by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
No Exit’s Year of Surreality presents Piano Dada with Shuai Wang (7pm at CSU’s Drinko Hall), The Cleveland Orchestra led by Fabbio Luisi (pictured) gives the second performance this weekend of the new piccolo concerto commissioned for Mary Kay Fink (7:30, Severance Music Center, repeated Sunday at 3), the Kenyon College Chamber Singers perform on their Spring Tour (7:30 at Fairmount Presbyterian), Les Délices follows Orpheus to the Underworld in the premiere of a new work by Jonathan Woody (7:30 at Akron Civic Theater), and the Western Reserve Chorale & Chamber Orchestra perform Brahms’ German Requiem (7:30 at Lakewood Methodist, repeated Sunday at 3:30 at Church of the Saviour).
Click here to visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings page for more information.
MERCH FOR WOMEN’S DAY:
Van Magazine is offering a perpetual calendar for International Women’s Day that features 250 female composers. “Hang it on your wall, and automatically refute ‘but there just weren’t any women composers back then’ arguments, no verbal effort required. The best news: this calendar can be reused year after year.” Price reduced to $8.50. Click here to order.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
BIRTHS: On this date in 1566 (or maybe 1564, 1560, or 1561) Italian composer (and murderer) Carlo Gesualdo, in Verona, German composer Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach (2nd son of Johann Sebastian), 1714 in Weimar, English composer, pianist & conductor Avril Coleridge Taylor (daughter of Samuel), 1903 in South Norwood, American composer Alan Hovhaness, 1911 in Somerville, MA, American composer Christian Wolff, 1934 in Nice, France & Welsh tenor Robert Tear, 1939 in Barry Glamorgan.
DEATHS: French composer Hector Berlioz, 62, 1869 in Paris, British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, 81, 1961 in London & British composer William Walton, 80, 1983 on the Island of Ischia in Italy.
UNVEILINGS: Sibelius’ Second Symphony, 1902 in Helsinki (composer conducting).
Musical selection: click here to hear a live performance of the Walton Violin Concerto by Zino Francescati and The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, conducting, recorded live on 25, 26, and 27 January 1968 in Severance Hall, where the work’s debut performance was played on December 7, 1939 by Jascha Heifetz under Artur Rodzinsky. Click here to read Mike Telin’s interview with former Cleveland Orchestra associate concertmaster Peter Otto before he played the work in March of 2022 with the Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst. Otto was only the third soloist to be featured in the piece since its debut.
