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DIARY: Wednesday, March 16, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Piano Cleveland, Cleveland School of the Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art will come together tonight at 7:30 pm in Gartner Auditorium at CMA for a collaborative, multi-disciplinary performance of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals. Details in our Concert Listings.

R.I.P. TIMOTHY ROBSON:

The sad news reached us yesterday of the unexpected passing of our longtime colleague and friend Timothy Robson, one of the first people I met when I came to work at Trinity Cathedral in 1977, and one of the original correspondents for ClevelandClassical.com when the website was founded in September of 2008. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, March 14, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

ON TODAY:

This week’s episode of Eric Charnofsky’s “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music” on WRUW radio from Case celebrates the birthday of Telemann, and includes a Monteverdi madrigal, a J.S. Bach Cello Suite performed on double bass, excerpts from Handel’s musical ode Alexander’s Feast, and a Divertissement by Lully. Click here to listen to the internet feed.

New York’s Metropolitan Opera is hosting a 70-minute Concert for Ukraine tonight at 6:00 pm, featuring its singers, orchestra, and chorus (pictured) led by Yannick Nézet-Séguin in music by Valentin Silvestrov, Barber, Verdi, and Richard Strauss, culminating in the finale from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Ukrainian bass-baritone Vladyslav Buialskyi will lead the Met Chorus in a performance of the Ukrainian national anthem. Click here at start time for the free internet stream (audio only). [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend March 12-13, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

This weekend’s entries:

• Concerts at Oberlin, Severance Music Center, and Kent State, and on the road in Fairlawn and Coventry Village

• Coverage of reactions by the classical music community to the Russian invasion of Ukraine from The Violin Channel, and report of a construction miracle for the New York Philharmonic (Thank you, pandemic)

• Marking the birthdate of American choral conductor and composer Hall Johnson [Read more…]

DIARY: Friday, March 11, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

Today’s entries:

• Cleveland Orchestra matinee, piano concerts at Fine Arts Willoughby and U. of Akron, Chinese traditional music for sheng at CMA

• Touching announcement by Michael Tilson Thomas, controversial cancellation in Montréal

• A single summer concert brings today’s Almanac celebrations of Mendelssohn, J.S. Bach, Bobby McFerrin — and a large outdoor crowd — together in the Marketplace in Leipzig [Read more…]

Jonathan Moyer & BlueWater in “Fantastical Machines” concert (Mar. 5)

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by Daniel Hathaway

BlueWater Chamber Orchestra’s concert at the Church of the Covenant on Saturday evening, March 5 checked all the boxes for a memorable concert experience.

It lasted 80 minutes and nixed an intermission, developed a clever theme through unusual repertoire (although it didn’t take itself too seriously there), and featured an engaging soloist in organist Jonathan Moyer as well as a communicative conductor in Daniel Meyer, both of whom spoke briefly and informatively without simply recycling program notes.

[Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, March 9, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

12:00 pm – Trinity Brownbag Concert: Music and Meditation. Todd Wilson & Nicole Keller, organ & piano. Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering. Hybrid concert will also be livestreamed.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Every day brings news of the latest fallout for Russian artists from Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Catch up with this story (“Conductors Stand Down from Posts Amidst Russian Invasion”) on the Violin Channel. [Read more…]

DIARY: Monday, March 7, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S EVENTS:

No live performances to raise up today, but Eric Charnofsky will host an homage to Ukraine on his WRUW radio show Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music from 2 pm to 4 pm, and at 7:30 pm, Les Délices will revisit works by women composers across the centuries in “Women’s Herstory,” the latest episode in its SalonEra series. Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

English composer Henry Purcell may have been born on this date in 1659 (records are sketchy, to say the least), and in his brief 36-year career distinguished himself in a large body of music written both for church and theater after the restoration of the monarchy.

One of Purcell’s most popular works is his Dido and Aeneas, with a libretto by Nahum Tate based on Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid. [Read more…]

DIARY: Weekend, March 5 & 6, 2022

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by Daniel Hathaway

This weekend’s entries:

• Orchestra concerts by Contemporary Youth Orchestra, BlueWater Chamber Orchestra, Canton Symphony, Cleveland Philharmonic Akron Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, and Lakeland Civic Orchestra. Choral performances by Quire Cleveland and West Shore Chorale. Chamber music with tenor Mark Padmore & pianist Mitsuko Uchida (pictured), Amici String Quartet with clarinetist Afendi Yusuf, and Desert Island ensemble. And Jazz with the Tri-C Gallery All-Stars.

• Interesting read — the reinstallation of the largest organ on the west coast

• Almanac: marking the founding of Steinway in New York, the birthday of the late hornist Barry Tuckwell, the departure of Zoltán Kodály, and the anniversary of Rimsky-Korsakov’s completion of The Flight of the Bumblebee

ON DECK THIS WEEKEND:

Numerous orchestras are making early spring appearances this weekend. [Read more…]

Mark Padmore to join Uchida for Lieder recital in Reinberger

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by Daniel Hathaway

British tenor Mark Padmore was getting ready for a Cleveland concert in 2020 — his first visit since 1985 — when the novel coronavirus showed up with other plans. His recital of works by Beethoven and Schubert with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, part of a North American tour, got put on ice and will finally take place in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center on Sunday, March 6 at 3:00 pm.

Born in London and educated at King’s College, Cambridge, Padmore has developed an international career in opera, concert, and recital repertoire. Among the highlights are his performances as Evangelist in J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Simon Rattle, staged by Peter Sellars.

I spoke to Padmore by telephone last week in New York soon after he arrived from London.

Daniel Hathaway: How does it feel to be traveling again after a two-year hiatus?

Mark Padmore: It’s been a long time getting the tour rescheduled. But it’s lovely. I’ve got some great friends in the U.S. so to see them again has been very special. [Read more…]

Quire Cleveland: Jay White talks about Demantius’ Passion music

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by Daniel Hathaway

When you’re looking for neglected music to program, it’s helpful to have friends with wide-ranging tastes who are cleaning out overflowing collections of recordings. That’s how Quire Cleveland artistic director Jay White stumbled across a major work by the 17th-century Bohemian composer Christoph Demantius.

“My spouse and I were visiting a friend who is an early musician in Texas,” White said in a recent telephone conversation. “He and his partner, who passed away recently, had collected hundreds of recordings during their 60 years together, and he was painstakingly going through them to see what he wanted to keep. The three of us were able to whittle it down quite a bit, but we had to look at every single recording, because there were some real treasures.

“I looked at this one recording and said, ‘Wait a minute. A St. John Passion I’ve never heard of before?’ About a month later, I found the score and decided that Quire needed to perform it.”

Perform it they will, at free concerts in three historic Catholic churches whose parishes were created in the last years of the 19th century by immigrants from Eastern Europe: St. John Cantius, established by Poles (Friday, March 4), St. Vitus, founded by Slovenians (Saturday, March 5), and St. Elizabeth of Hungary, organized by Hungarians (Sunday, March 6). [Read more…]

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