by Daniel Hathaway

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA POWER OF MUSIC VIDEOS:

A series of videos to be released weekly over social media for the next 7-10 weeks finds Assistant Concertmaster Jessica Lee and her colleagues fanning out through the community to play in various businesses in Greater Cleveland, “to bring these places back into people’s lives while we are less able to visit and enjoy them.” The series is part of the Music Medicine Initiative: The Power of Music for Health and Well-Being, a community collaboration between The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Clinic’s Art + Design Institute.

In the first video, released on Monday, Lee joins Yun-Ting Lee, Wesley Collins, and Dane Johansen at Luna Bakery in Cleveland Heights for the third movement of Debussy’s String Quartet.

BW ROCK OPERA FEATURED IN AMERICAN THEATRE:

Not one to be deterred by a mere pandemic, Baldwin Wallace Musical Theatre Director Victoria Bussert forged ahead with plans to produce Spring Awakening last week.

“What would a pandemic-era production look like, and how would people see it? How could you perform group numbers when unmasked group singing is verboten? What about kissing? And most importantly, how would you keep everyone safe?” Read the article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On November 24, 1868, American composer and pianist Scott Joplin was born near Marshall, Texas. Most famous for single-handedly inventing ragtime — a syncopated American genre revived by William Bolcom and William Albright, who introduced the young musicologist Joshua Rifin to Joplin’s music in 1968, and further popularized in the movie The Sting — Joplin wrote two operas as well. The materials for A Guest of Honor have been lost, probably seized by a rooming house owner in lieu of rent during a tour in 1904, but Treemonisha enjoyed a full production by Houston Grand Opera in May, 1975. Watch a video (with subtitles in Portuguese!) here.

Back to ragtime: Joplin made seven pianola rolls in 1916 including his most famous piece, the Maple Leaf Rag. In 1970, Rifkin’s Nonesuch recording of Joplin piano rags was the label’s first to sell a million copies.

Also born on November 24 (in 1934), Russian composer Alfred Schnittke adopted what he called his polystylistic technique in works like his remarkable Concerto Grosso No. 1, performed live in Moscow in 2004 by Gidon Kremer, Tatiana Grindenko and Kremerata Baltica.

On November 24, 1940, American jazz composer Wendell Logan was born in Thompson, Georgia. He joined the Oberlin Conservatory Faculty and founded the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble in 1973, later developing a jazz curriculum for the school, which adopted admission standards for jazz students in 1991. Watch a shaky cell phone video of Logan speaking at the dedication of the Kohl Jazz Studies Building in 2010 (he died later that year).

And listen to a February, 1991 recording of Logan’s Roots, Branches, Shapes and Shades (of Green), commissioned by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, composed for pianist Neal Creque, and first performed under the direction of Edwin London in February, 1991.

Finally, multi-genre double bass phenomenon and composer Edgar Meyer was born on this date in 1960. ChamferFest Cleveland violinist David Bowlin and bassist Nathan Farrington performed the third movement of his Concerto Duo at The Wine Spot in June, 2014. Watch here.

by Daniel Hathaway

STREAMING HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEKEND:

Locally-sponsored events you can enjoy from the comfort of your domicile include a choral concert from the University of Akron, an International Series recital by Raphael Feuillatre from the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society (read Jarrett Hoffman’s preview interview here), the first collaboration between BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Verb Ballets (read my conversation with BlueWater Artistic Director Daniel Meyer here), an Oberlin Stage Left concert by the Oberlin Orchestra, Sinfonietta, and Contemporary Music Ensemble, and a concert by the Lunaris, the University of Akron’s graduate woodwind quintet. See the Concert Listings for details

Moving to the southern end of the state, on Saturday evening at 8:00 pm, the Cincinnati Symphony will stream a free digital concert featuring New York Philharmonic principal Anthony McGill in the premiere of You Have the Right to Remain Silent, a new clarinet concerto by Anthony Davis, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in music for his opera The Central Park Five. (Rehearsal photo above.) It’s part of a program led by Louis Langree that also includes Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 and Julia Perry’s Homunculus C.F. In a preview article in WVXU News, Julie Coppens writes

