by Stephanie Manning
HAPPENING TODAY:
Guest conductor Tito Muñoz (pictured) leads the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra tonight in a program of two staples: Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. That’s at 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center.
Admission is free, but register online for tickets. CIM student Zachary Brandon is the featured violinist.
For more details on this and more upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The Prague Summer Nights Young Artists Music Festival will be holding live auditions next Wednesday, February 5, from 5:40 – 7:40 pm at Oberlin Conservatory. The month-long program in the Czech Republic will put on four orchestra concerts and six fully-staged operas between June 16 and July 14. Application information is available here.
INTERESTING READ:
“Morgiane” — maybe the oldest existing opera by a Black American — was never staged after composer Edmond Dédé completed it in 1887. Until now.
The history of the 545-page epic, its relatively recent discovery, and the composer’s connection to Black opera in 19th-century New Orleans are all chronicled in a recent feature for the New York Times.
Kevin O’Brien writes: “Now, almost 125 years after Dédé’s death, an unlikely team, including a historian, an antiquarian music dealer, two librarians, and a pair of New Orleans natives, has come together to salvage Dédé, make relevant his legacy and stage his greatest work for the first time.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Daniel Hathaway
It’s interesting that two British composers who have achieved cult status rather than wide acceptance were both born on January 29 — Frederick Delius in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1862, and Havergal Brian in Dresden, Staffordshire in 1876.
Delius’ music was championed by conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, and one click will take you to an 8-1/2 hour compendium of his complete orchestral and choral music led by Beecham.
Brian, mostly self-taught and largely supported by a wealthy businessman, wrote 32 symphonies, including the mammoth “Gothic” Symphony No. 1, which Oscar Wilde might have foreseen in his bon not, “Nothing succeeds like excess.” Brian’s allies on the podium were Sir Adrian Boult, who was persuaded to conduct his 8th Symphony in 1954, and Leopold Stokowski, who led the 28th Symphony in a BBC broadcast in 1973 when both composer and conductor were 91.
Watch An Introduction to Havergal Brian’s symphonies and orchestral music by Malcolm MacDonald here, and follow the score along with a nearly two-hour-long performance of the “Gothic Symphony” by the Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Mark the birth on this date in 1924 of Italian composer Luigi Nono, with a performance of his Il canto sospeso, commemorating the victims of fascism. He wrote the work at the age of 32, a piece that first brought him to international prominence.
And celebrate the natal day in 1971 of German composer and conductor Matthias Pintscher, who became director of the Ensemble InterContemporain in 2013. An occasional guest conductor with The Cleveland Orchestra, Pintscher’s Chute d’Étoiles received its premiere by the ensemble at the Lucerne Festival in August of 2012 under Franz Welser-Möst with trumpet soloists Michael Sachs and Jack Sutte. Click here to listen to a performance of Pintscher’s Cello Concerto with Alisa Weilerstein and the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln led by François-Xavier Roth, recorded on October 1, 2019, in the Cologne Philharmonie.
