by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Three events all begin tonight at 7:30. Jörg Widmann (pictured) conducts The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Music Center in his own works plus Felix Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony. Timothy Weiss leads the Oberlin Sinfonietta with faculty soloists Alexa Still, flute, Drew Pattison, bassoon, and Martha Guth, soprano, in pieces by Stephen Jaffe, Stephen Hartke, and Katharina Mueller in Warner Concert Hall. And the Canton Symphony hosts the soul band Apostle Jones in its Divergent Sounds series at the Auricle.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today’s honorees include Austro-Hungarian operetta composer Franz Lehár (born on April 30, 1870 in Komárom, now Komárno, Slovakia), American conductor Robert Shaw (born on this date in 1916 in Red Bluff, Iowa), and American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (who entered the world in Miami on this date in 1939).
Lehár composed a number of light operas that became popular in Viennese circles, including the much-performed Merry Widow (Lustige Witwie). Some of them have found their way into the repertoire of American lyric theater companies like Ohio Light Opera.
Before moving on to the Atlanta Symphony, Robert Shaw served as George Szell’s assistant with The Cleveland Orchestra, where he prepared the Orchestra Chorus for many performances while also maintaining his own professional ensemble, The Robert Shaw Chorale.
In celebration of his centenary, Carnegie Hall made a series of documentaries showing how Shaw prepared for performances of major choral works. In this episode, he rehearses and conducts excerpts from Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, soprano Christine Goerke, tenor Richard Clement, baritone Benjamin Luxon, the Robert Shaw Festival Chorus, Robert Shaw Institute Singers, and the American Boychoir.
One of America’s pioneering female composers, in 1983 Ellen Taafe Zwilich was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra was commissioned by The Cleveland Orchestra to celebrate John Mack’s 25th anniversary with the ensemble, and premiered in January of 1991 under the direction of Christopher von Dohnányi.
Her 2008 Septet for piano trio and string quartet was written for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and the Miami Quartet, who play the unusual work on the 2014 recording, Passionate Diversions: a Celebration of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Listen here, or watch a 2012 video of a performance by the Newbury Trio and Amphion Quartet at the La Jolla Music Festival.
