by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY: 

Only a single event to report today, but an important one: the first of three end-of-season, in-person concerts sponsored by the Cleveland Chamber Music Society features ChamberFest Cleveland favorite, violinist Alexi Kenney, with pianist Renana Gutman in works by J.S. Bach, Strozzi, Messiaen, Kurtág, Schumann, and Mozart. The performance, which can also be viewed online, introduces a new venue for CCMS, St. Paschal Baylon in Highland Heights, which offers more than enough elbow room for effective social distancing. But don’t forget your face mask. Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

We’ll begin by noting the recent passing of mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig on April 23 at the age of 93. A fixture with the Vienna State Opera for more than 30 years, Ludwig enjoyed a stellar career in opera, oratorio, and art song. In a Guardian obituary, Barry Millington writes,

She habitually named three conductors from whom she had learned everything she needed to know about music: Karl Böhm for precision, Herbert von Karajan for beauty of sound and legato, and Leonard Bernstein for the expressive quality and joy of music.

A few examples of Ludwig’s art show the range of her voice and interpretive talent. First, a 1962 recording of “Erbarme dich” from Bach’s Matthew-Passion with Otto Klemperer.

Then, “Der Abschied” from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Leonard Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic in 1972.

And from the other side of Bernstein, the tango “I am easily assimilated” from his Candide, recorded with the London Symphony at the Barbican in 1989, the composer conducting.

Finally, here’s a complete recording of her last concert at Vienna’s Musikverein in 2003 with Charles Spencer at the piano.

On this date in classical music history, Russian-American musicologist, composer, conductor, and (according to himself) standup comedian Nicolas Slonimsky, was born in St. Petersburg in 1894. And on April 24, 1915, Russian composer Alexander Scriabin died of blood poisoning at the age of 43.

Slonimsky, who died in 1995, was one of the great characters of the 20th century. As editor of Baker’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, he penned priceless autobiographies as prefaces to various editions, and edited such compendia as The Lexicon of Musical Invective, a collection of critical assaults on composers since Beethoven’s time. Watch the documentary, A Touch of Genius here, and enjoy his appearance on the Johnny Carson Show in 1986 at the age of 92, where Slonimsky “speaks about Frank Zappa (4:40​), demonstrates conducting quintuple time with one hand and duple time with the other (7:21​), tries to demonstrate his perfect pitch (10:51​) and plays Chopin’s “Black Key” Étude with an orange (12:08​).”

Scriabin made an impressive splash in the Russian piano world during his brief lifetime, but was almost as quickly forgotten. His pieces regularly show up in piano competitions. Martin James Bartlett, winner of Piano Cleveland’s Virtu(al)oso Competition, played Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata in the final round (watch here).

2013 Cleveland International Piano Competition second-place winner Arseny Tarasevich-Nikolaev also included Sonata No. 4 in his semi-final round program, prefacing it with Scriabin’s 5 Preludes, Op. 16.

And Martina Filjak, 2009 CIPC Gold Medalist, knocked everyone’s socks off in her semifinal round with Scriabin’s Nocturne for the Left Hand.

Scriabin’s amazing Poème de l’Extase has been recorded by The Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. Listen here.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

As the weather improves (despite a few backslides into winter), outdoor concerts are beginning to appear. Among them this weekend, Oberlin’s Small Jazz Ensembles performing from the bandstand in Tappan Square (pictured), and Dana School of Music brass ensembles playing from a parking garage on the Youngstown State campus. Online, Oberlin also presents ChamberFest, a new episode of Stage Left, and a TIMARA concert.

Also online, New York’s Carnegie Hall takes note of performances of Beethoven’s 9th in response to historical events and takes a look at a fruitful conversation between Marlene Dietrich and Ute Lemper, Case Western presents its Early Music Singers and a Japanese drumming event, Kent presents its New Music Ensemble, CIM showcases its composition students, and Heights Arts broadcasts its latest Close Encounters. Not to mention other events featuring pianist Hamelin, baritone Benjamin Appl, and the Greater Cleveland Flute Society. Details and more in our Concert Listings.

WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

The anniversaries of a patent, two births and two deaths figure in this weekend’s agenda.

Chicago inventor Laurens Hammond filed a patent on April 24, 1934 for a new electric organ, an event that produced consequences he couldn’t have imagined at the time. The Hammond Organ was meant to provide a less expensive option than the pipe organ for churches, but especially in its eventual configuration as Hammond’s Model B-3 (introduced in 1954 and outfitted with rotating Leslie speakers and harmonic percussion effects), was enthusiastically embraced by jazz and gospel musicians.

