Kerrytown's WolfFEST

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acceptable as great music? Wolf's contemporary, Strauss, wrote operas and symphonic poems, but no one held that against his songs. So why isn't Wolf famous? I'd guess it's because his songs are so concentrated, so intense, so expressive, and so original that they were too much for most people, even most song lovers, to grasp.

Even a century after his death — a century in which the greatest singers performed his songs with the fervor of evangelists — Wolf still isn't famous even in Ann Arbor, a veritable hotbed of song lovers. The Kerrytown Concert House WolfFEST on October 11 and 12 could help change that. With a pair of concerts featuring some of Wolf's best songs on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon — along with a master class led by accompanist Martin Katz on Friday and a lecture on Wolf's love life by Wolf scholar Louise Urban Saturday afternoon — the Concert House is doing all it can to convert the unbelievers.