by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

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.

Delius’s physical condition toward the end of his life prevented him from personally preserving his legacy as a composer, but the struggling young Yorkshire composer Eric Fenby stepped in and became his amanuensis during the last six years of Delius’s life. That period was captured in the 1968 b/w film Song of Summer, co-written, produced, and directed by Ken Russell for the BBC’s Omnibus series. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway:

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 is the last local opportunity to hear Apollo’s Fire’s Countryside Concert ¡HISPANIA! with music by Diego Ortiz, Gaspar Sanz, and Santiago de Murcia, plus René Schiffer’s Concerto for Two Violas da Gamba. Jeannette Sorrell conducts from the harpsichord at Avon Lake UCC, 32801 Electric Blvd., Avon Lake. Tickets available online.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

The Violin Channel reports that, following the final rounds in Fort Worth over the weekend, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition awarded its First Prize of $100,000 to 29-year-old pianist Aristo Sham from Hong Kong/China.

Second Prize was won by 30-year-old Vitaly Starikov from Israel/Russia, who received a cash award of $50,000. Third prize was claimed by 26-year-old Evren Ozel from the United States, who will receive $25,000.

Videos of all rounds of the Cliburn Competition are now available on YouTube.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Danish composer Carl Nielsen was born on this date in 1865 in Norre-Lyndelse. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

The Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival gets up to speed for the weekend today at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Click here for details about the numerous events on the docket for this weekend, culminating in the Final Round of the James Stroud Youth Competition on Sunday evening at 6:30.

Jinjoo Cho’s ENCORE Festival of Music and Ideas has events scheduled this weekend in Peninsula, at Gilmour Academy’s Dodero Center in Gates Mills, and Federated Church in Chagrin Falls. Tickets available online.

Margi Griebling Haigh’s opera The Higgler receives its world premieres on Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday at 3:30 in a production directed by Marla Berg and conducted by Steven Smith, featuring tenor Brian Skoog in the title role at Disciples Church in Cleveland Heights. Tickets available online.

Apollo’s Fire repeats its Countryside Concert ¡HISPANIA! on June 6 at 7:30 pm, June 7 at 3:30 and 7:30 pm, and June 8 at 3:00 pm, but better check venue updates here. It’s safe to assume that the indoor performance on June 9 at 7:30 pm at Avon Lake UCC, will proceed as planned. Tickets available online.

On Saturday at 3 pm, Studio Espressivo Sunday Studio Series presents Sounds of the Cinema at Murray Hill Galleries, repeated on June 7 at 8 pm and June 8 at 3 pm. Pay-what-you-wish, suggested donation $15. At 7 pm, Matthew Salvaggio will conduct the Cleveland Repertory Orchestra, featuring hornist Van Parker, in Federated Church, in Chagrin Falls. Freewill offering.

And on Sunday at 3:30, Western Reserve Chorale will perform Dan Forrest’s Jubilate Deo, with chamber orchestra and soloists conducted by David Gilson, at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights. (Freewill offering, concert to be live streamed here.)

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Notable births on June 8 in music history include German composer Robert Schumann in Zwickau (1810), Czech composer Ervin Schulhoff in Prague (1894), and Polish-American pianist Emanuel Ax (1949). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

R.I.P. Karen Holtkamp, 83

Karen McFarlane Artists, Inc. writes on their website, “It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Karen Elizabeth (McFarlane) Holtkamp in Cleveland on June 3, 2025, at the age of 83 following a two-year battle with cancer.” Read more here.

HAPPENING TODAY:

9:45 am -12:15 pm & 1:30 pm – 4:00 pm – Sixth Annual James Stroud Classical Guitar Youth Competition: Semi-final Round. Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music. Free and open to the public.

7:30 pm – Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival. Hao Yang, guitar, with Helen Zhibing Huang, soprano (China). Mixon Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music.

7:30 pm – Apollo’s Fire. ¡HISPANIA! Countryside Concerts. VENUE CHANGE: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland Heights. Tickets available online. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

A blank date on the performance calendar is an opportunity to look ahead to events later in the week, when the pace begins picking up fast. The Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival and the James Stroud Youth Competition fill up the weekend along with the premiere of Margi Griebling-Haigh’s opera The Higgler, Apollo’s Fire’s Spanish programs, and the beginnings of the ENCORE Festival and ChamberFest Cleveland (note: opening night in Mixon Hall is sold out), to mention only a few. Have a look here.

Or you can hop on to one of several live streams of the 2025 Van Cliburn Piano Competition, now in its final round in Fort Worth, Texas. Click here to choose, and scroll down to learn about some of the innovative video techniques the Cliburn is introducing to bring the contest to worldwide computer screens.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On June 4, 1951, Russian-American conductor Serge Koussevitzky (pictured above with Bernstein and Copland), who led the Boston Symphony for a quarter of a century, died in Boston. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

“June is busting out all over,” declares one of the opening numbers in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, which kicks off the Ohio Light Opera season in Wooster on June 14.

The summer concert season will be similarly exploding with festivals and other events next week, but our weekend events make up an interesting if modest list.

No Exit presents a program of music from The Collective, an international consortium of composers on Friday at 7 at the Bop Stop, and Saturday at 7 at Heights Arts. The program features works by Agata Zubel, Mathew Rosenblum, Douglas Knehans, Spiros Mazis, Amy Kaplan, Constantine Koukias, Edward Smalldone, and Timothy Beyer (pictured).

On Saturday at 7:30 at Severance Music Center, Carl Topilow will lead Cleveland Pops Orchestra in real tunes from the fictitious Great American Songbook, featuring vocalist Capathia Jenkins and the Cleveland Pops Chorus.

On Sunday at 3 at Shore Cultural Center, Euclid Symphony will join conductor Jimmie A. Parker, Sr., and special guests for a program of big band music.

Closing out the weekend, on Sunday at 3, the Omni Quartet will play Beethoven’s string quartets Nos. 8 and 12 in a carriage house in Cleveland Heights. At 5, The Resonance Project will put Baroque instrumentalists together with West African drummer and vocalist Assane M’Baye at Forest Hills Church. And at 7, OPUS 216 will launch their summer Symphony at Sunset series in Voinovich Bicentennial Park on the E. 9th Street Pier.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

We’ll zero in on one date in music history: May 31, which in 1656 marked the birth of French composer and violist da gamba Marin Marais in Paris. [Read more…]

 by Daniel Hathaway

INTERESTING READS:

In his Critic’s Notebook in today’s New York Times, Zachary Woolfe asks, “People love Janáček’s music when they hear it. So why isn’t my favorite composer more popular?

“On Sunday, when the Cleveland Orchestra (pictured by Roger Mastroianni) finished an elegant but crushing concert version of Jenůfa, which ends with a vision of forgiveness and reconciliation after extraordinary suffering, I would have happily sat through it again, right then and there.” Read the article and comments by readers here.

And marking the centennial of his birth, German baritone Benjamin Appl remembers his teacher Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, as one of the 20th century’s greatest singers and a complicated, conflicted man. Read the New York Times article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz was born on this date in Camprodón. Taste just one of his iconic Iberian portraits in a 2010 performance of Sevilla by Jason Vieaux in Kulas Hall at CIM. [Read more…]