by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS THIS WEEKEND:

Presenters seem to be taking Saturday off, but there are five varied concerts to choose from on Sunday afternoon: Tuesday Musical’s Al Fresco Passport series (Zydeco on the lawn of Akron’s Historic Barder House both at 1 and 3 pm), Divinity Lutheran’s Parma Heights recital by Cleveland Orchestra musicians Elanya Duitman, violin, and Carolyn Warner, piano at 3 pm, an American Guild of Organists, Cleveland Chapter retrospective of Music by H. Leslie Adams (pictured) for piano, voice, violin and trumpet in Rocky River, and Spanish Renaissance music performed by Duo Mignarda with EnsAmble Ad-Hoc and baritone José Gotera at St. John’s Cathedral, both at 3 pm, followed by the Cavani String Quartet’s latest “Beyond Beethoven” episode on the Music From the Western Reserve Series in Hudson at 5 pm (LvB’s Op. 18, No. 5 and Op. 59, No. 3 plus Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout.

Details in our Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READS:

In a September 22 entry on his blog, Unanswered Question, musical scholar and concert promoter Joe Horowitz discusses two examples of “Buried Treasure,” works by Black composers that he argues need to come into the mainstream.

Of the first, he writes, “It’s finally become inevitable that William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, premiered by Leopold Stokowski in 1934, will become known as a galvanizing achievement in American symphonic music. Incredibly, our major orchestras still haven’t gotten around to it – but they will.”

The second work, Arthur Farwell’s 1922 Hako String Quartet, will be released in October on Naxos in a performance by the Dakota String Quartet. Horowitz writes, “Farwell isn’t played for reasons political, not musical. As the leader of our Indianist movement in music, he’s today condemned as a cultural appropriator…He believed it was a democratic obligation of Americans of European descent to try to understand the indigenous Americans they displaced and oppressed — to preserve something of their civilization; to find a path toward reconciliation. His Indianist compositions attempt to mediate between Native American ritual and the Western concert tradition.” Read his article here.

And in an NPR story, Eleanor Beardsley writes about French pianist Colette Maze, who has just released her sixth album at the age of 107 (she records on Sundays in her 14th floor apartment overlooking the Seine, “when the neighbors are likely to be out and the building is quieter.”) Read or listen to the six-minute broadcast here.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

Two musicians born on September 26 figure in other entries in the weekend’s Diary. American composer and trombonist William Levi Dawson (1898 in Anniston, Alabama) is the composer of the Negro Folk Symphony mentioned in Joe Horowitz’s blog, and American composer Gabriela Lena Frank (1972, Berkeley, Caifornia) is the author of Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, to be played on Sunday by the Cavani Quartet.

Why not spend some time today visiting recordings of those two works. Click here for Leopold Stokowski’s performance of the Dawson Symphony with the American Symphony Orchestra, and here for a performance of the string orchestra version of Frank’s Leyendas by Lina Gonzaléz-Granados and the New England Conservatory Philharmonia live streamed on October 17, 2020 from NEC’s Jordan Hall in Boston.

Other notables to acknowledge this weekend include Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (born on September 25, 1932, Toronto), and on September 26, French conductor Charles Munch (Strasbourg, 1891), and American composer George Gershwin (Brooklyn, New York, 1898. Those who left us on September 26 include colonial New England composer William Billings (Boston, 1800), and Bela Bartók (New York, 1945).

Archival recordings can put us directly in touch with these musical personalities. Click here to revisit the famous incident of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto involving Gould and Leonard Bernstein, here to watch Munch conduct Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique with the Boston Symphony, here to listen to Gershwin play excerpts from the F-Major Piano Concerto, and here to enjoy Bartók’s own interpretations of excerpts from Music for Children.

Billings departed the scene too early for recordings, but Ross W. Duffin and Quire Cleveland brought his infectious motet I Am the Rose of Sharon to life in a concert at Historic St. Peter’s Church in April, 2014. Watch here.

 

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

CIM violin professor Jaime Laredo celebrates his 80th birthday tonight at 7 by conducting the CIM Orchestra in works by Prokofiev, Mozart, and Brahms in a hybrid concert you can attend in person (free reservation required) or watch online.

CityMusic Cleveland’s Pantheon Ensemble goes live at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus tonight at 7 with a program featuring the world premiere of Denise Ondishko’s A More Perfect Union: Reflections on American Equality, Justice and Hope, along with pieces by Gershwin, Lili Boulanger, and Dvorák.

Pianist Gerardo Teissonnière joins the belated LvB 250th celebrations with a concert of Beethoven’s last three sonatas tonight at 7 in the Church of the Western Reserve.