Ethel Smith was an early adopter — she advertised herself as “The Queen of the Hammond Organ” and became famous for her arrangements of tunes like Tico Tico (featured in the 1944 film Bathing Beauty).

Other artists like Booker T. Jones (appearing here on an NPR Tiny Desk Concert), Eddie Baccus (performing here on the 2011 Tri-C Organ Summit, and pictured), and Joey DeFranceco (featured here at BluJazz in Akron) added to the B-3 legacy.

The newest B-3 artist to appear on the Cleveland scene was still in his teens when he performed at Tri-C JazzFest in 2019. Listen to the phenomenal Matthew Whitaker performing with his combo at a jazz festival in Bremen. Germany,.

On April 24, 1948, Mexican composer and guitarist Manuel Maria Ponce died in the Federal Capital. His music for piano and for guitar frequently takes its inspiration from folkloric traditions. Edel Muñoz included his Sonatina Edel Meridional on his recent program for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society (watch here at 35:27), and Petra Poláčková performs his Sonata III on a Guitars International recording.

On April 24, 1964, American composer Augusta Read Thomas was born in New York City. Married to another celebrated composer, Bernard Rands, Thomas has long been associated with the University of Chicago and with the musical life of the Windy City. Watch an interview with Thomas here in connection with Bowling Green State University’s 41st New Music Festival.

George Sakakeeny plays her Bassoon Sonatina with Tim Weiss and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble on the Oberlin Music album Full Moon in the City, and violinist Laura Russell is featured in a recording of her Spirit Musings on the album New American Soloists with Edwin London and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony.

On April 25, 1861, Italian composer Marco Enrico Bossi was born in Salò (he died while crossing the Atlantic in 1925, returning from an organ concert tour to New York and Philadelphia). While serving as director of conservatories in Venice, Bologna, and Rome, he found time to write some 150 compositions, including this Concerto in a for organ, string orchestra, horns and timpani.

You can also hear him play — from beyond the grave — his much-performed Scherzo for organ, thanks to an Aeolian player roll he recorded in 1925.

Finally, on April 25, 1906, New England composer John Knowles Paine died in Cambridge, MA, where he had been appointed Harvard’s first University Organist and Choirmaster at Harvard in 1861. and later, America’s first Professor of Music. A member of the “Boston Six” along with Amy Beach, Arthur Foote, Edward MacDowell, George Chadwick, and Horatio Parker, he was a popular guest conductor of the Boston Symphony.

For a taste of America’s musical styles of the time, listen to his 1861 Concert Variations on “The Star-Spangled Banner.” for solo organ, played by Andrew Meagher. Or to his Symphony No. 2 in A (“Im frühling”) from 1879 with the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta. Or to his celebrated Mass in d from 1860 in a recording by Gunther Schuller with the St. Louis Chorus and Symphony (former CIM voice professor Vinson Cole is among the soloists).

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Two in-person concerts feature a CityMusic Cleveland chamber ensemble in works by Louise Adolpha Le Beau and Elfrida Andrée at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, and Apollo’s Fire in “Virtuosity: Fireworks from J.S. Bach” featuring soprano Amanda Forsythe (pictured), violinist Alan Choo, and trumpeter Stephen Marquardt, at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. Check links in our Concert Listings to see if tickets are still available.

Online, New York’s Carnegie Hall offers “The premiere of a new music film in which violinist Jennifer Koh and opera singer Davóne Tines collaborate to distill the history of Asian American oppression, and highlight the untold story of solidarity between Asian Americans and the Black community.” And the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra presents “Sonic Shift,” the first of two episodes curated by Jessie Montgomery, in which she collaborates with charcoal artist Will Kim “to create animations which will enhance the visual presence of LACO’s musicians.”

A VIDEO TOUR:

Trinity Cathedral music director Todd Wilson shows off the console — which reminds him of an airplane cockpit — of the new chancel organ, created with materials from earlier Skinner instruments. The pandemic has even affected the supply chain for organ parts like stop knobs. Watch the April 13 video here.

DO YOU KNOW WHO INVENTED THE PDF?

One of the greatest inventions of the 20th century, of particular usefulness to musicians, is the Portable Document Format or .pdf, which has made it possible to download scores from libraries like the Petrucci Project (IMSLP), and load music onto tablets for paperless performances — among dozens of other applications.

