by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Turning the calendar page, we find ourselves on the cusp between the end of June festivals and the opening of the Blossom Music Center season.
Today’s agenda is blank. For details of upcoming concerts, visit our Concert Listings page.
INTERESTING READ:
“This season, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin experimented with programming works by female composers at every performance. Results were mixed.” Read (or listen to) Jeffrey Arlo Brown’s report from Berlin in Sunday’s New York Times, “What Happened When an Orchestra Said Goodbye to All-Male Concerts.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today marks the anniversaries of two births of note — German composer Hans Werner Henze in 1926 and American conductor Philip Brunelle in 1943.
Henze’s extensive body of works incorporated neoclassicism, jazz, twelve-tone technique, and serialism, as well as rock and some popular music.
Gay, and an avowed Marxist, Henze’s works were influenced by the theater, serialism, Italian and Arabic music, and jazz. The 1968 Hamburg premiere of Das Floß der Medusa, a requiem for Che Guavara, sparked a riot and the arrest of his librettist. Listen to his “oratorio volgare e militare” in a 2017 performance here.
An example of his works for smaller forces is the Ode an eine Äolsharfe, pour guitare concertante et quinze instruments (1986). Guitarist Pierre Bibault and the Ensemble intercontemporain under the direction of Brad Lubman perform movement III: “An Philomene” here.
Following his death in 2012, The Guardian’s Guy Rickards beautifully summarized the composer’s fascinating life. Read the obituary here.
Brunelle, probably best known for his choral work with Vocal Essense on the long-running Minnesota Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion, gave a series of chats about composers from the piano in the Guild Hall of Plymouth Church in Minneapolis. In episode No. 70, he discusses African American composer Hall Johnson, who wrote “choral music that sounds like a symphony orchestra.” Watch here.
