by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
This evening at 7 pm, the Cleveland International Piano Competition continues with part one of its Salon Round. Giuseppe Guarrera (Italy) and Zijian Wei: (China) will each perform a 45-60 minute program in historic Glidden House on Ford Drive in University Circle. “In the grand tradition of salons, personal narratives and histories will be interspersed throughout the program.” Click here for ticket information.
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassicaal.com Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Czech-American composer Karel Husa was born in Prague on August 7, 1921. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1954, and taught composition and conducting at Cornell University for 38 years. In a January, 2017 New York Times obituary, Steve Smith writes
Mr. Husa created works in most of the standard concert-music forms apart from opera, including two symphonies, several concertos, four string quartets and three ballets.…
In “Music for Prague 1968,” a response to the Soviet Union’s crushing of the Prague Spring reform movement, he incorporated a 15th-century Hussite anthem used previously by Dvorak and Smetana to connote solidarity and resistance, alongside eerie, unsettling microtonal passages and instrumental effects evoking bird song, church bells, Morse code and gunfire.
The piece, given its premiere by the Ithaca College Concert Band in January 1969, became one of the most-played works in the wind-ensemble repertoire, with more than 10,000 known performances to date.
Click here to listen to a retrospective of Husa’s music, including Music for Prague, from a 2005 symposium in which the composer participated.
