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Apollo’s Fire Violin Fantasy to explore influences on Bach

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by Daniel Hathaway

Where did Johann Sebastian Bach come from? What influenced the mature musical style of one of the greatest composers of the Baroque period? Or to put it as co-director and violin soloist Alan Choo does in his recorded introduction to Apollo’s Fire’s Violin Fantasy programs, “Who were Bach’s role models?”

Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra will set out on a musical journey this weekend to document some of those influences, introducing the Hapsburg composer Johann Schmeltzer (1623-1680), touching base with Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) and Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), investigating the expressive techniques of late 17th-century German composers like Johann Adam Reinken (1643-1722) and Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707), and ending with a curious vocal work by a composer half Bach’s age that the Leipzig master thought highly enough of to copy out and slightly alter in 1746. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra Chorus sings Brahms’ Requiem with duo pianists (Oct. 28) 

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by Daniel Hathaway

Like the exiles in The Book of Isaiah who returned rejoicing to Zion, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus jubilantly revisited Severance Music Center, the scene of many past triumphs, on Thursday evening, October 28. Chorus director Lisa Wong was on the podium, Johannes Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem was in singers’ hands and on their lips, a pair of Steinways manned by Carolyn Warner and Daniel Overly sat dovetailed at center-stage, and a near-capacity audience witnessed the homecoming.

Had the Chorus been missed during its many months of silence? You bet it had. A thunderous welcome greeted the 120-some singers as they smartly filed onstage, to be matched at the other end of the evening by a warm and lengthy ovation for a job well done. [Read more…]

Diary: Monday, November 8, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

MONDAY’S AGENDA:

Les Délices’ SalonEra 2.4 — Divine Love premieres today, featuring CWRU Scholar Susan McClary, cornettist Alexandra Opsahl, and tenor Jason McStoots in ecstatic music from a very special corner of the seventeenth century. Tune in at 7:30 pm to hear performances of works by Schütz, Cozzolani, and Charpentier. Register here to view online and on demand after debut. Suggested donation $10.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Oberlin Conservatory has announced the winners of its senior concerto competition, held on Sunday in Finney Chapel. In alphabetic order, musicians who will perform later this season with the Oberlin Orchestra or Chamber Orchestra are: Leo Choi (Samuel Barber: Piano Concerto, Op. 38), David Lee (cello, Sergei Prokofiev: Sinfonia Concertante in E Minor, Op. 125), Evyn Levy (Aaron Copland: Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra), and Johnum Palado (Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 63).

Judges for the contest included Norman Fischer, Professor of Cello, Rice University Shepherd School of Music, Alexander Korsantia Professor of Piano, New England Conservatory, Bramwell Tovey, conductor, pianist, composer, and Music Director Designate of the Sarasota Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, and Alain Trudel  conductor, trombonist, composer, and Music Director of the Toledo Symphony.

Les Délices announces that the shelf life of its online programs will be extended beyond the announced expiration dates. Its Song of Orpheus, and the four future programs in the Baroque ensemble’s concert series will now be available until June 30.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1890, Belgian-born French composer César Franck died in Paris, his demise partially attributed to the after effects of injuries he sustained when a cab he was riding in collided with a horse-drawn trolley.

Franck’s most celebrated works are for the organ, including the Trois Chorales completed during the last year of his life. Click here to watch French organist Vincent Dubois play No. 3 in a minor at Soissons Cathedral. Dubois, who performed at St. John’s Cathedral in Cleveland in November, 2015, is now one of the three tenured organists at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris.

Otherwise, the composer left only one Symphony, performed here by Pierre Monteux and the Chicago Symphony, with a follow-along score. Among his chamber works are the popular and dramatic Violin Sonata, played here by ChamberFest Cleveland rising stars Nathan Meltzer and Evren Ozel in Harkness Chapel at CWRU. (It’s frequently poached by cellists, as well as the occasional flutist — which just doesn’t quite seem right for the material.)

Born on this date in 1906 in Cambridge, MA, American composer, conductor, and lutenist Rudolph Arnold Dolmetsch was the son of early music revival pioneer Arnold Dolmetsch, who settled with his family in the English village of Haslemere in 1914 and maintained a workshop for period instruments.

Rudolph eventually veered off in his own direction, but kept one foot in the early music world, as shown by his Concertino for Viola da Gamba and Small Orchestra from 1941. Click here for a performance by the Concord Chamber Orchestra.

And on this date in 1991, American musicologist and pianist John Kirkpatrick left us, but his legacy as the authority on the music of Charles Ives and as the composer’s archivist remains strong. Among his signal achievements, the first recording of Ives’ thorny Concord Sonata. Listen here.

Diary: Weekend, November 6-7, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday, join members of the Greater Cleveland Flute Society for a 1 pm master class with Robert Dick featuring some of his extended techniques and inventions.

