by Daniel Hathaway

LOCAL GROUPS ANNOUNCE PLANS:

Quire Cleveland Artistic Director Jay White announced in an email to its patrons today that the professional choral ensemble will resume a full schedule of in-person concerts in December, 2021. Details here. Quire’s last concert, Journey Home: Finding Unity After Loss, recorded at St. Vitus Church on February 29, 2020, will be broadcast on WCLV’s Cleveland Ovations program on Wednesday, April 21at 8:00 PM. Tune in to 104.9 FM or listen online.

Cleveland Chamber Choir will release a pre-recorded concert of madrigals on May 15 at 7:30 pm contrasting settings of the same poetry composed centuries apart. Scott MacPherson will lead the professional ensemble in music by Dolores White and Adolphus Hailstork, as well as settings by Vittoria Aleotti, Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons, Josquin, John Bennet, Sir John Stainer, Morton Lauridsen, Johannes Brahms, and Andrew Rindfleisch. More information here.

The Canton Symphony will return to the stage after a 15-month silence on May 21 at 7:30 pm with a hybrid concert of Mendelssohn and Mozart led by Gerhardt Zimmermann, presented for a live audience in Umstattd Hall as well as broadcast online. A limited number of attendees will be permitted with the customary health protocols in place. Details here.

Western Reserve Chorale has scheduled a virtual performance of “In Her Voice, songs of hope, gratitude, and comfort celebrating the poetry of women” for release on June 4, 2021. The event will incorporate eight new recordings by the Chorale, led by David Gilson, with art provided by students from Cleveland Heights High School, and poetry readings by local students.

Les Délices: Music Meditations will launch this week in conjunction with National Poetry Month. Available as a podcast, each three to six-minute episode will feature readings of classic or contemporary poetry by residents of Northeast Ohio by veteran broadcaster Leon Bibb, along with selections from Les Délices’ archives. Details here.

HAPPENING TODAY:

Earth and Air String Orchestra releases a farewell concert featuring violinists Andrew Sords and Mari Sato, London’s Wigmore Hall broadcasts the first of two Bach recitals by controversial harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, Gordon Square Classical Concerts present Ryan Charles Raymer’s Suite of 33 Miniature Solo Pieces That Fit on the Front of a Postcard, Akron’s Tuesday Musical brings bassist Edgar Meyer to E.J. Thomas Hall for an in-person recital, and Carnegie Hall presents “Metamorphosis” with Third Coast Percussion and Movement Art, illustrating “universal themes cast through the experiential lens of young Black men growing up in America today.” Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On April 20, 1941, British conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner was born in Fontmell Magna, Dorset, where he grew up with the famous Elias Gottlob Haussmann portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach hanging on the wall — lent to the Gardiner family for safe keeping during World War II  by Walter Jenke, who had bought it in a curiosity shop in Breslau. (The painting was later acquired by William H. Scheide, the Princeton-based Bach scholar, who transferred it to the Leipzig Bach Archives in April of 2015.)

Gardiner went on to study at King’s College, Cambridge, where he began his conducting career with the Monteverdi Vespers in King’s Chapel in 1964, and in subsequent years established the Monteverdi Orchestra, which took up period instruments in 1998, and the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique, which has specialized in 19th century repertoire. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE TODAY:

This weekend, and for the first time since 1933, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival will be presented as a series of online events, beginning tonight at 7 with a virtual concert honoring cello professor Regina Mushabac (pictured), who will retire at the end of her 46th year at BW.

At noon, sit in on a master class by multi-instrumentalist and composer Tyshawn Sorey via a Zoon webinar from Youngstown State University.

Two broadcasts from New York’s Carnegie Hall include Reiner Moritz’s documentary about Shostakovich (at 3:00 pn) and Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli in “American Voices,” a program of works by Black and Native American composers (at 7:00 pm).

Buffalo Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta leads the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra in a 7:00 pm online concert of works by Nathaniel Heyder (a premiere), Debussy, Cleveland composer Margaret Brouwer (The Art of Sailing at Dawn) and Stravinsky.

And this evening’s events conclude with opera: a 2017 production of Dvořák’s Rusalka from The MET, and Caroline Shaw’s We Need to Talk from Opera Philadelphia.

Check our Concert Listings for links and connect!

