by Daniel Hathaway

CHANTICLEER UPDATE:

San Francisco’s celebrated 12-voice male choir stops in Akron tonight on their first tour since the pandemic shut singing down for over a year. Read about how the ensemble coped with the situation in this interview with music director Tim Keeler.

Tuesday Musical, the sponsor for the 7:30 pm performance in E.J. Thomas Hall, has emailed these details to ticket holders and prospective attendees:

Seats in the orchestra level start at $19. For the best selection, order on-line now. If seats are still available, tickets will also be sold at the door. 

After the concert, we’ll celebrate with a festive drinks-&-desserts reception for the entire audience!

Complimentary parking in the EJ Parking Deck and adjacent surface lots.

Are you a student? Receive a free ticket! Simply bring your student ID to the EJ Ticket Office that evening.

EJ Ticket Office opens at 6:30 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m. Program begins at 7:30 p.m.

The singers of Chanticleer ask that everyone wear masks, regardless of vaccination status. Complimentary disposable masks will be available at the door.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

This is the week when the Cleveland International Piano Competition moves into a new phase with the arrival of eight pianists who will enter the Semifinal Round two-by-two, live and in person beginning on Thursday at the Cleveland Museum of Art. We’ll concentrate today on keyboard composers and performers who mark anniversaries on July 27.

French composer and harpsichordist Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre entered the Elysian Fields in Paris on this date in 1729. Born into a prominent family of musicians and artisans, she was educated by her father on an equal basis with her brothers, and became an early favorite of Louis XIV at Versailles. She composed in all contemporary forms, although not all of her works have survived.

Click here to watch Cleveland’s Burning River Baroque perform her cantata, Judith. Soprano Malina Rauschenfels and harpsichordist Paula Maust are joined by Sarah Lynn, baroque flute, and Glenna Curren, baroque cello, for a concert in Foxburg, PA in March, 2019.

For a sampling of her keyboard music, listen here to Elisabetta Guglielmin’s performances of several suites for the clavecin. Follow along with the score to see how one harpsichordist realizes the notation of the prélude non-mensuré, a popular way of encouraging a quasi-improvisatory performance.

Another death to report on July 27: Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi in Vienna. An odd feature of his legacy is that the “Red Priest” who authored more than 500 concertos wrote none that featured keyboard instruments. That hasn’t stopped others from arranging various concertos for performance by keyboardists, beginning with Johann Gottfried Walther, who repurposed several for organ solo. Click here to watch Bálint Karosi play Vivaldi’s RV 275 concerto in Walther’s arrangement (oddly attributed to a ‘Sigr. Meck’) on the organ of the Kreuzkirche in Suhl, Thuringia (Germany).

And the harpsichord duet of Tom Pixton and Edward Parmentier have recorded several Vivaldi concerto arrangements for Titanic Records. Listen here to their performances on instruments built by Pixton and Keith Hill.

Moving on to more recent, piano virtuoso-influenced times, July 27 marks the birth of Russian pianist Vladimir de Pachman in Odessa in 1848, and the death of Italian-German composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni in Berlin in 1924 at the age of 58.

Pachman specialized in playing the works of Chopin, as well as for a long list of performing eccentricities. He was an early adopter of new recording technologies that emerged in the first decade of the 20th century. This RCA Victor Red Seal 12-inch recording from January 17, 1911 preserves his take on Liszt’s concert paraphrase of Verdi’s Rigoletto. And in posting his 1925 rendition of the “Minute” Waltz, YouTube contributor Beckmesser2 commented, “This recorded performance is probably the best documentation of what it was like to attend a Pachmann recital during the pianist’s final years.”

Pachman’s life, career, and eccentricities are documented in exquisite detail in this spreadsheet, compiled by Nigel Nettheim, which provides an interesting rabbit hole for piano addicts to explore.

