by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Pianist Melody Quah, faculty member at Penn State University, will play a double-header at Youngstown State University today. Both her Music at Noon program at the Butler Institute or American Art and her 7:30 pm recital on the Muse Concert Series at the McDonough Museum of Art will include Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and the evening performance will add works by Malaysian, Chinese, and Australian composers. Both are free.

INTERESTING READS:

Among the African American musicians who found Europe more promising for their careers than the United States, was conductor Everett Lee, who passed away on January 12 in Sweden at the age of 105. Growing up in Cleveland, he was mentored by Cleveland Orchestra music director Artur Rodzinsky, and studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Joseph Fuchs, the Orchestra’s concertmaster.

Lee attracted the attention of many conductors and musical institutions, but was continuously passed over when appointments were made, even being denied auditions because of his race. New York Times writer David Allen chronicled Lee’s life and career on January 20. Click here to read “Everett Lee, Who Broke Color Barriers on the Conductor’s Podium, Dies at 105.”

And except for occasional outliers like Cameron Carpenter, performers in the organ demi-monde aren’t often regarded as newsworthy by a wider musical audience. Enter Swedish organist and songwriter Anna von Hausswolff, who has been making waves in Europe for a decade now — notably upsetting religious conservatives by performing in churches, where most organs are located. Click here to read Alex Marshall’s New York Times article,  “A ‘High Priestess of Satanic Art’? This Organist Can Only Laugh.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Is there something auspicious about January 26 as a date for opera premieres? How about this list: Mozart’s Così fan tutte in 1790 and Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande in 1905, both in Berlin, Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (Dresde,n, 1911), and Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites (La Scala, Milan, 1957). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

The last unhosted weekly episode of WRUW’s Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music airs today between 2:00 & 4:00 pm (Eric Charnovsky returns in February). Today’s program includes George Walker’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, William C. Banfield’s Symphony No. 3, C.P.E. Bach’s Clavichord Sonata in f-sharp, Martin Scherzinger’s Etudes for Piano (selections), Alan Hovhaness’s Symphony No. 20 (“Three Journeys to a Holy Mountain,”) Nicolo Paganini’s Moto Perpetuo (arr. for trumpet), Paul Ben-Haim’s Three Songs Without Words (violin and piano) & Igor Stravinsky’s Scènes de Ballet (orchestra). Free on WRUW, Case Western Reserve University. Click here to listen to the internet feed.

COVID-19 UPDATES:

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society regrets that the concert by the Danish String Quartet scheduled for Tuesday, January 25 has been cancelled due to positive COVID-19 test results from one of the performers. The concert will not be rescheduled this season. Patrons who purchased tickets with a credit card (online or by phone) will receive an automatic refund to that card. Those who purchased tickets by mail should contact the office to receive a refund. Those who prefer to exchange their ticket(s) for another concert this season should be in touch by the end of this week.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Jazz organist Eddie Baccus Sr. (pictured above), passed away unexpectedly on Sunday, January 23, the very day he was to be honored with a concert at the Bop Stop. That event turned into a tribute evening and a benefit for his family.

Announcing the change of plans, the jazz club wrote

Eddie Baccus Sr. has been a beloved part of the Cleveland music scene since just about forever (the 60s). He met a fellow blind musician, the great flute/sax player Roland Kirk, at the Ohio State School for the Blind in late 40s, but chose a different path and opted to stay closer to home than Kirk. While Kirk toured the world and died young at age 41 of a stroke in 1977, Baccus has continued to roll his Hammond B-3 into area clubs, performing in a range of jazz styles, and collaborating with and mentoring other players, such as Joe Lovano, Ernie Krivda and his sax-playing son Eddie Baccus Jr.

Donations can be made here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Among the entrances and exits on the classical music stage on January 24: the births of Frederick the Great (in 1712 in Berlin, the flute-playing king of Prussia who challenged the father of his court musician C.P.E. Bach to improvise a fugue on the spot during a visit in 1747. Also of the English oboist Evelyn Barbirroli in 1911 (spouse of conductor Sir John), and of Klaus George Roy in 1924, long-time program editor and annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday, CityMusic Cleveland repeats its “Tales and Scenes” program featuring Pantheon at St. Jerome at 7 pm, the UA Wind Symphony performs in Guzzetta Recital Hall in Akron at 7:30 pm, and Cleveland Pops features trumpeter and vocalist Byron Stripling in Mandel Hall at Severance (for which you’ll need tickets).

