by Jarrett Hoffman
ON TODAY IN PERSON:
First, two early-afternoon options. On the Music at Noon series, the Dana School of Music presents the final concert of the Northeast Ohio Keyboard Festival at 12:15 pm at the Butler Institute of American Art at Youngstown State. Also at 12:15, Florence Mustric takes to the Beckerath organ at Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland for “A Tribute to Karl Hass.”
Then at 7, it’s back to Youngstown — to Harrison Commons Field — for the YSU Wind Ensemble Outdoor Pops Concert. Conductors Michael S. Butler and Kate Ferguson will lead you through music by Gershwin, Ticheli, and Sousa. If it rains, the concert moves to Ford Theater in Bliss Hall.
More details in our Concert Listings.
LOCAL NEWS:
Last week, CityMusic Cleveland announced its 2021-22 chamber music series, titled Justice, Equality, and Hope. One highlight of the ten-concert series is the abundance of newly-commissioned works by women composers: Denise Ondishko, Kotoka Suzuki, Michi Wiancko, Elena Ruehr, Jungyoon Wie, Daixuan Ai, Jasmine Barnes, Jessica Meyer, Margaret Brouwer, Fusun Koksal, and Dawn Avery (all pictured above).
The opening concert, “American Dream,” takes place on Friday, September 24 at 7:00 pm at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, when the Pantheon Ensemble — Masha Andreini and Mari Sato, violins, Yael Senamaud-Cohen, viola, Helen Hawersaat, cello, Tracy Rowell, bass, and Elizabeth DeMio, piano — will play works by Gershwin, Ondishko, Boulanger, and Dvorák.
See the full season schedule here. All concerts are free, no registration needed. Masks and social distancing are required. For those unable to attend in person, select programs will also be recorded for release on CityMusic’s YouTube Channel.
One last bit of news: individual tickets for the 2021-22 Cleveland Orchestra season, which opens October 14, are now on sale. An update to the docket of guest artists: pianist Jeremy Denk replaces previously-announced soloist Yuja Wang in the Cleveland Orchestra premiere of John Adams’ Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? with Adams on the podium at Severance Hall on February 3, 5, and 6, 2022.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this day last year, we paid tribute to four musicians who entered or exited from this world on September 15 in music history: Swiss composer Frank Martin (born in Geneva in 1890), Austrian organist, conductor, composer, and influential teacher Anton Heiller (born in Vienna in 1923), American soprano Jessye Norman (born in Augusta, Georgia in 1945), and Austrian composer Anton Webern (died in Mittersill, Austria in 1945).
This go-around, we’ll add one name to that list: French composer and pianist Louise Dumont Farrenc, who died on this date in Paris in 1875.
Farrenc built up a stellar reputation at the keyboard during the 1830s, leading to her appointment in 1842 as piano professor at the Paris Conservatory, a position in which she remained for 30 years — making her the only female tenured professor at the Conservatory during the entire 19th century.
As a composer, it was in chamber music where she left her strongest legacy. Her two piano quintets, Op. 30 and 31, were especially renowned, and she won the Académie des Beaux-Arts’ Chartier Prize twice.
Her chamber music even played an important role in helping her beat the gender pay gap. Despite being known as an excellent teacher, one of the best in Europe, she was paid less than her male colleagues — that is, until the triumphant premiere of her 1849 Nonet in E-flat, Op. 38, when she was finally granted equal pay.
If only she didn’t have to go above and beyond for that to be the case.