by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Operas, Latin-flavored orchestra concerts, and an improvisation fest rise to the top of this weekend’s calendar.
. Almanac: three from the archives
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
On Friday, Cleveland Jazz Orchestra offers “Blues, Gospel, and the Abstract Truth” at the Maltz, Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra feature Mussorgsky’s Pictures, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G (Víkingur Ólafsson) & Louise Farrenc’s Third Symphony (repeated Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 3), while CIM Opera stages Poulenc’s chilling Dialogues des Carmélites (also Sunday at 3) and the Oberlin Improv Fest continues with flutist Nicole Mitchell at the Birenbaum.
Les Délices will fill the marble halls of the Main Cleveland Public Library with renaissance tunes on Saturday at 2 (repeated at the Akron Public Library at the same hour on Sunday), Andréa Walker, soprano, Guillermo Salas Suárez, violin & QinYing Tan, harpsichord & organ celebrate Women’s History Month at Forest Hills Church at 5, Oberlin’s Improv Fest brings pianist/composer Luis Perdomo and a PI Ensemble to Cat in the Cream at 7, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra features bandoneonist Hanzhi Wang (pictured above) in southern hemisphere music at the Church of the Covenant at 7:30, the same hour as the Cleveland Philharmonic hosts pianist Shuai Wang at CSU (repeated in Westlake on Sunday at 3), and at 8 No Exit presents harpist Stephan Haluska at Spaces.
In addition to repeats of earlier events, on Sunday at 4, Versailles Chapel organist Jean-Baptiste Robin plays French music at the Church of the Covenant, and at 7, Matthew Jaroszewicz leads the Canton Symphony in music by Gershwin, Still, Copland, Ballard, Revueltas, Chavez, and Moncayo, accompanied by Westwater Arts’ stunning photochoreography.
See our Concert Listings for details.
IN THE NEWS:
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced a $7 million commitment from Jane B. Nord and the Eric and Jane Nord Family Fund to fund in perpetuity the Jane B. and Eric T. Nord Education Concerts at Severance Music Center and transportation subsidies for students. This transformational gift also made provisions to raise public awareness about these dynamic programs. Jane B. Nord has made it her personal and philanthropic goal to assure that every child, regardless of economic circumstance, can attend Cleveland Orchestra Education Concerts at Severance free of charge, providing equitable access for all young people in Cleveland to the benefits of an education rich in music and the arts. — Cleveland Orchestra press release
ALMANAC FOR MARCH 3-5:
Here are three repostings gleaned from our archives.
March 3:
By Jarrett Hoffman
Chicago-born composer and pianist Margaret Bonds passed away on March 3, 1972. The first Black musician to solo with the Chicago Symphony, Bonds was an important artistic partner of both Florence Price and Langston Hughes, a supporter of Black musicians and composers more broadly through the Margaret Bonds Chamber Music Society, and a popular arranger of spirituals including He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands, created in 1963 for soprano Leontyne Price, who sings it here.
Among Bonds’ settings of texts by Hughes is the song cycle Three Dream Portraits. Listen to a recording by baritone Will Liverman and pianist Paul Sánchez on the album Dreams of a New Day: Songs by Black Composers (movements one, two, and three).
March 4:
By Mike Telin
As we begin the gradual shift from winter into spring, we celebrate the birth of the composer whose name is synonymous with all four seasons. On this day in 1678 Antonio Vivaldi made his world debut in Venice, Italy.
Vivaldi’s page on London’s Classic FM highlights many fun facts about the composer, who was nicknamed il Prete Rosso, (“The Red Priest”). Here are a few to ponder.
- Vivaldi was baptized immediately after he was born, in his own home. This could have been due to his ill health, or the earthquake that shook Venice on the day of his birth.
- Vivaldi suffered from what he called ‘strettezza di petto’ (tightness of the chest) throughout his life — this severe asthma inhibited his speech, and even made him weak and dizzy when he spoke.
- Despite the fact Vivaldi wrote around 800 different works, his music was rarely played after his death in 1741, when his manuscripts were locked away or even attributed to other composers because he was deemed to be out of favor.
- Alongside his religious duties, the composer spent 37 years of his life as a composer, teacher, and conductor at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà asylum for orphaned girls.
- Vivaldi wrote fragments of poetry on the manuscript for his The Four Seasons, and no one’s sure who authored them.
- The Four Seasons may well be his most famous piece, but Vivaldi wrote more than 500 other concertos for other instruments including mandolin, cello, flute, viola d’amore, recorder, and lute. Around 230 of these are for violin — he was, after all, a violinist, like his father.
A fun fact that was not included is that Vivaldi wrote 39 Bassoon Concertos. Click here to listen to Klaus Thunemann perform the Concerto in g, RV 495 with I Musici.
March 5:
By Daniel Hathaway
March 5 marks the birthdates of American composer Arthur Foote (1853 in Salem, MA), Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 in Rio de Janiero), and Australian conductor and virtuoso hornist Barry Tuckwell (1931, in Melbourne). And the departure of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1953 in Moscow, notably upstaged by Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, who died on the same day).
Lee De Forest became the first DeeJay on this date in 1907 when he successfully transmitted Rossini’s William Tell Overture on a radio signal from Telharmonic Hall at Broadway and 40th Street in New York City, to a receiver at the US Naval Yard — less than eight miles away.
Foote, who was a member of the “Boston Six” along with George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker, was the first American composer to have been entirely trained in the United States. Watch a performance of his Night Piece for flute and strings by Joshua Smith and the Cavani Quartet at the Cleveland Institute of Music in December, 2008.
Among Villa-Lobos’ many compositions are his Bachianas Brasileiras pieces in which he evoked the spirit of J.S. Bach. Here’s a performance of No. 5 for soprano (Natasha Simmons) and twelve cellos (students of Mark Kosower) at the Cleveland Institute of Music in February, 2016.
Lots to choose from to celebrate Prokofiev. Let’s start with his Symphony No. 1, nicknamed “Classical,” in a live performance by George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra in 1968. It’s either amusing or maddening to read YouTube comments, but in this case there are only two: “Best I’ve ever heard of the piece!” and “The forces were too large, the tempo too fast. It’s sloppy, by Szell’s standard.” Your thoughts?