Seasoned as he is, “You Have the Right to Remain Silent” handed McGill some new challenges: it’s his first major performance on the super-sized (and much deeper-voiced) contra-alto clarinet; his first time improvising a solo against a Kurzweil synthesizer, which lends some otherworldly effects; and a rare musical exploration of racism in the American criminal justice system. He’s certainly never been Mirandized on stage before—but this weekend’s free “Live From Music Hall” streaming concert will take viewers deep into all those experiences and more, combining the gritty intimacy of a TV police drama with the transcendence of symphonic creation and collaboration.

MORE COVID-19 UPDATES:

Following the announcement of a new, statewide public health advisory, Apollo’s Fire has announced that its December performances, originally planned to be hybrids offering patrons the choice of in-person attendance or high-quality videos to be available the week after the live concerts, will now go entirely digital.

And the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is closed to the public beginning on November 20 for an indefinite period of time. For information about online programs and other services, visit the museum’s website.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

November 22 marks the feast day of Cecilia, a Roman Empire-era virgin martyr who has somehow become the patron saint of musicians, and in whose name celebratory odes have been penned by poets and composers over the last few centuries.

Both Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten — England’s most celebrated composers — had the honor of being born on St. Cecilia’s Day, as did Arthur Seymour Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte Opera fame.

Purcell straddled the old era of viols and the new age of violins at the British royal court, steeping himself in the long tradition of viol consort music before continuing his career as a church and theater composer who wholeheartedly embraced the new instrumental tastes imported from the French court, and managed to jam as much music into his brief lifespan as Mozart did — both died in their mid-30s.

Before her recent retirement, Oberlin viola da gamba and cello professor Catharina Meints gathered a consort of guests to present an entire concert devoted to Purcell’s Fantasias for viols on September 13, 2019. Read about it here, and watch the concert on the June 18, 2020 episode of Oberlin Stage Left here. (The viols segment begins at 20:48.)

Purcell served as organist of Westminster Abbey, where he wrote and performed such modern works as his verse-anthem Rejoice in the Lord Alway, sung here with organ accompaniment in Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral on October 5, 2015 on the program “The Remarkable Mr. Henry Purcell.” David Acres conducts Contrapunctus Cleveland.

Benjamin Britten wrote his Hymn to St. Cecilia in 1942 on the high seas while returning from a sojourn in America, setting a striking poem by W.H. Auden. Listen to a performance by Britain’s Voces 8 here.

Previously unreleased works by Britten have regularly shown up since his death in 1976, among them his Gerard Manley Hopkins settings in A.M.D.G. (“Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam”, the motto of the Jesuit order to which Hopkins belonged). One of the most beguiling movements is “Rosa Mystica,” sung here by Cleveland Chamber Choir under the direction of Scott MacPherson in March, 2019.

And for listeners who only know the theater music of Arthur Sullivan, here are two little gems to enjoy (we’ll spare you The Lost Chord!)

His solo song, Orpheus With His Lute, from a suite of Shakespeare settings, celebrates another patron saint of music, the god who could make mountaintops and trees “bow their heads when he did sing.” Dame Janet Baker sings it here with Gerald Moore at the piano.

Then there’s Sullivan’s The Long Day Closes, a quintessentially Victorian meditation on death composed in 1868 that was often sung at funerals for members of the D’Oyly Carte Company. The King’s Singers perform it here on the BBC Proms in 2008.

by Daniel Hathaway

TWO CHEERS FOR A.I.:

Viewers who hopped onto the Cleveland Musicians Local 4  “Tuning In” performance by violinist Emily Cornelius and Pianist Eric Charnofsky last night witnessed a jarring interruption when the Facebook Live stream was shut down — more than once. It seems that the FB bots that spread out over the network to nab copyright infringements mistook the live performance for a commercial recording. Local 4 Music Fund Executive Director Amber Rogers writes, “If you want to hear the performance SO GOOD that Facebook shut it down TWICE, it’s here, for you.”

