by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

“Winds of Change,” the second offering in this season’s Les Délices concert series is available online today. The program features Emi Ferguson, flute, Shelby Yamin, violin, Debra Nagy, oboe, Rebecca Reed, gamba and cello, and  Sydney Guillaume, composer.

Inspired by philosophical ideals of liberty and equality and early abolitionist writing, works by Joseph Bologne Chevalier de St. Georges and Luigi Boccherini are joined by a new work by Haitian composer Sydney Guillaume. During a pre-concert talk, musicologist Claude Dauphin and scholar/baritone Jean Bernard Cerin will share their research into Haitian musical history. The online-only concert will be available on-demand through December 17. Click here for tickets and link. Read our preview article here.

At 7:30 pm at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, the CWRU Collegium, Early Music Singers, Baroque Chamber Ensembles, Renaissance Violin Band and cornettist Bruce Dickey will present “Nature’s Secret Whispering.” The program includes works by Orlando di Lasso, Annibale Perini, Erasmus Widmann, Lambert de Sayve, Andrea Gabrieli, and Michael Praetorius. The concert is free.

Also at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel, Oberlin Conservatory faculty Katherine Jolly, soprano, Jonathan Moyer, organ, and Alexa Still, flute will perform works by Arvo Pärt, Christopher Rouse, Jehan Alain, John Corigliano, William Bolcom, Dave Ragland, and William Grant Still. The event is free. Click here for live stream.

 IN THE NEWS: 

The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society has announced its International Series spring 2022 concert lineup. Duo Noire (Thomas Flippin and Christopher Mallett), will make their Cleveland debut on March 5. Paraguayan guitarist Berta Rojas makes her Cleveland debut on April 2, and on May 14 William Kanengiser will make a return visit to the series. All three concerts will be held at Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights. Tickets are available online.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

Today we celebrate the births of Carl Maria von Weber (1786), conductor Eugene Ormandy (1899), and violist/composer Lillian Fuchs (1901). As I scrolled through the list of other musical figures who were born on this day, I was curious to know who many of them were, or are. So today we celebrate the births of three people who were randomly selected from the list.

On this day in 1895, Swiss composer, pianist and conductor Ernst Levy was born in Basel, Switzerland. A noted musicologist, Levy taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago and the New England Conservatory. His book, A Theory of Harmony, published in 1985, delves into his concept of harmonic “undertones.” His compositional output includes 14 works for orchestra, a cello concerto, over 30 chamber music works, and 7 piano sonatas. He retired from academia in 1966 and returned to his native Switzerland where he lived for the remainder of his life. He died in 1981 in Morges, Switzerland.

Click here to listen to his live performance of Brahms’ Intermezzo in A, Op.118, No.2. [Read more…]

by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 pm Apollo’s Fire will present Violin Fantasy — Tracing the Path from Biber to Bach. Co-director and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell, and co-director and violinist Alan Choo, will lead works by Buxtehude, Biber, Pachelbel, Weiss, Reinken, J.S. Bach, Pergolesi, and transcriptions of their music. Rebecca Myers, soprano and Elisa Sutherland, mezzo-soprano are featured soloists. First Methodist Church, 263 E. Mill St., Akron. Tickets are available online. The program will be repeated around Northeast Ohio through Sunday. Check out Concert Listings page for locations and times.

Also at 7:30 pm, Thierry Fischer conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in Messiaen’s Les Offerandes Oubliées, Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with Tom Borrow (pictured) as soloist, and  Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Mandel Hall at Severance, 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. Tickets are available online. Click here for COVID-19 protocols. The program will be repeated on Saturday at 8:00 and Sunday at 3:00.

At 8:00 pm Oberlin Opera will present Handel’s Acis & Galatea at Hall Auditorium. Jonathon Field directs and Matilda Hofman conducts the Oberlin Orchestra. “Handel’s stirring adaptation of the ancient Roman myth explores the ways in which we are transformed by loss—and how we cling to hope amid the pain.” Runtime: 2 hours, including one intermission. Tickets are available online. Click here to read a preview article. Performances continue through Sunday.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, an armistice brought World War I to an end. In yesterday’s Washington Post, Michael E. Ruane wrote: “The catastrophe of the Great War, as it was then called, had claimed 116,000 Americans, through combat, disease and other causes, and killed millions more people around the world.” Read the full article here.