We featured Busoni in the Diary on this date in 2020. Click here to listen to his recordings of several works captured in London in 1922. Known especially for his Romantic piano elaborations of works by Bach (click here to watch Antonio Pompa-Baldi play his arrangement of the great Chaconne in Mixon Hall at CIM in October of 2020), Busoni crowned his keyboard works with his immense Piano Concerto. Pianist Garrick Ohsson recorded it in the late 1980s with Christoph von Dohnányi, The Cleveland Orchestra and the men of the Orchestra Chorus. Thirty years later, Ohlsson revisited the piece with the Orchestra in February, 2019, and prefaced the performance with some of his thoughts.

by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND EVENTS:

Saturday and Sunday provide piano fans with their last opportunity to get to know the 26 contestants in the Cleveland International Piano Competition — after Sunday’s Round 2, Session 6 performances, the field will be whittled down to eight hopefuls as the competition moves into the Semifinal, Chamber Music, and Concerto Rounds. The early round sessions have been pre-recorded from locations around the globe, and you can tune in on Saturday and Sunday at 2:00 pm to listen in for free (or catch them later, on-demand).

Alas for procrastinators, Saturday’s Ohio Light Opera performance of Trial by Jury and Stars in the Classics’ garden concert are both sold out. But on Sunday evening at 7:00 pm, guest conductor Rafael Payare and violinist Stefan Jackiw will appear with The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom in music by Prokofiev and Dvořák, and lawn and pavilion tickets are available here. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni from last weekend, courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra.)

INTERESTING INTERVIEW:

Musical America editor Susan Elliott holds a one-on-one conversation with Harold Brown, who took on the position of chief diversity and inclusion officer for the Cincinnati Symphony last March with the mandate “to effect change and broaden the institution’s personnel profile to better reflect its diverse community.” Watch here.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

We’ll start by mentioning the birth of Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch in Geneva on July 24, 1880, who served as the first president of the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1920-1925.

Then we’ll move on to celebrate the anniversaries of two of the great vocalists of the 20th century: soprano Adele Addison, born in New York on July 24, 1925, and contralto Maureen Forrester, born (as Kathleen Stewart) in Montréal on July 25, 1930.

Although trained in opera, Addison appeared most frequently in the 1950s and 60s in orchestral concerts and recitals. Listen here to her performance in the solo quartet of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell in April of 1961 (bonus: Richard Lewis is the tenor).

Addison’s supple voice was well suited to Baroque music, and she became a favorite of Leonard Bernstein. Listen here to Handel’s “Come unto him” from Messiah with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in 1956.

Among her other credits, Addison’s voice was dubbed in for Dorothy Dandridges’ in the 1959 film version of Porgy and Bess, and she was soprano soloist for the world premiere of Poulenc’s Gloria with Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony in 1961. Listen to “Bess, you is my woman” here (the voice of Robert McFerrin — father of Bobby — is also dubbed in, this time for Sidney Poitier).

As a young singer in Canada, Forrester made strong impressions on CBC talent shows, and received her big break in New York when Bruno Walter chose her as one of the soloists for Mahler’s Second Symphony. She also sang in the conductor’s farewell performances with the New York Philharmonic in 1957.

A true contralto, Forrester’s vocal gifts come to the fore in this 1957 performance of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody with the Orchestra de Radio-Canada, led by Igor Markevich. But her singing could also be light and lively, as in this duet from J.S. Bach’s Cantata BWV 78 with soprano Lois Marshall and pianist Yehudi Wyner from a 1974 recital at Mt. Orford, Québec. “Wir eilen mit Schwachen doch emsigen Schritten” translates as “We run with eager but faltering footsteps,” an image that the composer captures brilliantly.

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Looking for outdoor music? Try Sheryl Modlin’s 12:15 pm concert on the McGaffin Carillon in University Circle (also live streamed), the 2:00 pm Ohio Light Opera performance of Trial by Jury in Wooster, or Canton Symphony musicians’ 6:00-8:30 pm event, Music in the Beech Creek Botanical Garden in Alliance (billed as an “adult evening”).

Online, tonight at 7:00 pm, the Cleveland International Piano Competition continues with Round 2, Session 4, featuring pre-recorded, 30-minute programs by Roman Lopatynskyi (27, Ukraine), Martín García García (24, Spain), Svetlana Andreeva (32, Russia), and Byeol Kim (31, South Korea).

Both live and online, the Kent Blossom Music Festival faculty recitals continue with the Miami String Quartet, who perform at 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall at KSU. Violinists Benny Kim and Cathy Meng Robinson, violist Scott Lee, and cellist Keith Robinson will play Haydn’s Quartet No. 30 in E-flat (”Joke”), Erwin Schulhoff’s Quartet No. 2 (1925) & Dvořák’s Quartet No. 10 in E-flat.

Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Oberlin Jazz Percussion Professor Billy Hart has been named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. Read the Oberlin news release here.

And the Oberlin-Como Piano Festival, a five-day virtual celebration of the Conservatory’s partnership with Italy’s Accademia Internazionale Del Pianoforte Lago Di Como, recently offered online, is now available for on-demand viewing.

The sessions include interviews and master classes with Yefim Bronfman (“Piano Concerti of Beethoven and Brahms”), William Grant Naboré (“The Marvel of the Baroque on the Pianoforte”), Dang Thai Son (“Conversations with Chopin”), Robert Spano (“Performing Piano Concerti: A Conductor’s View”), and Oberlin-Como Director Stanislav Ioudenitch (“The Golden Age of Piano Virtuosity: Legacy of Lake Como”). Watch here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Italian composer and harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti died on this date in 1757, perhaps from exhaustion after composing 555 sonatas which have become favorite recital openers for many modern pianists, and technically demanding exercises for keyboardists in general. Thanks to the Petrucci Library, all of them are available here in eleven volumes edited by Kenneth Gilbert. Keyboardists: hone your sight reading by taking on one sonata every day, a challenge that will either thrill or frustrate you for the next year and a half!

Johann Sebastian Bach left us some 200 church cantatas, and speaking of challenges, British composer and conductor William Gillies Whitaker, born on this date in 1876, set out to perform all of them. He succeeded, presenting a third of them in Newcastle and the rest in Glasgow with his Bach Choir.

A number of conductors have recorded all the sacred cantatas, including Karl Richter, Masaaki Suzuki, John Eliot Gardiner, Helmuth Rilling, Nikolaus Harnoncourt with Gustav Leonhardt, and Ton Koopman. I’ve had friends who made it a habit to listen to one cantata every Sunday morning, an inspiring regimen that could take four years to complete. It would be interesting to listen to a single conductor’s interpretations, or to mix and match them. Time to get started!

July 23 marks the birthdates of a number of American composers who may not be familiar household names: Ben Weber (born in 1916 in St. Louis), Jerome Rosen (1921 in Boston), David Noon (1946 in Johnstown, PA), John Carbon (1951 in Chicago), and Steven L. Rosenhaus (1952 in Brooklyn, NY).

Another challenge: get to know the works of these sometimes prolific figures, using the following as points of departure. For Weber, his Piano Concerto (performed by William Masselos with the NY Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein). For Rosen, his String Quartet No. 1. For Noon, his Saxophone Quartet No. 1. For Carbon, his Fantasy-Nocturne for piano and orchestra. And for Rosenhaus, a “Meet the Composer” interview on Zoom, and his chamber work for soprano, string quartet and piano, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Pigeon.

by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS TODAY:

Just one local performance to plug: the BlueWater Chamber Ensemble (Stephen Tavani, Rachel Englander, Maria Monday, and Nancy Patterson, violins, Laura Shuster and James Rhodes, violas, and Linda Atherton and Derek Snyder, cellos), will play Mozart’s Divertimento in F, K. 138, Elgar’s Serenade for Strings, and Mendelssohn’s Octet, Op. 20 in Evans Amphitheatre at Cain Park in Cleveland Heights. It’s free.

NEWS BRIEFS:

In addition to its forthcoming concert by Chanticleer on July 27, Tuesday Musical is resuming its “Music al fresco: Passport 2021” series of world music performances on the front lawn of West Akron’s historic Barder House. Three Sunday afternoons will feature “Irish Fiddle with Opus 216” (August 29), the Moises Borges Quartet in Brazilian samba and bossa nova (September 12), and Zydeco with Mo’ Mojo (September 26). Click here for details and tickets.

Opera Western Reserve announces local actor auditions for its November 12 production of Romeo and Juliet at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown, which will combine text from Shakespeare’s play with orchestral and vocal music from Gounod’s opera, sung in French. “We are auditioning specifically for the roles of: Paris and Abram (stage combat experience preferred), Capulet, Lady Capulet, Montague, Lady Montague, Nurse, and Friar, who will be performing Shakespeare monologue and dialogue in English.” Auditions will be held on Monday, August 9 from 7-9 pm, and Tuesday, August 10 from 4-6 pm, at Stambaugh Auditorium. Contracts are paid. Rehearsals begin in October. Advanced audition appointment not necessary. For more information, email Lynn Ohle.