This morning’s New York Times obituary for Cleveland native Chuck Geshke details the St. Ignatius grad’s remarkable career in the desktop publishing industry as the founder of Adobe. Although he achieved great success in that business, he always thought of himself as an engineer. “Engineers dream of building something that millions of people will use; that’s their ultimate goal.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

According to some sources, “The Bard of Avon,” William Shakespeare, was born on April 23, 1564, and it’s a fact that he died on the same date in 1616. Setting aside the contentious question of whether or not the son of a glove maker from Stratford-Upon-Avon actually authored the plays and poems attributed to him, we’ll honor both his arrival and departure dates with a setting of words from The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1. By moonlight, Lorenzo and Jessica are discussing music both earthly and celestial, and Lorenzo comes to the conclusion that

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. 

Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote A Serenade to Music to mark the 50th anniversary of the first concert conducted by Sir Henry Wood, who led the popular “Proms” (Promenade Concerts) for 50 years. The original work featured sixteen soloists chosen by the conductor and the composer, who at times sing as a choir. Members of the London Symphony, the BBC Symphony, and the London Philharmonic joined together for the first performance at the Royal Albert Hall on October 5, 1938 (listen to the first recording here.)

Here, in one album, are three versions of the piece from Vaughan Williams’ pen: for soloists (with the London Philharmonic conducted by Sir Adrian Boult), for chorus and orchestra (with the Royal Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, led by Vernon Handley), and for orchestra alone (with the Northern Sinfonia under Richard Hickox).

And on this date in 1891, Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev was born in Sontzovka, Ekaterinoslav, Ukraine. Many works come to mind to celebrate that occasion, but since we’ve just been talking about choral music — which is in a weird kind of limbo during the pandemic — it seems like a good time to revisit his music for Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 film Alexander Nevsky, for which Prokofiev wrote the score and later turned the material into a cantata. The composer was impressed with the director’s approach. As he wrote in broken English at the time,

Eisenstein’s respect for music was so great that he was ready to “hitch” film with visual image forward or backward only not to break the value of musical fragment. Do I need to say that working with such a condition gave me a great satisfaction!

Watch the full movie here and pay particular attention to the “Battle on Ice” scene and the touching mezzo-soprano solo in “The Field of the Dead.” We can recommend two videos of the cantata.

The first features mezzo soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Choir of the National Academy of Santa Cecilia, led by Yuri Temirkanov.

The second, celebrating the 70th anniversary of the BBC Symphony, was led by Leonard Slatkin at London’s Barbican Hall in 2000. Mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung is well known to Clevelanders from her appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra.

by Daniel Hathaway

LOCAL GROUPS ANNOUNCE PLANS:

Quire Cleveland Artistic Director Jay White announced in an email to its patrons today that the professional choral ensemble will resume a full schedule of in-person concerts in December, 2021. Details here. Quire’s last concert, Journey Home: Finding Unity After Loss, recorded at St. Vitus Church on February 29, 2020, will be broadcast on WCLV’s Cleveland Ovations program on Wednesday, April 21at 8:00 PM. Tune in to 104.9 FM or listen online.

Cleveland Chamber Choir will release a pre-recorded concert of madrigals on May 15 at 7:30 pm contrasting settings of the same poetry composed centuries apart. Scott MacPherson will lead the professional ensemble in music by Dolores White and Adolphus Hailstork, as well as settings by Vittoria Aleotti, Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons, Josquin, John Bennet, Sir John Stainer, Morton Lauridsen, Johannes Brahms, and Andrew Rindfleisch. More information here.

The Canton Symphony will return to the stage after a 15-month silence on May 21 at 7:30 pm with a hybrid concert of Mendelssohn and Mozart led by Gerhardt Zimmermann, presented for a live audience in Umstattd Hall as well as broadcast online. A limited number of attendees will be permitted with the customary health protocols in place. Details here.

Western Reserve Chorale has scheduled a virtual performance of “In Her Voice, songs of hope, gratitude, and comfort celebrating the poetry of women” for release on June 4, 2021. The event will incorporate eight new recordings by the Chorale, led by David Gilson, with art provided by students from Cleveland Heights High School, and poetry readings by local students.

Les Délices: Music Meditations will launch this week in conjunction with National Poetry Month. Available as a podcast, each three to six-minute episode will feature readings of classic or contemporary poetry by residents of Northeast Ohio by veteran broadcaster Leon Bibb, along with selections from Les Délices’ archives. Details here.

