By Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Unusual concerts by two orchestras:
At 7:30 The Cleveland Orchestra presents the first of four screenings of Miloš Forman’s 1984 Mozart biopic Amadeus, adapted from Peter Shaffer’s 1979 stage play, with three more to come on Friday at 7:30, Saturday at 8:00, and Sunday at 2. Richard Kaufman conducts the live score.
At the same hour, the Youngstown Symphony presents NYC-based drag performance artist and professional strings musician Thorgy Thor in “From Brahms to Bruno Mars,” with Lawrence Loh on the podium.
City Music Cleveland has less outrageous Mozart in mind for its 7:30 concert at Fairmount Presbyterian: his Concerto in C for 2 Violins featuring Jung Min Amy Lee & Kyung Sun Lee, along with music by George Walker, Tōru Takemitsu, and Joseph Bologne.
And the 7:30 Warner Concert Hall performance by Oberlin Sinfonietta. includes Gabriella Smith’s Brandenburg Interstices, Shuying Li’s Eight Immortals and the Sea, and Pierre Jalbert’s All Is Now. Timothy Weiss conducts, and Alexa Still is the featured faculty flutist. (The concert is free and will be streamed).
Check our Concert Listings for more details and future performances.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
British composer Gustav Holst was born on September 21, 1874 in Cheltenham. Prolific and inspired by such diverse influences as Hindu music and English folksong, he left a large catalog of music, much of which has been overshadowed by works like The Planets that made his name famous.
Holst’s daughter Imogen recalls her father in a charming documentary, and this restored 1926 recording of The Planets with the composer conducting has been described as revelatory and surprising.
Explore some of Holst’s less familiar choral works with these recordings: His Two Psalms, sung by the Estudio Coral de Buenos Aires in 1981, his Hymn to Jesus, based on the Apocryphal Gospels and performed by the University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra and Grand Chorus in 2012, and — continuing the metaphor of sacred dance — his folklike but sophisticated setting of the old Cornysh carol This have I done for my true love, performed by the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (with scrolling score).
Or take a taste of his settings of hymns from the Rig Veda, with the Hymn of the Travellers, sung by the children’s choir and youth ensemble of the Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris with harp accompaniment.
And English art song composer Roger Quilter took leave of this life on September 21, 1953, leaving a legacy of over a hundred songs, many setting texts by Shakespere, that still figure importantly in vocal recitals. His Three Shakespeare Songs of 1905 are probably at the top of the list, and composer Peter Warlock wrote that O Mistress Mine is “one of the very few things that very simply send me into ecstasies every time I play it.” This performance of the set is by baritone Zak Kariithi and pianist Lemuel Grave.