In the evening, the 7:00 hour presents students and alumni of CIM Opera Theater in a MET Opera-style gala culminating in Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music, “A Season of Thanksgiving” program by an octet from Cleveland Chamber Choir, and the debut of Kent State Youth Winds, featuring National Trumpet Competition high school division winner Chris Petrella. 

Mark Edwards leads the Oberlin Baroque Orchestra at 7:30 in Warner Concert Hall (live stream available), and British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason delivers the Elgar Concerto at 8 at Severance with Jakub Hrůša and The Cleveland Orchestra.

On Sunday (you did set your clocks back an hour, right?) The Oberlin Senior Concerto Competition begins bright and early (10 am in Finney Chapel), Kanneh-Mason and Hrůša wrap up their four-concert set at Severance at 3, and violinist Andrew Sords and pianist Anitra Pontremoli perform at First Lutheran in Lorain at the same hour.

At 4 pm, the Cavani Quartet continue their Beyond Beethoven series at The Temple – Tifereth Israel, both Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland and Christ Presbyterian in Canton offer Choral Evensong (including the blessing of the new organ at Trinity), and the Lakeland Civic Orchestra plays a homecoming concert in Kirtland.

The weekend ends as it began with flutist Robert Dick, this time at 7:30 pm at Praxis Fiber Workshop in an improvisation-fest with Dana Jessen, bassoon, Bob Drake, hardware electronics, and Stephan Haluska, harp.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Semyon Bychkov has withdrawn from next week’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts, to be replaced by Thierry Fischer. The new program replaces Dvořák and Tchaikovsky with Messiaen’s Les Offrandes oubliées and Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with Tom Borrow remains as originally announced.

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, Daniel Meyer, music director, has announced a three-concert season for 2021-2022. An hour-long family concert on November 20 at 3 pm at the Breen Center will celebrate Cleveland landmarks with musical selections by Respighi, Debussy, Jennifer Higdon, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Howard Arlen, and Michael Daugherty. On March 5 at 7:30 pm, the orchestra will join organist Jonathan Moyer at the Church of the Covenant for music by Walter Piston, Satie, Robin, and Haydn, and a Mother’s Day Weekend performance at the Covenant on May 7 at 7:30 with flutist Jessica Sindell will feature works by Tamm, Mozart, and Beethoven.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

The announcement of a podium change for next week’s Cleveland Orchestra concerts neatly coincides with the first performance of one of the works that Thierry Fischer will conduct: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, in the 1922 arrangement for orchestra by Maurice Ravel, commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony and first performed on November 6 of 1924.

The original is a cleverly-conceived suite for solo piano that Modest Mussorgsky completed in 1874 after visiting an exhibition of watercolors and drawings by his late friend Victor Hartmann. On his walkthrough, the composer views and contemplates ten of the vivid and sometimes bizarre works in the show, with thoughtful little promenades in between.

In his program notes for the L.A. Philharmonic, Orrin Howard writes,

Pictures at an Exhibition proved to be a welcome rarity in Mussorgsky’s anguished experience – a composition born quickly and virtually painlessly. Reporting to his friend Vladimir Stassov about the progress of the suite he was writing for piano (Pictures’ original medium), Mussorgsky exulted: “Ideas, melodies, come to me of their own accord. Like roast pigeons in the story, I gorge and gorge and over-eat myself. I can hardly manage to put it all down on paper fast enough.”

Most concertgoers are familiar with the Ravel orchestration. A few may be aware that other arrangements were made by Leopold Stokowski, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Alexander Taneyev, as well as by Sir Henry Wood (writing under the nom de plume of “Klenovsky,” until he heard Ravel’s version and immediately withdrew).

In fact, there are dozens of arrangements of Mussorgsky’s Pictures, as detailed in a spreadsheet made for the Petrucci Project, which lists those for orchestra or wind ensembles made since Leo Funtek made a complete orchestration in 1922, and includes versions by Mekong Delta for rock band and orchestra, and the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer reworking.

Considering the attractiveness and splendid colors of Ravel’s orchestration, you can emphasize with Henry Wood’s decision to get out of the way.

Another happenstance to mark this weekend is the anniversary of Belgian Adolphe Sax, born on November 6, 1814, who invented the instruments of the saxophone family in 1840. Ravel used a solo alto sax to great effect in “The Old Castle” in Pictures.

Diary: Friday, November 5, 2021 

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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.

Kent State University to launch Youth Winds on November 6

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by Daniel Hathaway

Northeast Ohio’s newest youth ensemble will burst onto the scene on Saturday, November  at 7:00 pm at Kent State University, when the Kent State Youth Winds make their debut in Cartwright Auditorium.

Led by Wendy K. Matthews, KSU’s director of bands, the new ensemble numbers 48 high school age players equally divided between males and females, and fills both an educational gap and a geographical void in the Kent area. “I grew up in a rural area and would have done anything to be in a group like this growing up,” Matthews said in a Zoom call.