INTERESTING READS:

The Detroit Symphony was uniquely situated to move to an online presence when the pandemic reached our shores a year ago, having made its first foray into webcasting on April 10, 2007 as part of the strategy for renewing itself after a six-month work stoppage. Read about what took place over that decade in the Orchestra’s news article “Precedented Times: 10 years of Webcasting at the DSO.”

Organist Paul Jacobs, featured in the Poulenc Concerto in The Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus 8, is highlighted this week in a newsletter from the public relations firm of Hemsing and Associates. Follow the links to read Jacobs’ recent Wall Street Journal article about contemporary music for the organ, and to catch up on his activities.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Among its many quirks, the ClevelandClassical.com Diary is a rich source of cultural trivia. Did you know that American silent film icon Charlie Chaplin was actually born in England on this date in 1889, composed most of the music for his own films, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1975? (“Sir Charles!”)

Or that American composer Henry (Enrico) Mancini was a native Clevelander, born on this date in 1924 in Little Italy, whose first instrument was the piccolo? Or that he auditioned (successfully) for Juilliard in 1942 with a Beethoven sonata and an improvisation on Cole Porter’s “Night and Day?” Or that he made a cameo appearance in the first season of Frasier as a call-in patient to Dr. Frasier Crane’s radio show, followed by the playing of Moon River?

Tuck those useful factoids away while celebrating Chaplin’s life in this 90-minute documentary and viewing his 1931 film, City Lights, for which The Cleveland Orchestra played Chaplin’s score under the big screen in Severance Hall in March of 2021, William Eddins conducting.

Tunes from Mancini’s scores to such films as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther are surely still circulating in our ears. The latter is played here by a combo with the composer at the piano, and Swiss organist Guy Bovet was moved to make the theme into a cheeky polyphonic piece in his Fuga sopra un sogetto.

Final tribute of the day: the birth of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks in Aizpute on this date in 1946. Cleveland Orchestra solo English horn Robert Walters performed his concerto for that expressive instrument with Andrey Boreyko and the Orchestra in February of 2011, and talked about it in a preview. And Polish guitarist Marcin Dylla, who has appeared twice on the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society series, plays Vasks’ The Sonata of Loneliness here.

By Daniel Hathaway

A CHANGE IN OUR NEWSLETTER SCHEDULE:

Beginning this week, our weekly newsletter will be emailed to subscribers at 5:00 pm on Wednesdays. This change will give the editors a bit more time to prepare the weekly Concert Listings and for our staff to write and copyedit articles before posting. Because details of the classical music scene can change so quickly these days, we recommend that you check the website frequently for new and updated information.

DALLAS INVITES THE MET ORCHESTRA:

Fabbio Luisi, who served as principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera before taking the helm at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (photo above), has invited some 50 of his former colleagues to Texas to join the DSO in two benefit performances of Mahler’s First Symphony on April 30 and May 1.

The MET Orchestra has been furloughed without pay since the house closed its doors on March 12, 2020, although recent negotiations with general manager Peter Gelb have yielded a plan for partial salary restoration. On their Facebook page, the MET musicians wrote, “We cannot overstate the impact this unprecedented collaboration will have on our members, both financially and artistically, after this long year of cultural famine.” Read more in New York Times articles here and here.

MIGNARDA RELEASES NEW ALBUM:

The voice and lute duo of Donna Stewart and Ron Andrico, who perform as Mignarda, announce the release of their 14th CD on April 10.

“Unquiet Thoughts presents a selection of rarities and perennial favorites by John Dowland (1563 – 1626) and a few of his contemporaries, concentrating on songs with exquisite poetical texts by some of the best poets of the Elizabethan age. It is no accident that we chose the very first song from Dowland’s First Booke as the title of our album, as the eloquent term so appropriately describes a genre that pairs an intimate voice with the most personal of instruments to express the secrets of the soul. Unquiet Thoughts is also the title of our blog (soon to be published in book form), which since 2010 has been a platform that offers our insights and experience of music for voice and lute and its relevance in the modern era.”

More details here.

EVENTS ON TODAY’S CALENDAR:

Two online events look forward to Baldwin Wallace’s upcoming virtual Bach Festival. Director Dirk Garner speaks to recent Conservatory alumni and Festival Choir members in this Tuesday’s edition of BACHCAST, and half a dozen young scholars discuss the projects they’re pursuing through the Riemenschneider Bach Institute.

