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Archives for August 2021

DIARY: Weekend, August 14-15, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Indoors on Saturday, Con Fuoco (Ann Yu, violin, Ryan Louie, cello & April Sun, piano) play Mendelssohn and Schoenfeld at 7 pm at Bop Stop. Outdoors on Sunday, Karina Canellakis (pictured) leads The Cleveland Orchestra in a 7 pm performance at Blossom featuring pianist Behzod Abduraimov and trumpeter Michael Sachs in Shostakovich’s First Concerto plus music by Dvořák and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. And the Akron Symphony Virtuosi perform works by Joplin, Amram, Handy, and Sousa in Akron’s Forest Lodge Park at 7:30 pm with Christopher Wilkins on the podium.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

Four births to celebrate and three deaths to mourn — all more or less distinguished figures in the world of classical music.

On August 15, German inventor Johannes Nepomuk Maelzel, who developed the metronome, was born in Regensburg in 1772, African British composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor entered the world in London in 1875, and French composer Jacques Ibert first saw the light of day in 1890 in the City of Light, as did Russian inventor Leon Theremin, creator of the pioneering electronic instrument that bears his name, but in St. Petersburg in 1896.

On August 14, 1972 American pianist Oscar Levant, who also worked as a composer, conductor, author, radio game show panelist, television talk show host, comedian and actor, checked out in Beverly Hills. On August 15, Hungarian violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim, close associate of the Schumanns and Brahms, crossed the bridge into immortality in Berlin in 1907 at the age of 75, and Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel, who first recorded Beethoven’s complete sonatas, bid this world adieu in Morschach, Switzerland in 1951 at 69.

That’s a potpourri of personalities that deserves an equally varied set of listening suggestions.

Here’s Oscar Levant playing Poulenc’s Pastourelle in 1945 (with a bonus: Vladimir Horowitz performing the same composer’s Presto in B-flat in 1947). Couple that with an episode of Levant on the Jack Benny Show in November of 1958 — dated in obvious respects, but showing the pointed wit of a multifaceted American figure who said of himself, “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”

For something on the more exalted side, click here to listen to Artur Schnabel play Brahms’ First Concerto with George Szell and the London Symphony in 1938.

And here’s a 2013 documentary about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s visits to the U.S. in 1904, 1906, and 1910, and his influence on the African American Civil Rights Movement.

Ending on a lighter, but perhaps creepy note, watch a historic video of Leon Theremin  playing one of the first electronic instruments to enter the concert world, or another video of an extraordinary gathering of 273 Theremin players going for a Guinness World Record in Japan in 2013.

DIARY: Friday, August 13, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

If the weather gods are smiling, at 6:30 pm today, Idle Twittering: a flock of flutes, will perform outdoors at the Streeter Arboretum in Wooster. George Pope, Jane Berkner, Kyra Kester, and Linda White, will bring along a batterie of flutes of all shapes and sizes for an event sponsored by Ohio Regional Music Arts and Cultural Outreach (ORMACO). It’s free, but registration is recommended. There are rain plans in case the gods are being uncooperative.

And the Church of the Western Reserve will present a free outdoor concert by the a cappella group Zero to Sixty tonight at 7. Details in our Concert Listings.

Live online at 7 pm, the weeklong Bard Music Festival continues with “Nadia Boulanger & Her World VIII,” featuring music written for Parisian avant-garde salons, “especially those of Boulanger’s colorful friend and patron, the sewing machine heiress Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac.” Leon Botstein conducts. Details and tickets here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1655, German instrument maker Johann Christoph Denner was born in Leipzig. Often credited with the invention of the clarinet — well, he did add a register key to the chalmeau, a single reed instrument with many historical antecedents — Denner’s innovations helped pave the way for the future development of one of the most versatile instruments in the woodwind family.

The clarinet achieved an important level of sophistication during Mozart’s time, as his concerto and quintet for the instrument demonstrate. They were written for Anton Stadler, the composer’s favorite clarinettist, but the concerto can hardly have had more loving treatment than it did in the hands of Franklin Cohen and his “all-star” ChamberFest Orchestra in 2015. Watch the performance here.

A more recent work that Cohen introduced to the ChamberFest audience just this summer is Carbarkapa Maljokovic’s Sonata for Four Clarinets. Click here to watch the performance by Cohen, Benjamin Chen, Amitai Vardi, and Hugh Shihao Zhu on June 11 at the Grove Amphitheater in Mayfield Village.

