by Daniel Hathaway

CONCERTS TODAY:

Today’s lunchtime Carillon Concert by George Leggiero in University Circle features the premier of Pilaster by Matthew Saunders, a piece written as part of a year-long partnership with the Cleveland Composers Guild. Read a preview article here.

Tonight at 7, CIM Opera Theater celebrates A Century of Singing at CIM, a Met-style gala concert featuring student and alumni singers with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra performing opera favorites. And down the street at 7:30 pm, Czech guest conductor Jakub Hrůša, and British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason join The Cleveland Orchestra for the second in a four-day home stand at Severance.

And jumping west into Lorain County, tonight’s Fridays @ Finney features the Oberlin Orchestra, Rafael Jiménez, conducting, in the premiere of Eclipse by Oberlin grad Theo Chandler (pictured), plus Ole Schmidt’s Hommage à Stravinsky (1985), and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D (1901). You can also catch the performance via live stream. Click here.

NEWS BRIEFS:

PianoCleveland has announced the winner of the audience prize in its recent PianoFlicks video project competition. 8-year-old Aegean Niu of Perth, Australia, improvised a piece titled Beethoven’s Coronavirus. Watch it — and view all the other submissions — here.

INTERESTING INTERVIEW:

Last season, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music surprised the music industry by announcing its acquisition of Opus 3 Artists, one of the few surviving artist management firms. The new partnership raised important issues that SFCM President David Stull addresses in a Musical America One to One interview. (Stull was formerly Dean of the Oberlin Conservatory). Watch the interview with MA’s Susan Elliott here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On November 5, 1929, Ukrainian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky made his American debut at Oberlin College, an event announced in a New York Times article the month before. Oberlin seems to have scooped three major orchestras here, and it would be interesting to know more about that appearance.

On November, 5, 1989 Ukrainian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz departed this life at the age of 85. His last public performance took place on June 21, 1987 in Hamburg. Click here to watch another performance on that same final concert tour, this one in the Goldener Saal of the Wiener Musikverein. Note the exuberant comments!

And November 5, 2012 marked the death of American composer Elliott Carter at the age of 103. Click here to read a New York Times appraisal of the ‘Master of Complexity’ by Anthony Tomassini.

by Daniel Hathaway

TUESDAY’S AGENDA:

At noon, Jonathan Moyer takes advantage of the two very different organs at the Church of the Covenant, playing a Bergamasca by Samuel Scheidt and Johann Pachelbel’s Aria Quarta on the 17th-century-style instrument in the rear gallery, followed by a Mendelssohn Andante and Dudley Buck’s The Last Rose of Summer on the large, eclectic instrument in the chancel. Nice to have a choice! The concert is free.

Details in our Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READ:

Last Thursday’s performance of the Brahms Requiem by the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus was remarkable for a number of reasons, but one of the most noticeable was that the 120 singers performed wearing special face masks. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran a story a few days ago about Joan Fernley, a soprano who designed such a device that improved the performing experience for singers. “Fearnley says she couldn’t find a mask online that was suitable for the needs of a singer. ‘They were really close to the lips and you would breathe in and you would suck the fabric right into your mouth. You would open [your mouth] wide to make a tall vowel and the mask would pop off,’ she said. Her design has caught on with vocalists around the world. Read the story here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Some random milestones to recall on November 2 in classical music history,

On this date in 1887, Swedish coloratura soprano Jenny Lind died in England at the age of 67. Having made her mark in opera, she retired at the age of 29 in 1849, but the next year undertook a 93-concert tour of the U.S. under the management of P.T. Barnum. She raised today’s equivalent of nearly $11 million, endowing free schools in her native country and contributing to charities. Lind settled in England in 1852, raised three children, and taught at the Royal College of Music.

Jumping across into the mid-20th century, Gian Carlo Menotti’s Piano Concerto had its debut on November 2, 1945 by Rudolf Firkusny and the Boston Symphony with Richard Burgin on the podium. An instrumental work by Menotti, who was known principally as an opera composer? Give it a try in this performance by Earl Wild and the Symphony of the Air under the baton of Jorge Mester.

On this date in 1979, Peter Shaffer’s musical Amadeus, opened in London.

And on November 2, 1960, Greek American conductor Dimitri Metropoulos died of a heart attack in Milan while rehearsing Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Orchestra of La Scala. Here’s some footage of Metropoulos rehearsing part of Liszt’s tone poem, Faust, with the New York Philharmonic.

by Daniel Hathaway

CONCERTS TODAY AND TOMORROW:

On Saturday, the BGSU Men’s Chorus continues its tour in the area with a 4pm program at First Congregational Church in Tallmadge and TrueNorth Chorale and Chamber Orchestra perform in Bay Village at 7.

Two Oberlin events on Saturday evening at 7:30 pm include a Faculty/Guest Recital by NEXUS Chamber Music with English hornist Robert Walters, and an organ recital by former professor William Porter with Michael Lynn, flute and recorder.

Porter’s recital is the harbinger of two events on Sunday marking the 40th anniversary of the 17th-century style North German meantone organ by John Brombaugh and Associates in Fairchild Chapel (pictured). Alumni play a tag team recital at 2:30 pm, and a 7:30 pm Vespers Concert will feature the Collegium Musicum, directed by Steven Plank, faculty organists Jonathan Moyer and Christa Rakich, Porter and guests.

