield, have commissioned composer Mark Petering to write the concerto. Petering, a Whitefish Bay native, is at work on a 15-minute concerto for tuba and full orchestra and on a chamber-orchestra version of the piece.

Pamela and Aubrey Foard will be featured in a benefit recital to cover some of the expenses of the commission at 6 p.m. Oct. 5. The recital will take place at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts, 19805 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield. Tickets are $25; call Pamela Foard at (262) 227-4717. The Foards will perform the works of Debussy, Marcello and P.D.Q. Bach (the comic alter-ego of Peter Shickele). Pamela Foard and violinist Gina Wood will premiere Petering’s Duo for Violins, and the composer will give a pre- concert talk about his music and show a DVD of his work “Train and Tower,” the first piece of music written for orchestra and train.

Conductor Nicola Rescigno dies at 92

Conductor Nicola Rescigno, co-founder of both the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Dallas Opera, died Aug. 4 in Viterbo, Italy, at age 92.

Rescigno, uncle of Joseph Rescigno, principal conductor of Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera, created the Lyric in 1954 with businessman Lawrence Kelly and Carol Fox, a young singer. In 1957, Rescigno and Kelly left Chicago, after the Lyric’s board sided with Fox in a dispute among the co-founders. Kelly and Rescigno then founded the Dallas Opera. Rescigno led the Dallas Opera until 1990, when he took an emeritus role.

Throughout his long podium career, which began with the touring San Carlo Opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1943, Rescigno conducted the biggest singers in opera at the most important opera houses around the world.

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