by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

The Cleveland Orchestra celebrates the music of North America this weekend, as Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska (pictured) takes the podium to conduct Silvestre Revueltas’s La Noche de los Mayas and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World.” Severance Music Center Friday at 11:00 am (without the Revueltas), Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Tickets available online.

The 8 pm Friday evening slot at Severance Music Center goes to the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra this week, when conductor James Feddeck will lead a suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet and César Franck’s Symphony in d. Tickets available online.

Daniel Meyer will lead the BlueWater Chamber Orchestra in “Waves of Passion” at the Church of the Covenant on Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday at 3 pm at Rocky River Presbyterian church. Music by Aaron Copland and Margaret Brouwer, plus Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with soloist David McCarroll. Find ticket information for Saturday’s concert here.

Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series welcomes the Danish String Quartet to Finney Chapel on Friday at 7:30 pm. Music by Jonny Greenwood & Beethoven, plus original arrangements and compositions. Tickets available online.

Baroque ensemble Les Délices presents four family-friendly events throughout the weekend. “The Aesop Project,” featuring puppets created by Ian Petroni, visits the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Community Arts Center at 11:30 am on Saturday, and the Akron Public Library at 3:30 that afternoon. Arrive at 10:30 am to join art-making activities. The same program will be repeated at the Akron Public Library Main Branch at 3:30 pm that day. And Les Délices’ “Wild Things” visits the Rocky River Public Library (Friday at 7:00 pm) and Christ Church Episcopal in Hudson (Sunday at 5:00 pm).

For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings. [Read more…]

NEWS BRIEFS:

In an email, Piano Cleveland has announced that its piano donation program “hit an important milestone — placing its 88th piano into the home of a Cleveland Metropolitan School District student, 12-year-old Jayce Furmin.

“The number 88 is to a pianist what 13 is to a baker,” says Piano Cleveland executive director, Marissa Moore. “The piano has 88 keys and International Piano Day falls on the 88th day of the year. It’s really fitting that the 88th instrument we’ve placed through our donation program is going into the home of a student like Jayce.”

Although Piano Cleveland has previously rehomed 87 other pianos and keyboards, Furmin is the first student from the organization’s hallmark educational program, PianoLab, to receive an instrument.

The Violin Channel reports that “Chamber Music America, the national network for small ensemble music professionals, announced the recipients of its highest awards: the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award to the Takács Quartet; the Michael Jaffee Visionary Award to Imani Winds; and its biennial Cleveland Quartet Award to the Poiesis Quartet. Read more here.

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 at Severance Music Center, guest conductor Dalia Stasevska leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Silvestre Revueltas’s La Noche de los Mayas and Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, repeated through Sunday afternoon.

At the same hour, Abrepaso Flamenco presents Ni más / ni menos, with all-new original music by Adam Ben Ezra, blending classical, jazz, Mediterranean, and flamenco sounds at Disciples Christian Church. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 in Wooster, Wayne Center for the Arts Concert Series presents violinist Chad Hoopes and harpist Bridget Kibbey. Wayne Center for the Arts, 237 S. Walnut St., Wooster. Tickets available online.

And tonight at 7:30 in Cleveland, CIM Insiders Charles Paul, double bass, Genevieve Smelser, violin, Gareth Zehngut, viola, Dane Johansen, cello, and Jacob Bernhardt, piano play works by J.S. Bach, Lili Boulanger, Jacob Druckman, and Fred Lerdahl in Kulas Hall.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Guardian reports that ‘Two long-lost organ pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach have been performed in Germany, roughly 320 years after the composer wrote them as a teenage music teacher.

“Entitled Chaconne in D minor BWV 1178 and Chaconne in G minor BWV 1179, the pieces were added to the official catalogue of Bach’s works on Monday and played in public for the first time in three centuries inside Leipzig’s St Thomas Church, where Bach is buried.” Photo: Bach statue outside the Thomaskirche.

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. [Read more…]

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 12 Noon, organist Kingsley Price Wood plays works by Anonymous, J.S. Bach, César Franck and Maurice Durufle at the Church of the Covenant.

And tonight at 7:30 in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall, Tuesday Musical presents the renowned French ensemble Les Arts Florissants in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at 300, featuring violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte (pictured).

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Here are two musicians with local connections who entered the world on November 18.

Lillian Fuchs’ two brothers, Joseph and Harry, both played in The Cleveland Orchestra, Joseph as concertmaster and Harry as a cellist. But the violist of the family, born on this date in 1901, didn’t mind being left out of the spotlight, even by her own parents. She told The Strad 1986, “I was delighted to be left alone.” Lillian was a celebrated soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue who taught for 29 years at the Manhattan School of Music, 26 at the Aspen Music Festival and School, and 22 at the Juilliard School. Her playing inspired works by Bohuslav Martinů, among others. [Read more…]

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Only one birth and one death to memorialize on the seventeenth day of November.

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. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

On Friday at 7:30, Robert Walters steps out in front of The Cleveland Orchestra to play the U.S. premiere of Geoffrey Gordon’s Mad Song for English horn and orchestra. (Read our preview interview here.) Also on the program: Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. Tugan Sokhiev conducts at Severance Music Center. Repeated Saturday at 7:30. Tickets available online.

Also on Friday, Cleveland State University presents Boulez 100: Celebrating the Pierre Boulez Centenary, with Andrew Rindfleisch, director, Shuai Wang, piano, and the Boulez 100 Ensemble. Pierre Boulez’s Incises for solo piano, Dérive 1 for six players, and Dérive 2 for eleven players. 7:30 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tickets available online.

On Saturday, Cleveland Classical Guitar Society hosts Duo Noire, Thomas Flippin and Christopher Mallett, guitars, in world premieres of works by Bryan Senti, Casimir Liberski, and Layale Chaker, plus arrangements of music by J.S. Bach, Nathaniel Dett, and more. 7:30 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center. Tickets available online.

And on Sunday, the Tri-C Classical Piano Series presents Elliot Wuu (pictured), performing Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 31 No. 3, “The Hunt,” and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s  Daisies, Op. 38 No. 3, Preludes Op. 23 No. 4 & 8, and Sonata No. 2. 2:30 at the Tri-C Metropolitan Campus Auditorium. Free, but tickets required — register online.

For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

Paul Hindemith — that celebrated composer of the first half of the 20th century who was also a violist, conductor, and important music theorist and compositional pedagogue — was born on this November 14, 1895 in Hanau, Germany. [Read more…]