FEATURED VIDEO:

Erie, Pennsylvania’s Warner Theater, home to the Erie Philharmonic, in which a number of Cleveland musicians play and whose music director, Daniel Meyer, also leads BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, is being renovated for a grand re-opening in December. The orchestra has released a fun video of its brass section playing Copland’s Fanfare on the construction site, suitably decked out for the occasion. Thanks to timpanist Andrew Pongracz for the link.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Let’s celebrate the natal days of three avant-garde composers who burst onto the scene on July 20: Nam June Paik (1932, in Seoul, South Korea), Gernot Wolfgang (1957 in Bad Gastein, Austria), and Michael Gordon (1958 in Miami).

Paik, also a mixed media and video artist, was a student of Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage, whose moment of notoriety came in 1967 when cellist Charlotte Moorman was arrested for performing his Opera Sextronique topless — although other works of his, like his hommage à john cage, which calls for the destruction of two pianos, stick in the collective memory. Click here to watch a collage of his film and music, selected by musicians who worked with him. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS THIS WEEKEND:

Ohio Light Opera is busy this weekend, with afternoon performances of Trial by Jury and The Fantasticks as well as an evening edition of “The Musical Magic of OLO.” All planned for the great outdoors, but with rain plans at the ready.

Online piano events include the beginning of the second round of the Cleveland International Piano Competition and the continuation of the Oberlin-Como Piano Festival (with an interview featuring conductor Robert Spano).

Encore Chamber Music Institute hosts its Blooming Artist Marathon online all afternoon and into the evening on Saturday.

And on the Blossom stage Sunday evening, vocalist Capathia Jenkins (pictured) opens that mythical volume, “The Great American Songbook,” joining The Cleveland Orchestra for American standards by Gershwin, Ellington, and others.

Details in our Concert Listings

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

A year ago today, July 17, we highlighted the birth in 1935 in Ames, Iowa of American composer Peter Schickele (whose alter ego was the fictional P.D.Q. Bach), and the death of French composer, conductor, and organist Gabriel Pierné in Ploujean, Brittany in 1937.

This weekend, we’ll celebrate the birth of British pianist, scholar, and composer Sir Donald Francis Tovey in Eaton (July 17, 1875), and mark the demise of American harpsichordist and pianist Rosalyn Tureck in New York City (July 17, 2003).

Tovey, who held a professorship in music at the University of Edinburgh from 1914, is best known for his scholarly writings about music — his Essays in Musical Analysis were published by Oxford in six volumes from 1935 to 1939. But he contributed some impressive works to the British canon of orchestral and chamber works as well. Based on those pieces and on his scholarly editions of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and The Art of Fugue, Elgar is said to have recommended him for a knighthood in 1935.

Listen here to Tovey’s 1913 Symphony in D, Op. 32 performed by the Malmö Opera Orchestra under George Vass, and here to a scratchy archive recording by Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony of his Cello Concerto, Op. 40, dedicated to Pablo Casals, who is the soloist.

As part of his editorial work on Bach’s great fugal textbook, Tovey wrote a completion to Contrapunctus XVI, which he plays here on the piano.

And for a sample of Tovey’s chamber music, listen here and follow along with the score to his Op. 1 Piano Trio, which he dedicated to his mentor, Sir Hubert Parry.

Rosalyn Tureck’s early and lifelong advocacy of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach survived her training at the Juilliard School which she entered at the age of 16. She found the faculty unencouraging about her favorite composer, a situation that she also encountered elsewhere. In his New York Times obituary, Alan Kozin wrote,

When she entered the Naumburg Competition, she made it to the finals and presented an all-Bach program as her closing recital. As she told the story years later, the members of the jury said they could not give her the award “because they were sure that nobody could make a career in Bach.”

Well, she did, as you can learn from the video Rosalyn Tureck: Remembering a Legend, produced for what would have been her 100th birthday in 2014, and featuring a number of interviews with those who knew her best, including former Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor Michael Charry. Watch here.

There’s also a video of her all-Bach recital in the Great Hall of the Philharmonic in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1995 that includes the Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother, and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue.