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Archives for November 2021

Cleveland Arts Prize Past Masters

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by Mike Telin

Being recognized with a Cleveland Arts Prize is arguably the greatest honor that someone working in Northeast Ohio’s cultural sector can have bestowed upon them. Founded in 1960 by the Women’s City Club of Cleveland, since 1961 CAP has honored over 350 artists and arts leaders whose work has advanced the disciplines of literature, music, design, visual art, theater, film, and dance.   

Although CAP’s list of recipients reads like a who’s who of the region’s most influential artists, a closer look reveals many names that are conspicuously absent. “People come up to me and say, ‘How come Langston Hughes never won the prize, how come Ernst Bloch never won?’” Cleveland author and biographer Dennis Dooley said during a telephone conversation. “I tell them, that’s because the Arts Prize didn’t exist yet.” 

In honor of its 60th anniversary, The Cleveland Arts Prize, in partnership with The Cleveland History Center, will recognize the region’s artist luminaries of days gone by with its Past Masters Project.     

The year-long celebration kicks off on Saturday, December 4 with “Honoring Our Past Masters: The Golden Age of Cleveland Art, 1900–1945” at the Hay-McKinney Mansion. Doors open at 1:00 pm for a 1:30 concert that will feature music by five Past Master composers performed by members of The Cleveland Orchestra and guest musicians (download the program here). Tickets for the concert are available online. 

[Read more…]

Quire Cleveland: Jay White talks about returning to live singing

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by Daniel Hathaway

Quire Cleveland will resume live concerts this weekend, with three performances of the 11th edition of its annual Carols for Quire scheduled for December 2, 3, and 4 in great ecclesiastical spaces around the city.

I reached conductor Jay White by phone in his studio at Kent State University and began by asking him what was involved in restarting a choral machine that’s been silent for two seasons.

“It’s been interesting,” he said. “As you can imagine, many of the singers, unless they had any kind of a church job over the course of the pandemic — when they were recording something and sending it in — there’s been very little if any ensemble work at all, or it’s been one singer on a part. Most of the members of the ensemble, myself included, haven’t had much opportunity to sing in the past 20-some-odd months.

“That said, what has been working well is that the enthusiasm and excitement for wanting to do this work is infectious to the point where people are really stepping up,” he said. [Read more…]

Diary: Tuesday, November 30, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S AGENDA:

Today’s free noon concert at the Church of the Covenant features North German Advent Music of the late 17th century. Tenor Mark Laseter, violinists Jonathan Goya and Addi Liu, violist da gamba Jane Leggiero, and organist Jonathan Moyer will perform music by Dietrich Buxtehude, Nicolaus Bruhns, and Johann Adam Reincken.

We’ve been remiss in recommending Eric Charnofsky’s radio programs, “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music,” which air from 2:00 to 4:00 pm on Mondays on Case Western Reserve University’s internet stream. Himself a composer and a collaborative pianist, Charnofsky (pictured) likes to hunt out not-so-often performed music by well-known composers. The current edition features works by Frederick Delius, Kile Smith, Julius Eastman, Paul Hindemith, Aaron Coland, Poldowski (the pseudonym for Régine Wieniawski), and Shih-Hui Chen. Need assistance connecting? Help is only a click away.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

For those who recoiled a bit last Friday morning at the all-too-early dominance of Christmas and Holiday music on the airwaves, we’ll seek out alternatives during these last weeks of 2021 and note the anniversaries of some works that received their premieres on these dates in classical music history.

On November 30, 1913 (with some wiggle room due to the conversion of Russian calendar dates), Sergei Rachmaninov conducted the first performance of his choral symphonic poem, The Bells, in St. Petersburg.

The composer, who had been seeking out a likely text to set to follow his cantata, Spring, was on holiday in Rome in 1907when he received an anonymous letter suggesting Edgar Allen Poe’s The Bells, in a translation by the Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont.

