by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
The Cleveland Orchestra returns to the stage this weekend at Blossom for identical Independence Day concerts on Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 pm. Led by Brett Mitchell, the all-American program features Michelle Cann in Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement, Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, Mary D. Watkins’ Soul of Remembrance, Adolphus Hailstork’s An American Fanfare, and Aaron Copland’s Suite from Appalachian Spring.
As one member of the wind section posted on Facebook yesterday, “After 477 days apart, it is an incredible honor to be making music with The Cleveland Orchestra again!” Read a preview article here, and an interview with Michelle Cann here.
Americana is also on the agenda for Sunday’s 4:30 pm Encore Chamber Music Institute concert in Gates Mills. Copland’s Appalachian Spring will be featured, along with a bluegrass set by Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper. Read a preview article here.
Also, check out special online events from the Oregon Bach Festival (“Phenomenal Women Part 1”), London’s Voces8 (“A wide-ranging recital connecting natural and spiritual regeneration, recognizing loss, beauty, love and joy”), and pianist Min Kwon (“who has commissioned more than 70 composers including Terry Riley, Tania León, Nico Muhly, George Lewis, and more to each write a variation on America the Beautiful”). Details in our Concert Listings.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
On July 3, 1854, Czech/Moravian composer Leoš Janáček was born in Hukvaldy. Now seems a good time to recall one of his most remarkable works, the Sinfonietta, which was performed by Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra on January 10 of 2020. That was just weeks before the pandemic closed live Severance Hall concerts down and effectively banished wind players from the world’s concert halls.
I wrote about that evening in a review, and Roger Mastroianni captured the moment in a photo. Look at all those extra brass players!
After the stage reset, a phalanx of nine trumpeters took their places, standing in a long row at the back of the stage for Janáček’s “Military Symphonietta,” inspired by the “pretty fanfares” the composer heard from the distant garrison band while walking through a park in his hometown of Brno. While the physical setup might have suggested an imminent onslaught of deafening brass, the opening was pure gold. Two bass trumpets and a pair of Wagner tubas helped join low and high brass in a seamless, resplendent ensemble…How can you end a piece that began so strikingly? By repeating the beginning fanfares with the Orchestra joining in, and so Janáček did.
Enjoy earlier interpretations led by George Szell (October, 1965) and Christoph von Dohnányi (September, 1988) here and here.
On July 4, 1826, American song composer Stephen Foster was born near Pittsburgh, becoming globally famous during his short life for his quintessentially American music. That’s not hyperbole: back in 1967 during a choral tour around the world, I stayed with a family in Taiwan who knew next to nothing about American culture, but proudly displayed a picture of Foster on the wall of their living room (next to a photo of Chiang Kai-shek).
Minstrel shows, now regarded as overtly racist, were the usual platform for Foster’s songs, and his music conjures up images of the antebellum South, although he visited that part of the country only once, during his honeymoon. He died, perhaps at his own hand, in New York at the age of 37.
The Nat Shilkret Salon Group offers a compendium of Foster songs here.
Australian American pianist and composer Percy Grainger was fond of Foster’s music, and wrote a musical extravaganza based on Camptown Races “for six single voices, mixed chorus, men’s voices, musical glasses and bowls, bowed metal marimba, piano solo and orchestra (or 2nd piano)” featured at the Last Night of the 2000 London Proms, with Sir Andrew Davis conducting the BBC Symphony and Chorus. Watch it here.
And Argentine nuevo tango composer Astor Piazzolla expired on July 4th, 1992 in Buenos Aires. Google dedicated its homepage doodle to the band leader and bandoneon virtuoso on the centennial of his birth earlier this year. You can access a collection of his biggest hits here (already enjoyed by a quarter of a million fans, many of whom have commented in Spanish).
Finally, the Baltimore Symphony suggests a non-traditional playlist for Independence Day. Click here to explore links to the music they recommend.
