By Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Today at Noon, organist Jonathan Moyer will play music by Georg Böhm & Franz Liszt on both organs at the Church of the Covenant.
Tonight at 7:30, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society opens its 74th season with the Belcea Quartet (pictured), formed in 1994 when its members were studying at the Royal College of Music in London. On the menu: quartets by Schubert, Dvořák & Bartók. Come early and hear a 6:30 pre-concert interview with Eric Kisch. But don’t — out of habit — come to Plymouth Church. The concert has been moved to the Disciples Cultural Arts Center in Cleveland Heights.
For details, visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On October 17, 1849 Frederic Chopin died in Paris. Having planned ahead, his coffin was sprinkled with earth he had brought from Poland before his remains were interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery. You can visit his grave there along with those of such luminaries as Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Édith Piaf.
On this date in 1943, Naumburg prize winning violinist, violist conductor and soprano Susan Davenny Wyner was born in New Haven. She made her Met Opera debut — her only performance in that house — in October of 1981 as Woglinde in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, and later settled in Ohio to lead the Warren Philharmonic and Opera Western Reserve.
And shockingly, a trio of promising composers — Victor Ulmann, Pavel Haas, and Hans Krása — were murdered by the Nazis on this date in 1944 in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
In a happier event, British composer Herbert Howells was born on this date in 1892 in Lydney, Gloucestershire. Howells’ reputation is based on his large output of Anglican church music — ecstatic and elegiac works that celebrate particular cathedrals and choirs, many of which commemorate Howells’ son Michael, who died of polio at the age of nine. Howells’ Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis for London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral is a good example of his lofty tone and special harmonic language: this performance by St. Paul’s Choir in Christopher Wren’s monumental building is led by Barry Rose, with Christopher Dearnley at the organ.
This would also be a good opportunity to take a dip into Howells’ catalog of chamber music. Follow along with the score of his Piano Quartet in a minor here.
Pavel Haas’ String Quartet No. 2, “From the Monkey Mountains” was performed by the ensemble that bears his name on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series on April 17, 2012. Listen to their recording here. His Wind Quintet has been featured locally on concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet (CCMS series), CIM faculty and students (“Violins of Hope” series), and CityMusic Cleveland (“The Composers of Theresienstadt,” including Viktor Ullmann’s Quartet No. 3).