More world premieres are on the docket for the first of three fall concerts by No Exit tonight at 8 in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, including works by Derrik Balogh,  Giuseppe Desiato, and Jiří Trtík that share the program with pieces by No Exit artistic director Timothy Beyer and Agata Zubel. (Catch later performances at SPACES on October 1 and Heights Arts on October 2 — all are free.)

JOELA JONES TO BE HONORED ON HER RETIREMENT:

The Cleveland Orchestra announced on Thursday that principal keyboard player Joela Jones (pictured above) will retire after performing Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony with the ensemble on October 17. At the performance on October 14,  she will be honored with the Orchestra’s Distinguished Service Award. Its longest-serving principal player, Jones joined The Cleveland Orchestra 45 seasons ago in 1967.

In the announcement, the Orchestra noted that “her contributions go well beyond the countless notes played on stage. These were decades filled with Monday night rehearsals, accompanying the remarkable volunteers of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, afternoons or mornings in coaching sessions interacting with conductors and guest vocalists, countless chamber music rehearsals, and many Orchestra committee meetings, working tirelessly for the sake of her fellow musicians and the ensemble.”

Click here to watch a video about Joela Jones’s Distinguished Service Award, and here for more information about the keyboardist who has played piano, organ, harpsichord, celesta, synthesizer, and even accordion when required for nearly a half century.

ClevelandClassical.com’s Mike Telin interviewed Joela Jones in January, 2015 in conjunction with the 90th birthday celebrations for Pierre Boulez. Read that article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

British conductor and musical scholar Christopher Hogwood died of a brain tumor in Cambridge on this date in 2014. One of the forerunners in the early music revival movement, Hogwood relaunched the 18th-century Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, clearing a pathway for such later conductors as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM eventually outgrew its concentration on Baroque music and recorded the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as all of Mozart’s piano concertos with Robert Levin.

Hogwood was also noted for transforming Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society into a period instrument ensemble, along with his influential guest conducting appearances with a number of symphony orchestras. His career is detailed in Barry Millington’s obituary in The Guardian.

Click here to watch Hogwood’s performance of Haydn’s last symphony with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (misidentified as the AAM!), and here to watch a performance he led of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 with Robert Levin, who provided his own improvised cadenzas.

To see Christopher Hogwood in action as a musical scholar who served on the faculty of London’s Gresham College, here are two lecture-concerts: London: Music Under the Shadow of Handel, and an analysis of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.

by Daniel Hathaway

INTERESTING READ:

Frequent Cleveland Orchestra guest conductor Jakub Hrůša (pictured left in a 2019 performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony with soprano Joelle Harvey) is the subject of a New York Times interview this week in conjunction with the release of his recordings of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony with the Bamberg Symphony.

Obsessed with the piece, the composer left three distinct versions of the symphony, and Hrůša, unable to decide which he preferred, chose to commit all three to disc. The article also reveals some interesting facts about the Bamberg orchestra, which Hrusa regards as the “flagship” of its small Bavarian City, where one in ten of its residents holds season tickets for its concerts. (Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower was solo cellist in Bamberg before his translation to Ohio.) Read the article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

British composer Gustav Holst was born on September 21, 1874 in Cheltenham. Prolific and inspired by such diverse influences as Hindu music and English folksong, he left a large catalogue of music, much of which has been overshadowed by works like The Planets that made his name famous.

Holst’s daughter Imogen recalls her father in a charming documentary, and this restored 1926 recording of The Planets with the composer conducting has been described as revelatory and surprising.

Explore some of Holst’s less familiar choral works with these recordings: His Two Psalms, sung by the Estudio Coral de Buenos Aires in 1981, his Hymn to Jesus, based on the Apocryphal Gospels and performed by the University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra and Grand Chorus in 2012, and — continuing the metaphor of sacred dance — his folklike but sophisticated setting of the old Cornysh carol, This have I done for my true love, performed by the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford with scrolling score.

Or take a taste of his settings of hymns from the Rig Veda, with the Hymn of the Travellers, sung by the children’s choir and youth ensemble of the Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris with harp accompaniment.

And English art song composer Roger Quilter took leave of this life on September 21, 1953, leaving a legacy of over a hundred songs, many setting texts by Shakespere, that still figure importantly in vocal recitals. His Three Shakespeare Songs of 1905 are probably at the top of the list, and composer Peter Warlock wrote that O Mistress Mine is “one of the very few things that very simply send me into ecstasies every time I play it.” This performance of the set is by baritone Zak Kariithi and pianist Lemuel Grave.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Outdoor concerts reign on Labor Day weekend, with Richard Kaufman leading The Cleveland Orchestra in film scores by John Williams both on Saturday and Sunday evening, and Carl Topilow hosting baritone Lester Lynch in an evening of music by Queen, Broadway tunes, and Americana classics with Cleveland Pops Orchestra in Elyria’s Town Square on Sunday.

