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DIARY: Weekend, October 28-30, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Featured: a mix of Korean song & European opera, multiple concert choices all weekend

. Remembering Joseph Pulitzer (what happened to the prizewinners?)

. Choosing spooky music for All Hallows Eve, and remembering Black Tuesday and the New York Stock Exchange crash of 1929 (might make you feel better about 2022)

WEEKEND  EVENTS:

This weekend’s featured event brings Korean and European cultures together in  the physical context of visual art. On Saturday evening at 7:30, Singers Kyung Kim, Hein Jung, and Misook Yun (pictured) will join pianist Younjung Cha in a free  program of Korean songs and Western opera trios at the McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University.

I recently spoke about the event via teleconference with soprano Misook Yun, who has taught at YSU for 24 years (we were joined by her 20-year-old orange tabby cat, a charming if persistent Zoom bomber). [Read more…]

Sords set to resume touring after long hiatus

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by Daniel Hathaway

Before the novel coronavirus blew into the music world in 2020, bringing with it what he calls “the Great Silence,” violinist Andrew Sords was among the busiest touring soloists and chamber musicians in the industry. He reckons that he spent nearly 200 days on the road in 2019, compared to 40 this year.

This Saturday, October 29 at 7:00 pm at the Federated Church in Chagrin Falls, Sords will join colleagues Mari Sato, violin, Eric Wong, viola, John Walz, cello, and Elizabeth DeMio, piano, in works by Brahms, Dvořák, and Rachmaninoff. Dvořák’s Piano Quintet is at the center of the program, a work Sords classifies as “a desert island piece” that should become more of a special undertaking for its performers, rather than just a standard repertory item. “It’s an epic project,” Sords said. “But rehearsing it doesn’t even seem like work.”

That’s a healthy attitude Andrew Sords brings to practicing and rehearsing in general. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 26, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. featured keyboard music by (Domenico) Scarlatti & George Walker

. the Beatles and Jacques Lousssier push at stylistic borders

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 7:30 tonight, pianist Alexandre Dossin takes his program “Piano Soundscapes: A Journey through Six Decades in the Music of George Walker” to Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the composer’s birth. The program includes his Prelude and Caprice, Variations on a Kentucky Folk Song, Piano Sonata No. 2, Spatials, Spektra, Piano Sonata No. 3, Guido’s Hand — Five Pieces for Piano & Piano Sonata No. 5. Click here to watch a live stream.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

The prolific keyboard composer Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples on this date in 1685, the son of composer Alessandro Scarlatti, and the third eminent member of the Class of ‘85 that includes Handel and J.S. Bach. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 24, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

.  COYO announces season with new conductor Daniel Reith (pictured), Watson moves on from Tri-C JazzFest, Piano Cleveland announces Young Artist Institute

. Weelkes and Gubaidulina share a birthdate

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 2:00 pm join host Eric Charnofksy for Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music. Today’s edition celebrates the birth anniversaries of George Crumb and Luciano Berio, featuring Crumb’s Four Nocturnes for violin and piano, Quest for guitar and chamber ensemble & Pastoral Drone for organ, Berio’s Eindrücke for orchestra, & Petite Suite for piano, plus a string quartet by Edvard Grieg and vocal music by Leoš Janáček. WRUW.

IN THE NEWS:

Tickets are now on sale for the 2022/23 Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (COYO) season. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, October 21 – 23, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

.  Concerts in all flavors to choose from

. R.I.P. violinist Geoff Nuttall (pictured), news from Piano Cleveland

. Howard Hanson & Franz Liszt celebrate birthdays, Jean-Marie Leclair & Alessandro Scarlatti take their leave

WEEKEND  EVENTS:

Today, at 12:15 pm, McGaffin Carillon Concert & Live Stream presents Sheryl Modlin, guest carillonneur (Church of the Saviour, Cleveland Hts.). Her program of Halloween favorites includes themes from The Adams Family and the Munsters, “the” Bach Toccata & music by Gounod, Chopin, and John Williams. McGaffin Tower, 11205 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Free. Click here for live stream.

At 7:30 the imaginative period ensemble Les Délices unveils their new program, Winds of Change, at the Akron Public Library (downtown). The all-instrumental concert features chamber works from the eve of the French and Haitian Revolutions, inspired by philosophical ideals of liberty and equality and early abolitionist writing. Classical Era works by Joseph Bologne Chevalier de St. Georges and Luigi Boccherini will be paired with Haitian composer Sydney Guillaume’s commission A Journey to Freedom. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 19, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Farewell to Gabriel’s horns at Trinity

. Scottish Chamber Orchestra soloist Nicola Benedetti profiled, anniversaries of Ravel’s Pictures, Gershwin’s Lullaby, and the premature departure of Jacqueline du Pré

TODAY’S  EVENTS:

At noon, Trinity Cathedral’s Brownbag Concert features the popular big band Gabriel’s Horns (pictured). If you’re a fan, you should know that bandleader James Mays is retiring, so this will be the horns’ final appearance on the lunchtime series at Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering.