Today’s breakfast-time stream from London’s Wigmore Hall (still available at lunchtime, tea time, and suppertime) features Christian Wolff’s setting of Susan Griffin’s text about Underground Railway figure Harriet Tubman, while the New York Festival of Song features works written during the pandemic. Performers include Oberlin alum Joshua Blue.

Russian piano wizard Daniil Trifonov will be featured in works by Debussy, Prokofiev, and Brahms he recorded in January for New York’s 92nd St. Y, and the Baltimore Symphony showcases some of its soloists in BSO Session—Spotlight.

And organist Paul Jacobs, who soloed with The Cleveland Orchestra in last week’s Focus 8 performance of the Poulenc Organ Concerto (when he also gave a tour of Severance Hall’s E.M. Skinner instrument), pops up this evening in a concert from the University of Minnesota featuring music by J.S. Bach and Handel.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two very different musicians to remember on this 13th day of April, when French composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut died in 1377 in Reims, and Polish American pianist and avant-garde composer Frederic Rzewski was born in 1938 in Westfield, Massachusetts.

Machaut, whose musical creations helped define the Ars nova movement of the eventful fourteenth century, was equally active as the author of some 400 poems in the courtly love tradition. His Messe de Nostre Dame may have been the first cyclical setting of the Roman Catholic mass by a single composer. Listen here to a performance by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois in which other music appropriate to the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary is interleaved.

Just in time for his obsequies, Cleveland’s Les Délices has joined Boston’s Blue Heron to produce Machaut’s Lay of the Fountain. Read Mike Telin’s article here and watch the hour-long program here until April 19.

Rzewski had a traditional academic education at Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, studying with Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt. Then he sojourned in Italy, where his career was influenced by Luigi Dallapiccolo and he was introduced to electronic music and improvisation.

Famous for politically-charged works, one of Rzewski’s most famous works is The People United Will Never Be Defeated! — 36 variations on Chilean leftist song meant to be a companion piece to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Conrad Tao plays it here at the 2020 Modern Music Festival. (While listening, think of editor Nicholas Slonimsky’s comment in Baker’s Dictionary: 

[Rzewski] is furthermore a granitically overpowering piano technician, capable of depositing huge boulders of sonoristic material across the keyboard without actually wrecking the instrument.”

By Daniel Hathaway

CONCERTS THIS WEEKEND:

If the current trends continue, we’ll be posting an increasing number of in-person events in the Concert Listings. There are two on Sunday: CityMusic Cleveland at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus at 3:00 pm, and French chamber music on the Sacred Heart Concert Series in Oberlin (pictured) at 5:00 pm.

Online only events on Saturday include NPR’s Amplify with Lara Downes, Oberlin Conservatory Large Ensembles, and the JACK Quartet with Shai Wosner.

On Sunday, there’s the New World Symphony with Matthias Pintscher and pianist Inon Bartanan, the CIM New Music Ensemble, Kent’s Black Squirrel Winds on Hudson’s Music from the Western Reserve series, violinist Jennifer Koh, and Chanticleer.

See our Concert Listings for details.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

There are only birthdates to honor this weekend. For April 10, that includes French jazz pianist and composer Claude Bolling (1930, in Cannes), and Uzbek pianist Yefim Bronfman (1958 in Tashkent).

For April 11, it’s a longer list: French composer Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682 in Avignon), Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (in 1866 in Empoli, near Florence), American composer, conductor, organist, and music critic Harvey B. Gaul (1881, in New York), Czech conductor Karel Ancerl (1908 in Tucapy), and Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera (1916 in Buenos Aires).

We’ll concentrate on Ginastera, the most prominent composer on the list, who like many Porteños (denizens of Buenos Aires) was of mixed Spanish and Italian ancestry — his father was Catalan, his mother Italian. He spent most of his career in Argentina, with brief sojourns in the U.S. (the first in 1945-47 to study with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood) before moving to Europe in 1970. (Photo: Ginastera with his wife, Argentine cellist Aurora Natola, and Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.)

Ginastera’s compositions incorporated varying elements of traditional Argentine music in the course of his career, though those influences became more abstract over the decades.

Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower recorded the First Cello Concerto with his former orchestra, Germany’s Bamberg Symphony (follow along with the score), and played the Second Concerto with Cleveland in October of 2018 (here’s a brief excerpt from a Severance Hall  rehearsal with guest conductor Gustavo Gimeno).

In other Cleveland Orchestra performances, George Szell led Pampeana No. 3 in a live concert in November, 1956, and Louis Lane conducted the Variaciones Concertantes in a live radio broadcast in 1969.

More recently, Oberlin Harp Professor Yolanda Kondonassis recorded the Ginastera Harp Concerto on the Oberlin Music CD Ginastera: One Hundred. Her performance of the work with Raphael Jiménez and the Oberlin Orchestra was also featured in the inaugural edition of Oberlin Stage Left, where she talks about the piece with Conservatory Dean William Quillen.

By Daniel Hathaway

UPDATES FROM CLEVELAND CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY & APOLLO’S FIRE:

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society announced today that the last three performances of its season will be presented live at St. Paschal Baylon in Highland Heights, where social distancing protocols will be followed and face masks required. Free livestream access will be announced when information becomes available. Performances include violinist Alexi Kenney and pianist Renana Gutman on April 27, the Junction Trio on May 11, and the last of three programs of Beethoven sonatas by violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong on May 18. Check the CCMS website for ticketing details.

Apollo’s Fire has added a fifth performance to its all-Bach season finale on Wednesday, April 21 at 7:30 pm at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. Details here.

STREAMING ONLINE TODAY:

Former Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor James Gaffigan, who also led CityMusic Cleveland, guest conducts the Orchestra of Berlin’s Comic Opera today at 2:00 pm, but you can hear the performances of Webern’s Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, Friedrich Gulda’s Concerto for Cello & Winds with soloist Felik Nickel, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 on-demand through April 15.

Ilya Kaler leads the CIM Orchestra in Arensky’s Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky, Op. 35a & Herbert’s Serenade for String Orchestra tonight at 7.

And at 7:30pm — from the Wellspring Theater in Kalamazoo — the Aaron Diehl Trio plays works in the early jazz tradition courtesy of The Gilmore.

Details in our Concert Listings.

AN INTERESTING READ:

The New York Times’ obituary for Lois Kirschenbaum, who died on March 27, at the age of 88  tells the extraordinary story of one of the Metropolitan Opera’s most loyal followers. “In New York opera circles, an autograph request from her, the mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade said, was considered ‘a special type of approval.’” Read about “the Ultimate Opera Superfan” here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Three memorable dates in Black American classical music history appear on today’s calendar: the birth of composer Florence Beatrice Price in 1887, the birth of bass and actor Paul Robeson in 1898, and Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial, sponsored by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, that drew a crowd of 75,000. The performance (pictured) protested the decision of the Daughters of the American Revolution to prevent the contralto from performing at the DAR’s Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

Having been neglected for decades, the music of Florence Price is now appearing on concert programs everywhere. We devoted much of the Diary on June 3, 2020 to Price on the anniversary of her death, and Lilyana D’Amato wrote about her in our Legacy of Black Musicians series on July 29, 2020. As more and more of her music is being re-engraved and re-issued, programmers will want to keep up with the progress of that project by visiting the Wisemusic catalog here.

Robeson had an eventful career that included venturing into the troubled political waters of mid-20th century America, where he fought against facism but got close enough to the communist party to be investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee. His life is summarized in the documentary Here I Stand, and a sample of his vocal artistry is available in this 1936, second version of Old Man River (note both versions of the lyrics in the notes).

And Marian Anderson, the first Black singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera, thrilled a huge audience on Easter Day, April 9, 1939 with this performance, accompanied by Finnish pianist Kosti Vehanen. The occasion is treated at somewhat greater length in this short documentary, and the press had much to say about the incident.

The Philadelphia Tribune wrote, “A group of tottering old ladies, who don’t know the difference between patriotism and putridism, have compelled the gracious First Lady to apologize for their national rudeness.” The Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote, “In these days of racial intolerance so crudely expressed in the Third Reich, an action such as the D.A.R.’s ban … seems all the more deplorable.” — Wikipedia article on Marian Anderson

Other April  9 milestones to note in passing: the birth of impresario Sol Hurok (Russia, 1888), of conductor Antal Dorati (Hungary, 1906), and New York Pro Musica founder Noah Greenberg (USA, 1919), and the death of post-Romantic composer Siegfried Karg-Elert (Leipzig, 1933), who gave a much-anticipated but disastrous organ recital at the Cleveland Museum of Art shortly before his demise. We’ll catch them the next time around.