Halloween inspires programs by the Euclid Symphony and the Kent State Orchestra, both on Sunday at 3, and other performances include composer, arranger, and organist Dan Miller (2 pm in Parma Heights), the Jerusalem Quartet on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society Series (3 pm at the Maltz PAC), the CIM New Music Ensemble with Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (4 pm in Mixon Hall), saxophonist Gabriel Piqué and pianist Casey Dierlam Tse on the Music From The Western Reserve series (5 pm at Christ Church, Hudson), and an Oberlin Jazz Society jam session with Caleb Smith (7:30 pm at the Birenbaum).

Details in our Concert Listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

It’s time for the annual celebration of Hallowe’en, and probably also time to put that apostrophe back in its name, which is a contraction of “All Hallows Eve,” the day before the Christian feast of All Saints’ Day. So on Sunday there will be “ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night” out and about.

A variety of scary mix tapes is available, but Dark Classical, one of the better collections to listen to on Hallowe’en, will give you an hour and 45 minutes worth of thrills and chills while you’re waiting to pass out sugary treats.

Everyone has their own favorite hair-raising music, and comments on the aforementioned collection have lamented the omission of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, and proposed adding Schnittke’s Requiem, and the “Dance of the Knights” from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.

My own recommendation for generating goose bumps is “Satan’s Dance” from Ralph Vaughan William’s Job: A Masque for Dancing, based on drawings by William Blake (left, Satan smiting Job with boils). The composer dedicated his 1930 work to conductor Sir Adrian Boult, who leads it here with the London Philharmonic at the age of 83. (Satan enters around 4:12).

A bit scary in its own way, George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children was first performed on October 30, 1970 at the Library of Congress by the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, which included mezzo-soprano Jan DeGaetani, pianist Gilbert Kalish, and boy soprano Michael Dash. The piece was commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, named for the American music patroness and composer who was, by coincidence, born on October 30, 1864 in Chicago.

Click here to watch a more recent performance by faculty and fellows at the 2016 Bang on a Can Summer Marathon at MASS MoCA’s Summer Festival. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TONIGHT’S CONCERT AGENDA:

Though without the services of The Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus performs live for the first time since March of 2020 tonight at 7 in Mandel Hall at Severance. The four hands of pianists Daniel Overly and Carolyn Warner will stand in for the instrumentalists, using Johannes Brahms’ own arrangement for two pianos. Lisa Wong will be on the podium, and soprano Andrea Carroll and baritone Chris Kenney will be the soloists.

And tonight at 7:30 pm, pianist Jean-Louis Haguenauer of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University will play a guest recital in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall. The program includes Webern’s Variations, Op. 27, J.S. Bach’s Overture in the French Style, BWV 831, Haguenauer’s own I can’t breathe — in solidarity, and Schubert’s Sonata in A-flat, D. 959. Catch the performance in person, or watch the webcast.

Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

It’s bad news when the Taliban come calling. The Afghan all-female Zohra Orchestra fled the country in advance of their arrival and are now rehearsing and performing in Qatar. Read the Yahoo News story here.

The Summit Choral Society wants its furloughed members and interested new singers to know that the Metropolitan Chorus is back in business, with rehearsals to begin on Tuesday, November 2. Read about the adult ensemble and register here.

Burning River Baroque announces the release on various streaming sites of its CD, Love Poems in Times of Climate Change, featuring soprano Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust in music by Dawn Sontag. The ensemble reminds us that although original music is more widely available now than in pre-internet days, a Spotify stream will pay the musicians “somewhere between $.003 and $.0084.” That suggests that a donation is in order.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Starting new jobs on October 28: Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina as organist and choirmaster of St. Agapito Cathedral in the Italian town of Palestrina in 1544, and John Dowland as “Musician for the Lutes” at the English court of James I, in 1612.

American composer and conductor Howard Hanson was born on this date in 1896 in Wahoo, Nebraska, 26 years after its founding by Czech, German, and Scandinavian settlers (and named after the eastern wahoo, a shrub indigenous to the area). Tapped by industrialist George Eastman in 1923 to be the second director of his new Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, Hanson served the school for 40 years, during which he was also prolific as a composer. (Speaking of music schools, a charter was granted to another famous institution, the Juilliard School in New York City, on this date in 1926, the successor to the Institute of Musical Art where Hanson had studied in 1912).

As a conductor, Hanson led the premieres of many American works including William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1 Afro-American, which debuted on this date in 1931. His own Symphony No. 2, subtitled “Romantic” was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to mark the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony, who premiered it in November of 1930. One of his most popular works, it’s recently been arranged by Cameron Carpenter for his innovative International Touring Organ. Have a taste here.

On this date in 1909, violinist Joseph Gingold was born in Russia. A year ago, Jarrett Hoffman profiled Gingold, who served as concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra for thirteen years. Read that Diary entry here.

And October 28, 1925, saw the opening of the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation series at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Coolidge was responsible for the commissioning of a large body of chamber music, as chronicled in this 2016 Interlude article in the series, “The Great Women Artists Who Shaped Music XX.”