by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Concerts in all flavors to choose from
. R.I.P. violinist Geoff Nuttall (pictured), news from Piano Cleveland
. Howard Hanson & Franz Liszt celebrate birthdays, Jean-Marie Leclair & Alessandro Scarlatti take their leave
WEEKEND EVENTS:
Today, at 12:15 pm, McGaffin Carillon Concert & Live Stream presents Sheryl Modlin, guest carillonneur (Church of the Saviour, Cleveland Hts.). Her program of Halloween favorites includes themes from The Adams Family and the Munsters, “the” Bach Toccata & music by Gounod, Chopin, and John Williams. McGaffin Tower, 11205 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Free. Click here for live stream.
At 7:30 the imaginative period ensemble Les Délices unveils their new program, Winds of Change, at the Akron Public Library (downtown). The all-instrumental concert features chamber works from the eve of the French and Haitian Revolutions, inspired by philosophical ideals of liberty and equality and early abolitionist writing. Classical Era works by Joseph Bologne Chevalier de St. Georges and Luigi Boccherini will be paired with Haitian composer Sydney Guillaume’s commission A Journey to Freedom. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 7:30 at the Church of the Covenant and Sunday at 4:00 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. Click here for ticket information.
On Saturday at 4:00 pm, Windsong presents “Sing Out for Justice: Moving Toward Equity and Inclusion.” Cleveland’s Feminist Chorus draws on the Justice Choir Songbook for a community sing-out that includes songs about gender, race, immigrant status, and sexual orientation. Doors open at 3. Waetjen Auditorium, Cleveland State University. 2001 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Free, but registration requested.
Later that evening at 8:00 pm at Severance Music Center, guest conductor Daniel Harding leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Jorg Widmann’s Viola Concerto featuring Antoine Tamestit, and Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony. Tickets are available online.
On Sunday, October 23 at 4:00 pm, Arts at Holy Trinity in Akron will present Hungarian-born organist Balint Karosi in music by Charles Marie Widor, J. S. Bach, William Bolcom, and Max Reger. The playlist also includes Karosi’s Kodály Triptyque as well as an improvisation on a submitted theme. The event is free.
And at 7:00 in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Gartner Auditorium, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis presents “FIVE MINUTES for Earth,” featuring 17 World Premieres of works by Jocelyn C. Chambers, Chen Yi, Michael Daugherty, Daniel Dorff, Reena Esmail, Keith Fitch, Patrick Harlin, Stephen Hartke, Nathaniel Heyder, Takuma Itoh, Aaron Jay Kernis, Steven Mark Kohn, Philip Maneval, Máximo Diego Pujol, Arturo Sandoval, Gary Schocker, and Zhou Long. Read a preview article here. Tickets available here.
Even more events can be found on the Clevelandclassical.com Concert Listings page.
IN THE NEWS:
We learned with great sadness of the passing of violinist Geoff Nuttall (pictured) of pancreatic cancer at the age of 56. As the founding first-violinist of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Director of Chamber Music for the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC, and a Stanford University faculty member since 1998, Geoff was a deeply respected, admired, and inspirational presence in the chamber music field. Read his obituary here.
Piano Cleveland invites everyone to gather their friends on Wednesday, November 2 at 6:30 PM at Phunkenship, Platform Brewery’s sour-beer facility, to enjoy the sounds of classical piano with Chengzi Li, popular tunes with pianist Joe Leaman and vocalist Helen Welch, and jazz pianist Theron Brown with trumpeter Tommy Lehman. It’s free and no tickets are required. Click here for more information.
Speaking of Piano Cleveland, beginning tomorrow, October 21st, applications will be accepted for the 2023 Cleveland International Piano Competition and Institute for Young Artists. This innovative Competition & Institution duel program, combines high-level artistry and rich pedagogical experience for young pianists worldwide. This event is presented by Piano Cleveland at the Cleveland Institute of Music in partnership with the Lang Lang Foundation. Click here to learn more.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On October 21, 1896 American composer and conductor Howard Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, 26 years after its founding by Czech, German, and Scandinavian settlers (and named after the eastern wahoo, a shrub indigenous to the area).
Tapped by industrialist George Eastman in 1923 to be the second director of his new Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, Hanson served the school for 40 years, during which he was also prolific as a composer. (Speaking of music schools, on this date in 1926 in New York City a charter was granted to another famous institution, the Juilliard School, the successor to the Institute of Musical Art where Hanson had studied in 1912).
As a conductor, Hanson led the premieres of many American works including William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1 “Afro-American,” which debuted on this date in 1931. His own Symphony No. 2, subtitled “Romantic” was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to mark the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony, who premiered it in November of 1930. One of his most popular works, it’s recently been arranged by Cameron Carpenter for his innovative International Touring Organ. Have a taste here.
The October 22 calendar mostly records historic passings, perhaps none so tragic as that of French Baroque composer Jean-Marie Leclair. On this date in 1764, he was murdered in his home, supposedly by his jealous nephew, although no one was ever tried for the crime.
Making a more natural departure, Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, father of the prolific keyboard composer Domenico, died on this date in 1725 in Naples at the age of 65. In his memory, we suggest his extraordinary setting of Stabat Mater for ten solo voices and organ, sung here by Ars Nova Copenhagen, led by Paul Hillier and recorded in the Garnisonskirken in April, 2014.
On a happier note, our birthday boy is Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt, born near Bayreuth on October 22, 1811. His eventful life and career included his single-handed invention of the solo piano recital, for which he wrote an enormous number of pieces to challenge keyboardists and make listeners swoon.
One familiar example from that repertoire is his Mephisto Waltz No. 1, played here by Megan-Geoffrey Prinz at the Cleveland Institute of Music on May 20, 2018 (the fantastic story behind the piece is included in the notes).
Liszt also invented and championed the tone poem, of which he wrote a dozen during his years in Weimar. Orpheus tells the tale of the singing poet and lyre player who learned his art from Apollo himself. It was first performed as an orchestral introduction to Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, but Liszt later made a transcription for organ. So did Jean Guillou, who played the work in 1977 at Notre-Dame in Paris. Listen here.
Wrapping up the weekend, American composer and diarist Ned Rorem was born on October 23 in 1923 in Richmond, Indiana. A prolific composer of art songs, he penned a few operas as well — listen here to a performance of his musical version of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. Baldwin Wallace produced the work in 2010.
Rorem’s tell-all diaries have tended to overshadow his compositions. The New Yorker published The Ultimate Diary, a wicked parody of his writings in 1975, and The Paris Review wrote about them in 1999. Rorem sat for an interview with New Music USA’s Frank J. Oteri in 2006. Watch “Ned Rorem at Home” here.
