by Daniel Hathaway

ON TODAY’S AGENDA:

The free, Noon Advent Series at the Church of the Covenant continues today with an organ recital by Adam Chlebek, an Oberlin organ major and music director of Lakewood’s St. James Church. Both organs will be featured in music by Nicolaus Bruhns, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and Olivier Latry.

Tonight at 7:30 pm, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society presents The Cavani Quartet in its next-to-last performance in its Beyond Beethoven series. This event, a free, community concert at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights, features Beethoven’s Op. 95 and Op. 127 string quartets, and the “beyond” work is Osvaldo Golijov’s Tenebrae. (Photo: an earlier performance at the Music Settlement).

And in case you haven’t already heard, don’t go to the Akron Civic tonight — the Tuesday Musical performance by Rodney Marsalis and Philadelphia Big Brass has been cancelled.

INTERESTING READ:

Israeli-born cellist and conductor Amit Peled is featured in a Baltimore Sun article about The Mount Vernon Virtuosi, his chamber orchestra, and his vision of free classical music for all. (Peled was named music director of CityMusic Cleveland in 2019, when the organization was still presenting chamber orchestra concerts.) Read the article here.

CHANGES OF VENUE:

Two events previously scheduled at the Cleveland Institute of Music have been moved to other venues. The Cleveland Art Song Festival’s Winter Minifestival, including a recital on December 10 by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and pianist Bryan Wagorn, and master classes with Wagorn on the 9th, and Costanzo on the 11th, will now be held in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, same dates and times.

And a joint concert by Margaret Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble and Burning River Baroque scheduled at CIM on December 15 will now take place at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music announced today that applications are now being received for the second annual Emerging Black Composers Project. Esa-Pekka Salonen will lead the San Francisco Symphony in the first performance of a new work commissioned from the winner of the Project, who will also receive a $15,000 cash award. Read a press release here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today we celebrate two inaugurations and a premiere that took place on December 7 in classical music history. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

CONCERTS THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday at 1:30 pm at the Hay-McKinney Mansion of the Western Reserve Historical Society, members of The Cleveland Orchestra will play music by winners of the Cleveland Arts Prize in conjunction with the exhibit “Honoring Our Past Masters: The Golden Age of Cleveland Art, 1900-1945.” And at 8:00 pm, the Oberlin College Black Musicians Guild hosts the Nicholas Payton Trio in Finney Chapel.

On Sunday at 1:00 pm, Finney Chapel will be the site of the inaugural Peter Takács Beethoven Prize in Piano competition, named for the longtime Oberlin piano professor for whom Beethoven’s music has been a lifelong inspiration. (You can watch a webcast as well as attend in person.) A few blocks away at 5 pm, the Sacred Heart Concert Series presents the Orb Quartet and other Oberlin Conservatory musicians in “Chillin’ with Contemporary Composers.”

Otherwise, a long list of Advent and Christmas concerts fills this weekend’s calendar.

On Saturday, performers include the Lake Effect Concert Band, the Baldwin Wallace Men’s Chorus, Cleveland Jazz Orchestra with vocalists Vanessa Rubin, Evelyn Wright, and Ava Presto, and Quire Cleveland’s third and last “Mary’s Song” program.

On Sunday, seasonal music continues with Tomáseen Foley’s A Celtic Christmas, the Euclid Symphony Orchestra Holiday Pops, Western Reserve Chorale, Advent Lessons and Carols with Trinity Cathedral Choir, Singers Companye in Fairlawn, the University of Akron Choral Ensembles and Brass Choir (pictured above), and the West Shore Chorale.

Visit our Concert Listings page for details.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov was born on December 5, 1960 in La Plata, but departures far outnumber arrivals on these two dates in history. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S HAPPENING:

The vocal and instrumental musicians of Akron’s Holy Trinity Lutheran Church and St. Sebastian Catholic Church join forces at 7:30 pm for An Advent Procession of Lessons and Carols at Holy Trinity. You can attend in person or watch the live stream, which will be available for the next week.

