WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:
Here are our top classical music recommendations for this weekend, culled from our master concert listings calendar. Especially in the leadup to Christmas, there are many other worthwhile performances to support in Northeast Ohio, many of them free and close to where you live. Have a look at our two-week concert listings here.
Canadian early music guru Bernard Labadie leads The Cleveland Orchestra, Chorus, and soloists Liv Redpath, soprano, Tim Mead, countertenor, Andrew Haji, tenor, and John Brancy, baritone, in George Frideric Handel’s 1741 oratorio, Messiah on Friday and Saturday at 7:30, in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center.
The CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra will play four concerts around the metropolitan area under the direction of James Feddeck and featuring violinist Laura Hamilton, cellist Mingyao Zhao, oboist Virginia Kao, and bassoonist Sue Barber in Joseph Haydn’s Sinfonia Concertante. Concerts are Friday at 7:30 at St. Noel Catholic Church in Willoughby Hills, Saturday at 7:30 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, Cleveland, and Sunday at 2:30 at Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church, Cleveland. All are freed but donations are welcome.
And Les Délices, Cleveland’s usually French Baroque period instrument ensemble will branch out in four “Noel, Noel” concerts featuring soprano Elena Mullins Bailey in English carols, French noëls, German hymns, and festive Baroque music by Michael Praetorius, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and others on Friday at 7:30 at Westminster Presbyterian in Akron, Saturday at 7:30 at Fairmount Presbyterian in Cleveland Hts., and Sunday at 4 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River. Tickets available online.
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
On December 5, 1791, Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, who preferred to be called Wolfgang Amadé, died in Vienna after being bedridden for a fortnight with what was officially described as “severe miliary fever,” characterized by a rash that resembles millet seeds.
He left two extended works unfinished — the “Great” Mass in c minor, and the Requiem. Mozart had planned his “Missa Solemnis” for a return visit to his family in Salzburg to introduce his new bride. Constanze had already sung the et incarnatus movement in a performance of the incomplete work during a mass in October of 1783. There’s much speculation about why Mozart never finished the elaborate double-chorus work, but he did retext the movements and use them for his cantata Davide penitente, K. 469.
A web of intrigue surrounds the Requiem, much of it promoted by Mozart’s widow, who tapped Mozart’s pupil, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, to finish the Mass so she could be paid by its commissioner, Count Franz von Walsegg — who may have intended to pass the work off as his own.
Leaving such works unfinished as magnificent ruins has a certain Romantic appeal, but that hasn’t deterred later scholars and composers from tying up their loose ends. In Mozart’s case, later hands have set to work both on the Mass and the Requiem, perhaps none so successfully as those of Robert Levin (pictured), who is famous for channeling the composer by improvising cadenzas when performing the piano concertos. Read an article from the Juilliard Journal here.
Levin started early, completing the “Amen” fugue that Mozart had sketched out for the end of the “Lacrimosa” movement, and performing it during his sophomore year at Harvard (I happened to sing in that concert). This weekend, lift a glass to Mozart either by revisiting your favorite performance of Süssmayr’s completion of the Requiem, or by getting to know the piece anew through Levin’s ears. There are several performances available on YouTube, including those by Boston Baroque, and the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. You can also compare five modern completions of the “Amen” Fugue, including Levin’s.
