by Daniel Hathaway
At Noon, organist Mark Slatter will play works by Thomas Tompkins, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Georg Böhm, Louis Vierne & Edward Elgar on both organs at the Church of the Covenant. Attend in person, or click here for the live stream.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
ChamberFest Cleveland has announced details for its 12th season, which runs from June 12-29. Co-artistic directors Diana Cohen, Franklin Cohen, and Roman Rabinovich (pictured above) write, “This year’s theme of “Sacred + Profane” is a timeless concept: We as humans have this necessity to transcend, to reach for the divine, and we also have bodies that exist in the real world, that hug and hurt and hear beautiful music.” Click here for complete programs and ticket information.
INTERESTING READ:
In a New York Times feature last Sunday, Hugh Morris writes that “Gustav Holst composed The Planets with crucial help from others. Firsthand accounts and the score reflect how collaborative its creation was.” Click here to read “The Team Effort Behind One of Classical Music’s greatest hits.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Just one historical event to spotlight today: the founding of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1842, making the ensemble the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States (some sources report that the founding took place on April 5). The first concert was given in New York’s Apollo Rooms in lower Manhattan in December of that year with some 600 in attendance. (Photo: Gustav Mahler rehearsing the orchestra during his term as music director).
The organization’s complex history, including mergers with the New York Symphony, the New/National Symphony, and its summer seasons at Lewisohn Stadium is richly chronicled in a Performance History database that documents “all known concerts of all of these organizations, amounting to more than 20,000 performances.
“The New York Philharmonic’s Leon Levy Digital Archives provides an additional interface for searching printed programs alongside other digitized items such as marked music scores, marked orchestral parts, business records, and photos.”
Start searching — or browsing — here.