Archives for August 2020

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Here are three birthdays to celebrate today: Italian composer Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-1886), Israeli-American violinist and conductor Itzhak Perlman (born in 1945), and American composer Lee Hyla (1952-2014).

Highly accomplished but not widely known, Hyla won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize, and taught at the New England Conservatory and Northwestern University. He deserves another look.

Perlman needs no introduction, and is still writing a remarkable legacy that includes sixteen Grammys, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a performance at Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, among so many honors. (“75 is pretty good,” Perlman told Howard Reich in a recent interview for the Chicago Tribune. “Things are still working!”)

Today we’ll focus on Ponchielli (above), and just for fun, we’ll do it by imagining his career as a set of matryoshkas. If we say that the composer himself is the largest doll, then nesting just inside is his best-known work, La Gioconda. And inside that is the act-three finale for which the opera is most famous, the charming Dance of the Hours.

And to take it a step further, that little doll surely belongs within yet another set of matryoshkas, one representing the 1940 film Fantasia. Which brings me back to December 2014, when then-assistant conductor Brett Mitchell led The Cleveland Orchestra in Disney Fantasia Live in Concert at Severance Hall. As Mitchell said to the audience after the Dance of the Hours, “You’ve never lived until you’ve conducted hippos in tutus.” (See what he means here on YouTube.) [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

SCHOOLS OF MUSIC NEWS:

The campuses of Northeast Ohio Universities and Conservatories are coming to life this week as students — masked and observing safety protocols — return for various configurations of a new academic year. The normally busy concert schedules we usually begin publishing are subject to improvisation as larger ensembles begin rehearsing outdoors and nearly all performances will be streamed on the Internet. We’ll follow this developing story as plans unfold. (Oberlin check-in photo by Yvonne Gay).

Meanwhile, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory will launch its new year with a faculty convocation recital to be streamed today at 3:00 pm. Point your browser here at start time to watch.

And in planning for the future, Oberlin Conservatory would like to hear which of its summer “Oberlin Stage Left” programs resonated with viewers. Go here to vote and make suggestions for future online programs.

LIVE TODAY — IN A PARKING LOT:

The Marshall Griffith Trio (Marshall Griffith, piano, Linda White, flute, Dean Newton, bass) will play an hour-long, live drive-in concert today at 6:30 pm in the parking lot of the Cleveland Heights Recreation Center on Monticello Blvd. Tickets go for $5, and listeners are restricted to their cars. Reserve here. Rain date is Friday.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez (most often simply known as Josquin) died on this date in 1521 at the age of 81 in Valenciennes. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

WCLV’s Cleveland Ovations this evening at 8 features “Lux Caelestis,” a concert by Cleveland Chamber Choir conducted by Scott MacPherson that the ensemble presented twice in November, 2019. This publication reviewed the performance at St. John’s Cathedral. Listen at 104.9 FM or on the web.

Intrigued by the sounds singers are able to produce in contemporary music? Stephanie Lamprea gives a livestream workshop in extended techniques this afternoon at 2 in a session designed for singers, instrumentalists, and avant-garde enthusiasts. This might come in handy one of these days, if researchers are ever able to agree on protocols for preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus through singing. RSVP here.

And as always during these distressing times, The Cleveland Orchestra and the MET Opera offer daily doses of past performances to tide us over. At lunchtime, the Orchestra serves up Richard Strauss and a Beethoven quartet movement reformatted for full strings, and this evening, the MET continues its Verdi week with Luisa Miller.

LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS:

After 25 seasons, the Contemporary Youth Orchestra and its founder and music director Liza Grossman have announced their mutual intention to “move in different directions” for the 2020-2021 season. In the same email message received today, Grossman wrote, “In addition to continuing my relationship with [the rock group] Styx, I will be pursuing conducting opportunities that include recordings and performances.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two births and a death to mark today.

American composer, pianist, and critic Arthur Loesser was born on this date in 1894 in New York, the half-brother of Broadway composer Frank Loesser (who he referred to as “the evil of two Loessers”).

His career took him to Cleveland, where he began teaching at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1926 and from 1953 headed its piano department. He died on January 4, 1969 of a heart attack at the wheel of his car outside CIM.

A witty commentator, Loesser wrote program notes for The Cleveland Orchestra and Vladimir Horowitz, and penned the popular book Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History. He talked about that book in a two-part lecture at the University of Michigan in July of 1965. Listen here and here.