On Sunday at 3, the Cleveland Cello Society will showcase its current scholarship winners in an online only, live performance from the Bop Stop. Read more about those magnificent seven in our Concert Listings.

R.I.P. VIOLIST ROGER TAPPING:

British-born violist Roger Tapping succumbed to cancer on January 20 in New York at the age of 61. Known to Cleveland Chamber Music Society audiences as a member of the Takács Quartet from 1995 to 2013, and then the Juilliard Quartet, he also held a number of orchestral positions including principal viola with the London Mozart Players, as well as serving as a member of the English Chamber Orchestra, and a founding member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. A dedicated teacher, he served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Longy School, and Boston Conservatory, as well as the Royal Academy of Music and Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

Tapping’s charming personality comes through clearly in an interview I did with him before a Cleveland Chamber Music Society performance by the Juilliard Quartet in November, 2014.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

While it’s amusing to note the anniversary this weekend of Wolfgang and Nannerl Mozart’s recovery from intestinal flu just in time for a performance in The Hague in 1766, and bizarre to recall the death of American composer Marc Blitzstein from brain injuries in a barroom fight in Fort-deFrance, Martinique in 1964, two opera premieres and an historic concert featuring Black musicians make it to the front of the pack.

On January 22, 1907, Richard Strauss’s opera Salome received its U.S. premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, followed by its cancellation after a single performance and subsequent absence from the stage of the Met until 1930.

As an article in the Met archives sums it up, “No opera premiere in Met history has created a scandal to equal the one that greeted Richard Strauss’s Salome on January 22, 1907.” Read all about it — and the opera’s later history with the company here.

On January 22, 1934, Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District opened in Leningrad at the Maly Operny, where Cleveland Orchestra music director Artur Rodzinski saw the production several times and vowed to bring it to the recently completed Severance Hall. Cleveland audiences first enjoyed it there on January 31, 1935, but not without some troubles along the way — and more to come. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY (OR NOT):

This is the time of year when concerts thin out after the holidays, creating an annual lacuna complicated this time around by the recrudescence of COVID-19 and the first snow event of the season.

It’s also the time when people begin looking ahead to more agreeable times — when gardeners haul out the seed catalogues and classical music fans begin filling out their must-hear calendars with intriguing events to come.

Even the latter activity has become dicey this year, with events that pop up and just as quickly disappear as reality trumps planning. It’s difficult to keep track — and in our case, to keep the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings up to date.

For example, we just received word from The Cleveland Orchestra of a COVID-related change to its March 3-5 concerts that were to have featured the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus in Mendelssohn’s “Reformation” Symphony and two Psalms by Alexander Zemlinsky. Those will be replaced by George Walker’s Lilacs featuring soprano Latonia Moore, and a suite from Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier compiled by Franz Welser-Möst. Imagine the challenges of running a symphony orchestra these days!

Since there are no events to list for today, Wednesday, January 19, let’s flag a few things that are about to happen and burrow a bit deeper into plans for two of the major festivals of the summer in Northeast Ohio.

Coming up on Thursday: A Highland Lassie, the latest event in Les Délices’ Concert Series will become available on demand at 12:01 am. The program visits the fascinating world of Scottish traditional music that celebrates “the permeable borders between folk song and art song, between country dance and cotillion. Truly, the tunes crossed social boundaries — being sung and played by folks from every walk of life from the fields to the tavern to the well-heeled salon. With their haunting melodies, budding romanticism, and nostalgic sentimentality, these traditional Scots songs speak powerfully to us today.” [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

You’re reading this after noon on Friday, so the 12:15 pm McGaffin Carillon concert is already old news. But you can still enjoy George Leggiero’s performance (including a Beatles tune) via YouTube, on demand here.

