by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two well-known composers were born on this date: Charles Gounod (in Paris, 1818) and Igor Stravinsky (in Oranienbaum, Russia, 1882). And two lesser-known American composers have anniversaries: Don Gillis was born in Cameron, MO in 1912, and Peter Mennin died in New York in 1983.

Gounod wrote a number of operas, of which his Faust is most frequently performed, but his operatic church music, like Rossini’s, also has a following. Watch a fuzzy video here of the incomparable Jessye Norman performing the “Sanctus” from Gounod’s Messe solennelle.

Stravinsky made his debut as guest conductor with The Cleveland Orchestra in February of 1925, conducting his Fireworks, Chant du Rossignol and Firebird Suite. Conductor Nikolai Sokoloff found him “something of a showman and not entirely endearing,” adding, “He was, in short, a pain in the neck.” (Rosenberg, The Cleveland Orchestra Story, p. 87). Stravinsky was more complimentary about his experience: “I have never seen an orchestra in which there was finer discipline and a greater responsiveness than right here in your Cleveland Orchestra.” Here’s a live performance of Le chant du rossignol by Pierre Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra from November, 1970. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

MISSING CUSP:

The Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project offers a “Summer Sounds — June Edition” playlist in lieu of the live performances the organization had scheduled before the pandemic arrived. Click here for links to Admiral Launch Duo, Joo Won Park, Desdemona Ensemble and Anthony R. Green, Anna Elder, Molly Jones, Christopher Clarino & Leah Asher.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Belgian violinist, composer, and conductor Eugène Ysaÿe was born on this date in Liège in 1858. After graduating from the conservatory there, he became principal of the orchestra that later morphed into the Berlin Philharmonic. Ysaÿe has two interesting links to Ohio, having taught Josef Gingold, concertmaster of The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell, and having served as conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony from 1918-1922 after turning down the directorship of the New York Philharmonic.

Franck wrote his Sonata in A as a wedding present for Ysaÿe, and the violinist’s Ysaÿe Quartet premiered Debussy’s String Quartet. His six solo violin sonatas are widely admired and performed. Yura Lee played two movements from the fifth sonata on her 2016 ChamberFest Cleveland “Fiddle Tales” concert at Transformer Station. And Augustin Hadelich, who was to have performed with the Canton Symphony in May, recorded Ysaÿe’s third sonata live at Deutschlandfunk in Köln in 2015. Watch that performance here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

BOX OFFICES ARE OPENING:

On June 18, the Cleveland Museum of Art will begin selling a limited number of timed admission tickets to Museum members for its June 30 opening and the month of July. Tickets for the general public will go on sale June 22. Details here.

The Museum has also begun posting “Behind the Beat,” a series of video conversations with composers and performers in the time of isolation. Watch here.

Apollo’s Fire has announced its 2020-2021 season, offering a number of options for its subscribers including in-person attendance at concerts and exclusive post-performance videos. Details here.

Les Délices will begin selling subscriptions to its 2020-2021 series on July 1. The four programs will be presented entirely online. Read more here.

And Tri-C JazzFest’s 41st season will go virtual, streaming across various online platforms on Friday and Saturday, August 21 and 22. More information here. Performers will be announced on June 18.

ON THE WEB TODAY:

Catch pianist Imogen Cooper anytime today in an on-demand version of her live lunchtime concert at London’s Wigmore Hall, enjoy Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and revisit the MET Opera’s 2010 production of Rossini’s Armida with Renée Fleming and Lawrence Brownlee. Details here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

BOP STOP is acquiring state-of-the-art streaming equipment, enabling the Music Settlement’s near-West Side venue to begin streaming live events and select archived performances by mid-July. Read the press release here.

News of the latest North American cancellations and furloughs comes from the Nashville Symphony, Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and Canada’s Banff Centre in Alberta, while East Asian orchestras like the National Symphony of Taipei (Taiwan) are experimenting with ways to carry on live performances with reduced capacity audiences.

Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, joined MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell to discuss “the power of music to affect change and how the worldwide jazz community is activating to join the conversation on civil rights.” View the conversation here.

