by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Let us now praise famous musicians who arrived or departed on May 18.

German composer Georg Böhm took his leave on this date in 1733. He was working for the French-influenced court in Luneburg when Johann Sebastian Bach was a teenaged chorister at a church down the street. Enjoy two of Böhm’s engaging works played on the Schnitger organ in Groningen by Wim van Beek. We’ll start with his multi-sectioned Präludium in g, then move on to his variations on Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele — the next-to-last variation introduces some stunning blue notes into the harmony.

Two basses come up in today’s list: the birth of Ezio Pinza in Rome in 1892, and the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 2012. We featured the latter in an earlier Diary, so we’ll move on to Pinza, who, despite never having learned to read music, enjoyed a long and distinguished opera career beginning in Milan under Toscanini and at the MET in New York.

Watch some rare video of Pinza rehearsing for a Bell Telephone Hour program in 1947, and recall his second career on Broadway in clips from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific, where he appeared opposite Mary Martin as the French planter Emil de Becque.

German composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (pictured) died in Vienna on this date in 1911, leaving nine-and-a-half monumental symphonies that were performed during his lifetime, but languished until their revival later in the century, notably by Leonard Bernstein. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

FEATURED EVENT: On Sunday afternoon at 3, Arts Renaissance Tremont honors the late Chris Haff Paluck (pictured with cellist Ralph Curry), founder of the ART series, with a tribute concert by the Amici String Quartet, guitarist Jason Vieaux, and The Cleveland Orchestra Bass Quartet at Pilgrim Congregational Church UCC in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood.

WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:

MAY 15 – FRIDAY

Tonight at 7:30, CityMusic Chamber Orchestra continues its final peripatetic series of the season at St. Noel Church in Willoughby Hills (note corrected venue). Jeannette Sorrell conducts Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Piano features violinist Diana Cohen, violin, and pianist Roman Rabinovich. Repeated on Saturday at 7:30 at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, and Sunday at 2:30 in Our Lady of Angels Church.

Also at 7:30, Erik Ochsner leads the Youngstown Symphony in Modest Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina Prelude: Dawn on the Moskva River (arr. Rimsky-Korsakov), Anna Thorvaldsdóttir’s ARCHORA, Felix Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea & Prosperous Voyage, and Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable,” in Stambaugh Auditorium.

MAY 16 – SATURDAY

As the central event in its Opera and Humanities Festival, The Cleveland Orchestra presents Beethoven’s Fidelio, Franz Welser-Möst, conducting, with Sara Jakubiak & Ashley Emerson, sopranos, David Butt Philip & Owen McCausland, tenors, Tomasz Konieczny & Dashon Burton, bass-baritones, Martin Summer, bass, and The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus (7:30 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center).

Also at 7:30 pm – The Singers’ Club of Cleveland presents “And All Nature Did Sing!” Chris Clark, artistic director, and Ben Malkevitch, piano, at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River (repeated on Sunday at 3 at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland.)

MAY 17 – SUNDAY

This afternoon at 3, Arts Renaissance Tremont honors the late Chris Haff Paluck, founder of the ART series, with a tribute concert by the Amici String Quartet, guitarist Jason Vieaux, and The Cleveland Orchestra Bass Quartet at Pilgrim Congregational Church UCC.

Also this afternoon at 3, Master Singers Chorale presents a 25th Anniversary Concert led by Marc Weagraff, with pianist Eric Charnofsky, soprano Sabina Balsamo, mezzo-soprano Kimberly Lauritsen, tenor; Ethan Burck, tenor, and baritone Aidan Eddy, baritone, including the world premiere of Charnofsky’s Everyone Sang, at First United Methodist Church in Cuyahoga Falls. Free.

For details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

On May 15, 1501, Venetian printer Ottaviano del Petrucci published Harmonice musices odhecaton A, the first musical score to be printed from moveable type — a feat similar to Johannes Gutenberg’s technical advances of 60 years earlier. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30, CityMusic Chamber Orchestra begins its final peripatetic series of the season at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights. Jeannette Sorrell conducts Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Piano features violinist Diana Cohen, violin, and pianist Roman Rabinovich. Concerts continue through Sunday afternoon.

For details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

HEADLINES:

Baltimore Public Media Presents “Classical Music for People With Short Attention Spans.” This summer, WYPR, the Baltimore-based radio station, is hosting an accessible concert for old and newcomers of classical music. Read the Violin Channel story here.

The woodwind quintet ZaRiah took home the Grand Prize and the Senior Wind Division Gold Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition this week. Four of the members of the Connecticut-based group are Oberlin Conservatory graduates. A post on the school’s Facebook page adds:

“ZaRiah is the first woodwind quintet to win the Fischoff Grand Prize since Quintet Attacca in 2002. The win also continues a remarkable recent run for Oberlin at the competition, following the Poiesis Quartet’s Grand Prize win in 2023.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Before lighting the birthday candles for historical figures born on May 14, let’s observe the passing of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel in 1847 at the too-young age of 43. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 6 pm, Piano Cleveland Live presents Chaeyoung Park and friends at Edwins in Cleveland Heights. And at 7:30 the Cleveland Museum of Art hosts Grammy Award–winning jazz pianist Brad Mehldau and his Trio with Felix Moseholm and Jorge Rossy in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

For details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

This weekend marks an unusual collaboration between three of Cleveland’s musical organizations as Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell conducts CityMusic Chamber Orchestra with two of ChamberFest Cleveland’s artistic directors, violinist Diana Cohen and pianist Roman Rabinovich, in Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture, Mendelssohn’s Concerto for violin, piano, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in four different venues from Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon. See our concert listings for details about the free performances.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1842, composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan was born in London. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Today at 12 Noon, organist Daesean Lawson (pictured) plays a varied program on the Tuesday Organ Plus series at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle. (Click here to view the program), and Piano Cleveland presents Chaeyoung Park in the Atrium of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

For details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

From the New York Times’ The Morning: “A cigarette tax has generated $270 million for cultural organizations in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland. It has also led to declining smoking rates in the region. Which is a win-win — except the arts organizations now need to replace what they’re losing as people buy fewer smokes. “It’s a double-edged sword,” one arts leader told The Times.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Jarrett Hoffman

The Amati are one of the most important families of luthiers in the history of the violin, and on this date in 1684, the greatest instrument maker in that family, Nicola Amati, died in Cremona, Italy. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Rocky River Chamber Music Society ends its season by presenting baritone Edward Vogel (pictured) with pianist Jenny Parker in A Palace in the Wild: Journeys in British Art Song (7:30 at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church).

For details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.

CLEVELANDCLASSICAL.COM SETS END-OF-YEAR ANNUAL FUND GOAL:

On Saturday, founder and editor Daniel Hathaway wrote in an email, “Thanks to the continuing support of our readers, we have once again set our annual fund goal at $23,000 for this fiscal year.

“That leaves us with only $6,500 to raise before June 30. We hope you will want to pitch in with a gift at this time, either with a check or with a credit or debit card. Visit the Donate page on our website for details.”

TODAY’S  HEADLINES:

The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra announces 2026–27 season, celebrating 40th anniversary (Press release.) James Feddeck will lead three concerts, all of which will be free in celebration of the anniversary.

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). [Read more…]