by Daniel Hathaway

SUMMER TICKETS ON SALE:

ChamberFest Cleveland, Stars in the Classics, The Cleveland Orchestra, and Apollo’s Fire, have announced that their box offices are now open for summer al fresco reservations.

ChamberFest’s performances at The Grove Amphitheatre in Mayfield (pictured) and a Cleveland Heights Yard Concert between June 9-25 will be free, but reservations are required. The Festival Finale on June 26 at St. Paschal Baylon will be a ticketed event. You’ll also need tickets for Apollo’s Fire’s May 30-31 and July 10, 13 & 14 shows, for STARS’ June 10 & 11 Garden Concerts, and for The Cleveland Orchestra’s dozen concerts at Blossom from July 3 through September 5.

Tickets for shows on Ohio Light Opera’s reduced schedule in Wooster from July 10-23 will be available when the box office opens on June 1.

IN THE NEWS:

CityMusic Cleveland has released a new podcast featuring composer Amanda Harberg, who joins Eric Kisch and Jim Mehrling to discuss her work Lucas’s Garden. Pianist Donna Lee and clarinetist Daniel Gilbert join the conversation to preview works by Libby Larsen, Beethoven and Schubert, all of which will be performed on programs at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus on May 14 & 15.

Harpist Yolanda Kondonassis has a new, long-term project in the works. For Five Minutes for Earth®, she has commissioned fifteen composers to create works or soundscapes for harp lasting five minutes or less “that express a powerful experience inspired by Earth in one of its many conditions or atmospheres. FIVE MINUTES is also a metaphor for the urgent and compressed timeframe that remains for our global community to find and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

The results will be released by Cleveland’s Azica Records in March of next year and premiere performances will take place in April, 2022. Composers (who are contributing their works free of charge) include Chen Yi, Jocelyn Chambers, Michael Daugherty, Daniel Dorff, Reena Esmail, Keith Fitch, Patrick Harlin, Stephen Hartke, Nathaniel Heyder, Aaron Jay Kernis, Hannah Lash, Philip Maneval, Máximo Diego Pujol, Gary Schocker, and Zhou Long. More information here.

Composer Tyshawn Sorey, featured last month on the Donald P. Pipino Concert Series at Youngstown State University, has been commissioned by the Houston Dacamera and Rothko Chapel to create a 30-minute work celebrating the 50th anniversary of the fourteen dark-hued canvases Mark Rothko created for the octagonal chapel that opened in 1971. The piece, to be performed by the Houston Chamber Choir next February, will feature performers who debuted Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel in 1972 (Rothko missed both the opening and the Feldman piece, having died in 1970).

ONLINE TODAY:

Apollo’s Fire releases its video Virtuosity today, the Dallas Symphony features its collaboration with members of the locked-out Met Opera Orchestra, the Church of the Covenant presents organist Matthew Dion and oboist Anne Pinkerton in a concert honoring the 30th anniversary of the death of Jean Langlais, a National Sawdust broadcast considers the future of performance, and the Cleveland Chamber Music Society hosts the Junction Trio (Stefan Jackiw, violin, Jay Campbell, cello, and Conrad Tao, piano) for an in-person concert at St. Pascal Bayon in Highland Heights that you can also watch remotely. See our Concert Listings for details.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1849, German composer Otto Nicolai died of a stroke at the age of 38, Russian composer Anatoly Liadov was born in St. Petersburg in 1855, American songsmith Irving Berlin was born (as Israel Belin) in Russia in 1888, American choreographer Martha Graham was born in Pittsburgh in 1894, African American composer William Grant Still was born in Mississippi in 1895 (some sources say 1898), and German composer Max Reger died in Leipzig in 1916 (of a heart attack at the age of 43).

To pick just a few tributes, let’s start with Berlin, whose 101 years on earth (and on Tin Pan Alley) produced a flood of songs that document the popular cultural life of America in the 20th century. Carnegie Hall celebrated his 100th birthday in May of 1998 with an amazing tribute featuring such luminaries as Walter Cronkite, Michael Feinstein, Isaac Stern, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Jerome Robbins, Garrison Keillor, Frank Sinatra — the list goes on. Watch here.