MUSEUM TO CLOSE TEMPORARILY:

The Cleveland Museum of Art is responding to the new surge in COVID-19 cases by closing its doors for the second time. The current interruption is planned to last from today through December 16. In the meanwhile, the Museum notes that “the CMA will continue to offer dynamic, online art experiences. Remember: Home Is Where the Art Is offers visitors a chance to explore the wealth of digital resources that the CMA has to offer.”

HAPPENING ONLINE TODAY:

Streamed concerts by students in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Advanced Trio Program and CWRU’s Symphonic Winds are available today. See the Concert Listings for details.

And while staying home in accordance with the most recent state guidelines, have a look at the wealth of online performances listed in Musical America’s Guide (follow the link at the top of our Concert Listings). Among today’s highlights, pianist Lang Lang plays J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations from Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, where the composer is buried.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

November 20 obits include the passing of Renaissance composer Pierre de la Rue in Courtrai, Belgium in 1518 and Russian composer Anton Rubenstein in Peterhof in 1894, as well as that of English musician John Shore in 1752, who had invented the tuning fork in 1711 and presented one to Handel.

On the other end of the life cycle, American multimedia composer and innovative singer Meredith Monk was born in Lima, Peru on this date in 1942. Alan Pierson, Artistic Director of Alarm Will Sound talks to her about her piece Anthem in a recent interview. Watch 21 remote performers play the piece here in real time thanks to a platform Alarm Will Sound has developed during the pandemic.

Finally, on this date in 1820, an 80-ton sperm whale attacked and sank the Nantucket whaling ship Essex 2,000 miles off the west coast of South America. That event inspired Herman Melville’s 1851 more-than-a-novel, Moby-Dick, and in turn, moved American composer Jake Heggie to write his opera of the same name on commission from Dallas Opera, San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, State Opera of South Australia and Calgary Opera. I saw the premiere in Dallas in April, 2010 along with colleagues from the Music Critics Association of North America.

Heggie talked about the process of composing the work in a University of California TV interview in 2012. No time like the present to crack open Melville’s magnum opus, which may be one of those classics we’ve never gotten around to reading. (The author’s Billy Budd also inspired the eponymous opera by Benjamin Britten.)

by Daniel Hathaway

THE VIRUS THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS:

Early on Wednesday afternoon, The Cleveland Orchestra announced that its entire series of Christmas Concerts — already scaled down to eliminate choral music — will be cancelled “due to the recent and continued rise of positive cases of Covid-19 across the state in order to maintain the health and safety of audiences, musicians, staff and volunteers.”

Ticket holders for the fifteen performances scheduled from December 10-23 have the option of donating their tickets back to the Orchestra and receiving a tax receipt, exchanging their tickets for a gift certificate, or receiving a refund. Orchestra President and CEO André Gremillet explains the decision in a video.

ONLINE TODAY — LOCALLY AND NATIONALLY:

Check our Concert Listings for details about today’s Intensive Duo Recital from CIM, a program of chamber music by the Case Western Baroque Chamber Ensembles, Local 4’s latest “Tuning In” performance by violinist Emily Cornelius and Pianist Eric Charnofsky, an Oberlin master class with Lawrence Brownlee, and Baldwin Wallace’s rock opera, A Spring Awakening.

Farther afield, ChamberFest Cleveland wants to tip you off to a performance by pianist Roman Rabinovich on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series. And fans of Cleveland guest performers and composers may want to catch a program of music by George Walker at the Baruch College Performing Arts Center, and a 92nd St. Y recital by the Emerson String Quartet with Yefim Bronfman. And then there’s a Live at Carnegie Hall program remembering the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. See the Musica America guide linked at the top of our Concert Listings page for more information.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two eminent composers left this life on November 19, due in both cases to microbes: German Johann Hermann Schein (of the plague) in 1630 in Leipzig, and Franz Peter Schubert (of typhus) in 1828 in Vienna.