On August 25, 1958, British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams died in London at the age of 82. His thoroughly English oeuvre reflects a long-standing pastoral tradition that often includes folk song. But he could be equally inspired by literature (John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress) and poetry, as in his miraculous setting of George Meredith’s poem The Lark Ascending. Listen here to a performance by violinist Rafael Druian and the Cleveland Sinfonietta, led by Louis Lane.

And on this date in 1960, American saxophonist Branford Marsalis was born in New Orleans. A good way to celebrate would be to enjoy the Marsalis Quartet’s performance at the Jazz Sous les Pommiers festival at Coutances in the French province of Normandy on May 21, 2009. Watch here.

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts on this date in 1918. We’ve previously mentioned his sole appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra in a 1970 performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony at Blossom, but today it might be fun to go behind the scenes and watch “Lenny” in rehearsal — a process even more revealing than a resulting performance.

I had the honor of studying with Bernstein in the conducting class at Tanglewood in the early ‘70s, and of singing in Mahler 2 with the Harvard-Radcliffe Choruses and the Boston Symphony on a radiant summer afternoon during that time. Click here to watch Bernstein rehearse Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring during the 1987 International Conductor’s Competition and Master Course at the Schleswig-Holstein Festival in Germany. And in a separate clip, he takes the triangle players in Berlioz’ Roméo et Juliette aside for a brief tutorial.

And on August 25, 2002, American bass-baritone William Warfield died in Chicago at the age of 82 (read an obituary here). He launched his career with a debut recital at New York’s Town Hall in 1950, and two years later — in an age when cultural diplomacy was still important — he performed in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in the first of six tours he made for the U.S. State Department.

A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Warfield went on to teach at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and later at Northwestern University.

In his first television appearance in 1951, he was featured in “It ain’t necessarily so from Porgy (listen here), and toward the end of his career in 2000, he sang one of his signature pieces, Schubert’s Erlkönig in California. To appreciate another aspect of his artistic talents, you can hear his recitations of Paul Lauence Dunbar’s “Deacon Jones’ Grievance,” “Prometheus,” and “When Malindy Sings” here.

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

In addition to Bernstein, Haydn, and Mozart on WCLV’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra and the MET Opera’s Il Trovatore during Verdi Week, tune in to the 92nd St. Y’s archive performance by the Danish String Quartet. Details here.

INTERESTING LINKS:

For musicians (and listeners) who are interested in diversifying their repertoire, the Oberlin Conservatory Library has curated a list of digital resources available via the Library’s website.

And Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic have been busy filming concerts in the empty Hollywood Bowl, which boasts a stage capacious enough to accommodate a full, socially-distanced orchestra. The performances will be streamed free of charge. Details here.

by Daniel Hathaway

LES DÉLICES LAUNCHES SALONERA SERIES TODAY:

Cleveland’s mostly French Baroque ensemble wades into new waters with its every-other-Monday SalonEra series, which premieres online tonight at 7:30 pm. The first episode of the series, which has been specifically designed for interactive viewing on the internet, will feature an all-J.S. Bach program performed by soprano Sherezade Panthaki, violinist Shelby Yamin, keyboardist Eric Milnes, and violist da gamba Mélisande Corriveau. The series is free, though a $10 donation is suggested, and can be viewed on several platforms (see the Concert Listings for details and click here to view the calendar of forthcoming programs.)

INTERESTING READS:

As some organizations begin taking exploratory steps to offer live performances once again, New York Times critic Anthony Tomassini writes about the difference between live and virtual concerts with reference to recitals of both types by pianist Conrad Tao. And his colleagues Joshua Barone and Zachary Woolfe reflect on their experience attending the same in-person concert after being deprived for nearly half a year: they heard the JACK Quartet playing in a New Jersey parking lot.

And as performing arts schools begin their fall semesters virtually or in-person, three Washington Post arts writers survey a number of officials — including Oberlin Conservatory Dean William Quillen — about the challenges ahead.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

The late American composer Stephan Paulus was born on this date in 1949 in Summit, New Jersey, though he spent most of his career in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. His life was tragically cut short by a stroke which led to his death in 2014.

His some 450 works are dominated by choral pieces of all dimensions and the four operas he wrote for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. Paulus was a popular composer-in-residence, having served in that position with the Atlanta Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the orchestras of Tucson and Annapolis.

Organist Paul Jacobs performed his Grand Concerto with The Cleveland Orchestra in 2017, and Elizabeth Lentl soloed in his smaller Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Percussion with Trinity Chamber Orchestra at a Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert in 2012. Watch the latter performance here.

For a taste of Paulus’ choral music, click here to watch the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus sing his “Wonder Tidings” from Three Nativity Carols at Rocky River Presbyterian Church in 2013.