by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 7 pm, Brendan Caldwell leads the Baldwin Wallace Symphonic Band & Chamber Winds in Gamble Auditorium.
The final trio of concerts in The Cleveland Orchestra’s Beethoven Piano Cycle continues on Friday at 7:30, when Yunchan Lim, winner of the 2023 Van Cliburn Competition, will solo in the Fifth Concerto, preceded by his New England Conservatory mentor, Minsoo Sohn, who will do the honors in Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1.
Apollo’s Fire continues its run of “Hope and Solitude,” with countertenor Reginald Mobley, oboist Debra Nagy, and violinist Alan Choo performing music by Henry Purcell and J.S. Bach at 7:30 at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts.
And the Oberin Conservatory has planned a weekend of festivities to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Flentrop organ (pictured) in Warner Concert Hall. It begins with a faculty recital by Jonathan Moyer and Christa Rakich on Friday at 7:30 (J.S. Bach’s German Organ Mass, free and live streamed.)
For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Conductor Fritz Reiner passed away on this date in 1963 at the age of 74.
Born in Budapest, Reiner studied piano with Béla Bártok at the Franz Liszt Academy, and worked with Richard Strauss during early conducting engagements in Europe. After moving to the U.S. in 1922, he became principal conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony, taught at the Curtis Institute of Music (Leonard Bernstein was among his students), led the Pittsburgh Symphony for a decade, and spent a handful of years as principal conductor at the Metropolitan Opera.
But his ten years in Chicago are considered the height of his career. That included a stamp of approval from Igor Stravinsky, who was not exactly famous for doling out kind words, and who described the orchestra under Reiner as “the most precise and flexible orchestra in the world.” (Clevelanders may beg to differ!)
Listen to the CSO play Bártok’s Concerto for Orchestra here
