by Daniel Hathaway
STREAMING SATURDAY FROM BOP STOP:
Having been moved online, Heights Arts’ “Close Encounters” won’t bring performers and audiences into as close proximity as usual this season, but the performances will be predictably excellent. The first program, “OMNIPresence with Obligat’OBOE,” airs on Saturday at 3:00 pm, live from the Bop Stop.
Same day, same venue, but at 8:00 pm, Steve Kortyka and Jackie Warren put their talents on saxophone and piano together. Comments and donations encouraged.
See our Concert Listings page for more information.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
Imagine being the little brother of a famous composer. Imagine being christened with the name of a famous Roman emperor. Such was the dual fate of Giulio Cesare Monteverdi, younger sibling of Claudio. born on January 31, 1573. He left a few works to prosperity, two of them published in his brother’s Scherzi Musicale. Here’s one of them: “Deh, chi tace il bel pensero,” performed by Ars Lyrica Houston under the direction of Matthew Dirst from their 2018-2019 season.
Also born on the last day of January: French flutist, bassoonist, and composer François Devienne in 1759 in Joinville. He survived the Revolution, wrote extensively for wind instruments and taught at the institution which became the Paris Conservatory. Here are three of his Bassoon Quartets featuring Jane Gower.
In 1797 on this date, Austrian composer Franz Schubert was born in Vienna. There are so many familiar works with which to celebrate, but let’s go for a luminous performance of his F-Minor Fantasy for Piano Four Hands that happened only a week ago. Emanuela Friscioni and Antonio Pompa-Baldi recorded it in their music room for the season opener of the Tri-C Classical Piano Series of which Friscioni is the executive director.
Another worthy tribute is Schubert’s Cello Quintet (not for five cellos, but rather for string quartet with an extra cellist). For a performance, you couldn’t do much better than the one played by ChamberFest Cleveland musicians Yura Lee, David Bowlin, Dimitri Murrath, Clive Greensmith, and Peter Wiley at Harkness Chapel in June 2015.
Or there’s also the famous Octet, which you can enjoy here in George Szell’s arrangement for orchestra from December, 1965. That work also gave Cleveland Orchestra Youth Members an opportunity to join their compatriots from the Anton Bruckner Private University in preparing and performing the piece in Linz during their European Tour in 2019. Watch footage of rehearsals (coached by Franz Welser-Möst) and the performance here.
January 30 marks the death of French composer Francis Poulenc in Paris in 1963. His Gloria exemplifies his compositional style, aptly described by a YouTube commentator: “His ingenious ability to join the secular and the sacred, in this case, French cabaret and High liturgy is unmatched, except maybe for Mozart.” That comment was in response to a live performance by soprano Else Benoit, the Netherlands Radio Choir and Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Peter Cijksatra, that took place in Utrecht in November of 2019.
An earlier work that captures Poulenc’s urbane wit is the 1928 Concert Champêtre for harpsichord and orchestra — quite a large ensemble to pit against the soloist, but Poulenc was writing for the heavy Pleyel instruments championed by the dedicatee, Wanda Landowska, during the 20th century harpsichord revival.
Jory Vinikour was featured in the Concerto in Severance Hall with Stéphane Denève and The Cleveland Orchestra in March, 2018. Watch for that to come around on a WCLV rebroadcast, but in the meanwhile, here’s a performance by Aimée van de Wiele and the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, conducted by Georges Prêtre.
We’ll wrap this up with brief mentions of American minimalist composer Philip Glass, and British composer George Benjamin, born on January 31 in 1937 and 1960 respectively.
Glass’s Glassworks is featured in The Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus 5 program, which premiered on January 28 on the Adella platform and will be available on-demand for the next three months.
And thanks to the Festival d’Aix en Provence, you can watch Benjamin’s complete opera, Written on Skin, from 2012. The composer talks about the work, based on the 13th century Provençal legend of the troubadour Guillaume de Cabestanh, here.