by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TONIGHT:

8:00 brings two options: one in person and outdoors, the other over the web and airwaves. BW Opera continues its run of George Frideric Handel’s Alcina outdoors on the steps of the Boesel Musical Arts Center, while WCLV’s Ovations will feature CityMusic Cleveland in music by Jungyoon Wie, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Ellen Taffe Zwilich. Read our preview about the Wie and Coleridge-Taylor works, which were programmed together this past April.

Details about both events in our Concert Listings.

VIDEOS & PODCASTS:

To help welcome families back to Severance this season, The Cleveland Orchestra has prepared a digital family concert featuring the Factory Seconds Brass Trio (above, right), and hosted by Meaghan Heinrich. From the looks of it, there’s something for everyone, whether you’re drawn in by the performances, the music (Poulenc’s Sonata for Horn, Trumpet, and Trombone), the story (a tale of Parisian love “brought to life by the antics of a mischievous cat!”), the artwork by Kate Atherton (one example pictured above, left), or the opportunity to create your own art. Watch here.

And the ASO’s Unorchestrated podcast finishes up its series on the Akron Symphony Chorus with a discussion about There’s a Stirrin’ in the Water, written by Chuck Myricks Jr. and Jesse Ayers in 2016. Joining host Tom Moore are the two co-composers, as well as Chorus Director Chris Albanese. Musical excerpts, of course, are included along the way, both from a November 2016 performance and from May 2021. Listen here.

IN THE NEWS:

Ahead of his recent speech at the Conservative Party conference, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson walked onstage accompanied by the music of indie band Friendly Fires. The group had not given advance permission, and in any case they were not pleased with the association. But the matter isn’t always that simple. Writing for the BBC, Mark Savage investigates the rules around politicians’ choices of music, both in the U.S. and the U.K.

And the Teatro Comunale di Bologna has named Oksana Lyniv as its next music director, making her the first woman to assume that position for an Italian opera company. Read the article from Opera Wire here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Previous Diary entries (here and here) have highlighted English-born violist and composer Rebecca Clarke, who died on this date in 1979 in New York City. Today we’ll shine a spotlight on another, lesser-known, and living Clarke, of no relation. That figure would be Australian musician Zana Clarke, born on October 13, 1965.

A composer, recorder player, and violinist, Zana Clarke has also taught Medieval improvisation and early instrumental music at the University of New England — an interest that intertwines with those other musical pursuits. Her compositions, mainly for the recorder, often bear Medieval influences, but combine them with contemporary techniques such as “vocalized recorder,” or singing while playing to create two individual melodic lines.

A great example is her Swamp — listen here, ignoring the shaky video, to enjoy a fascinating blend of the Medieval and the modern, as performed by Jo Arnott at the premiere in 2005.

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by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 3:00 at the Maltz, the Case/University Circle Symphony Orchestra, led by Kathleen Horvath, plays an all-Czech program of music by Dvořák and Smetana. And at 8, BW Opera and director Scott Skiba present Handel’s Alcina in an outdoor production on the steps of the Boesel Musical Arts Center. Details and links in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

This Indigenous Peoples’ Day is the first one to be recognized by proclamation of a sitting U.S. president.

“For generations, Federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures,” President Biden wrote on Friday. “Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society.”

Let’s reflect on two recent and local musical events to honor Indigenous culture of the Americas.

We begin this past summer with Mexican guitarist, composer, and singer Anastasia Sonaranda (above, middle), who was one of three guest artists involved in the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Creative Fusion virtual series.

Through her residency, Sonaranda sought to illustrate the diversity of styles in Mexican music. The waltzlike “son istmeño” style, developed in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (which mostly lies in the Mexican states of Veracruz and Oaxaca), was aptly represented by La Llorona, a popular folk song that originated in that same region.

A key element of the arrangement by Sonaranda and Rodrigo Lara Alonso (educator and Latinx Community Liaison for the Guitar Society) is a text that was written for the occasion by Irma Pineda Santiago (above, left), a Oaxacan-born poet who is also a 2020-22 United Nations representative to Indigenous peoples of Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

The poem, Gunaa runna, is written in the Indigenous language of Isthmus Zapotec or Diidxazá. The Zapotec group of around 50 languages is spoken by 490,000 people, according to the 2020 census, the majority of them in Oaxaca, with the Isthmus area being among the most proud in maintaining that tongue.

Given that the poem reflects on the figure of La Llorona (literally “the weeping woman”), it’s helpful to know the basics of the folklore in advance: a woman has drowned her children, then herself — for various reasons depending on the particular variation of the story — and now roams as a ghost mourning them.

