by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At Noon, organist Evan de Jong will play works by George Muffat and John Bull, and J.S. Bach’s Partita on ‘Sei Gegrüßet, Jesu Gütig” at the Church of the Covenant (live stream available).
And three events are scheduled for tonight at 7:30 pm. The Cleveland Chamber Music Society presents the Dover Quartet (pictured) at Plymouth Church in Shaker Hts., Akron’s Tuesday Musical presents the Kyiv Virtuosi Symphony Orchestra on its “Tour of Peace” with members of the MultiPiano Ensemble (Israel) at E.J. Thomas Hall, and harpsichordist Jay Krasnow plays 18th century German transcriptions in Harkness Chapel at CWRU.
For details, visit our Concert Listings.
PASSINGS:
Today’s New York Times reports that “Eric Carmen, whose plaintive vocals soared above the crunching guitars of the 1970s power-pop pioneers the Raspberries before his soft rock crooning made him a mainstay of 1980s music, has died. He was 74.
“The Raspberries, which formed in Cleveland, burst onto the American rock scene in 1972 with their self-titled debut album, featuring a raspberry-scented scratch-and-sniff sticker and their biggest hit: “Go All the Way,” a provocative song for its day, sung from the point of view of a young woman.
“Dave Swanson of the website Ultimate Classic Rock called it “the definitive power pop song of all time,” as the emerging style, known for grafting bright ’60s-era vocal harmonies onto the heavy guitar riffs of the ’70s, would come to be called.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On March 12, 1837, French organist and composer Alexandre Guilmant was born in Meudon. Titulaire of the Parisian church La Trinité for 30 years (Messiaen held the post even longer beginning in 1931), Guilmant founded Paris’s Schola Cantorum, taught Marcel Dupré at the Paris Conservatory, and left a large legacy of works for the organ — his sole compositional interest.
Guilmant played his Fugue in D at the opening concert for the E.F. Walcker & Sons organ in Latvia’s Riga Dom (Cathedral) in 1884 for an audience of 3,000. Latvian organist Aivars Kalējs played the work in July, 2012 on the same instrument (but probably for not quite as many listeners).
During the Soviet occupation of Riga, the Dom was secularized. But Moscow picked up the bill for the renovation of its famous instrument in 1984 when the entire organ was flown to the shop of Flentrop Orgelbouw in Zaandam, the Netherlands. Score one for the West.
While the grand organ of Notre-Dame de Paris is undergoing restoration after the fire, enjoy Olivier Latry’s performance of the Finale of Guilmant’s Sonata No. 1. And for fans of American organist Christopher Houlihan, here’s his performance of Guilmant’s March, Op. 15 based on the “Lift up your heads” chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Houlihan plays a large Allen electronic instrument. Loaded question: can you tell the difference?
On March 12, 1890, Russian ballet master Vaslav Nijinsky, famous — or notorious — for creating the role of the Faun in Debussy’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune, was born in Kyiv. Although his performance seems to have been filmed, Ballets Russes impresario Sergei Diaghilev suppressed its release. But Nijinsky’s close counterpart Rudolph Nureyev contributed a tribute in 1980 in partnership with the Joffrey Ballet.
March 12, 1985 saw the death of conductor Eugene Ormandy (born Jeno Blau in Hungary), who launched his American career with what is now the Minnesota Orchestra, then chalked up a record-winning 44 years as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Both heralded and criticized for developing “The Philadelphia Sound,” to some ears everything he conducted sounded the same. Listen here to a live recording of Ormandy conducting Rachmaninoff’s Third Symphony in 1963.