The original poem, read here by Basil Rathbone with an underlay of Mahler, is highly onomatopoetic, something that doesn’t translate well. But Rachmaninoff took to it enthusiastically, regarding the finished work — along with his All-Night Vigil — as one of his two favorite compositions. Click here to listen to a 2015 live performance on AVROTROS with the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus led by James Gaffigan, former assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra.

  1.   Allegro ma non tanto: The Silver Sleigh Bells
  2.   Lento: The Mellow Wedding Bells
  3.     Presto: The Loud Alarm Bells
  4.   Lento lugubre: The Mournful Iron Bells”

 

DIARY: Monday, November 29, 2021

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by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TONIGHT:

At 7:30 pm, Debra Nagy teams up with Scott Metcalfe of Boston-based vocal ensemble Blue Heron for the latest episode of Les Délices’ SalonEra series: “Machaut Man.” (Can’t beat that title.)

The episode celebrates the forthcoming release of the ensembles’ collaborative album Le Remede de Fortune, centered around that work by Machaut — a long-form narrative poem with musical interpolations that tells the story of a young lover’s attempts to live well despite the capriciousness of Fortune.

In addition to showcasing footage from live performances and from the ensembles’ archives, tonight Nagy and Metcalfe will explore the extravagantly detailed, evocative illuminations found in MS C, one of the most richly-decorated of Machaut’s surviving manuscripts.

See the full program and register here. It’s available for a short time on-demand after the premiere.

R.I.P. SONDHEIM:

The most important piece of news in music since our last Diary entry is the passing of Stephen Sondheim, titan of American musical theater, on November 26 at the age of 91. The lyricist for West Side Story early on in his career, he went on to leave his strongest legacy as both the composer and lyricist for such musicals as Company, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods. 

Probably his most famous song is “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, sung here by Judi Dench, who received the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her role in a revival of the show in 1995 in London.

But as Tim Page writes in an obituary in The Washington Post, “Mr. Sondheim was less interested in creating stand-alone popular ‘hits’ than in fashioning unified works that maintained a firm, near-operatic structural integrity throughout.” To experience the song in context, as Sondheim himself felt it was most powerful, watch the full musical here in a live broadcast from New York City Opera in November of 1990.

To some critics, including Page, Sondheim’s greatest masterpiece is Sweeney Todd, a work that is interesting for many reasons aside from its unusual and dark subject matter. Those include its categorization in genre: some consider it an opera, or at least a crossover. “It has demands for specific singers that are more operatic, yet need the acting skills necessary in traditional musicals,” Michigan Opera Theater assistant music director and chorus master Suzanne Acton said in an article in Detroit Free Press.

This 2014 performance of the Johanna Quartet from Sweeney Todd provides a good example: it’s fascinating to hear bass-baritone and frequent operatic star Bryn Terfel as the title character, singing side by side with a Broadway headliner in Jay Armstrong Johnson.

Finally, as evidence of just how strongly Sondheim’s passing has been felt in the musical community, watch here as a large group of Broadway artists — including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Josh Groban, and Sara Bareilles — gather in Times Square this past Sunday, November 28, to sing “Sunday” from Sunday In The Park With George.

Diary: Thanksgiving Weekend, November 26-28, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND PERFORMANCES:

The Cleveland Orchestra will play its last pair of subscription concerts before the Holiday season kicks off with a dozen performances by the Orchestra and Chorus between December 9 and 19.

On Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8, guest conductor Gustavo Gimeno leads an interesting program that features pianist sisters Katia Labèque & Marielle Labèque in Bryce Dessner’s Concerto for Two Pianos. The evening begins lightly with Ravel’s Suite from Ma Mère l’Oye (”Mother Goose”), and ends with Céasar Franck’s dark-toned Symphony in d. Read Mike Telin’s interview with Gimeno here and his conversation with Bryce Dessner here.