Baldwin Wallace voice professor JR Fralick joined pianist Nicole Keller in a laid-back performance of Berlin’s Slap That Bass on a Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert in March of 2019.

Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, subtitled “Ballet for Martha (Graham)” was originally written for a chamber ensemble of 13 players, which many think more appropriate for the music than the composer’s later version for full orchestra.

Here are two performances: one by the New York Classical Players led by Dongmin Kim in 2017, and another performed without a conductor by students at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston during a 2015 chamber music marathon.

The full extent of William Grant Still’s oeuvre is still being explored by conductors and performers, including his numerous operas. Still is interviewed here on Voice of America before the premiere of his 1949 work, Troubled Island.

Cleveland Orchestra musicians recently recorded two of Still’s works at Plymouth Church. Watch here as principal oboe Frank Rosenwein and pianist Carolyn Gadiel Warner play his Incantation and Dance, followed by his Danzas de Panama in the version for string quartet.

Conductor John McLaughlin Williams leads the CIM Orchestra in Still’s “rousing and amiable” Festive Overture, which won first prize among 39 anonymously submitted pieces in a 1944 competition sponsored by the Cincinnati Symphony.

To end, we should mention the first performance on this date in 2000 of Colin Matthews’ Pluto — the Renewer, written to update Gustav Holst’s original list of planets. Wrong-headed, since the composer had astrological signs rather than heavenly spheres in mind when he wrote The Planets (he also left Earth out). Even though Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006, Matthews’ add-on piece may still be worth a listen. Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

WCLV’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra reliably offers the music of Johannes Brahms on weekdays at noon, and on his birthday today, the playlist includes an overture and selections from A German Requiem, his First Piano Concerto, and his Second Symphony.

Locally, at 7 pm tonight, the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra plays a pre-recorded concert including a Bach harpsichord concerto with Nicole Keller, and Oberlin’s Sacred Heart Concert series presents a live, in-person concert by violist Chris Gokelman with pianist Immanuel Mykyta-Chomsky (you can also watch online).

And follow the tendrils of the worldwide web to keep in touch with some of Cleveland’s favorite soloists and ensembles: So Percussion from the University of Washington, violinist Francesca dePasquale from Philadelphia, the Pavel Haas Quartet from Duke University, and Alisa Weilerstein from Washington Performing Arts. Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Ohio Light Opera has announced an abbreviated season in Wooster this summer. Because of the pandemic, audiences aren’t permitted in Freedlander Theatre, so performances of The Fantasticks and Trial by Jury will be presented in outdoor venues, and The Daring of Diane and Rare and Well Done will be streamed from the company’s empty theater. Click here to read more and here to view the complete schedule.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach met the Prussian king Frederick II in Potsdam while visiting his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel, and accepted the flute-playing monarch’s challenge of improvising a three-voice Ricercar on a theme that Frederick supplied. Back home in Leipzig, Bach the father turned that royal theme into A Musical Offering, a suite that included Ricercare for three and six voices, twelve canons — a number of them expressed as musical puzzles to be solved — and a trio sonata featuring Frederick’s instrument, the flute.

Click here to hear the entire collection conducted by Jordi Savall, with harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï, and here to listen to the Trio Sonata played by Cleveland Orchestra principal flute Joshua Smith, violinist Allison Edberg, gambist Ann Marie Morgan, and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour.

A version of the polyphonically dense six-voice Ricercar arranged by Anton Webern has been recorded by Christoph von Dohnányi and The Cleveland Orchestra, and Arseniy Gusuv tackled the piece on his semifinal round of Piano Cleveland’s Virtu(al)oso competition earlier this year. Watch that here.

Also on May 7, Italian composer Antonio Salieri died in Vienna in 1825. Highly regarded in his day, he counted Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel among his students, and wrote many popular operas.

Though not perhaps the brightest musical light in 18th-century Vienna, Salieri has been the victim of a disinformation campaign begun by Russian author Alexander Pushkin with his 1831 “little tragedy,” Mozart and Salieri. Written to illustrate the sin of envy, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov made the story into an opera in which Mozart is poisoned by his mentor, and Peter Shaffer gave extra mileage to the tale in his 1979 play Amadeus. (Peter Schickele lampooned it in 1982 in P.D.Q. Bach’s Little Nightmare Music — excerpt here).