Schein, a friend of Heinrich Schütz who was likewise influenced by early Italian Baroque music, preceded J.S. Bach at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, and wrote equal quantities of vocal and instrumental music. His instrumental suites, collected in the 1617 publication Banchetto musicale, were meant to be played during dinner, as the title suggests.

Visit the special sound world of Schein’s era with Intrada 21, played on the wonderful, buzzy instruments of the curtal and rackett family by the Unholy Rackett ensemble.

Schein’s sacred music is replete with madrigalesque word painting, as you can hear in his 1623 cycle Israelis Brünnlein, performed by Gli Angeli Genève at the Geertekerk in Utrecht in 2011. Zero in on one of the movements, the motet Die mit Tränen säen (“Those who sow with tears”), with Philip Herreweghe and the Ensemble Vocal Européen in this follow-along-with-the-score performance. 

Schubert is so ubiquitous in the concert hall that we’ll just give a tip of the hat to his wonderful cello quintet, performed here (first movement only) on a ChamberFest Cleveland concert in Harkness Chapel in 2015, before we move on to less-familiar repertoire.

Those works would include Schubert’s songs for male chorus, which imbibe the spirit of Austro-German Romanticism (quite literally — many of them are drinking songs). Robert Shaw recorded ten of them in 1992 with an ensemble drawn from the Robert Shaw Chorale. Listen here.

The spirit of the forest is invoked both musically and instrumentally in Schubert’s Nachtgesang im Walde for male voices and four valve horns, performed here by members of the Vienna State Opera Chorus and Vienna Symphony.

Even more emblematic of Schubert’s philosophical world are his three settings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Gesang der Geister über den Wassern (“The soul of mankind is like water”). One is for unaccompanied male chorus, an entirely different setting that the composer left unfinished adds piano, and the remarkable third version — again completely different — adds an ensemble of low strings. Listen to No. 3 as performed in 2011 by the Norwegian Soloist Choir and the Oslo Camerata, directed by Grete Pedersen.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Fans of organist Paul Jacobs — who is featured in the recently-released Cleveland Orchestra recording of the world premiere of Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Okeanos — can hop digitally across the upper Midwest tonight and catch his recital from Overture Hall in Madison, Wisconsin. He’s playing Baroque transcriptions on the Klais organ, including four Handel Concertos, and J.S. Bach’s Air on the G String and Arioso. The stream is free, but you’ll need to register.

As the Cleveland Institute of Music approaches the end of the semester, its chamber music groups are showing their wares online. Tonight’s broadcast features a woodwind quintet coached by Cleveland Orchestra bassoonist Barrick Stees, countering the gales of November with sunny Caribbean-inspired music: Paquito D’Rivera’s Aires Tropicales.

Another popular Cleveland Orchestra soloist, pianist Aaron Diehl, appears on New York’s 92nd St. Y Series with music by African American composers from William Grant Still to Duke Ellington. Check out that event and many others in the weekly Musical America guide to (mostly) free live streams. You’ll find the link at the top of our Concert Listings page.

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

Fans of the Heinz Poll-era Ohio Ballet will be sad to learn of the death of its music director and pianist David Fisher on November 6. Read an obituary here.

Composer Margi Griebling-Haigh writes that her one-act opera, The White Trout, is now available for viewing on YouTube. The 20+ minute work, which she saw “as a way to do something not only productive, but FUN, during this general moratorium on live musical activities,” is based on an Irish folk tale, and features Gabrielle Haigh (soprano), Brian Keith Johnson (baritone), Jessica Sindell (piccolo), Scott Haigh (double bass), Parker Ramsay (harp), and Randall Fusco (piano), “all tied together with very fun narration by Ty Alan Emerson.”

