by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
A blank date on the performance calendar is an opportunity to look ahead to events later in the week, when the pace begins picking up fast. The Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival and the James Stroud Youth Competition fill up the weekend along with the premiere of Margi Griebling-Haigh’s opera The Higgler, Apollo’s Fire’s Spanish programs, and the beginnings of the ENCORE Festival and ChamberFest Cleveland (note: opening night in Mixon Hall is sold out), to mention only a few. Have a look here.
Or you can hop on to one of several live streams of the 2025 Van Cliburn Piano Competition, now in its final round in Fort Worth, Texas. Click here to choose, and scroll down to learn about some of the innovative video techniques the Cliburn is introducing to bring the contest to worldwide computer screens.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On June 4, 1951, Russian-American conductor Serge Koussevitzky (pictured above with Bernstein and Copland), who led the Boston Symphony for a quarter of a century, died in Boston. A double bassist by training, Koussevitzky launched a publishing house before he left Russia, and was responsible through his foundations for the commissioning of numerous important works, including Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, the Ravel orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite, Britten’s Peter Grimes, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, and Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie.
Perhaps the most-performed work for which Koussevitzky was responsible is Randall Thompson’s Alleluia, commissioned for the opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood in 1940. Here’s a rare, 1950 video of Koussevitzky conducting another Thompson work he commissioned, The Last Words of David.
Click here to listen to Koussevitzky conducting the first recorded public performance of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra on December 30, 1944 — including the original ending.
Another historical recording of the Bartók was made at the Palace of Culture in Kyiv during The Cleveland Orchestra’s 1965 Russian tour. George Szell is on the podium for a concert that includes music by Mozart and Dvořák, as well as a rare performance of William Grant Still’s In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy. Listen here.