Armistice Day was first held at Buckingham Palace one year later. Since then many countries have renamed November 11 Remembrance Day, while the United States chose the name Veterans Day in 1954, following World War II and the Korean War. Today, this federal holiday honors those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces in war or peace, whether they’re living or deceased, provided they have not been dishonorably discharged.

Perhaps no place honors those who answered that call to serve more appropriately than Arlington National Cemetery. And no location within the Cemetery honors those who lost their lives more poignantly than the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Today marks the centennial of the first soldier to be laid to rest in the Tomb of the Unknown, and in honor of the occasion, D.C.-based opera company UrbanArias commissioned a song cycle from composer Shawn Okpebholo and poet Marcus Amaker. The film version of their new cycle, UNKNOWN, is now available  online.

Another newly-created work honoring veterans that is being screened nationwide this weekend is Modern Warrior LIVE. The immersive narrative and musical experience chronicles one man’s journey — U.S. Army Veteran and Warren, Ohio native Jaymes Poling, who shares the story of his three deployments in Afghanistan and subsequent transition back home. The film, with its dramatic musical underscore, honors those who have served and highlights resilience and post-traumatic growth.

The artistic team includes trumpeter Dominick Farinacci, broadcast journalist and Vietnam War Veteran Leon Douglas Bibb, theatrical creator and storyteller Emmett Murphy, vibraphonist, pianist, composer and arranger Christian Tamburr, lighting designer Garrett Caine, vocalist Shenel Johns, pianist and pastor Dr. Lafayette Carthon Jr., poet and spoken-word artist Orlando Watson, vocalist and composer Will Blaze, percussionists Jamey Haddad and Salar Nadar, drummer Gabe Jones, and bassist Walter Barnes Jr.

On-demand screening is available today through November 14. Click here for ticket information.

by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7:30 pm, in Mandel Hall at Severance Music Center, Jakub Hrůša leads The Cleveland Orchestra in the first of four performances of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Ballade in a, and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 6. The playlist also includes Elgar’s Cello Concerto with Sheku Kanneh-Mason as soloist. The program is repeated on Friday at 7:30 pm, Saturday at 8:00 pm, and Sunday at 3:00 pm. Click here to read a Preview article and here to purchase tickets.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

Today we remember composer, organist, pianist and teacher Gabriel Fauré, who died in Paris on 4 November 1924 at the age of 79. Recognized as one of the most influential French composers of his time, his musical style inspired many 20th-century composers. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, describes him as the most advanced composer of his generation in France, and notes that his harmonic and melodic innovations influenced the teaching of harmony for later generations.

Born in Pamiers, Ariège, in the south of France on May 12, 1845, his musical talents were revealed while he was still a boy. As a nine-year-old he was sent to the Ecole Niedermeyer music college in Paris, where he was trained to be a church organist and choirmaster. It was there that he met Camille Saint-Saëns, who would become a lifelong friend.

Following his graduation Fauré earned his living as an organist and teacher — leaving him little time for composition. He would later hold the post as organist of the Église de la Madeleine and go on to become the director of the Paris Conservatoire.

Fauré was a founding member of the Société Nationale de Musique, formed in 1871 with the mission of promoting new French music. The membership included Romain Bussine, Saint-Saëns, Georges Bizet, Emmanuel Chabrier, Vincent d’Indy, Henri Duparc, César Franck, Édouard Lalo and Jules Massenet.

Maurice Ravel dedicated his String Quartet to Fauré, a respected teacher and mentor. Even after his retirement from the Conservatoire at the age of 75, he continually made himself available to young composers, including members of Les Six.

In a centenary tribute the musicologist Leslie Orrey wrote in The Musical Times that Fauré’s music is “More profound than Saint-Saëns, more varied than Lalo, more spontaneous than d’Indy, more classic than Debussy, Gabriel Fauré is the master par excellence of French music, the perfect mirror of our musical genius.”

Perhaps Fauré’s most well-known work is his Requiem Op.48. Click here to listen to Robert Shaw lead the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus with Judith Blegen (Soprano) and James Morris (Baritone).