Archives for July 2021

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS AND UPDATES:

We’ve just received news of the death of Kathleen Shamp (pictured, right) on June 10 at the age of 93. The Wooster native served as music librarian at the Cleveland Public Library for 50 years (1950-2000), sang with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under George Szell and Robert Shaw (1954-1974), and served on the music staffs of Epworth-Euclid (now University Circle) United Methodist and Plymouth churches. A Memorial Service will be held at 11:00 am on Saturday, July 24 at the University Circle United Methodist Church, 1919 E. 107th Street. Read an obituary here.

Pianist Conrad Tao will replace Benjamin Grosvenor with Dame Jane Glover and The Cleveland Orchestra on Sunday evening, July 11 at Blossom, and the Mozart concerto has been changed to No. 23 in A, K. 488.

The Cleveland Philharmonic announces auditions for the new season under music director Victor Liva. Openings are available in all string sections as well as percussion and oboe. Details here.

The Cleveland Institute of Music has named Alison King as its first-ever Director of Digital Media. She comes to CIM from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she served as director of marketing and business development.

HAPPENING TODAY:

Round One, Session Two of the Cleveland International Piano Competition will be conducted via pre-recorded videos made from around the world. Tune in at 7:00 pm to hear Lucas Thomazinho (25, Brazil), Zhi Chao Juli Jia (29, China), Jiarui Cheng (22, China), and Yedam Kim (32, South Korea). It’s free.

The next-to-last ENCORE Chamber Music Institute Concert of the season features guitarist JIJI, with Jinjoo Cho, Sibbi Bernhardsson and Minhye Choi, violins, Stephen Wyrczynski, viola, and Max Geissler, cello in “Sparked by Frida [Kahlo].” Music by Albeniz,  Ponce, Isabella Leonarda, Villa-Lobos, Piazzolla, Frantz Casseus, Boccherini, and Roland Dyens. The in-person event begins at 7 pm in the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills. [Read more…]

by Mike Telin

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 7:00 pm, the Cleveland International Piano Competition gets underway with Round 1, Session 1. Four of the 26 contestants perform 20-minute solo recitals, pre-recorded from around the world. Today’s lineup: Lin Ye (28, China), Stefano Andreatta (29, Italy), Ying Li (23, China) & Honggi Kim (29, South Korea). Click here at start time. Free. Click here to read a preview article.

IN THE NEWS:

When Jeanne Lamon (pictured), founder and longtime artistic director of Tafelmusik, the Toronto Baroque orchestra, passed away on June 20 at the age of 71, she left the world with many exceptional recordings she had made with that stellar ensemble. Writing in the July 6 edition of San Francisco Classical Voice, Nicholas Jones has assembled an annotated playlist in tribute to the violinist who led the ensemble for 33 years. Click here to read “The Essential Jeanne Lamon.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1883, Australian American pianist, composer, and folk tune arranger Percy Grainger was born in Melbourne — he became a U.S. Citizen in 1919. Click here to listen to a selection of piano rolls that preserve his performances of his popular works. And in 1939, Spanish composer Fernando Sor died in Paris.

July 8 also marks the world debut of American avant-garde composer and inventor George Antheil in 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey. The young George began learning piano at the age of six. In 1916, he began studying composition with Constantine von Sternberg in Philadelphia. It was there that he was exposed to conceptual art, including Dadaism.  Anthiel would later become a pupil of Ernest Bloch. Although Bloch was initially skeptical of Antheil’s talents, calling his compositions “empty” and “pretentious,” his teacher was eventually won over by the young composer’s enthusiasm and energy.

During his lifetime, Antheil composed symphonies, chamber works, film music, and operas. In addition to music, his interests included endocrinology, criminal justice, and military history, and he was co-holder (with actress Hedy Lamarr) of a patent for what today is known as “spread-spectrum technology.”

An excellent writer, at the age of sixteen, Antheil wrote an essay for the Trenton High School Spector titled “A Madman’s Narrative,” which begins “I am not mad. They are all maniacs here; all but me. I, alone am sane; a great composer, yet they tell me I am also mad. Surely, sir, you will not make that mistake. See how calm I am, how measured I talk.” Click here to continue reading. He would pen many articles during his life including his autobiography, Bad Boy of Music.

Although Antheil composed over 300 works, his Ballet mécanique is the most famous. Written in 1924 the work is scored for 16 player pianos playing four separate parts, four bass drums, three xylophones, a tam-tam, seven electric bells, a siren, and three different-sized airplane propellers (high wood, low wood, and metal), as well as two human-played pianos. Click here to read more about that notorious composition and here for a performance by Ensemble Modern, led by Peter Rundel.

 

by Jarrett Hoffman

SALONERA SEASON 2:

In the language of the television industry — not a strange comparison considering the pandemic-era broadcasts of classical music organizations — there is reason to celebrate, because Les Délices has picked up SalonEra for a second season.

From September to April, Les Délices will release twelve episodes that, in trademark form, will bring together conversation, performance, and a diverse slate of emerging and established musicians.