Check our Concert Listings for details.

CLASSICAL MUSIC FOR LABOR DAY:

By the time that Labor Day was established as an official national holiday in 1894, in response to the widespread unrest exacerbated by the Pullman Strike of that year, 30 states were already setting a day aside to honor workers — an observance that became increasingly vital as the effects of the Machine Age unfolded. Among others, photographer Lewis Wickes Hine captured laborers with dignity in his fine art “photo stories” (below, his Powerhouse Mechanic, c. 1921).

“Work” has expanded to encompass a wide variety of human activity, as evidenced by a 2014 WQXR poll that asked listeners to nominate classical works that best capture the spirit of Labor Day. Submissions ranged from Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith to Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 2, from Copland’s Fanfare For the Common Man (countered by Joan Tower’s Fanfare(s) for the Uncommon Woman) to Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated,

One interesting suggestion was Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony (No. 45), the musical documentation of a labor dispute between Prince Nikolaus Esterházy and his court orchestra that seems ironic during the COVID era, when musicians of all kinds have experienced furloughs, layoffs, and the disappearance of work.

INTERESTING READ:

The Metropolitan Opera is scheduled to reopen on September 27 with Terrence Blanchard’s 2019 stage version of New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Click here to read the New York Magazine “Vulture” article about baritone Will Liverman, who will sing the title role.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

On September 4, collaborative pianist Irwin Gage was born in Cleveland in 1939, and Alsatian medical missionary, theologian, and Bach scholar Albert Schweitzer died at his hospital in Lambéréne, Gabon (then French Equatorial Africa) in 1965 at the age of 90.

On September 5, a long list of debuts and departures includes Johann Christian Bach (“The English Bach,” born in 1735), Canadian pianist and composer Marc-André Hamelin (born in 1961), and Hungarian-born conductor Sir Georg Solti (knighted honorarily in 1971 and substantively in 1972 when he became a British citizen, who died in 1997). Other names that pop up on the fifth day of September: German opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (born 1791), Amy (Mrs. H.H.A.) Beach (born 1867), American revolutionary John Cage (born 1912), English composer Peter Racine Fricker (born 1920), and Mexican conductor Edouarda Mata (born 1942).

The September 6 class includes three birthdays — American composers Emerson Whithorne (Cleveland, 1884), Wayne Barlow (Elyria, 1912), and William Kraft (also a percussionist and conductor, in Chicago, 1923) — as well as the passing of American conductor Henry Hadley (in New York, 1937).

To dig a bit deeper into the lives of four of this weekend’s honorees, watch

Albert Schweitzer: My Life is My Argument, which explores his decision to give up a prestigious career as a musician and philosopher to become a medical doctor and serve native inhabitants of Gabon, Africa.

Living the Classical Life: Episode 84, in which host and pianist Zsolt Bognár interviews Marc-André Hamelin about his preparation for a Carnegie Hall appearance “and how Hamelin has managed to find a zone of performance completely free of the nerves that often plague others,”

and listen to

Emerson Whithorne’s Poem for Piano and Orchestra (1927), played by John Kozar with the Haddenfield (NJ) Symphony Orchestra, Arthur Cohn conducting, “striking music, severe and granitic, with a determined shattering of its melodic line and persistently syncopated rhythms.”

and Henry Hadley’s tone poem The Ocean (1921), performed by John McLaughlin Williams and the Ukraine National Symphony, to experience the compositional legacy of an American figure who served as the first conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, scouted out the future location of Tanglewood, and had a World War II Liberty Ship named in his honor.

In their time, Whithorne and Hadley enjoyed performances of their works by major American orchestras. Is it time to rediscover them?

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 8 in Evans Amphitheater in Cain Park, the BlueWater Brass Quintet (Neil Mueller and Larry Hermon, trumpets, Ken Wadenpfuhl, horn, David Mitchell, trombone, and Ken Heinlein, tuba) will close out the last month of summer with music by J.S. Bach, Victor Ewald, Paul Dukas, and George Gershwin, along with a selection of Civil War-era brass band music. It’s free.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two very different figures in Germanic classical music history were born on this date one year apart: Albert Riemenschneider in Berea, Ohio in 1878, and Alma Schindler Mahler-Werfel in Vienna, Austria in 1879.

Riemenschneider’s father was president of German Wallace College, which later became Baldwin-Wallace College, then Baldwin Wallace University (dropping a hyphen on the way). Albert was offered the directorship of the music department in 1898 while still an undergraduate, and went on to found the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival in 1932, modeled after the one in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That became a Riemenschneider family enterprise with the agenda of allowing students to participate in each of J.S. Bach’s four great choral works — the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Mass in b-minor, and the Christmas Oratorio — during their undergraduate years.

