Archives for December 2020

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1808 in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, Ludwig van Beethoven presented one of the most talked-about concerts of the 19th century. Over the course of four hours in an unheated hall, the audience heard the premieres of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, Fourth Piano Concerto, Choral Fantasy, mass movements, and an aria, performed by a hostile and under-rehearsed orchestra and a teen-aged replacement soprano, with Beethoven himself at the piano.

That musical marathon has inspired a number of re-creations — but well-rehearsed and with heat — most recently by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra in March of 2020, just before concerts were shut down by the pandemic. Salonen talks about the event here.

The Choral Fantasy was among the works Oberlin had planned to perform in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday, but the novel coronavirus upended plans for a performance in October by piano professor Peter Takács and the college’s Arts and Sciences Orchestra. Instead, conductor Tiffany Chang gave herself a crash course in video editing and assembled over 200 performers from all over the globe to create a virtual performance of the work. Four hundred hours later, the results premiered in an online concert on December 15. In an interview to be posted later today, Chang tells me how she decided to go down that path and what she learned from the experience.

In other news, Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini was born on this date in 1858 in Lucca. His popular verismo operas need little introduction, except to note that they cast a wide geographical net from Italy to Asia and the American West. Because its opening takes place on that evening, Christmas Eve is a  particularly appropriate time to watch La Bohème, and the MET Opera has obliged by scheduling a December 24th encore performance of its January, 1982 production featuring Teresa Stratas, Renata Scotto, José Carreras, Richard Stilwell, and James Morris. It starts at 7:30 pm.

On November, 29, 1924, news of Puccini’s death in Brussels following treatment for throat cancer reached a theater in Rome where Bohème was in mid-performance. The opera was halted and Chopin’s Funeral March was played to what was described as a stunned audience.

There’s a recent Cleveland connection to the Austrian avant-garde composer Ernest Krenek, who died in Palm Springs, California on this date in 1991. Krenek first made a splash in Europe with his 1926, jazz-influenced score, Jonny spielt auf, but wrote in a variety of styles. He abandoned Europe for North America in 1938, teaching first at Vassar.

In his review of a recent Cleveland Orchestra recording, Jarrett Hoffman writes, “Franz Schubert’s spirited and expansive “Great” Symphony in C (1826) sits alongside the ten miniatures that make up Ernst Křenek’s atonal and highly atmospheric Static and Ecstatic (1972). In brilliant performances captured live at Severance Hall just before the coronavirus shutdown in March, each work packs quite an artistic punch, though they both require a measure of patience from the listener.”

LOOKING BEYOND THE PANDEMIC:

The new music festival June in Buffalo is making plans for the summer of 2021. The Center for 21st Century Music at SUNY Buffalo has announced that June in Buffalo will run from June 7-13, and applications from future participant composers are now being accepted until the Monday, February 8 deadline. Apply here.

MUSIC FOR CHRISTMAS OR THE HOLIDAY YOU CELEBRATE:

Online performances by our local organizations include The Cleveland Orchestra’s free 1984 “Symphony in Celebration” led by Robert Page, Les Délices (“Noel, Noel” on-demand has been extended through December 27), Apollo’s Fire (“Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” available on demand for 30 days), and Quire Cleveland (a selection of individual carols). And Cleveland Opera Theater’s Amahl and the Night Visitors can be watched on demand through January 6.

WCLV’s Ovations on Wednesday at 8:00 pm will present “Holiday Treasures with Cleveland Chamber Choir,” including music for Advent, Hanukkah, and Christmas drawn from their 2018 and 2019 holiday concerts. Tune in at 104.9 FM or online.

Oberlin’s a cappella group, the Obertones, have produced a special five-song holiday video. Watch here.

And here are three events from Boston: The Handel & Haydn Society have come up with a way of continuing their 167-year run of Handel’s Messiah, the Harvard University Choir presents a virtual version of what may be America’s oldest carol service on Christmas Eve, and the American Repertory Theater offers younger viewers a musical production of Jack in the Beanstalk from the Harvard campus.)

Many other Christmas programs are available through Musical America’s Guide to Streams. Scan the possibilities and enjoy!

WE’LL SEE YOU IN 2021:

After today’s entries, the Diary and the Tuesday Newsletter will take a holiday break until Tuesday, January 4. Best wishes for a restful and restorative holiday season!

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

Today, Apollo’s Fire debuts its “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” HD video, recorded last season at the Cleveland Museum of Art (read our review of the previously released audio CD here). The show replaces the in-person performances that Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra had originally planned for December.

The Cleveland Orchestra has just announced a special online feature with the Orchestra Chorus. Home For the Holidays is “a heartwarming and festive visual album of seasonal music from the past and present, filled with imagery from ‘Cleveland’s most loved holiday tradition.’” Watch for free on the Adella platform.

And the Cleveland Chamber Music Society has just posted the latest episode in its Front Row series in collaboration with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Violinist Cho-Liang Lin joins pianist Jon Kimura Parker, violinist Erin Keefe, violists Hsin-Yun Huang and Paul Neubauer, and cellists Dmitri Atapine and Colin Carr in music by Foss, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky. Watch here through December 22.

Akron’s Summit Choral Society goes online with its annual Candlelight Concert, and the Western Reserve Chorale releases its third holiday program featuring Christmas music from its archives. Details in the Concert Listings.