On Sunday, Carl Topilow and Cleveland Pops officially turn on the symphonic Holiday Lights with a 2:00 pm concert in Playhouse Square.,

INTERESTING READ:

Read a WKSU feature about young classical guitarist Damian Goggans, whose promising career path began with lessons through the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society at Citizens Leadership Academy, advanced to a Musical Pathways Fellowship at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and after graduating from high school at the Cleveland School for the Arts earlier this year, brought him to the Oberlin Conservatory on a full scholarship.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

Lots happened in classical music history on November 26, 27, and 28, but let’s take a moment to reflect on the careers of two Boston women composers who may not be as well-known as their contemporary, Amy (Mrs. H.H.A.) Beach. [Read more…]

Diary: Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 25, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Diary is taking a day off for the holiday, but this eloquent Proclamation by Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross in 1936 seems appropriate for reposting today, even though some of the language is dated.

Proclamation issued by Gov. Wilbur Cross on Nov. 12, 1936.
Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year. In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of Public Thanksgiving for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved State with the favored regions of earth – for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives – and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken man’s faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; – that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.

Music From The Western Reserve: pianists Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Emanuela Friscioni (Nov. 14)

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by Peter Feher

Even the best pianists only share a keyboard in performance with someone they trust. Fortunately for Cleveland audiences, the bond between two players doesn’t get much deeper than the duo of Antonio Pompa-Baldi and Emanuela Friscioni.

The husband-and-wife piano team gave a spectacular four-hands recital at Christ Church Episcopal in Hudson on November 14, part of Music From The Western Reserve’s 2021–2022 concert series.

You could see the relationship at work on a practical level. Repertoire for two players at the same piano requires a certain choreography. There’s just one of each pedal to share, and the hand crossings left and right — which can be so fun to watch a soloist pull off — get more complicated when another person’s involved. At times, Pompa-Baldi drew a hand away from the keyboard and into his body, making room for Friscioni, and at the close of a few delicate phrases, the two were crouched together over the same final notes at one end of the instrument. [Read more…]

Cleveland Pops: “A Salute to John Williams” (Nov. 12)

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by Peter Feher

“And now for the two notes that changed the course of music history.” Conductor Carl Topilow was half-joking in his introduction to the “Shark Theme” from Jaws, just one of many recognizable movie moments from the Cleveland Pops Orchestra’s “Salute to John Williams” on November 12.

But he was also hinting at the composer’s influential, all-too-easy-to-imitate style, and piece after piece proved this true, immersing the audience at Severance Music Center in Williams’ sometimes repetitive but always satisfying musical world.

The signature sounds of these famous film scores are not so much John Williams’ invention as allusions to other classical pieces. The foreboding half-step from Jaws, growing more and more furious in the cellos and basses, shares something with Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony and Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin. [Read more…]

Rocky River Chamber Music Society: Arsentiy Kharitonov, piano (Nov. 15)

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by Daniel Hathaway

Russian pianist Arsentiy Kharitonov played the second concert in the Rocky River Chamber Music Society Series on Monday evening, November 15, not in the Society’s home venue — West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church — but at Lakewood Congregational Church, due to COVID-19 concerns. I watched the recital, a hybrid event with in-person attendance permitted, via the live stream.

Unlike most concert pianists, who seem to have taken to the keyboard while they were still learning to walk, Kharitonov only began his studies at the age of 16. But he plays with such naturalness and easy virtuosity that you’d never imagine he came late to the party. [Read more…]

Arts Renaissance Tremont: Cavani assume directorship with Beethoven & Montgomery (Nov. 21) 

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by Daniel Hathaway

The Cavani Quartet’s well-attended concert on Sunday, November 21 at St. Wendelin Church marked the sixth of eight performances in the ensemble’s roaming “Beethoven and Beyond” series, as well as the beginning of the 30th season of the Arts Renaissance Tremont series.

Now under the Cavani’s artistic direction following the passing of its founder, Christine Haff-Paluck, ART also introduced a new venue for its concerts, previously presented at Pilgrim UCC.

Each concert in “Beethoven and Beyond” includes two of LvB’s string quartets with a contemporary work in between, usually by way of contrast, although in her introductory remarks, primo violinist Annie Fullard drew thematic connections between the pizzicati in Beethoven’s “Harp” Quartet and Jessie Montgomery’s Strum. [Read more…]

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