And since the instrument comes in all sizes from the shrill, E-flat clarinet to the subterranean contrabass, it has inspired various arrangements like the Orchestra Siciliana di Clarinetti-Choir’s version of Gustav Holst’s Suite in F for military band.

And on August 13, 1900, English musicologist Sir George Grove died in London at the age of 79. Trained as an engineer, Grove’s love for music got him appointed director of orchestra concerts for the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London. He continued administering a concert series there after the building had been moved to Sydenham, and crafted admirable program notes for the benefit of amateur listeners. “I wrote about the symphonies and concertos because I wished to try to make them clear to myself and to discover the secret of the things that charmed me so; and from that sprang a wish to make other amateurs see it in the same way.”

One thing led to another, and Groves was invited by the publishers Macmillan and Company to produce a musical encyclopedia. Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians was eventually issued by Macmillan in alphabetical volumes over a dozen years, ending in 1889.

One of Grove’s passions was the music of Schubert, then little appreciated in England. He was instrumental in discovering the score and parts for the incidental music to Rosamunde, the 1823 play by Helmina von Chézy, during an exploratory visit to Vienna in 1867. In honor of that find, listen to a studio recording of excerpts from Rosamunde with George Szell and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra made in Amsterdam in December, 1957.

Grove ended his career as director of the refounded Royal College of Music. His Encyclopedia lives on — online.

 

DIARY: Thursday, August 12, 2021

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by Caitlin Winston

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

The New York Philharmonic was one of the first orchestras to offer live radio broadcasts of their concerts, and on this day in 1922, the Philharmonic was heard live on the airwaves for the first time. The program, held in the Lewisohn Stadium on the campus of  City College of New York, featured the Overture to Ambroise Thomas’ opéra comique Mignon, Franz Schubert’s entr’acte music from the play Rosamunde, Karl Goldmark’s “Rustic Wedding” symphony, and the Dream Pantomime from Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, and closed with two trumpet solos by Franz Schubert. On the podium: Willem van Hoogstraten, the Orchestra’s regular summer-event director.

The stadium, built in 1913 with a seating capacity of 8,000, was demolished in 1973. More information on New York Philharmonic history can be found in the archives section of their website.

French-Canadian mezzo-soprano Huguette Tourangeau, a musician remembered for her mind-blowing range, vocal agility, and rich chest voice, was born on this day in 1938. Tourangeau was a student at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal, and made her operatic debut as Mercédès in Carmen in 1964, shortly before winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. After her win, she performed the opera’s title role with the Metropolitan Opera National Company in a 56-city tour.

Throughout her career, she was known as a frequent performance and recording partner to Joan Southerland, whose dramatic coloratura paired perfectly with Toruangeau’s beautifully dark “almost baritone.” Tourangeau’s voice was heard frequently on the stages of the New York City Opera and the Met, as well as in opera houses in London, Seattle, Santa Fe, Vancouver, and San Francisco. Click here for Tourangeau and Southerland’s 1977 performance of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda.

American composer and master of the postwar avant-garde John Cage died on this day in 1992, at age 79. While Cage is commonly remembered as the person who makes us sit through more than four minutes of sometimes-enlightening, mostly-awkward silence, we also honor him as the composer who challenged musicians to re-approach their performance methods, and encouraged audiences to reconsider their preconceptions of what music is.

Cage’s indeterminate compositional style shifted much of the control over his music’s tone, shape, and scale to the performer and their interpretation of his notation. His innovative approaches to form and sound production continue to influence music composition today. Click here to watch New England Conservatory faculty member Stephen Drury demonstrate the process of piano preparation for Cage’s Sonatas & Interludes.

Kent Blossom Music Festival: Demarre McGill & Rodolfo Leone (July 21)

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by Peter Feher

Midway through his performance on July 21 at Ludwig Recital Hall — part of this year’s Kent Blossom Music Festival — flutist Demarre McGill invited the audience into an understanding of his program with an abstract but heartfelt speech. It was all preface to the next piece on the program, an arrangement of three short songs by William Grant Still.

McGill described the “unlikely duo” of emotions coursing through Still’s music, a balance between “mystery and hopefulness” or “nostalgia and energy” — or simply and musically put, major and minor. The flutist kept the discussion artistic, even suggesting that all this talk doesn’t really have any bearing on the music itself. [Read more…]

Martín García García reflects on winning the Cleveland International Piano Competition

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by Mike Telin

On Saturday evening, August 7 at Severance Hall, the jury of the 2021 Cleveland International Piano Competition awarded the Mixon First Prize to 24-year-old Martín García García of Spain.

On Sunday afternoon I was able to speak with the still slightly stunned García García over Zoom.