IN THE NEWS:

Violinist Nicola Benedetti, who will appear on Akron’s Tuesday Musical Series on Thursday with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in the Max Bruch Concerto, is profiled in The Guardian in conjunction with her recent appointment as director of the Edinburgh Festival. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, October 17, 2022,

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. Sphinx Virtuosi visit CIM, Charnofsky interviews bassist Ruth Cavano

. Anniversaries, some tragic, and invitations to explore some overlooked chamber music

TODAY’S  EVENTS:

2:00 pm – Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music, Eric Charnofksy hosts a new episode that includes. Michael Nyman’s Where the Bee Dances for soprano saxophone and chamber orchestra, Sara Feigin’s Variations for piano, Ivor Gurney’s Five Elizabethan Songs, Joseph Martin Kraus’s Riksdags March for orchestra, plus a special interview with prize-winning CWRU double bass student Ruth Cavano, discussing her upcoming recital on campus and playing a sampling of her repertoire by J.S. Bach and Andrés Martín. Join the broadcast on WRUW.

7:30 pm – CIM welcomes Sphinx Virtuosi, featuring Tommy Mesa, cello & Hannah Whitc, violin, in the program “Songs for our Times,” featuring Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, & Divided for Solo Cello & Orchestra,Michael Dudley’s Prayer for our Times, Valerie Coleman’s Tracing Visions, Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds, Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9, Ricardo Herz’s Sísifo na Cidade Grande & Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in a, arr. Rubén Rngel. Kulas Hall, Cleveland Institute of Music, 11021 East Boulevard, Cleveland. Free but seating passes required. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, October 14-16, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway with Mike Telin

IN THIS EDITION:

. The weekend concert calendar gives you a multiplicity of options.

. CIM ventures outside University Circle in an expanded series of community concerts.

. Hamilton C. MacDougall and William Barclay Squire (who?) make their debuts while Leonard Bernstein and Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (pictured above on a Dutch 25 guilder banknote) exit the scene.

WEEKEND EVENTS: 

On Friday, October 14 at 11:00 am Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider leads The Cleveland Orchestra with cello soloist Mark Kosower in Canadian-American composer Karim Al-Zand’s timely Lamentation On The Disasters of War, Ernst Bloch’s Schelomo (Solomon, Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra) & Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) at Severance Music Center, 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. Tickets are available online for this program, which will be repeated Saturday at 8:00 pm and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Read our preview article here.

On Friday at 7 pm, The Singers’ Club of Cleveland reprises a concert of reflective choral music in recognition of the global impact of the COVID pandemic. The featured work is British composer David Briggs’ Requiem for men’s voices and organ.. First Baptist Church, 3630 Fairmount Boulevard, Cleveland Heights. Tickets available online. [Read more…]

From Trafalgar Square to Shaker Square: CCMS presents St. Martin’s Chamber Ensemble

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by Daniel Hathaway

On Tuesday, October 18, London’s Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble will return to the Cleveland Chamber Music Series at Plymouth Church in Shaker Square to play works by Purcell, Brahms, and Enesco.

Not many musical groups are so closely associated in spirit and substance with a building as is the Academy of St. Martin with the grand parish church built to the plans of architect James Gibbs in 1720.

Only the second church to occupy its central London site on Trafalgar Square, St. Martin’s, inspired by Greek and Roman temples, established a style that was widely applied to ecclesiastical buildings during the restoration of the City churches after the Great Fire of 1666 by such architects as Christopher Wren. And made its mark on American Protestant church buildings like Plymouth UCC in Shaker Heights (below).

St. Martin’s has shared its real estate with the monument to Admiral Horatio Nelson after the Battle of Trafalgar in 1808, with the National Gallery of Art, completed in 1838, and until their eviction at the turn of the 21st century, with a flock of 35,000 feral pigeons, not to mention protesters demonstrating en masse for multiple causes (like the 100,000 Pakistanis who poured into Trafalgar Square one Sunday in the 1970s when I decided to visit St. Martin’s for the first time).

Determined to serve as a cultural center as well as an organization dedicated to religious, societal, and justice issues, St. Martin’s became a thoroughly modern Anglican organization in the mid-20th century. As its website notes, “ From London’s first free lending library to the first religious broadcast, St. Martin’s has broken new ground in defining what it means to be a church.” [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, October 12, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

IN THIS EDITION:

. An engaging ritual celebrated nightly since 1549

. Contemporary  music at Oberlin

. Revisiting the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams

TODAY’S EVENTS: 

At 6pm, Trinity Chamber Choir will sing the traditional Anglican service of Choral Evensong commemorating Edith Cavell +1915, nurse and martyr. with Jeremy Jackman’s responses, William Byrd’s Fauxbourdon Service, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Valiant-for-Truth. The Rev. Peter Faass officiates and Todd Wilson conducts.

This 45-minute service will be sung by Trinity’s resident choirs and guests every Wednesday from October through May at Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. On his blog, concert pianist and polymath Stephen Hough (himself a Roman Catholic), wrote about the engaging British ritual, which has been sung nightly around the world sinc 1549:

Evensong hangs on the wall of life like an old, familiar cloak passed through the generations. Rich with prayer and scripture, it is nevertheless totally nonthreatening. It is a service into which all can stumble without censure – a rambling old house where everyone can find some corner to sit and think, to listen with half-attention, trailing a few absentminded fingers of faith or doubt in its passing stream. [Read more…]

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