The music of Johannes Brahms, born on this date in 1833, is ubiquitous, but some pieces more than others. For his birthday today, let’s consider him in the same light as J.S. Bach — as a master contrapuntalist. His Geistliches Lied, Opus 30, is written as a double canon at the 9th — sopranos and tenors and altos and basses are paired and sing the same material one bar and nine pitches apart — yet the resulting music is unmistakably Brahmsian. Click here to hear the piece in its original form for chorus and organ, and here to compare it to Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s orchestration. In both cases, the composer has written one of the most striking “Amens” in Romantic music.

The music of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, born on May 7, 1840, also scarcely needs a plug, but we’ll celebrate with two significant recordings by The Cleveland Orchestra. His 1812 Overture, soon to appear (inexplicably) on July 4th concerts, was featured on the first commercial recording by The Cleveland Orchestra, captured in New York on January 23, 1924 under Nikolai Sokoloff. And his Serenade for Strings (composed at the same time as the 1812) was the first piece that members of the Orchestra recorded during an experimental return to Severance Hall on July 15, 2020.

Finally, just a tip of the hat to Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, who died on this date in 2002, with two of his works. His 1953 Concierto Breve was recorded by Alicia de Larrocha with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid in 1999, and his opera El Gato con Botas (Puss in Boots), previewed at Cleveland’s Ohi in 2010 for a New York production, can be enjoyed here.

Montsalvastge’s Fantasia for Harp and Guitar is featured on Yolanda Kondonassis and Jason Vieaiux’s 2015 Azica recording Together. Their CIM students Grace Roepke and Maryam Hajialigol recorded the first movement in Mixon Hall in November, 2017.

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

May 4 in classical music history marks some important beginnings that ultimately led to the modern grand piano, the phonograph record, and the international orchestral tour.

Italian craftsman Bartolomeo Cristofori, born in Padua on May 4, 1665, was responsible for inventing the first practical pianoforte, an instrument that looks just like a harpsichord until you raise the hood. Inside, instead of quills that pluck strings, a hammer mechanism strikes them and then retreats, allowing the performer to play soft, loud, or at any dynamic level in between. Thus Cristofori named his invention the “gravicembalo col piano e forte.”

Cristofori’s pianoforte mechanism was so sophisticated that no major improvements were made for the next 75 years, and the basic concept has persisted to today. You can see the 1720 model he built in Florence in the musical instrument collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum, read about it here, and listen to Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in d played on it here by Dongsok Shin.

A number of late 19th century inventors were involved in creating machines that would reproduce sound, but on May 4, 1887, Emile Berliner was the first to file a patent application (U.S. patent 372,786) for a device he called the gramophone. His machine “recorded a lateral pattern on lamp-blacked paper wrapped on a cylinder, similar to the phonautograph of Leon Scott, but with an oil applied to the surface mixed with lampblack to make a fatty ink better able to be engraved with a cutting stylus.” Read about it in The Early Gramophone.

That a lot remained to be done before Sony could develop a single disc capable of reproducing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is suggested in the first news story about Berliner’s invention. A two-page article in Electrical World dated November 12, 1887 described a device driven by a weight box and controlled by a paddle-wheeled governor that recorded four minutes of sound on an 11-inch glass disc at 30 rpm.”

And on May 4, 1920, The Symphony Society of New York — which eventually became the New York Philharmonic — played the opening concert of its debut European Tour at the Paris Opera, making it the first American ensemble to perform overseas.

The Symphony Society Bulletin of March 18, 1920 noted that the European Tour was being undertaken “by official invitation from the governments of France, Italy, Belgium and a committee of England’s foremost musicians.” The Orchestra embarked on the transatlantic crossing aboard the Rochambeau on April 22, beginning “a tour which is unprecedented and indicates in a remarkable manner the new position of America in the world of music.”