The ensemble, which rehearses weekly and is scheduled to play three concerts this season, is managed by Matthews and a group of Kent State students who serve as Mentors. “They hold sectionals, play alongside the young musicians, and are involved in every aspect of the ensemble. It’s a very practical way for them to get experience before they go off and student teach,” she said.

Matthews and her Mentors have been working toward Saturday’s debut since May when auditions were scheduled — right in the middle of COVID and the restrictions the pandemic placed on wind players, which have been only slightly relaxed recently. [Read more…]

Cleveland Composers Guild teams up with McGaffin Carillon for new music 

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by Daniel Hathaway

It’s good for composers to try writing outside their comfort zone, but some members of the Cleveland Composers Guild are challenging themselves to scale new heights by learning to write for the carillon.

Ubiquitous in the Low Countries of Belgium and the Netherlands, carillons are collections of tuned bells played with the fingers, fists, feet, and occasionally by a performer’s outstretched hand or forearm. The instruments vary in size depending on the number of bells their creators could afford, and on the size of the towers where they’re housed.

Northeast Ohio is home to several carillons, among which the McGaffin Carillon in University Circle is the largest, with its four-octave range of 47 bells. Its 50th anniversary celebrations in 2018 included McGaffin Flourish, a new work by Guild member Jennifer Conner, who teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music — well within earshot of the McGaffin Tower. Although attached to The Church of the Covenant, the structure has been incorporated as a separate entity for the sake of the preservation and promotion of the bells.

Carillonneur George Leggiero has been the liaison between the Friends of the McGaffin Carillon and the Composers Guild in planning a series of new works to be debuted from the tower this fall during the Friday lunchtime concerts, which run between 12:15 and 12:45 pm. [Read more…]

Diary: Tuesday, November 2, 2021

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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.

Diary: Weekend, October 30-31, 2021

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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…]

Diary: Friday, October 29, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

CONCERTS TODAY:

Baldwin Wallace’s Bach Haus, part of the reconfiguring of the BW Bach Festival returns for a 7 pm concert by Front Porch, cellist Khari Joyner, saxophonist Gabriel Pique, and BW Music Theatre students at the Knowlton Center on the Berea campus. On the docket: Bluegrass, Broadway, Jazz, and, of course, Bach, plus coffee and desserts.

At the same hour, the Bowling Green State University Men’s Chorus is scheduled for a concert at St. Christopher’s Church in Rocky River.

Two conservatory orchestras go nearly head-to-head tonight. At 7 pm, the CIM Orchestra will feature Cleveland Orchestra musicians as principals in music by Purcell and Stravinsky, Half an hour later, Oberlin’s Fridays@Finney presents the Oberlin Orchestra & Contemporary Music Ensemble, Rafael Jiménez & Timothy Weiss, conducting, with NEXUS Chamber Music, Robert Walters, English horn, Jacqui Armbruster, viola & Amy Owens, soprano, in music by Jessica Meyers, Augusta Read Thomas, Michel Foumal, and Tebogo Monnakgotia. Both performances will offer the option of live streams.

And the once-a-month Oberlin Friday Night Organ Pump (pictured), will be the Halloween Edition of this popular midnight show that features conservatory organ majors playing the C.B. Fisk Op. 116 instrument. Anything could be on tap. It starts at 11:59 pm.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Whatever happened to Maria Anna Mozart, “Nannerl,” the composer’s beloved older sister, who died on this date in 1829? An accomplished pianist in her own right, she is said to have written music herself, although none survives. Her life was re-imagined in René Féret’s 2010 French language film, Nannerl, la sœur de Mozart. Watch a trailer here, and learn how you can rent the movie.

On October 29, 1911, Hungarian-born newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer died in Charleston, South Carolina. His estate endowed the Pulitzer Prizes, which, beginning in 1943,  included an annual award for a classical musical composition by an American composer. In the late 1990s, the entry rules were expanded to include a wider range of American music, and the first such prize recognized Wynton Marsalis’ 1997 Blood on the Fields. George Gershwin and Duke Ellington were subsequently honored on their anniversary years in 1998 and 1999.

It’s interesting to read down the list of Pulitzer Prize winners in music, both to see what works have passed into wide use and which seem to have fallen by the wayside. Click here to view the list.

For an early start on your Halloween celebrations, have a listen to Edward Burlingame Hill’s The Fall of the House of Usher, based on the Edgar Allan Poe poem, which received its first performance on this date in 1920 by Pierre Monteux and the Boston Symphony. In lieu of a recording of the piece, how about listening to Basil Rathbone’s inimitable reading of Poe’s chiller. Click here if you have 23 minutes to spare.

Finally, on this day in 1929, dubbed “Black Tuesday,” the New York Stock Exchange crashed, launching the Great Depression. YouTube will take you back to some popular music of the period via this playlist.

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