Mike Telin: Congratulations! You played beautifully.

Martín García García: Thank you so much. I still can’t believe it.

MT: When you finished, I remembered you telling me last week that playing Rachmaninoff 3 was like climbing a mountain. I thought wow, not only did he climb the mountain, he firmly planted the Spanish flag at the summit.

MGG: It was quite nice to come onstage and see all the flags at the back. And it was such a good feeling to see the flag of my own country. [Read more…]

Four CIPC Finalists play concertos with The Cleveland Orchestra (Aug. 6 & 7)

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by Daniel Hathaway

The audiences for the Concerto Round of the Cleveland International Piano Competition on August 6 and 7 — both in-person and online — were eager to hear the four finalists play, but they were also about to enjoy the extra treat of hearing The Cleveland Orchestra live, back on its home turf, and at full strength for the first time since March of 2020.

That must have been an equally memorable experience for the four finalists whose performances in the earlier rounds won them the opportunity to play concertos with Jahja Ling and the Orchestra — a prize in itself.

Byeol Kim (31, from South Korea) led off on Friday evening with Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto, followed by Yedam Kim (32, also from South Korea), who chose Rachmaninoff No. 3. On Saturday, Lovre Marušić (28, from Croatia) reached back into the Classical period with Beethoven No. 4, and Martín García García (24, from Spain) closed out the competition with another Rachmaninoff No. 3. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom: Blomstedt’s Beethoven 7 (Aug. 1)

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by Peter Feher 

From the podium, Herbert Blomstedt is always proving that there are new insights to be found in even the most well-trod pieces.

The 94-year-old Swedish American conductor, whose big American post was with the San Francisco Symphony several decades ago, returned to Blossom Music Center on Sunday, August 1, with the kind of austere program only he can pull off.

[Read more…]

Fine Arts Association synthesizes music with visual art in opener to new Artist Recital Series

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by Stephanie Manning

“At the Fine Arts Association, we like to say that we’ve got all the arts under one roof,” conductor Michael Lund Ziegler (pictured) remarked in a recent Zoom interview. It’s a statement that succinctly sums up the Willoughby-based organization, known for its community theatre performances and robust education programs in dance, visual arts, music, and more.

Most recently, FAA is branching out into music performance through its upcoming Artist Recital Series. The opening concert, on Thursday, August 19 at 7:00 pm, will feature works for chamber orchestra and string trio and will be held in Corning Auditorium on the organization’s campus. In-person tickets are available here.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, August 11, 2021

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by Jarrett Hoffman

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA CHORUS:

Auditions for the 2021-22 Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and Blossom Festival Chorus will be held August 17, 20, and 29 at First Baptist Church. Schedule an audition here, and read the full press release here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

In figurative terms, jazz is an easy connection to see between actor/comedian Robin Williams and painter Jackson Pollock, who both died on this date in history — in 2014 and 1956, respectively.

Among his many comedic and dramatic talents, Williams was known as a brilliant improviser, from his celebrity impressions as the genie in Aladdin, to the memories of his wife breaking wind in her sleep in Good Will Hunting, to the way he responded to frosting unexpectedly melting and dripping from his face into cups of tea in Mrs. Doubtfire. (Watch that amazing scene here.)

Speaking of dripping, Pollock’s wildly abstract canvases, sporting his trademark style of drip painting, have often been compared in their freedom and structure to jazz, particularly the avant-garde style of bebop that was prevalent at the time. Saxophonist Ornette Coleman saw such a strong similarity that he featured Pollock’s White Light on the cover of his 1960 album Free Jazz.

As far as music performance, Williams comes out on top, having delivered memorable musical numbers in films such as Aladdin, Popeye, and Happy Feet, and even onstage at the 2000 Academy Awards. Not only does he have good pitch, but his high-energy comedic style translates to his vocalizing, which is full of character and manic pizzazz. (Plus, he learned to play the saxophone for his performance in Moscow on the Hudson, apparently advancing quite quickly in lessons, such that he could play a jazz solo within a month.)

On the other hand, Pollock couldn’t carry a tune, according to his wife, painter Lee Krasner. But as a listener, he was obsessed. “He would get into grooves of listening to his jazz records,” she said, “not just for days — day and night, day and night for three days running, until you thought you would climb the roof! The house would shake.”

But what kind of jazz was Pollock listening to? It wasn’t, in fact, bebop. His record collection was dominated by music from his youth, from the ‘20s and ‘30s, especially Dixieland. The modern style of jazz simply wasn’t to his taste — one Charlie Parker LP in his collection was a gift from his lover Ruth Kligman, who assumed it would be up his alley. It wasn’t. Describing his taste in music, she called him “a real square.”

