by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 4:30 pm violist Wendy Richman, singer Alice Teyssier, and composer David Reminick will present the world premiere Reminick’s The Story Book for viola and voice along with works by Richman, Kaija Saariaho, and Hildegard of Bingen in Oberlin’s Stull Recital Hall. At 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center, guest conductor Philippe Herreweghe leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Beethoven’s Overture to Egmont and Symphony No. 6, and Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1. Jean-Guihen Queyras (pictured) is the soloist. And 8:00 pm CUSP presents LIGAMENT — Anika Kildegaard + Will Yager — and Ensemble Mercury at Convivium 33 Gallery. Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other performances.
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Cleveland Orchestra announced it has received a generous gift of $4.6 million from longtime patrons and supporters Myrna and Jim Spira. The contribution will help support The Cleveland Orchestra’s artistic programming, pension fund, and annual fund. The gift also endows the Myrna and Jim Spira Bass Clarinet Chair, currently occupied by Amy Zoloto. “It’s a privilege to be part of a community that has supported the development of an orchestra of this caliber in a city of this size. It’s a remarkable civic accomplishment,” Spira said in a press release.
Long-lost Gershwin musical found by University of Michigan researcher. Material from the score of famed composer George Gershwin’s lost musical “La La, Lucille” is found at Amherst College by University of Michigan researcher Jacob Kerzner. Read Samuel Dodge’s Michigan Live article here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
German-British composer George Frideric Handel was born on this date in 1685 in Halle (in what was then Brandenburg-Prussia). He moved to London in his late twenties and spent the majority of his career there, becoming a British citizen fifteen years later. Naturally London was also the location of many premieres of important works, including the oratorio Esther, which was first performed on this same date in 1732 on Handel’s 47th birthday.
Click here to watch a performance of the famous aria “Tune your harps with cheerful noise” in the hands of San Francisco’s early music ensemble Voices of Music. Thomas Cooley is the tenor, and Marc Schachman is the Baroque oboist.
Handel makes an interesting counterpart to Edward Elgar, who passed away on this date in 1934. Although Elgar was English by birth, he nevertheless felt like an outsider there, being self-taught, having grown up relatively poor, and being Roman Catholic in a heavily Protestant country. Indeed there was some discomfort early on around his choral work The Dream of Gerontius (now deeply embedded in the canon) since it sets text from a poem that explores the afterlife through a Catholic lens. Getting performances was not always easy, and in some cases a revised text was used.
Click here to listen to the “Demon’s Chorus” from that work here, excerpted from a performance at the Southwell Music Festival in 2016.
