by Daniel Hathaway
WEEKEND ALMANAC
There are a number of musical milestones to reflect upon this weekend.
American classical and jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman was born in Chicago on May 30, 1909. Jazz at Lincoln Center gave a full-length family concert on November 17, 2017, “Who is Benny Goodman.” Watch that here, and hear Goodman play Mozart’s concerto and quintet on an unidentified recording here. The clarinetist was a featured performer on the inaugural season of the Blossom Music Festival.
Dutch harpsichordist, organist, teacher, and conductor Gustav Leonhardt was born in Graveland on May 30, 1928. A documentary, Reiziger in Muziek details his career (it’s in Dutch, but there are subtitles that quit part way through. Watch here). There are few videos of the master in action, but here’s an interesting excerpt from J.S. Bach’s Cantata 42 with Leonhardt conducting Musica Antiqua Amsterdam in 1977 with a young Ton Koopman at the harpsichord.
The elaborate documentary film Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach from 1968 cast the slim and patrician Gustav Leonhardt in the role of the famously well-nourished Johann Sebastian Bach.
On one of Leonhardt’s visits to the Cleveland Museum of Art that coincided with the recent installation of a Dutch organ in Trinity Cathedral, I had the privilege of being an audience of one while he improvised for an hour on the 1977 Flentrop organ. Like Bach, Leonhardt may have been even more impressive as an improviser than an interpreter. [Read more…]