by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
The Akron Symphonic Winds Big Band in Sinatra: The Love Songs (7 pm, Celestia Theatre, Wadsworth) • The Cleveland Orchestra. Barbara Hannigan (pictured) conductor and Johanna Wallroth, soprano (7:30, Severance Music Center) • CIM Opera Theater, Judith Wier’s Blond Eckbert (pocket version, 7:30 in Mixon Hall).
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.
TODAY’S HEADLINES FROM THE VIOLIN CHANNEL:
Composer Gabriela Lena Frank postpones premiere over ICE fears in Minnesota
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Four musicians to raise up today: American composer Roy Harris, born in 1898 in Chandler, Oklahoma, French composer, conductor, and pianist Emile Waldteufel, who died in 1915 in Paris, French composer Henri Duparc, who died in Mont-de-Marsan in 1933, and American composer and inventor George Antheil, who died in NewYork in 1959.
As we wrote in an October Almanac entry marking Harris’ death, “Born in rural Oklahoma, with the help of Aaron Copland he studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, and went on to write numerous works on American themes. His big breakthrough was his Third Symphony, captured here in a live performance by Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra in 2010.
Waldteufel’s principal claim to fame is as the composer of the Skater’s Waltz, known in French as Les Patineurs and less elegantly in German as Die Schlittschuhkläufer.
Beset by increasing blindness, Duparc destroyed all but some 40 of his works. The best-known that survived are his 17 Mélodies or art songs, a number of which can be enjoyed here in performances by such singers as Measha Bruggergosman, Susan Graham, Natalie Dessay, Régine Crespin, Jessye Norman, Lawrence Brownlee, and Renée Fleming.
And George Antheil is simply an American original. His Wikipedia biography includes vivid descriptions of his music, concerts, and inventions, one of which was a radio-controlled torpedo he developed with the actress Hedy Lamarr during World War II. The article is well worth a read, and you can watch his Ballet méchanique here.
