Archives for July 2020

by Daniel Hathaway

LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS:

Piano Cleveland has now posted biographies and repertoire for the 30 pianists who will participate remotely in its Virtu(al)oso Competition beginning on July 30. Competitors will be recording two sets of pieces of their choice in Steinway Galleries in Cleveland, New York, London Hamburg, and Beijing. Click here to get to know the players.

The Canton Symphony has announced the postponement of its next season, which is now scheduled to begin in March, 2021. Previously announced concerts for the fall 40 Years of Gerhardt and A Planet’s Odyssey, will be moved to June of 2021. In the meantime, the Orchestra’s online programming can be accessed here.

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

Hornist Richard King is featured in Strauss’ First Concerto on today’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra, the MET Opera pulls a 1982 performance of Wagner’s Tannhäuser from its archives, and the American Guild of Organists’ OrganFest 2020 highlights a Finnish improviser, the Choir and Baroque Orchestra of Trinity Wall Street, and the premiere of a new work by Brenda Portman. Details here.

NEW ONLINE CHORAL FESTIVAL DEBUTS AUGUST 1:

“Live from London,” a new online choral festival, will host some of the world’s most distinguished vocal ensembles on ten Saturdays beginning August 1. Participants in the HD broadcasts from the Voces8 Centre (St Anne & St Agnes Church) include Voces8, I Fagiolini, Stile Antico, The Swingles, The Sixteen (performing from Kings Place), The Gesualdo Six, Apollo 5, Chanticleer (performing from San Francisco), and the Academy of Ancient Music.

The series is designed “to raise money for artists, venues and promoters to cover their COVID-19 losses, and to reunite the world’s many singers, and audiences with much needed live concerts.” A proportion of ticket sales will go to the New Zealand Secondary Students’ Choir, NZ Youth Choir and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir. Details here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

In addition to the regular daily events — Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra (Haydn, Bernstein and Brahms) and the free MET Opera nightly stream (Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia) — today’s events include two new items.

Early afternoon Bach Cantatas from New York’s Trinity Wall Street Choir and Baroque Orchestra include two early works: Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn (BWV 152) and Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106.

This evening, organ fans can stream the first program in the American Guild of Organists’ OrganFest 2020, a five-evening series that replaces the organization’s biennial National Convention, originally scheduled to take place this week in Atlanta. The series features a variety of solo organ performances and choral works, and first performances of commissioned works.

For details, consult our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

July is a bit snoozy for anniversaries, but on this date in 1752, German-British composer and conductor John Christopher Pepusch died at the age of 85 in London. One of the founders of what eventually became the Academy of Ancient Music, Pepusch was active in London during the era of Handel. His interest in earlier music inspired his student William Boyce to publish his Cathedral Music, an anthology of 16th and 17th century works, although Pepusch is probably best known today for his collaboration with John Gay in The Beggar’s Opera. A satire on the high art of Italian opera originally suggested by Jonathan Swift, the show dispensed with recitative in favor of a string of re-texted popular ballads, hymns, and popular tunes.

That concept has been popular with many later producers, directors, and composers. Benjamin Britten arranged and revived the work in 1948, twenty years after Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill had updated it with completely new music in Die Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny Opera). Click here for a 1963 BBC video recording of Britten’s version (subsequent acts are to be found nearby).

by Daniel Hathaway

ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday, violinist Mari Sato plays music by George Walker, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Delores White on her program of works by African American composers on the Weekend of Chamber Music series. The organization normally programs live summer concerts in the Catskills.

WCLV’s Cleveland Orchestra on the Radio revisits a September 2010 concert on Saturday evening (works by Takemitsu, J.S. Bach, and Debussy, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring), and on Sunday afternoon, rebroadcasts Herbert Blomstedt’s interpretation of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony from late February — one of the last performances before the pandemic shutdown.

The MET Opera offers free streams of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Saturday, from 2014) and Puccini’s La Bohème (Sunday, from 1982).

And on Sunday evening, “Best of ChamberFest Cleveland” revisits performances of John Adams’ Shaker Loops (from 2009), and André Caplet’s Conte fantastique, after Poe’s “The Mask of the Red Death” (from 2016). See the Concert Listings for details.

Two new streaming sources launch this weekend.

Cleveland’s BOP STOP has completed installation of state-of-the-art streaming equipment. The first performance on Saturday evening by the Jonathan Thomas Trio, will be filmed at BOP STOP and broadcast to Dizzy’s Club and Jazz at New York’s Lincoln Center. Read more here.

Cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, artistic co-directors of California’s Music@Menlo, have announced “Intermezzo,” a digital chamber music experience to take place during the originally-scheduled festival dates of July 17-August 8. “Listeners can enjoy a variety of artist interviews, live and archival performances, master classes, and more from past Music@Menlo seasons.”

Read details here, and catch the first performance on Saturday featuring composer and pianist Michael Brown.

INTERESTING READS:

National Public Radio reports that its listenership has dropped off by 25% in the last quarter, a decrease directly attributable to work-from-home orders that steeply reduced commuting during the pandemic. Read the article here.

In his article “That Sound You’re Hearing is Classical Music’s Long Overdue Reckoning with Racism,” Washington Post critic Michael Andor Brodeur writes that during recent events, “the rifts and inequalities that define American culture since its inception have become more visible than ever. And the call to improve institutions from criminal justice to arts organizations to newsrooms is extending to the stages (and offices) of the classical world.”

And conductor Leonard Slatkin weighs in on the subject of diversity in classical music with an excerpt from his soon-to-be-published book. Read the post from his personal website here.