Mignarda, the voice and lute duo of Donna Stewart and Ron Andrico & Donna Stewart, have also put their time to good use during the cessation of live performances by releasing three new recordings, described below in their own words:

• Heart-Songs, a new recording of our folk music alter-ego (normally kept well-concealed from Mignarda fans, but you just knew something funny was up with us). Released on November 4.
• Mater Dolorosa, a recording of live ensemble tracks from our annual concert of sacred historical music. Released on November 11.
• Unquiet Thoughts, our much-anticipated recording of English lute songs. To be released on November 30.

Visit Mignarda’s website for more information.

Itching for even some virtual foreign travel these days? Before the borders closed, Oberlin grad Wesley Hall spent a year studying in Lübeck, Germany — Dietrich Buxtehude’s turf — and has made a 48-minute video about the organs and churches of that Hanseatic League town, which also figures in Thomas Mann’s novel, Buddenbrooks. “Such amazing instruments, such amazing people,” he writes. Watch Lübeck: Queen of the Hanse here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Only one birth and one death to memorialize today.

American composer and arranger Hershey Kay was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1919. He studied at the Curtis Institute, where he was a classmate of Leonard Bernstein, who entrusted the scores of On the Town, Peter Pan, and Candide to Kay for orchestration (only rarely do composers take that task on themselves).

Among Kay’s other products was the reconstruction and orchestration of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Grande Tarantelle, choreographed by George Balanchine and famously performed by New York City Ballet’s Patricia McBride and Edward Villela. Watch them dance the score here.

And on November 17, 1959, Brazilian composer, pianist, and conductor Heitor Villa-Lobos died in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 72. Among his most celebrated works are the nine Bachianas Brasileiras suites. Written between 1930 and 1945 for various instrumental ensembles, they meld Baroque compositional forms and techniques with Brazilian folk and popular music.

Suite No. 5 for soprano and eight cellos, is among the most-performed. Watch Mark Kosower’s Cleveland Institute of Music cello studio play the two-movement work here with soprano Natasha Simmons in a concert from February 29, 2016.

French guitarist Raphaël Feuillâtre will include music by Villa-Lobos on his Cleveland Classical Guitar Society recital on November 21, streamed from his home in France. During her visit to the CCGS in 2017, Sharon Isbin gave a master class on Villa-Lobos’ Prelude No. 1. 

And perhaps local guitarists will recall this performance in Harkness Chapel on May 18, 2017 of his Etude No. 7 by Chaconne Klaverenga, a student of Jason Vieaux at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE EVENTS TODAY:

Even during the pandemic, the concert calendar heats up in mid-November.

Today, Baldwin Wallace presents a residency performance by pianist Conrad Tao and tap dancer Caleb Teicher, CIM shares the results of its Advanced String Quartet Program, the Gruca White Ensemble throws a CD Release Party, YSU’s Dana Chorale broadcasts a pre-recorded fall concert, Opera Western Reserve offers “A Taste of Traviata” in lieu of its annual opera performance in Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium, No Exit hosts its Twin Cities counterpart Zeitgeist in a scary tale, “Crocus Hill Ghost Story,” and Oberlin faculty Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin, Kirsten Docter, viola, Dmitry Kouzov, cello, and Angela Cheng, piano, play Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 3 in a live stream from Warner Concert Hall. Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

French organist and composer Louis-Lefébure-Wély was born on this date in Paris in 1817. Closely associated with the symphonic organs built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, he occupied important positions at Saint-Roch, the Madeleine, and Saint-Sulpice. Nowadays, Wély’s exuberant, over-the-top compositions usually find their way onto recital programs as period novelties, but they reflect the taste of Parisian church-goers in the mid-19th century. YouTube offers a wide selection of his works, some played on harmoniums (not the same as American reed organs!) Click here to listen to René Saorgin play a selection of Wély’s pieces on the 1845 Nicolas-Antoine Lété instrument in Nantua.