Oberlin’s Fridays@Finney tonight at 7:30 pm hews to an avian theme with performances of Ottorino Respighi’s The Birds, Shulamit Ran’s Grand Rounds & Olivier Messiaen’s Oiseaux Exotiques by the Oberlin Orchestra & Contemporary Music Ensemble led by Rafael Jiménez and Timothy Weiss. Attend in-person, or join the live stream.

Guest vocalists Vanessa Rubin, Evelyn Wright, and Ava Preston will be featured with Cleveland Jazz Orchestra at 8:00 pm at BLUE Jazz+ in Akron. If that’s not convenient, “Sing a Song for the Holidays” repeats on Saturday at the Maltz PAC in University Circle.

And Quire Cleveland makes the second stop on its three-concert tour of “Carols for Quire XI: Mary’s Song” tonight at 8 pm at Our Lady of Peace Church on Buckingham Ave. in Cleveland. It’s free. Read a preview here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On December 3, 1883, Oberlin College began classes as the first institution of higher learning in the U.S. to admit both women and men.

And on this date in 1978, composer William Grant Still (pictured above), one of Oberlin’s first Black students, passed in Los Angeles at the age of 83. (He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the school in 1947.) Still has recently received long-overdue attention for his extensive catalogue of works that includes symphonies, ballets, operas, choral works, art songs, chamber music and works for solo instruments. A good reason to go exploring! Start here to access a web site maintained by his family and click away!

Let’s continue our December list of premieres with a look at the first performance of Samuel Barber’s Prayers of Kierkegaard by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony on this date in 1954.

Commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in 1942, the gestation of Barber’s one-movement piece for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, was prolonged by a few interruptions — notably World War II.

Barber chose to set words by the 19th-century Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard, whose writings had always appealed to him, but the composer avoided Kierkegaard’s complicated philosophy, turning to some simple and beautiful prayers instead,

Although it’s difficult to imagine in today’s media world, Time Magazine devoted an unsigned editorial to Barber’s new work, beginning with a description of the piece: [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S AGENDA:

Today’s free noon concert at the Church of the Covenant features North German Advent Music of the late 17th century. Tenor Mark Laseter, violinists Jonathan Goya and Addi Liu, violist da gamba Jane Leggiero, and organist Jonathan Moyer will perform music by Dietrich Buxtehude, Nicolaus Bruhns, and Johann Adam Reincken.

We’ve been remiss in recommending Eric Charnofsky’s radio programs, “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music,” which air from 2:00 to 4:00 pm on Mondays on Case Western Reserve University’s internet stream. Himself a composer and a collaborative pianist, Charnofsky (pictured) likes to hunt out not-so-often performed music by well-known composers. The current edition features works by Frederick Delius, Kile Smith, Julius Eastman, Paul Hindemith, Aaron Coland, Poldowski (the pseudonym for Régine Wieniawski), and Shih-Hui Chen. Need assistance connecting? Help is only a click away.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

For those who recoiled a bit last Friday morning at the all-too-early dominance of Christmas and Holiday music on the airwaves, we’ll seek out alternatives during these last weeks of 2021 and note the anniversaries of some works that received their premieres on these dates in classical music history.

On November 30, 1913 (with some wiggle room due to the conversion of Russian calendar dates), Sergei Rachmaninov conducted the first performance of his choral symphonic poem, The Bells, in St. Petersburg.

The composer, who had been seeking out a likely text to set to follow his cantata, Spring, was on holiday in Rome in 1907when he received an anonymous letter suggesting Edgar Allen Poe’s The Bells, in a translation by the Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont.

The original poem, read here by Basil Rathbone with an underlay of Mahler, is highly onomatopoetic, something that doesn’t translate well. But Rachmaninoff took to it enthusiastically, regarding the finished work — along with his All-Night Vigil — as one of his two favorite compositions. Click here to listen to a 2015 live performance on AVROTROS with the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus led by James Gaffigan, former assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra.

1.   Allegro ma non tanto: The Silver Sleigh Bells
2.   Lento: The Mellow Wedding Bells
3.     Presto: The Loud Alarm Bells
4.   Lento lugubre: The Mournful Iron Bells”