Now, watch the video, which begins with Santiago in recitation — songlike in itself given the tonal aspect of the Zapotec languages — before introducing the musical soloists: on guitar Sonaranda, and on voice Martha Toledo Mar (above, right), herself a Zapotec singer-songwriter from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

You’ll also hear over 100 guest musicians: students from CCGS Education and from the Orquesta Juvenil de Guitarras de la Ciudad de México, as well as amateur and professional guitarists from Cleveland and Mexico.

Moving north, let’s end by revisiting Les Délices’ September 2020 SalonEra episode “Recovering Roots.” The program shone a spotlight on baritone Jonathon Adams, whose ancestry can be traced back to two groups of Indigenous people primarily from what is now Canada: the Métis (themselves a mix of Indigenous and European — mostly French — descent) and the Cree.

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by Jarrett Hoffman

HAPPENING TODAY:

The afternoon opens with a Trinity Brownbag “Organ Spectacular” at 12 pm, with Todd Wilson and Nicole Keller (above) unveiling Trinity Cathedral’s new Muller Pipe organ through music by Sowerby, Hampton, Widor, Lemare, Shearing, and Soler (attend in person or via stream). And at 12:15, there’s a Dana School of Music Voice Area Recital at YSU’s Butler Institute of American Art.

The evening pairs string quartets and visual art when four CIM ensembles play works by Beethoven, Brahms, and Haydn in “Music in the Galleries” at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Details in our Concert Listings.

IN THE NEWS:

Last Thursday, Mike Telin rounded up several reviews of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the first opera by a Black composer ever to be staged by the company.

Following up on the review by chief classical critic Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times has since sent two more critics to see the production — one specializing in classical music, the other in jazz (Blanchard is a jazz trumpeter as well as a composer). Read the post-opera discussion between Seth Colter Walls and Giovanni Russonello here.

Elsewhere in NYC, the New York Philharmonic is managing the challenge of being without a home venue this season during the renovation of David Geffen Hall. “This 2021-2022 season is shaping up as a militarylike exercise of logistics, dexterity and scheduling,” writes Adam Nagourney in the Times.

Here are the numbers: “For each move, over the course of 86 concerts in four main locations, six crew members will have to pack up to 30 cases of instruments and equipment and load them into a 24-foot-long truck for hauls that will range from five blocks (from Tully to the Rose) to three miles (Riverside Church) and later in the season to its old home, Carnegie Hall.”

And you thought you were having a hard day.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1882 in the village of Tymoszówka, now in Ukraine, one of the great Polish composers was born: Karol Szymanowski. Beloved in his home country, he has received a slew of state honors, both during his life and after it.

Among the more fun facts in that arena, a whole year was given to his name thanks to a resolution by the Polish Parliament: 2007 was decreed “The Year of Karol Szymanowski” — it was the 125th anniversary of his birth. And later that year he reached truly rarefied air among composers: he appeared on commemorative currency, pictured above.

[Read more…]

by Jarrett Hoffman

ON TONIGHT:

At 5:00, the Imani Winds will give a free guest presentation and Q&A at Oberlin Conservatory’s Warner Concert Hall, a precursor to their performance tomorrow on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series.

And at 7:30, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society presents the Auryn String Quartet  in works by Haydn, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn as the German ensemble winds down after 40 years. It’s free in person at Lakewood Congregational Church or via live stream.  Read a preview article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

As Vinay Parameswaran, now the associate conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra, told me a couple of years ago, his favorite moments with the Orchestra have been seeing music director Franz Welser-Möst conduct opera: Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen in 2017, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde in 2018, and Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos in 2019 (photo by Roger Mastroianni below).

“He’s one of the greatest opera conductors in the world,” Parameswaran said. “Tristan was revelatory. The way he was able to shape it, capture the drama, and give the singers exactly what they needed, he just made it look so effortless. And then of course this season with Ariadne — it’s some of the most beautiful music Strauss wrote, and we had an A+ cast. I think I’ll remember that long past my time here in Cleveland.”

On that note, let’s revisit the strange history of that Strauss work, which had its revised version — the more popular one, and the one that The Cleveland Orchestra performed — premiere on this date in 1916 at the Vienna Opera.

Before that, in its original form, Ariadne auf Naxos was part of a six-hour package deal. The majority of that duration was taken up by librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s adaptation of the Molière play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, including incidental music by Strauss. Only at the end came the opera, replacing the Turkish ceremony that concludes the play: here, the foolish Monsieur Jourdain calls for an after-dinner performance of Ariadne auf Naxos, and the opera thus begins. 

A complicated, even clever idea, especially given that Le Bourgeois gentilhomme was from the start a hybrid of multiple art forms: a comédie-ballet, or a play containing interludes of music and dance.