His most well-known contribution to Bach studies was his publication of the 371 Harmonized Chorales in 1941 (along with 69 chorales with figured bass), a collection that had previously been published by Bach’s sons and others, but which has remained in publication and popularity.

Riemenschneider’s wife, Selma, was instrumental in founding the Baldwin Wallace Bach Institute with her 1951 gift of Albert’s books and manuscripts to the College (he died in 1940).

Tom Riemenschneider and Laura Kenelly considered his legacy in a paper on the 75th anniversary of the Festival. Click here to watch a video featuring the 2016 Matthew-Passion performance with Rufus Müller as Evangelist, Dashon Burton as Christus, and soloists Yulia Van Doren, Luthien Brackett, Matthew Anderson, and Jason Steigerwalt, with Dirk Garner conducting.

Alma Mahler was one of the truly liberated women of the early years of the 20th century, having become notorious for her serial marriages (Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius, Franz Werfel) and numerous interlocking affairs. She abandoned composing at Gustav’s insistence (he later relented), but her music, mainly Lieder, makes for interesting listening. Click here for a selection performed by soprano Charlotte Margiono and members of the Brabant Orchestra.

But her racy emotional life eclipsed everything else. Here’s a rare, brief interview. And Harvard math instructor and witty cabaret performer Tom Lehrer had a field day with her story in his song Alma:

Her lovers were many and varied

From the day she began her beguine

There were three famous ones whom she married

And God knows how many between

Alma, tell us

All modern women are jealous

Which of your magical wands

Got you Gustav and Walter and Franz?

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Cleveland Orchestra concerts at Blossom this summer have normally been scheduled for Sunday evenings, but one exception is tonight’s performance featuring pianist Jonathan Biss in Caroline Shaw’s Watermark (read a preview here). Also on tap, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Elgar’s Enigma Variations, with associate conductor Vinay Parameswarn on the podium, replacing Elim Chan, a victim of pandemic travel complications.

Also on for Saturday: Cleveland Opera Theater’s annual Opera for All concert returns to the Dunham Tavern Museum.

Sunday is packed with mostly outdoor events: Tuesday Musical’s al Fresco Passport series (two concerts featuring Opus 216 in fiddle music at Akron’s historic Barder House), Canton Symphony musicians popping up at the Beach Creek Botanical Garden in Alliance, a University of Akron faculty recital by clarinetist Stanislav Golovin, a Stars in the Classics Garden Concert in Orange Village, the Cavani Quartet with the Amici String Quartet on Tremont’s Arts in August Festival, and at Cain Park, the world premiere of Caliban Ascendant, a new ballet with music by Ty Alan Emerson choreographed by Bill Wade for Inlet Dance Theatre and performed — along with other works — by Cleveland Chamber Collective (rehearsal photo above). Read a preview article here.

For details, check our Concert Listings.

ONLINE SATURDAY:

Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year Festival returns for a second day of online performances by the world-class ensembles nominated for the magazine’s 2021 Orchestra of the Year Award — including The Cleveland Orchestra. Today’s program begins at 2 pm Eastern time, and will be available to watch for 24 hours on the British magazine’s website.

Saturday’s 2 pm lineup  includes music by Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Shostakovich, Florence Price, Handel, Bach, Vivaldi and Smetana performed by Paavo Järvi and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Santtu Matias-Rouvali with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst with the Cleveland Orchestra, Jakub Hrůša with Bamberger Symphoniker, and Richard Egarr with the Academy of Ancient Music.

INTERESTING READ:

In the Diary for Tuesday, August 17, we relinked to video interviews we conducted eight years ago with Colin Davin from Kabul, where the classical guitarist was serving as guest teacher at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (click here to watch). Now, the BBC considers the future of the school in an article by Tiffany Wertheimer. Read Afghan music school falls silent under Taliban rule here.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC

Colorado’s Aspen Music Festival and School was founded on August 28, 1949 as a two-week event celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of German social philosopher and dramatist Johann Wolgang von Goethe, who entered the world on August 28, 1749 in Frankfurt.

Watch A Bridge to Beethoven, a live performance by violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Shai Wosner from the 2015 Festival, and, from the Aspen School, a faculty-student showcase led by oboist Elaine Douvas.

Goethe’s most celebrated work is his tragic play, Faust, which became a German cultural monument, and whose mystical final lines have inspired settings by Schumann (Scenes from Goethe’s Faust), Liszt (Faust Symphony), and Mahler (Symphony No. 8).

And August 29, 1952, saw the premiere by pianist David Tudor in Woodstock, Vermont of one of the most controversial — and misunderstood — works of the 20th century: John Cage’s 4’33.” Usually characterized as four and a half minutes of silence, Cage actually intended the three-movement piece to allow listeners to tune in to the ambient sounds around them.

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