by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Multiple holiday concerts by area ensembles
. Thoughts about works by Tchaikovsky, Warlock & Stravinsky on the anniversaries of their debuts
THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:
Among the Holiday Events this weekend: Burning River Brass makes its annual appearance on the Arts Renaissance Tremont series (Friday, pictured in the series’ former venue — now moved to St. Wendelin Church), Summit Choral Society appears three times by candlelight at St. Bernard in Akron (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), Cleveland Chamber Choir presents a triptych of “Winter Carols and Lullabies” in Akron (Friday), Cleveland (Saturday) and Cleveland Heights (Sunday), Brett Mitchell conducts Cleveland Orchestra holiday concerts on Friday, twice on Saturday and Sunday, Peter Slowik leads Oberlin’s annual Messiah Sing on Sunday, and flutist Holly Hoffman plays at the Maltz on Sunday evening.
On Saturday, Sounds of St. James (Oberlin vocal ensemble) brings Nine Lessons and carols to the Lakewood church, and Oberlin’s Sacred Heart Concert Series presents carols without words.
The non-Holiday-themed event is a concert by the Contemporary Youth Orchestra on Saturday at Tri-C Metro.
ON THE INTERNET:
Simon Woods, President and CEO of the League of American orchestras, considers the changing role of Music Directors in his essay “Forward Thinking: Courageous Leadership” on Symphony.
Cyberwoes: The Metropolitan Opera and the Canton Symphony have both been challenged by website malfunctions and have been conducting business by workarounds. Click here for the Met story (situation now apparently resolved) and here for an alternative to the Canton site.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
We’ll gloss over Beethoven’s Birthday on December 16, 1770 (enough, already!) and move on to December 17, 1890 which witnessed the first performance of Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg. The libretto for the 2-act work was adapted from E. T. A. Hoffmann’s 1816 short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and the piece shared the program with a second commissioned work, the composer’s opera Iolanta. Tchaikovsky wrote parts of the score in Rouen, France, and suspended his work for three weeks to inaugurate New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Click here to view a much-praised concert version of Nutcracker performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic under Yannick Nezet-Seguin, recorded in December 2010 in De Doelen te Rotterdam.
Most famous works like The Nutcracker have spawned parodies, of which we’ll mention only two: Spike Jones presents for the Kiddies: The Nutcracker Suite (With Apologies to Tchaikovsky), which came out in 1945, and most recently, The Graham Cracker, a modern dance parody dedicated to choreographer Martha Graham.
British composer, critic, and all-around colorful literary figure Philip Heseltine took his own life on this date December 18 in 1930 at the age of 36. He wrote music under the nom de plume of Peter Warlock, and we’ll remember him with some of his jollier music: the Three Carols, colorfully orchestrated by the composer and ebulliently performed by the City of London Choir and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Click on the links to hear “Tyrley trylow,” “Balulalow,” and “As I Sat Under a Sycamore Tree.”
Although commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky for the Boston Symphony, Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms received its first performance in Belgium by the Société Philharmonique de Bruxelles on December 13, 1930, followed by the American premiere a week later by the BSO and the chorus of the Cecilia Society (prepared by Arthur Fiedler!) Koussevitzky had an orchestral work in mind, but Stravinsky had long been contemplating a work for chorus and orchestra. The piece is remarkable for the predominance of wind instruments — the only strings are cellos and basses.
Stravinsky was on the podium for a recording made in Paris with the Orchestre des Concerts Straram and the Alexis Vlassov Choir in February, 1931 (listen here), but there are a number of other recordings with different takes on the striking piece. Here’s one led by Riccardo Muti, obviously recorded in Italy but with no mention of who the performing forces are (La Scala?).