HAPPENING TODAY:

Earth and Air String Orchestra releases a farewell concert featuring violinists Andrew Sords and Mari Sato, London’s Wigmore Hall broadcasts the first of two Bach recitals by controversial harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, Gordon Square Classical Concerts present Ryan Charles Raymer’s Suite of 33 Miniature Solo Pieces That Fit on the Front of a Postcard, Akron’s Tuesday Musical brings bassist Edgar Meyer to E.J. Thomas Hall for an in-person recital, and Carnegie Hall presents “Metamorphosis” with Third Coast Percussion and Movement Art, illustrating “universal themes cast through the experiential lens of young Black men growing up in America today.” Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On April 20, 1941, British conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner was born in Fontmell Magna, Dorset, where he grew up with the famous Elias Gottlob Haussmann portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach hanging on the wall — lent to the Gardiner family for safe keeping during World War II  by Walter Jenke, who had bought it in a curiosity shop in Breslau. (The painting was later acquired by William H. Scheide, the Princeton-based Bach scholar, who transferred it to the Leipzig Bach Archives in April of 2015.)

Gardiner went on to study at King’s College, Cambridge, where he began his conducting career with the Monteverdi Vespers in King’s Chapel in 1964, and in subsequent years established the Monteverdi Orchestra, which took up period instruments in 1998, and the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique, which has specialized in 19th century repertoire. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE TODAY:

This weekend, and for the first time since 1933, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival will be presented as a series of online events, beginning tonight at 7 with a virtual concert honoring cello professor Regina Mushabac (pictured), who will retire at the end of her 46th year at BW.

At noon, sit in on a master class by multi-instrumentalist and composer Tyshawn Sorey via a Zoon webinar from Youngstown State University.

Two broadcasts from New York’s Carnegie Hall include Reiner Moritz’s documentary about Shostakovich (at 3:00 pn) and Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli in “American Voices,” a program of works by Black and Native American composers (at 7:00 pm).

Buffalo Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta leads the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra in a 7:00 pm online concert of works by Nathaniel Heyder (a premiere), Debussy, Cleveland composer Margaret Brouwer (The Art of Sailing at Dawn) and Stravinsky.

And this evening’s events conclude with opera: a 2017 production of Dvořák’s Rusalka from The MET, and Caroline Shaw’s We Need to Talk from Opera Philadelphia.

Check our Concert Listings for links and connect!

INTERESTING READS:

The Detroit Symphony was uniquely situated to move to an online presence when the pandemic reached our shores a year ago, having made its first foray into webcasting on April 10, 2007 as part of the strategy for renewing itself after a six-month work stoppage. Read about what took place over that decade in the Orchestra’s news article “Precedented Times: 10 years of Webcasting at the DSO.”

Organist Paul Jacobs, featured in the Poulenc Concerto in The Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus 8, is highlighted this week in a newsletter from the public relations firm of Hemsing and Associates. Follow the links to read Jacobs’ recent Wall Street Journal article about contemporary music for the organ, and to catch up on his activities.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Among its many quirks, the ClevelandClassical.com Diary is a rich source of cultural trivia. Did you know that American silent film icon Charlie Chaplin was actually born in England on this date in 1889, composed most of the music for his own films, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1975? (“Sir Charles!”)

Or that American composer Henry (Enrico) Mancini was a native Clevelander, born on this date in 1924 in Little Italy, whose first instrument was the piccolo? Or that he auditioned (successfully) for Juilliard in 1942 with a Beethoven sonata and an improvisation on Cole Porter’s “Night and Day?” Or that he made a cameo appearance in the first season of Frasier as a call-in patient to Dr. Frasier Crane’s radio show, followed by the playing of Moon River?

Tuck those useful factoids away while celebrating Chaplin’s life in this 90-minute documentary and viewing his 1931 film, City Lights, for which The Cleveland Orchestra played Chaplin’s score under the big screen in Severance Hall in March of 2021, William Eddins conducting.

Tunes from Mancini’s scores to such films as Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther are surely still circulating in our ears. The latter is played here by a combo with the composer at the piano, and Swiss organist Guy Bovet was moved to make the theme into a cheeky polyphonic piece in his Fuga sopra un sogetto.

Final tribute of the day: the birth of Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks in Aizpute on this date in 1946. Cleveland Orchestra solo English horn Robert Walters performed his concerto for that expressive instrument with Andrey Boreyko and the Orchestra in February of 2011, and talked about it in a preview. And Polish guitarist Marcin Dylla, who has appeared twice on the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society series, plays Vasks’ The Sonata of Loneliness here.