The May 4 performance, led by Walter Damrosch, included Berlioz’ Overture to Benvenuto Cellini, Beethoven’s Third Symphony, d’Indy’s Istar: variations symphonique, and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, “Fragment Symphonique.” The Orchestra’s European adventure lasted nearly two months, culminating in a June 20 matinee at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Like the Middle Eastern tour The Cleveland Orchestra was forced to cancel at the beginning of the pandemic, orchestral touring will eventually resume, however slowly. On this May 4th, it’s good to look back and recall that cultural exchanges have until recently been important tools of international diplomacy, and not merely expensive expressions of musical vanity.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Todd Wilson adds the title of Visiting Professor of Organ at the University of Michigan to his positions as Music Director at Trinity Cathedral and Head of the Organ Department at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Heights Arts invites its patrons to host a Random Acts of Art LIVE! event this summer at their home, businesses or community spaces. Born during the pandemic, “Random Acts of Art LIVE! (RAAL) brings local music talent directly to you in private yard concerts, music for patrons at your business, and in partnership with local community organizations. From classical and folk, to world music and jazz this series has something for everyone.” Contact Arleigh Savage at Heights Arts for more information on available ensembles and how to book your event.

HAPPENING TODAY:

The music publishers Boosey & Hawkes present a Zoom webinar about how opera is being reimagined as film. “When the pandemic hit, creators and producers learned to pivot from a traditionally live medium to visually dynamic, made-for-film productions of stage works with sets, soundtrack recording sessions, and directors.”

The Oberlin Guitar Ensemble presents a late afternoon virtual concert of music by Ponce, Britten, Giuliani and Coste.

And Tuesday Musical returns to Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall for an in-person concert by New York Philharmonic principal clarinet Anthony McGill and the Pacifica Quartet. You won’t find this one online.

by Daniel Hathaway

IT’S MAYDAY: 

A variety of traditions, both religious and secular, are associated with the first day of May in most cultures that have slogged through months of winter and are more than ready to celebrate the return of balmy breezes and the reflowering of the earth.

One tradition that’s persisted for over 500 years in England is the May Day morning singing of hymns and madrigals by the Magdalen College Choir from its iconic tower in Oxford (pictured here in a painting by William Homan Hunt).

A brief video puts the celebration in context among appearances by May Day Morris Men and a pagan band, and the Choir’s own video from 2016 documents the event from the perspective of the singers. COVID-19 forced the ceremony to go virtual in 2020, but  this news item from the College tells how the Choir found an ingenious solution for May 1, 2021.

Mayday trivia:

In a delayed response to the adoption in 1899 of May 1 as International Workers Day by the socialists and communists of the Second International, the Vatican created a second religious holiday in 1955 in honor of St. Joseph the Worker.

And how did “Mayday” become an international distress call? Frederick Mockford, a radio officer at London’s Croydon Airport introduced the idea in 1923 because it sounded like the French phrase m’aider (help me).

HAPPENING TODAY:

Out-of-doors events on Saturday include the YSU Wind Ensemble and Horn Choir on Harrison Commons in Youngstown. On Sunday, enjoy al fresco performances by the Oberlin Gospel Ensemble, and the Oberlin Chamber Singers.

One local in-person performance is on the docket: Sunday’s concert by the Dana Ensemble at the DeYor PAC in Youngstown, featuring orchestral reductions by the Schoenberg circle and the premiere of a new work by Jamie Wilding.

Everything else remains online. On Saturday, organist Jan Kraybill in Akron, the Dana Piano Trio, Oberlin Large Ensembles (including a premiere by student composer Natsumi Osborne), CWRU jazz ensembles, and broadcasts from the Detroit Symphony, 92nd Street Y, Friends of Ringwood Chamber Music (Jasper and Jupiter Quartet, and Tulsa Opera (commemorating the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. On Sunday, tune in for the Callisto Quartet from Caramoor, low instruments from the Louisiana Philharmonic, BW Men’s Chorus, Russian Duo from Music from the Western Reserve, and an all-Scriabin piano recital from Oberlin by Jiaqing Luo.

Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

In the interest of highlighting some lesser-known figures whose anniversaries pop up on this weekend’s calendar, we’ll acknowledge in passing the demise of Antonín Dvořák on May 1, 1904 (for whom a national day of mourning was declared), Giacomo Meyerbeer (who died with his boots on during rehearsals for his opera, L’Africane on May 2, 1864), and Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (who died in Moscow on May 1, 1978), the latter with a performance he led in 1972 of his Piano Concerto in D-flat with Nikolai Petrov at the keyboard — a piece that we’d like to hear programmed more frequently).