But at the premiere in 1912 in Stuttgart, the audience was not thrilled. “It was a fiasco, as could easily have been predicted,” critic and Strauss scholar Michael Kennedy writes, going on to quote the composer:

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by Jarrett Hoffman

ON TONIGHT:

7:00 brings a free CIM Faculty Recital at Mixon Hall, both in-person and online. In “Carolyn Warner & Friends XVIII” the pianist will be joined by Stephen Rose & Philip Setzer, violins, Stanley Konopka, viola, and Dane Johansen and Si-Yan Darren Li, cellos, in music by Haydn, Mahler, Schubert, and Dvořák. It’s free, but reservations are required to attend in person, though seats appear to be sold-out, or at least very limited. Fortunately, it will also be streamed.

And 8:00 brings ChamberFest Cleveland on WCLV’s Ovations, including Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4 and Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1. Listen on WCLV, 104.9 FM or online. Free.

IN THE NEWS:

Single tickets for the Akron Symphony’s 2021-22 season will go on sale Friday, October 1 on the Orchestra’s website. Programming ranges from classics such as Beethoven’s Fifth to Handel’s Water Music to jazz-influenced works by Duke Ellington and Aldemaro Romero, works involving Korean dance, a collaboration with Akron-based EarthQuaker Devices, and a spotlight on composers who deserve greater recognition, like Florence Price, Julia Perry, and William Dawson.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Let’s revisit Daniel Hathaway’s entry from last year devoted to the Christian festival of Michaelmas, or the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, which falls on this date each year and marks the beginning of autumn. Now, take it away, Dan:

It lends its name to the fall term in British universities, and gives rise to a number of folk customs, including making Michaelmas Bannock on the eve of the Feast of Saint Michael from equal parts of barley, oats, and rye without employing any metal implements. And Michaelmas draws the line after which you should stop picking blackberries. That last piece of advice derives from the legend that when the Archangel Michael expelled the rebellious Lucifer from heaven, he landed in a blackberry bush (ouch!), which he cursed and defiled in a special way. Don’t eat the berries.

Angels — divine messengers charged with delivering news good and bad to humans — are part of the rich mythology of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam alike. The archangels Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel join a trio in “The Heavens are telling” in Haydn’s The Creation (sung here by the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under Robert Shaw). Later, Gabriel returns to the story to bring surprising news to Mary of Nazareth (listen to Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria sung by Chanticleer). He’s also likely to have been part of the heavenly host that sends the shepherds to the stable in Bethlehem (as re-enacted by Kiera Duffy and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Chorale). And Gabriel may even have taken up a viol to entertain the bystanders as in Matthias Grünewald’s altarpiece that Hindemith turned into “The Angel Concert” in Mathis der Maler (here played by the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt).

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by Jarrett Hoffman

ON TONIGHT:

At 7:30 pm, Les Délices’ SalonEra explores “Performer-Composers,” in particular the recent work, compositional viewpoints, and creative processes of three guest artists. Nicola Canzano introduces the 18th-century compositional practice of Partimento, Doug Balliett follows Bach’s legacy in composing a full year’s worth of cantatas, and Jonathan Woody previews his new commission for Les Délices. Watch a preview video here, and register here to view online and on demand for 48 hours after the debut.

THE CANON:

Three recent articles provide a snapshot into the grappling that is taking place over the idea of the classical music canon.

Joshua Kosman thoughtfully confronts the question of “which composers get one-name treatment” here in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Violinist Nigel Kennedy has withdrawn from a concert with the Chineke! Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall over disagreements that include programming: he says that the radio station Classic FM insisted that he and the ensemble perform Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons rather than the intended tribute to Jimi Hendrix. Read more here from The Guardian.

And the Metropolitan Opera reopens today with Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, the first presentation of a work by a Black composer in the organization’s 138-year history, as Zachary Woolfe writes in The New York Times.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today we zero in on Hänsel und Gretel, the most famous opera by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who died on this date in 1921. The work has a humble backstory: it originated as four songs accompanying a puppet show put on by the composer’s nieces. It then expanded to a Singspiel with sixteen songs, and later to an opera. Stylistically, it’s notable for synthesizing two distinct sides of German music: one part Wagnerian influence, one part German folk songs.

YouTube contains several performances of the entire work, and many also of the famous and beautiful Abendsegen (“Evening Benediction”). Here’s a particularly lovely rendition of that excerpt, sung by Anna Lucia Richter and Fiona Lang, accompanied by a string quartet from the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne in an arrangement by Martin Richter.

It’s fun to reminisce about some of the many local performances of Hansel and Gretel that have taken place over the past decade.

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