Among the eclectic themes and repertoire set to be covered: “insights from living composers who take cues from their Baroque Era forebears, an homage to 17th-cent. Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a deep-dive into the technological shifts of the turn of the 16th century, and much more.” Read the press release here.

TONIGHT IN PERSON & ONLINE:

The Cleveland International Piano Competition kicks off at 7pm with its free Opening Ceremony hosted by Yaron Kohlberg and Zsolt Bognár, allowing you to meet the 26 contestants and hear a performance by 2016 First Prize winner Nikita Mndoyants.

And the Verona Quartet and pianist Scott Cuellar will have the honor of giving Oberlin’s first in-person concert in nearly 16 months. Their 7:30 program in Stull Recital Hall — which will also be streamed — includes music by Puccini, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Ernst Krenek, and Grażyna Bacewicz.

Links and details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC, WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES:

On this day last year, we honored several noted classical musicians who were born or died on July 7th in history, including Gustav Mahler, Giovanni Bottesini, Gian-Carlo Menotti, and Leo Sowerby.

This time around, we’ll step into another artistic discipline for a moment, as a gateway into film and television music. The starting point is British writer (and physician) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who died on July 7, 1930, and who is best known for dreaming up the character of that detective known for his wonderfully ridiculous abilities of logic and deduction.

Sherlock Holmes inspired a large output from Conan Doyle — 4 novels and 56 short stories — and still much more from the hands of other creative people ever since, spanning several media. In fact, the Guinness World Records announced in 2012 that Holmes had achieved — yes — a world record, having been depicted in film and television 254 times (besting Shakespeare’s Hamlet by 48).

That also means an astounding amount of music inspired by the prickly yet delightful character of Holmes and his adventures that never fail to sink their teeth into you, derailing whatever else you might have planned to do with your day.

On that note, the aptly named publication Den of Geek has done the world a favor by rounding up a long list of YouTube videos with music from the many, many Sherlock films and TV shows.

Some highlights? The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970) has to be included, thanks to its unique scoring by Miklós Rózsa, that great composer of both film and concert music. The extended violin solo a couple of minutes in is a particular treat — and is of course fitting for the Stradivarius-playing detective.

Patrick Gowers is responsible for the excellent theme to the TV series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (starring the celebrated Jeremy Brett), which ran from the mid-‘80s to mid-‘90s. Gowers captures a keen sense of intrigue that now feels very Holmes, and that has inspired the music of some of the more contemporary screen adaptations, including the spectacular BBC series Sherlock (2010-2017).

In the theme to that recent show — its earworm of a main melody coming in at the 1:49 mark — composers David Arnold and Michael Price hone in not only on mystery, but also on the humorous flavor of Holmes’ (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson’s (Martin Freeman) gallivanting adventures around modern-day London in this take on the story.

Finally, who doesn’t like some good, fun camp? Check out 1959’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, where composer James Bernard embraces horror in a way that should make you smile.

by Daniel Hathaway

VOTE FOR YOUR LOCAL ORCHESTRA

For the fourth year in a row, Gramophone magazine will be naming an Orchestra of the Year by public vote. The Cleveland Orchestra is among the ten worldwide ensembles to be nominated for 2021, based on the quality of their recordings. The other nine are the Academy of Ancient Music (UK), Accademia Bizantina (Italy), Bamberger Symphoniker (Germany), Berliner Philharmoniker (Germany), Philharmonia Orchestra (UK), Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (Canada), Minnesota Orchestra (USA), Singapore Symphony Orchestra (Singapore), and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich (Switzerland).

Gramophone has created Apple Music playlists in lossless audio for each ensemble, as well as a dynamic playlist that will be updated throughout the summer. Listen HERE.

Voting opened at noon on July 1 and remains live until 8 am (BST) on Monday, September 13. Votes can be cast on Gramophone’s website ,. The Orchestra of the Year will be revealed on October 5 at the 2021 Gramophone Classical Music Awards.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Considering the withering heat and humidity of the past few days, doesn’t an afternoon in a cool, dark movie theater sound enticing? Or perhaps just a couple of hours on the couch in the A/C enjoying the music of one of the world’s premier film composers — Ennio Morricone, who died on July 6, 2020 at the age of 91.

Although Morricone never left Rome and never learned to speak English, he created some 400 film scores and a hundred classical compositions. Click here to listen to 39 excerpts from his oeuvre.

Among the other aspects of his intriguing life, Morricone was a skillful chess player who once held grand master Boris Spassky to a draw in a simultaneous competition involving 27 players, of which he was the last man standing.

Morricone’s instrument was the trumpet, and we can honor him as well as the memory of Ryan Anthony, who studied at CIM, taught at Oberlin, played with the Canadian Brass, and who performed “Gabriel’s Oboe” from The Mission with members of the Dallas Symphony at a Cancer Blows benefit on March 4, 2015, before Anthony’s untimely death just a year ago. Listen here.