By Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
Saturday’s events begin at 7 with Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival’s mashup of Bach & Bartok with pianists Zarina Melik-Stepanova & Alexandra Nguyen & Jamie Ryan & Josh Ryan, percussion, in Gamble Auditorium.
Marking the 25th anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s murder in Wyoming, on Saturday at 7 Avon Lake UCC, Gregory Ristow will conduct the first of two performances by Cleveland Chamber Choir & Lakewood High School Chamber Choir of Craig Hella Johnson’s affecting modern oratorio, Considering Matthew Shepard. The program will be repeated on Sunday at 4 at Trinity Cathedral (rehearsal pictured above).
Also on Saturday, at 7:30, organist Robert Mollard will join Christopher Wilkins and the Akron Symphony for Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Worship, Ottorino Respighi’s Church Windows & Camille Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony at. E.J. Thomas Hall.
On Saturday at 8 pm, Jeannette Sorrell will lead Apollo’s Fire in a one-night-only performance of Handel’s Israel in Egypt with Amanda Forsythe & Sonya Headlam, sopranos, Cody Bowers, countertenor, Jacob Perry, tenor, Edward Vogel, baritone, and Apollo’s Singers in Kulas Hall at CIM.
Saturday wraps up with “A Night in Hollywood,” an 8 pm concert by Cleveland Pops Orchestra, Carl Topilow, conducting, at Severance Music Center.
There’s more to Easter Island than its iconic statues, as pianist Mahani Teave will prove in her 2 pm recital on Sunday on the Tri-C Classical Piano Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Island native will perform works from her debut album, Rapa Nui Odyssey.
And there’s more keyboard music on Sunday: At 4 pm, organist Daniel Colaner will play a solo recital at the Shrine of St. Stanislaus, and at 5 pm, pianist Zsolt Bognár will perform on the Music From the Western Reserve series at Christ Church, Hudson.
For details, visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
October 21:
American composer and conductor Howard Hanson was born on this date in 1896 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, a charter was granted to another famous institution, the Juilliard School in New York City, on this date in 1926, 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.
October 22:
Today’s 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.
Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano (1840), by Josef Danhauser.
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). And Seraph Brass recently played an adaptation of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody at Oberlin (watch an archive video here).
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.
