by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
Fifteen events are in the works for these two days, many in celebration of Valentine’s Day Weekend!
On Saturday:
BW Opera presents Speed Dating Tonight! (3 pm in Gartner Auditorium at CMA, repeated at 7 pm & Sunday at 3 pm), Cleveland Jazz Orchestra marks the weekend with Sinatra and Gershwin (7 pm, Music Box Supper Club), Wayne Center for the Arts presents Jinjoo Cho, violin, Max Geissler, cello, and Hyunsoo Kim, piano (7 pm in Wooster), Firelands Symphony plays love songs (7:30 pm, Sawmill Creek in Huron), the Youngstown Symphony presents Shakespeare in Love (7:30 in Stambaugh Auditorium), and Fabio Luisi conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in Silvia Colasanti’s Time’s Cruel Hand with countertenor Tim Mead (Thursday’s performance pictured above by Roger Mastroianni), and Bruckner’s Seventh (8 pm at Severance).
On Sunday:
BW Opera repeats Speed Dating Tonight! (3 pm in Gartner Auditorium at CMA), Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and Youth Chorus give their Winter Concert (3 pm at Severance), Sounds of St. James presents a Festival of Sacred Music (3 pm, St. James, Lakewood), Heights Chamber Orchestra features oboist Frank Rosenwein (3:30, Gilmour Academy), CIM New Music Ensemble plays music by Margaret Brouwer (4 pm in Mixon Hall), the Covenant Sunday Artist Series hosts French organist Vincent Grappy (4 pm, Church of the Covenant), Canton Symphony spotlights violinist Konrad Kowal (3 pm, Zimmerman Symphony Center), and The Cleveland Orchestra plays scores by John Williams led by Keith Lockhart (7:30 at Severance).
Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other forthcoming concerts.
INTERESTING READS:
The current turmoil at The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. has engendered considerable news coverage and commentary, but many articles are sequestered behind paywalls and accessible only to subscribers. Here are a few links gleaned from today’s ArtsJournal: Anne Midgette’s The Kennedy Center Putsch in VAN; Philip Kennicott’s Can Trump Destroy The Kennedy Center? in the Washington Post, and a WAPO staff story, Inside The Kennedy Center, Employees Are Scared And Events Are Disappearing From The Schedule.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
February 15:
In an unusual coincidence, early German composer Michael Praetorius departed this life in Wolfenbuttel on February 15, 1621, the same date on which he was born in Creuzberg an der Werra in 1571.
Other observances today: the birth in 1797 of German piano craftsman Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (which translates as “Steinway”), the departure in 1885 of German conductor, composer and violinist Leopold Damrosch in New York (the friend of Liszt and Wagner, who founded the New York Symphony (now the Philharmonic) and led early Wagner performances at the MET Opera, and the births in 1905 and 1907, respectively, of American song composer Harold Arlen (in Buffalo, né Hyman Arluck, author of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”) and French composer and organist Jean Langlais in La Fontenelle.
February 16:
On this date in 1938, American composer John Corigliano eredwas born in New York City, the son of John Sr., who served for 23 years as concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. Although he came late to composition, Corigliano was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, the Grawemeyer Award, and an Oscar.
Cleveland pianist and interviewer Zsolt Bognár featured Corigliano in Episode 60 of Living the Classical Life, and CityMusic Cleveland celebrated his 80th birthday in 2017 with Tessa Lark’s performances of his Red Violin Concerto, for which the composer was present (pictured left).
In 1980, the Metropolitan Opera commissioned a score from Corigliano — his first opera, and the MET’s first commission in 30 years. After a delay, Ghosts of Versailles finally had its sold-out debut in 1991. Watch the complete show here. Other compositions memorialized those who perished in the AIDS crisis (his Symphony No. 1, written in 1987 when he was composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony), and in the 9/11 attacks (his One Sweet Morning, 2011).
And on February 16, 1968, English-Canadian organist, choirmaster, and composer Healey Willan passed over the great divide in Toronto at the age of 87. While known principally for his Anglican Church music, Willan composed more than 800 works during his lifetime, in all forms from opera to band music. Watch a December 1966 Canadian television interview with him here (continued here).
Contemplating Willan’s life and career reminds us that many “consumers” of classical music encounter the genre from sources other than concert halls, and that young people brought up in British choral traditions have gone on to a variety of distinguished careers in music.
Here are three snippets of Healey Willan’s art: His motet, Rise up, my love, my fair one (sung by the Sydney Chamber Choir), an anthem, The Three Kings (performed by Tom Trenney and the choir of First-Pilgrim Church in Lincoln, Nebraska), and a hymn and improvisation recorded at the Church of St. Mary Magdalen in Toronto when Willan was 86. The tempo is stately.