 

THIS WEEKEND ON THE WEB AND ON THE AIR:

Lots of opera online this weekend: an encore screening of the MET Opera’s recent At-Home Gala, plus Handel’s Rodelinda, Dutch National Opera’s staging of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder, Florida Grand Opera’s 2015 production of Menotti’s The Consul, and on the lighter side, Ohio Light Opera’s selections from Carousel with cast members who would have performed Rodgers & Hammerstein’s classic musical this summer. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

On Thursday, The Cleveland Orchestra sent out a video message from President and CEO André Gremillet updating patrons on its plans for the summer and beyond (much is still up in the air), and announced “Cleveland Orchestra Classics,” a new summer series of full-length concert rebroadcasts. The Orchestra also noted the release of the latest podcast in its “On a Personal Note” Series. In “Resolution,” second clarinet Robert Woolfrey talks about finding peace in Brahms’s German Requiem and its power to connect the past with the present.

The Vienna Philharmonic is resuming public concerts with limited audiences present in the Musikverein. Read an article here.

ON THE WEB TODAY:

If you tuned in to the Stockholm Symphony’s live stream on Wednesday (with no audience present), you may be interested in hearing what the orchestra’s CEO and artistic director, Stefan Forsberg, has to say about the Swedish ensemble’s policies during the pandemic. He speaks with Susan Elliot on Musical America’s “One to One: Keeping the orchestra playing”. Listen here.

Today’s scheduled streams of local interest include Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra (Bruckner, Mozart, and Brahms with Julia Fischer), a house concert with pianist Spencer Myer ($), an encore screening of the MET Opera’s recent At-Home Gala featuring 40 artists around the world, and an episode in the Ohio Light Opera’s Virtual Summer Festival where OLO veterans and current company members trade messages and songs. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1864, composer Richard Strauss was born in Munich. One of his last works was the Oboe Concerto, inspired by Pittsburgh Symphony principal oboe John de Lancie (later principal in Philadelphia), who met the composer at the end of World War II in Garimsch-Partenkirchen while serving in the U.S. Army.

Principal Frank Rosenwein played the work with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra in September 2012, and again with CityMusic Cleveland in December, 2018. Watch a video here of the latter performance at St. Noel Church in Willoughby, conducted by Stefan Willich, and read a preview article by Jarrett Hoffman here.

Today would have marked the beginning of ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2020 series, now postponed until 2021. Since that coincides with Strauss’s birthday, it seems appropriate to suggest watching a video of his Metamorphosen for strings from ChamberFest’s June 27, 2016 concert at Chagrin Falls Methodist Church. The musicians are Noah Bendix-Balgley and Itamar Zorman, violins, Yura Lee and Teng Li, violas, Julie Albers and Timotheos Petrin, cellos, and Nathan Farrington, bass. (You can also hear the performance on July 26 as part of the nine archived ChamberFest concerts to be broadcast this summer by WCLV, 104.9 Ideastream. See the complete schedule here). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

English composer Frederick Delius died on this date in 1934 in Grez-sur-Loing, near Paris, blind and paralyzed by syphilis. His music, a London Times critic wrote, “belongs to no school, follows no tradition and is like no other composer in the form, content or style of his music,” although other commentators have noted the influence of Debussy, Wagner and African American music — which Delius heard in England by the touring Fisk Jubilee Singers and on Florida plantations where he was sent by his father to manage a citrus grove.

Cleveland hasn’t heard much of Delius’ music live, though British conductors like Bramwell Tovey and Andrew Davis have brought his music along to their Cleveland Orchestra appearances, and a smattering of his smaller pieces have been played by university and avocational orchestras. Here’s a tiny piece, the “Serenade” from Delius’ incidental music to the play Hassan with violinist Rafel Druian and the Cleveland Sinfonietta, led by Louis Lane. And here’s a seasonally appropriate work, Song for Summer, performed by the London Symphony under Sir John Barbirolli (you can follow along with the score).

And on June 10, 1911, harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick was born in Leominster, Massachusetts. One of the early champions of the instrument, he gave his first recital while studying art history at Harvard in 1930, and went on to work with Nadia Boulanger and Wanda Landowska in Paris. While serving as a professor at Yale from 1940-1976, he wrote a biography of Domenico Scarlatti and devised a chronology of his harpsichord works, which are identified by their “K” numbers. [Read more…]