Whichever type of jazz he preferred, it’s colorful to imagine Pollock painting for hours and hours while dancing around the canvas listening to music. But that doesn’t seem to be the case either — his studio, a converted storage barn, didn’t even have electricity until 1953, “by which time Pollock had already painted virtually all the dynamic poured paintings that have been likened to improvisational jazz compositions,” writes Helen A. Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, in a terrific essay about Pollock and jazz.

Above: Pollock’s famous 1950 work Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)

It’s very possible that Pollock took inspiration from jazz, but it’s interesting to note that when given the opportunity to choose music to accompany the short film Jackson Pollock 51, he did not recommend that genre. Watch an excerpt of the film here, and listen at 2:53 for music written by Morton Feldman especially for the occasion, who scored as if for choreography, the composer said.

We’ll close this article with music that Pollock would apparently like to hear when visiting one of his regular spots, the East Hampton, NY tavern then known as Jungle Pete’s. (That brings up another, more tragic connection between Williams and Pollock: long battles with alcoholism.)

The musicians at Jungle Pete’s may have rolled their eyes at Pollock’s old-fashioned requests, like I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby, but Louis Armstrong and the Savoy Ballroom Five played that song to beautiful effect in 1929 — a recording in Pollock’s collection. Listen here.

DIARY: Tuesday, August 10, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

One live and one virtual event to highlight today.

German organist Mirjam Laetitia Haag will give a recital at St. Paul’s in Cleveland Heights tonight at 7. The program includes pieces by Muffat, J.S. Bach, Liszt, Dupré, Reger, Mendelssohn, Hermann Schröder, Ian Farrington and Franck, as well as original improvisations. A freewill offering will be received.

Several musicians familiar to Northeast Ohio audiences will be featured on a live feed from the Seattle Chamber Music Festival tonight at 10 pm. James Ehnes and Stephen Rose are in the ensemble that will perform Florence Price’s String Quartet in G, and pianists Andrew Armstrong and Orion Weiss will share the keyboard for Schubert’s Fantasie in f. Purchase $25 tickets and access the feed here, either at concert time or on demand.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Cleveland Arts Prize announced its 2021 awardees yesterday in a press release. The list includes the collective Mourning [A] BLKstar, Happy Dog proprietor Sean Watterson, and two Cleveland Orchestra figures: Clara Rankin, and Franz Welser-Möst. The 61st annual award ceremony will be held on October 13 at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

This is a good time to mention that Welser-Möst’s recently published book, From Silence, is now available in an English edition from the Cleveland Orchestra store.

Cleveland Pops Orchestra will play an outdoor family concert on Sunday, August 15 at 2 pm on the grounds of the Mandel JCC. Vocalists Connor Bogart and Lauren Berry will join conductor Carl Topilow in Disney favorites and music by ABBA, Queen, and Elvis. Blankets, lawn chairs and picnic lunches are welcome, and kosher drinks and snacks will be on sale. Click here for free tickets and details.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1880, African American concert violinist, composer and educator Clarence Cameron White (pictured above) was born in Clarksville, Tennessee. He attended the Oberlin Conservatory, from which his mother had graduated, from 1896 to 1901, then studied composition with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in England, and violin in Paris. He succeeded R. Nathaniel Dett as head of the music department of the Hampton Institute from 1932-1935. White’s compositions include a ballet (A Night in Sans Souci) and an opera (Ouanga), two works based on Haitian themes for which he collaborated with playwright John Matheus.

Click here to watch a recent performance of White’s Suite Spirituale for Clarinet Quartet (at Clarinettissimo 2020), and here to watch an online video of his Levee Dance, Op. 27, No. 4 (performed by violinist Augustin Hadelich, and pianist Joyce Yang).

And on this date in 1909, Leo Fender, one of the pioneers of the electric guitar, was born in Anaheim, California. While this new, 20th century invention became synonymous with rock virtuosi like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, it also gained something of a foothold in classical music. Click here to read Christopher Fox’s article, “How The World Plugged into the Electric Guitar” in The Guardian, and here to read Anastasia Tsioulcas’ NPR article, “Electric Guitars Amp Up New Classical Music.”

Click here to listen to Bang on a Can All-Star Mark Stewart play Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, written in 1987 for Pat Metheny. And click here to hear the electric guitar introduction to s aria “Here Where Footprints Erase The Grave” from Missy Mazzoli’s 2012 chamber opera Song from the Uproar.

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