by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S EVENTS:
Piano Cleveland, Cleveland School of the Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art will come together tonight at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium at CMA for a collaborative, multi-disciplinary performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. Details in our Concert Listings.
R.I.P. TIMOTHY ROBSON:
The sad news reached us yesterday of the unexpected passing of our longtime colleague and friend Timothy Robson, one of the first people I met when I came to work at Trinity Cathedral in 1977, and one of the original correspondents for ClevelandClassical.com when the website was founded in September of 2008.
Tim emailed me on February 9 to tell us that he had experienced shortness of breath after returning from his father’s funeral in Iowa the last week of January. Eventually, he was admitted to University Hospitals, where he was diagnosed with a blood clot in his lungs, and a CT scan revealed a mass in his abdomen for which he underwent surgery on February 22. The mass was cancerous and was successfully removed.
In an email to parishioners on March 15, the rector of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Bay Village where Tim had been serving as organist wrote, “He was making good progress in a physical rehabilitation center and texted yesterday that he was going home later this week. This morning, Tim had a massive brain aneurysm from which he would not recover.”
Tim wrote his own short bio for this website:
Timothy Robson was for 37 years a librarian at Case Western Reserve University, ending his career as Associate Director for Academic Engagement Services in the university’s Kelvin Smith Library. In addition to being a regular contributor to ClevelandClassical, Robson is the regular Cleveland correspondent for Bachtrack.com, the London-based classical music site. Robson was Director of Music at Euclid Avenue Congregational Church in Cleveland for 27 years. Since then he has become an in-demand substitute organist in many churches in Northeast Ohio. He has performed many recitals in the area, making a specialty of performing music from our time and has played world premieres of several works written especially for him. Robson holds degrees in music and library science from Drake University and Case Western Reserve University.
Tim leaves his husband, George, whom he officially married last month after more than forty years together.
Tim Robson’s reviews were scholarly in tone but down-to-earth in their appeal. He was proud of his upbringing in rural Iowa — the blog he kept until the end of 2006 was titled “Virtual Farm Boy,” and he faithfully returned to attend and report on the Iowa State Fair each year.
His musical interests were wide-ranging — a trip to England a few years ago included standing in the rain for hours to attend the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge as well as joining the mosh pit for a concert by Lady Gaga.
Tim will be sorely missed. Arrangements are pending.
In the photo above, Tim (far right) looks on in the lobby of the Cleveland Museum of Art as the French composer Olivier Messiaen and his wife, pianist Yvonne Loriod, confer with musical arts curator Karel Paukert in 1978. (On Tim’s right: assistant curator Bruce Shewitz, organ builder Charles Ruggles, and Cleveland Public Library music librarian Kathleen Shamp.)
NEWS BRIEFS:
Tri-C Jazz Fest has announced the lineup for its 2022 festival, which will run from June 24-26 in PlayHouse Square.
MINI-VIDEOS FROM UKRAINE:
In a moving clip, 94 violinists from around the world come together to accompany violinists in Ukraine.
A brief Twitter clip documents a performance on March 9 by the Kyiv Classic Symphony Orchestra in Maidan Square.
And click here to watch young Amelia singing the Disney Frozen song “Let it Go” inside a Ukrainian bomb shelter
INTERESTING READ:
Tom Welsh, CMA’s Director of Performing Arts and Donald Nally, Conductor of The Crossing, write about the Philadelphia choir’s forthcoming performance on March 25 at the Museum. Read “Music for the Times We’re In” here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
There’s quite a mixed list of arrivals and departures to acknowledge on this 16th day of March. Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi (who died in 1736 in Pozzuoli of tuberculosis at the age of 26), American composer and conductor Edwin London (founder of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, who was born in Philadelphia in 1929), English conductor Sir Roger Norrington (born in 1934 in Oxford), American composer David Del Tredici (born in 1937 in Cloverdale, California), Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (who died in Los Angeles in 1968), and American composer Roger Sessions (who died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1985 at the age of 88).
A pastiche of their compositions and performances would make a remarkably varied concert program.
We could start with Pergolesi’s popular Stabat Mater, performed here by Nathalie Stutzmann (conductor), Philippe Jaroussky (countertenor), and Emöke Barath (soprano) at the Château de Fontainebleau), and follow that with something completely different: Ed London’s The Declaration of Independence with saxophonist Howie Smith.
To end a rather long first half, how about Norrington’s take on Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique with the Royal College of Music Symphony?
Transitioning after intermission to another world of fantasy, we could launch the second half with one of Del Tredici’s Alice (in Wonderland) pieces — an obsession of his.
Then as an entremet, one of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s classical guitar works. There are a hundred to choose from, but here are some interesting possibilities: Korean guitarist Bokyung Byun performing his Escarraman for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society this season; Petra Poláčková playing the first movement of his Omaggio a Boccherini; Chaconne Klaverenga playing the fourth movement of his Quintet with Rebecca Benjamin and Andrew Ma, violins, Mark Liu, viola, and Sarah Miller, cello, at the Cleveland Institute of Music in April, 2016; or Klaverenga performing his Capriccio Diabolico at CIM in May, 2015.
For a finale, why not the work that earned Sessions his Pulitzer Prize in 1982. Click here for a 1981 performance of his Concerto for Orchestra by Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony. (Discussion of his opera Montezuma, premiered in 1976 by Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston, is best left for another day.)