We’ll also light candles for the birthdays of English composer Alan Rawsthorne and Austrian-American opera director Kurt Adler, both on May 2, 1905, as well as for Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe in 1947, and Russian conductor Valery Gergiev in 1953.

In more detail, let’s toast the birth anniversaries of two composers best known for their church compositions — an important but often overlooked stream in the great ocean of music.

Leo Sowerby, born on May 1, 1895 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, figured prominently in the musical life of Chicago, where his works appeared regularly on Chicago Symphony programs, but is remembered today mostly for the music he wrote for St. James’ Church (later Cathedral) where he served as organist and choirmaster from  1927. In 1962, he retired and became founding director of the College of Church Musicians at Washington Cathedral, a position he held until 1968, when he died at Port Clinton, Ohio, enroute to Camp Wa-Li-Ro in Put-in-Bay, the summer choir camp where he had taught for many years.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

April 30 marks the 10th celebration of International Jazz Day. While a Global All-Star Concert is on the schedule, you can join a local Songbook Watch Party featuring trumpeter Dominick Farinacci and pianist Monty Alexander, streamed live from Tri-C’s LiPuma Center and rebroadcast throughout the weekend. Tri-C JazzFest pre-college students open the program, and afterwards, JazzFest director Terri Pontremoli talks with the artists.

Friday’s online events include local concerts by the CIM Orchestra and Baldwin Wallace wind ensembles, and special programs from New York’s Carnegie Hall (featuring Jordi Savall), from The Gilmore in Kalamazoo (premiere of a new piano concerto written and performed by Michael Brown), from Houston Grand Opera (Damian Sneed’s life of Marian Anderson), and from Urban Arias (Susan Kander’s new opera, dwb).

Live, in-person performances in Oberlin include an indoor program on the Sacred Heart Concert series and al fresco performances by the Oberlin Chamber Singers and Oberlin Trombone Choir.

Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Friday’s honorees include Austro-Hungarian operetta composer Franz Lehár (born on April 30, 1870 in Komárom, now Komárno, Slovakia), American conductor Robert Shaw (born on this date in 1916 in Red Bluff, Iowa), American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (who entered the world in Miami on this date in 1939), and Russian American choreographer George Balanchine, who debuted in 1904 in St. Petersburg as Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze and made his final curtain call in New York City on the last day of April in 1983.

Lehár composed a number of light operas that became popular in Viennese circles, including the much-performed Merry Widow (Lustige Witwie). Some of them have found their way into the repertoire of American lyric theater companies like Ohio Light Opera. In lieu of live performances last summer, the Wooster-based organization produced a virtual season. Watch an episode here that includes two virtual performances of The Mock Marriage and visits archival scenes from other European operettas.

Before moving on to the Atlanta Symphony, Robert Shaw served as George Szell’s assistant with The Cleveland Orchestra, where he prepared the Orchestra Chorus for many performances while also maintaining his own professional ensemble, The Robert Shaw Chorale. In celebration of his centenary, Carnegie Hall made a series of documentaries showing how Shaw prepared for performances of major choral works. In this episode, he rehearses and conducts excerpts from Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, soprano Christine Goerke, tenor Richard Clement, baritone Benjamin Luxon, the Robert Shaw Festival Chorus, Robert Shaw Institute Singers, and the American Boychoir.

One of America’s pioneering female composers, in 1983 Ellen Taafe Zwilich was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her 2008 Septet for piano trio and string quartet was written for the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio and the Miami Quartet, who play the unusual work on the 2014 recording, Passionate Diversions: a Celebration of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Listen here, or watch a 2012 video of a performance by the Newbury Tio and Amphion Quartet at the La Jolla Music Festival.

Balanchine, who was invited to the U.S. by Lincoln Kirstein, married the techniques of the Russian Imperial Ballet School with the traditions of Broadway and Hollywood to create the neoclassical style that became his signature as co-founder and director of the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet. One of his early works in collaboration with Igor Stravinsky is a perfect example of his approach. Apollon Musagete, later simply called Apollo, was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1937. Watch a Canadian broadcast of the ballet from 1960, featuring Jacques d’Amboise as Apollo, Diana Adams as Terpsichore, Jillana as Calliope, and Francia Russell as Polyhymnia.