And when did an article about classical music — not to mention organ music — last appear in the Op Ed pages of a major newspaper? Today’s New York Times features an essay by Annik LaFarge, “10 Fingers, 2 Feet and 5,000 Pipes, Breathing Life Into the Present,” on the art of improvisation as practiced by organists.

by Daniel Hathaway

LIVE AND ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES TODAY:

The Callisto Quartet — Paul Aguilar & Rachel Stenzel, violins, Eva Kennedy, viola, and Hanna Moses, cello — play Mozart and Debussy live and al fresco tonight at 7 on a baseball field at Solon Community Park, courtesy of Chagrin Arts and the City of Solon. See the Concert Listings for social distancing details.

In another plein air event, George Leggiero plays a “Lunchtime Drive-in” carillon concert from the McGaffin Tower in University Circle at 12:15.

Also at noon, WCLV’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra features music by von Suppé, Sibelius, and Richard Strauss, and tonight, the MET Opera’s Archives present a 2009 performance of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, starring Elina Garanča and Lawrence Brownlee.

NEW FROM THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA:

The second set of TCO Classics is now available for on-demand streaming. The new collection is centered around the Orchestra’s 2018 festival in which Music Director Franz Welser-Möst considered Beethoven’s music through the metaphor of Prometheus.

The set includes a “video overview from Cleveland Orchestra Chief Artistic Officer Mark Williams, video collaboration featuring Orchestra members and students from Cleveland School of the Arts, pieces celebrating the life of modern-day Promethean hero Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and audio recordings of Franz Welser-Möst leading the Orchestra in all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies, four Beethoven overtures, and Beethoven’s Große Fuge at Severance Hall.”

INTERESTING READS:

A newly-posted series of New York Times articles considers issues of race in classical music.

In interviews by Zachary Woolfe and Joshua Barone, nine Black musicians — bassoonist Monica Ellis, conductors Thomas Wilkins and Roderick Cox, composers Jessie Montgomery, Terrence Blanchard, and Tania León, clarinetist Anthony McGill, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, and soprano Latonia Moore — “describe the steps they recommend to begin transforming a white-dominated field.” [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS:

Due to the recent increase of COVID-19 cases, Apollo’s Fire has postponed its July “Blues Café 1610” concert at Music Box Supper Club until September 20. Read the announcement here.

The buildup to Piano Cleveland’s Virtu(al)oso Competition that launches on July 30 begins today at 11:30 am with the first PianoKids program — a series of 15-minute videos for children ages 3-8. Details here.

Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP) has released its July playlist. Click here to listen to Summer Sounds, including performances by Lea Bertucci & Amirtha Kidambi, Ammie Brod, Anika Kildegaard, Stephanie Lamprea & Zack Sheets, Martha Mooke, and Nina Dante & Dalia Chi.

TODAY ONLINE AND ON THE AIRWAVES:

The Miró Quartet — who have appeared on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series, the Oberlin Artist Recital Series, and the ENCORE Chamber Music Series — open their cycle of the complete Beethoven string quartets tonight with a live performance from their hometown of Austin, Texas. It’s part of the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, normally held in Washington State, but moved online this summer.

Also today, The Cleveland Orchestra continues its Lunchtime series on WCLV, 104.9 Ideastream with Brahms and Johann Strauss, Jr., and the MET Opera revisits its January 11 production of Alban Berg’s Wozzek with Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the podium. For streaming details, go to the Concert Listings.

Heads up: Nézet-Séguin is also scheduled to lead the first in a series of Philadelphia International Music Festival online master classes on Saturday, July 19 at 7:00 pm. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets (there’s a nominal fee). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

We have just two anniversaries to mark today. The first is that of Swiss American composer Ernst Bloch, who died on this date in 1959 in Portland, Oregon. Bloch served as founding director of the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1920-1925 before moving on to the San Francisco Conservatory. After a hiatus back in Switzerland, he helped found the Music Academy of the West, and taught in the summers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Among Bloch’s music based on Jewish themes is his tone poem about King Solomon, Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque. Listen here to a live Blossom Festival performance in 1980 by cellist Janós Starker with The Cleveland Orchestra, led by Eduardo Mata. Or click here to listen to a January, 2019 performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music by Lydia Rhea, with pianist Evan Solomon.

Another CIM performance, this one by Cleveland Orchestra first assistant cello Richard Weiss, features the first of Bloch’s trio of solo suites, inspired by Bach and composed between 1955 and 1957. Click here to watch the video from September, 2009.

The second is that of English composer Harrison Birtwistle, born on this date in 1934 in Accrington, Lancashire. His 1986 Earth Dances have been compared to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Christoph von Dohnányi recorded the work in 1996 with The Cleveland Orchestra for Decca (listen here), but there’s also a video of a performance by Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra led by Marcus Stenz.

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

In a normal summer, Ohio Light Opera and Kent Blossom Music Festival would be in full swing. In this abnormal season, both institutions are offering blasts from the past in place of live events. This afternoon’s OLO Virtual Summer Festival features the 2020 company in selections from Jacques Offenbach’s 1875 Voyage to the Moon, inspired by Jules Verne. Tonight, the third concert in Kent Blossom’s Virtual Music Festival features members of The Cleveland Orchestra, festival young artists, and Kent State faculty in music by Barber, Nicolas Roussakis, Jean-Michel Damase, Mendelssohn, Erwin Schulhoff, and Brahms.

Today’s Lunchtime Special from The Cleveland Orchestra includes Sibelius and Brahms, and tonight’s episode from the MET Opera Archives is a production of Puccini’s Turandot from 2009 led by Andris Nelsons. Check our Concert Listings for details. [Read more…]