Archives for August 2021

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Do they play well with others? Now that the solo rounds have shown the audiences and jury what they’re individually capable of producing from those 88 keys, four finalists in the Cleveland International Piano Competition will play piano quintets with the Escher String Quartet to test their mettle as ensemble players.

The first session takes place tonight at 7 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, when Byeol Kim joins the Escher in César Franck’s Quintet in f, followed by Yedam Kim in Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet. Both in-person and virtual tickets are available. Click here. The second session happens on Wednesday, same time, same place.

Garage Opera? At noon today, Lyric Opera Chicago presents a filmed version of Yuval Sharon’s drive-through reimagining of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, produced last April in Millennium Lakeside Parking Garage. You may have read about its debut in October of 2020 by Michigan Opera in Detroit, and Cleveland Orchestra patrons will remember Sharon’s stagings of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande in Severance Hall. Register here to view Raphael S. Nash’s 70-minute digital feature until October 29. It’s free.

Support your local principal cello! The Cleveland Orchestra’s Mark Kosower joins other prominent musicians at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival in Stewart Goodyear’s Piano Quartet and Beethoven’s Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 1. The performance debuts at 10 pm this evening and will be available here and on demand. Tickets are $25.

MAKE NO SMALL PLANS:

London’s 600-seat Wigmore Hall, which has to be one of the busiest recital halls in the world, has announced that its forthcoming season will feature 2,500 artists from more than 30 countries performing in 500 concerts. 150 of those will be live-streamed — a service that some 7 million viewers enjoyed during the past 18 months. Read more here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

It’s a slow day for mentioning milestones in classical music, but here are two.

On June 3, 1929, German-born inventor Emile Berliner died in New York City of a heart attack at the age of 78. Like many second-wave innovators, Berliner has largely gone unmentioned for his pair of contributions to the classical music recording industry. The first was his development of the circular disk that replaced Edison’s cylinders and made the mass production of recordings possible. To that end, he founded several companies, including Deutsche Grammophon and the Victor Talking Machine Company.

Berliner was also among those responsible for the invention of the microphone. His achievements are on display at the Library of Congress (click here to view), including such non-musical inventions as a loom for mass producing cloth and an early version of the helicopter. Somewhere in between falls his invention of a type of acoustical tile.

The second milestone for which we can thank August 3 is the introduction of the Tandy Corporation’s TRS-80 personal computer through Radio Shack, a model that was snapped up by thousands of early adopters within weeks of its release in 1977 for $600  each (some $2,600 in today’s currency).

Lacking such mod cons as the ability to render lower case letters, the machine eventually became a device for tinkerers, even though until 1982, it outsold the Apple II series five to one. Most importantly, the TRS-80 presaged today’s ubiquitous PCs through which we’ve been notating and streaming music, attending classes on Zoom, and conducting our business affairs throughout the Pandemic. It’s difficult to imagine 1977 without access to that magic box, much less 2021.

by Stephanie Manning

IN THE NEWS:

Starting August 6, the Bard Music Festival — on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York — will present “Nadia Boulanger and Her World,” a two-week exploration of the composer and pedagogue’s life and legacy. The most renowned composition teacher of the 20th century, Boulanger was also a talented composer and conductor. In addition to her music, the twelve concerts of the Festival will also feature the music of her precursors, contemporaries and students as well as works by her sister Lili. Read more in the New York Times here.

SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT:

The Rocky River Chamber Music Society has announced its 63rd season, which will begin in October. The lineup includes the Auryn String Quartet, Russian pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov, Oberlin Clarinet Professor Richard Hawkins and Faculty Friends, Bob Sneider and Friends from the Eastman School of Music, and the Grigoryan Brothers Guitar Duo. All concerts are free and will take place both in person at the West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church (health conditions permitting) and online. Learn more here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today marks one year since pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher died in Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of 92. A child prodigy, Fleisher performed at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic at the age of 16.

But it was the Cleveland Orchestra with which the pianist formed the strongest relationship. Fleisher became known for his outstanding recordings with the Orchestra and George Szell from the 1950s and 60s — particularly the concertos of Beethoven and Brahms. Listen to his recording of Beethoven’s five piano concertos here.

Focal dystonia in his right hand created a major setback for the pianist in the 1960s, but Fleisher persevered, turning to one-handed works like Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand. His career path expanded into conducting and teaching, and he eventually made a triumphant return to two-handed playing in the 1990s.

Fleischer returned to Cleveland time and time again, resulting in the longest relationship of any visiting artist with the Orchestra. In 2013, he took to the podium for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture and Beethoven’s second and third piano concertos. His student Jonathan Biss stepped in to replace Mitsuko Uchida, a testament to Fleisher’s teaching legacy.

In our interview before that concert, Biss (pictured below left, with Fleisher) said of his former teacher: “He really has earned his legend. Not through any razzle dazzle or publicity, but just because he is so inarguably great.”

Photo by Roger Mastroianni