The Cleveland Orchestra is on duty at Severance Music Center Friday at 7:30 and Saturday at 8 with two symphonic standards (Mozart’s No. 40 and Dvořák’s No. 8) separated by Bern Richard Deutsch’s Intensity. Franz Welser-Möst is at the helm.

On Saturday at 1, the MET Opera — who have yet to cancel a performance since the house reopened — bring you Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro over WCLV.

This is Martin Luther King Jr, weekend, but thanks to COVID-19, Saturday’s annual MLK Memorial Concert by musicians from the Music Settlement and The Cleveland Orchestra’s annual MLK Celebration Concert will be presented online. The Settlement event will be streamed live from the Bop Stop, while the Cleveland Orchestra will make its 2018 Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration concert available for free on Adella from January 17 through February 28. The Orchestra’s annual Community Day won’t happen this year. And Apollo’s Fire has created a six-video playlist to celebrate MLK Day.

At 4 pm Sunday, Cleveland Orchestra assistant concertmaster Stephen Tavani will be featured in the Brahms Concerto with the Youngstown Symphony. Guest conductor Miriam Burns will lead Bartók’s Roumanian Folk Dances and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 to fill out the program in the Ford Family Recital Hall at Youngstown’s DeYor Center.

Details in our Concert Listings.

COVID UPDATES:

Apollo’s Fire has decided to reschedule its cycle of “Lift Every Voice” concerts from February 4-6 to August 5-7. Ticket holders have been contacted with rebooking directions.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

Multiple sources report that Nuremburg instrument maker Johann Christoph Denner invented a new instrument called the clarinet on January 14, 1690 — a claim that recalls that Irish Archbishop’s assertion that God created the earth on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o’clock in the morning. In fact, Denner essentially added two keys to the chalmeau,  launching one of the most versatile instrument families to be incorporated into the developing symphony orchestra, and making possible such pieces as Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto.

Speaking of Mozart, a century and a decade later, Ludwig Köchel, who created the first chronological catalogue of Mozart’s works and assigned them KV (“Köchel Verzeichnis”) numbers, was born in Lower Austria on January 14, 1800. He was also a skilled botanist — not a bad hobby for someone who sorts musical works out into categories. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S AGENDA

Today’s Tuesday Noon online-only concert from the Church of the Covenant features violist Christopher Jenkins and organist Christa Rakich of the Oberlin Conservatory faculty in music by Adolphus Hailstork, William Grant Still, and Paul Hindemith. The video will remain available for viewing on demand.

COVID CANCELLATIONS AND CHANGES:

Citing concerns for the health of its musicians and staff, The Cleveland Orchestra has withdrawn from its late January residency in South Florida, including concerts and education activities at the Adrienne Arsht Center, Kravis Center, and Artis—Naples. Read the press release here.

The Operas in Place series co-sponsored by Baldwin Wallace, Cleveland Opera Theater, and On-Site Opera, that was to have presented nine micro-operas online over three days from January 14-16, has now been postponed to February.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Fischoff International Chamber Music Competition is now receiving applications for both the senior and junior divisions of its 2022 competition, to be held in South Bend, Indiana in May. A new feature this year is the “Lift Every Voice Prize,” focusing on works by Black and/or Hispanic/Latino/a composers. Read a Violin Channel press release here.

INTERESTING READ:

Writing in yesterday’s issue of The Gramophone, Tim Ashley makes a case for re-evaluating the puzzling career and legacy of Camille Saint-Saëns a month after the centenary of the composer’s death in 1921. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS THIS WEEKEND:

Two opportunities remain to hear The Cleveland Orchestra perform Hans Abrahamsen’s Vers le silence and Igor Levit (pictured) as soloist in Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. Franz Welser-Möst gives the downbeat in Mandel Concert Hall at the Severance Music Center on Friday at 7:30 pm and Saturday at 8:00 pm. Photo: Roger Mastroianni. You’ll need proof of full vaccination — including a booster shot — to attend, and tickets can be ordered online.