By Mike Telin 

STREAMING ON THE WEB TODAY:

At 7:00 pm The Cleveland Orchestra debuts “Visions & Impressions,” Episode 8 of the In Focus series. Franz Welser-Möst leads performances of Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, Opus 22a (15 movements for piano arranged by Rudolf Barshai for string orchestra) and Paul Jacobs is the soloist in Poulenc’s Organ Concerto (for organ, strings, and timpani). Filmed March 18-20 at Severance Hall, the playlist also features principal flute Joshua Smith in Takemitsu’s Air and Debussy’s Syrinx. Click  here for ticket information.

Also at 7:00 pm, it’s “Tuning In” presented by the Local 4 Music Fund. The ensemble “Nous,” features Howie Smith (sax), Theron Brown (keyboards), and Aidan Plank (bass) in a program to be announced. The Bop Stop event is free but donations are welcome. Click here at start time.

A half-hour later at 7:30 pm, Les Délices debuts Machaut’s Lai of the Fountain. Guillaume de Machaut’s flowing melodies become brilliant rainbows when refracted into three-voice canons in this 14th century piece. The program also features works by Johannes Ciconia and others to aid your exploration of the Medieval garden’s subtle beauty in this collaboration with Boston’s Blue Heron. There’s also a pre-concert conversation with Machaut scholar Domenic Leo and projection designer Camilla Tassi, and a live Q&A with the artists. Click here to read our preview article and here for tickets.

In other news, the Akron Symphony Orchestra has announced the debut of a new podcast channel, Symphosium, which will focus on all things related to classical music. The first podcast episode, ASO Goes Electric: Sam Petrey, is part of a collaboration with Akron-based EarthQuaker Devices where ASO musicians visited EarthQuaker’s studio to be recorded performing with a variety of effects pedals. The series includes Sam’s video, which you can view on EarthQuaker’s YouTube page.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today we remember three composers of note who took their leave of this world on April 8.

In 1848 Italian bel canto composer Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti died of neurosyphilis at the age of 50. A prolific composer best-known for his operatic works, he also wrote church music, a number of string quartets, and some orchestral pieces. Altogether, he composed some 75 operas, 16 symphonies, 19 string quartets, 193 songs, 45 duets, 3 oratorios, 28 cantatas, instrumental concertos, sonatas, and other chamber pieces.

Who doesn’t like a Donizetti aria? One crowd pleaser is “Ah! Mes amis … Pour mon âme” (the one with nine high Cs) from La Fille du Régiment. Click here to witness the rare encore performance at the Metropolitan Opera by tenor Javier Camarena (that brings the total count of high Cs to eighteen). Read the New York Times review here.

Another aria sure to inspire the crowd is the “Mad Scene” from Lucia di Lammermoor. Natalie Dessay gives a stunning performance here.

It was the Spanish Flu that took composer Charles Tomlinson Griffes’ life in 1920 at the age of 35 in New York City. His most famous work is his 1915 piano piece, White Peacock, which he then orchestrated in 1919. Other compositions include his Piano Sonata, The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan (based on a poetic fragment by Samuel Taylor Coleridge), and Poem for Flute and Orchestra.

In addition to many programmatic pieces for piano, chamber ensembles, and voice, it is his unpublished Sho-jo (1917) — a one-act pantomimic drama based on Japanese themes —  that makes him one of the first American composers to draw direct inspiration from Japanese music. Pianist Michael Lewin plays The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan here.

Last but not least, we pay our respects to American organist and composer Arthur William Foote, who died in Boston in 1937 at age 84. Foote was a member of the select group of composers known as the Boston Six which included George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker.

Foote was appointed organist of the First Church in Boston (Unitarian) in 1878, a position he held for 32 years. During his tenure he was an editor of Hymns of the Church Universal, published in 1890. He was also a founder of the American Guild of Organists.

Most of his catalogue is chamber music — A Night Piece for flute and string quartet immediately comes to mind (here’s a performance by Joshua Smith and the Cavani Quartet at CIM in 2008). But his Second String Quartet from 1893 is a gem. Listen to a performance by the Da Vinci Quartet here.