Among today’s interesting events on the national scene: Johannes Vogel conducts Mahler’s reorchestration of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony from Synchron Stage, Vienna (also available on December 19 and 20, tickets here), San Francisco’s Old First Concerts feature pianist Daniel Glover in “Symphonies and Concertos without Orchestra (a Covid Compromise)” including works by Clementi, Beethoven-Alkan, Corigliano, and Liszt (connect here with a donation), and the Library of Congress presents the latest in its 80-year tradition of Stradivari Anniversary Concerts (link here).

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Did we just mention the Stradivari Anniversary? On this date in 1737, Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona, having crafted some 1,100 instruments — mostly violins, but also violas, cellos, harps, guitars and mandolins, of which some 650 survive today. That includes instruments in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, which regularly make appearances in concerts. View a fascinating list of Stradivari’s surviving instruments, their owners, and lendees here.

There’s a mystique about the stringed instruments that came out of the ateliers of the great 17th and 18th century Italian makers in Cremona. Multiple explanations have been put forward about what makes them stand head and shoulders above those of other makers (watch The Secret of the Violin here), although there are performers who debunk their superiority over later instruments.

Strads are priceless these days. Many are owned by hedge funds and put out on long-term loans to performers, or are held in museums or libraries where violinists are hired to play them regularly to keep their sound alive. That hasn’t prevented artists from leaving their instruments in taxicabs (as did cellist Yo Yo Ma and violinist Philippe Quin in New York) or in the luggage rack of a train (as did an unnamed violinist in Germany). All were happily returned within a few hours. Other instruments have simply been stolen, as in the case of Roman Totenberg’s fiddle, which disappeared from his office at the Longy School of Music in 1980 only to be recovered 35 years later.

While waiting for Strad owner James Ehnes to complete his Beethoven cycle in May of 2021, visit the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s “Safe at Home” page to enjoy the sound of a Stradivari instrument in the hands of a master.

Back home in the U.S., today marks the anniversaries of a number of American composers: the birth of Edward MacDowell in 1860, the death of Louis Moreau Gottschalk in 1969, the death of Horatio Parker in 1919, the birth of Bang-On-a-Can founder Julia Wolfe in 1958, and the death of Daniel Pinkham in 2006.

And on a seasonal note, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker made its debut in St. Petersburg, Russia, on this date in 1892. Only 74 years later, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas made its first appearance on CBS TV, featuring the voice of Boris Karloff. Classics both of them.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

If you were a medieval monk, today’s agenda would include the singing of the first of eight daily “Great O Antiphons” at Vespers, marking the beginning of a crescendo into Christmas Day on December 25. Each is based on a text from the Hebrew prophets and Wisdom books and describes an attribute of Christ (O Wisdom, O Lord, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Dayspring, O King of Nations, O Emmanuel).

The tradition lives on. Contemporary composer Nico Muhly has written organ pieces based on the Eight Antiphons, a set that recent Clevelander Buck McDaniel performed last Sunday at New York’s Church of St. John in the Village. They’re still available as part of the program he gave with tenor Matt Jones. Watch here (minimum donation of $5).

If you missed the debut of the fourth episode of The Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus series led by Nicholas McGegan, or Les Délice’s Noel, Noel Christmas program, they’re still available on demand (follow the hyperlinks). And heads up: Apollo’s Fire’s Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain, recorded last year at the Cleveland Museum of Art becomes available online on Friday the 18th.

And the most recent Cleveland Orchestra “On a Personal Note” podcast finds pianist Mitsuko Uchida remembering the “familial nature” of her long relationship with the ensemble.

Events on the web today include the latest episode of Local 4 Music Fund’s “Tuning In,” featuring Eric Charnofsky’s piano quintet 5 by 5, and a holiday program by “Portland’s Little Orchestra” Pink Martini, a group that has delighted Cleveland audiences in seasons past. Details in our Concert Listings.

Moving farther afield, Musical America’s Guide to (mostly free streams) points us to a special program by pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard from The Gilmore that links Beethoven’s avant-garde tendencies to works by Messiaen, Stockhausen, and Kurtág (a premiere), and a concert from the Detroit Symphony led by its new music director Jader Bignamini that includes Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

By some calendars, the first Saturnalia festival was held on this date in Rome in 497 BCE, just one of the ancient Winter Solstice-centered events that might have influenced modern Christmas celebrations way down the line, including such traditions as the Christmas card, the first example having been commissioned on this date in 1843 by Henry Cole, founder of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

Ballet legend Vaslav Nijinsky was born on this day in 1889 in Kviv, but considered himself to be Polish. Admired for his athletic leaps and his ability to dance en pointe, he joined Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1909 just in time to choreograph Debussy’s L’après-midi d’un faune in 1912 (he wrote a sexually suggestive final scene for himself), and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps in 1913. Sadly, he spent the last three decades of his life in and out of mental institutions. Watch a digital reconstruction by Christian Compte of Nijinsky dancing the role of the Faun here.

And Arthur Fiedler, who conducted the Boston Pops for just short of five decades beginning in 1930, was born on December 17 in 1894. His vast list of recordings includes the premiere of Danish composer Jacob Gade’s Jalousie ‘Tango Tzigane,’ which sold more than a million copies, and the first complete performance of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Fiedler’s hobbies included a lifetime fascination with fire engines, which won him the title of “Honorary Captain” in the Boston Fire Department.

Finally, British composer, critic, and all-around colorful literary figure Philip Heseltine took his own life on this date in 1930 at the age of 36. He wrote music under the nom de plume of Peter Warlock, and we’ll remember him with some of his jollier music: the Three Carols, colorfully orchestrated by the composer and ebulliently performed by the City of London Choir and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Click on the links to hear “Tyrley trylow,” “Balulalow,” and “As I Sat Under a Sycamore Tree.”