Italian bel canto opera composer Gioachino Rossini died on this date in 1868, having written 39 operas by 1829, when he laid down his pen for the last 40 years of his life. Cleveland Opera Theater responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by reworking his The Barber of Seville into six educational episodes. Start watching here.

On this date in 1943, New York Philharmonic conductor Bruno Walter was in bed with the flu, giving the Orchestra’s young assistant conductor Leonard Bernstein — relatively unknown at the time — his big break on the podium. Read about that event here.

On November 13, 1951, Russian-born pianist and composer Nikolai Medtner died in London at the age of 71. It took some 25 years after his demise for the concert world to recognize him as a worthy colleague of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin in the Russian piano pantheon.

Here are three performances of single works by Medtner: first, his Tale in B-flat, played by the composer himself in 1930; then his Tale Op. 26, No. 3, performed by Daniil Trifonov at Carnegie Hall in December, 2016;, and finally, his Canzona matinata and Sonata tragica from Op. 39, recorded by Alex Tuchman at CIM in April, 2019.

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE EVENTS TODAY:

The Cleveland Orchestra’s “In Focus” series continues tonight with Episode 3. Pianist Emanuel Ax joins Franz Welser-Möst and the ensemble in Haydn’s D-Major Concerto, and the Orchestra fills out the hour-long program with Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings.

Also released today, the latest episode in the Orchestra’s “On a Personal Note” podcast series relates the story of the ill-fated performances of Haydn’s oratorio The Seasons, in January of 2018, when more than one soloist called in sick. “Change of Seasons” takes two episodes to tell the tale. Listen to Part 1, “The Scramble,” here.

This evening, the second of two programs in the “Black Reflections” series jointly hosted by the Oberlin Conservatory and the New World Symphony takes up the topic, “A Just Future for Black Musicians.” Christian McBride hosts the free Zoom webinar, for which you’ll need to register.

And Cleveland Brass Works is next up on the Silver Hall Series, streamed live from the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

See the Concert Listings for details.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Among the composers who wrote their finales on this date: Ernest Pepping (Germany, 1901), Quincy Porter (USA, 1966), Walter Piston (USA, 1976), Carlos Surinach (Spain/USA, 1997), Henryk Górecki (Poland, 2010), and John Tavener (England, 2013).

Some works immediately come to mind to celebrate three of those anniversaries.

Although Walter Piston was a celebrated academic who wrote four theoretical works and taught at Harvard from 1926 until 1960, he started his musical career playing piano in dance bands and saxophone in the Navy during World War I. One of his most engaging orchestral works is the suite he extracted from his ballet score, The Incredible Flutist. Watch the video of a performance by the Spanish Radio and Television Orchestra, Carlos Kalmar conducting, recorded live in April, 2015 at the Teatro Monumental, Madrid. Note the tango in 5/4 time (and the barking dog!) Cleveland Orchestra fans might have caught the ensemble’s archived performance on a recent WCLV broadcast.

Górecki came to prominence outside his native Poland only in the 1990s, chiefly through a recording of his Third Symphony, subtitled “Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,” that commemorated the victims of the Holocaust and featured soprano Dawn Upshaw. It sold more than a million copies worldwide. Listen to the work here in the recording with Upshaw and the London Sinfonietta, David Zinman, conducting.

Speaking of commercial successes, English composer John Tavener achieved wide renown for his religious works, many of which reflected his conversion to Orthodox Christianity in 1977. Among his best-sellers: The Protecting Veil (recorded by cellist Steven Isserlis), Song for Athene (sung at the end of the funeral for Princess Diana in Westminster Abbey in 1997), and the haunting little setting of William Blake’s The Lamb, inspired by his 3-year-old nephew and premiered at the 1982 King’s College Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. Watch Quire Cleveland perform The Lamb at Trinity Cathedral in December, 2013.

The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge included The Lamb in a 2013 tribute to Tavener, along with his Mother of God, Today the Virgin, Funeral Ikos, and Song for Athene. Stephen Layton conducted the ensemble at the European Festival of Church Music in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany in July 2013. Watch here.