Organist Nicole Keller will give a recital on the rarely-heard-these-days Holtkamp instrument in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art on Sunday at 2:30 pm. The menu includes works by J.S. Bach, Calvin Hampton, Rayner Brown, Paul Hindemith, Mozart & Florence Price. It’s free.  (NOTE: this recital has been postponed until spring due to the COVID surge.)

NEWS BRIEFS:

Aronson Cello Festival comes to Cleveland this summer

Cleveland Orchestra cellist Brian Thornton, one of the last students of Lev Aronson, who survived the atrocities of the Nazis to become principal of the Dallas Symphony and a beloved mentor to young cellists, founded a festival in Aronson’s honor. Thornton writes,

We are holding our next festival in Cleveland between June 6-12, 2022, at the Cleveland Institute of Music and at Severance Music Center. The events will span seven days and will include special programming filled with memorable performances and world class artists — in addition to innovative and interactive speakers and sessions called “LevTalks” that will inspire, inform, reflect upon, provoke, challenge and confirm the modern world of classical music around us. In this time of rapid change with the arts under siege, we must find ways to connect and embrace our community. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S AGENDA:.

Because of the recent COVID surge, today’s noontime concert from the Church of the Covenant will be presented online only. At 12 Noon, organist Jonathan Moyer will play music for the Epiphany by Buxtehude, Lefébure-Wély, Jongen, Messiaen, and Tournemire. Click here to view a pdf of the program, and here to view the live streamed performance.

ANDREA ANELLI, 60

Jonah Schulz has written to inform us of the passing of his mother on January 1.

“Andrea Anelli (pictured), the beloved soprano and founder of Cleveland Opera Theater (originally Opera Per Tutti) and ContempOpera Cleveland, passed away at the age of 60.

“Andrea’s passion for opera kept the art form alive and thriving in Northeast Ohio. After founding Opera Per Tutti in 2006, Andrea performed many of Opera’s most classic roles making world class productions accessible to audiences in Gordon Square’s Cleveland Public Theatre, Cleveland’s Masonic Auditorium and as the creator of The Italian Cultural Garden’s annual “Opera in the Garden” concert.

“Her talent and work ethic was honored at Cleveland’s City Hall when she was presented with the Italian-American Heritage Award by Mayor Frank Jackson.

“After leaving Cleveland Opera Theater, Andrea founded ContempOpera Cleveland where she performed and produced the works of modern composers and brought opera into classrooms around Cleveland.”

Click here to read a statement from Cleveland Opera Theater, and here to view Anelli’s greeting to the audience before an Opera Per Tutti al fresco performance.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Apollo’s Fire has announced a job opening for full-time general manager of Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra. Read about the position and download a detailed job description here.

Video applications are now being received through February 15 for the 2022 James Stroud National Classical Guitar Youth Competition, open to students ages 14-18. Semi-final and final rounds will be held in person at the Cleveland Institute of Music from June 2 through 5. The competition will award prize money totalling US$ 25,000. Click here for details.

Looking ahead, the Vienna Philharmonic has announced that frequent guest conductor Franz Welser-Möst will lead its New Year’s Concert for the third time on January 1, 2023.

And looking back to its December “Carols for Quire XI” programs, Quire Cleveland has made ten “videos” created from photos and a live audio recording of its December 4, 2021 concert at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church available here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

One important development to celebrate today in classical music history. In 1950, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) announced that it would produce LPs — 33 1/3 rpm long playing records — following the lead established by Columbia Records in 1948.

These records would replace 78 rpm discs — made of an abrasive shellac compound and limited to about five minutes of recording time per side — with vinyl, and formerly wide grooves with “microgrooves,” extending playing time to 22 minutes per side.

The history of this development gets a bit complicated (RCA had attempted to bring out an earlier version in 1931 that failed), but suffice to say that the change from shellac to vinyl — with all the attendant technical details — was a boon for classical music.

RCA has produced two films about “The History of Vinyl.” Click here to watch a 1946 film narrated by longtime Metropolitan Opera commentator Milton Cross that includes a tour of RCA’s Camden, New Jersey plant, and here to watch Part II, which followed ten years later. Part III, which followed in 1958, introduced stereo recording.