by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE TODAY

National Sawdust considers the legacy of James Baldwin in a conversation with Imani Winds oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, and DaCapo Chamber Players explore sounds of Native American history merged with African American history in Valerie Coleman’s Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes. Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS

The Knight Foundation has announced its 2021 Arts Challenge, an open call for artists and arts organizations in Akron, Detroit and Miami to submit their best ideas for creating works that connect people to their communities and to each other. Answer this question in 150 words or less: “What is your best idea for the arts in either Akron, Detroit, or Miami?” The winners, to be announced in the fall, will share up to $5 million across the three cities. More information here.

Cleveland Chamber Choir has won the top prize at the World Youth and Children Choral Artists’ Association World Choir Festival.  The “Choir of the World Award” was presented to the top performing group in an online festival that included almost 200 international choirs and was judged by 50 international jury members. The ensemble’s performance of Andrew Rindfleisch’s I Sing To Use The Waiting and Linda Kachelmeier’s O Vos Omnes also earned the award for “Most Musically Moving Performance,” and Artistic Director Scott MacPherson was designated as an “Outstanding Conductor.”

Jeanne Lamon, founder and longtime artistic director of Tafelmusik, the Toronto Baroque orchestra, has died at the age of 71. Read a Toronto Star article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Today’s debuts on the world stage include English tenor Sir Peter Pears (born in Farnham in 1910), and Cleveland composer Jeffrey Mumford (born in Washington, D.C. in 1955), and finales on this date in history include French composer Darius Milhaud (who died in Geneva in 1974). Now that it’s summer, I’ll trim my suggested listening list to one item for each honoree.

Pears was the life partner of composer Benjamin Briten, and their musical collaborations included Pears’ wonderful choices of texts set brilliantly by Britten and often performed by the two with Britten at the piano. One of Britten’s most superb song cycles is the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, performed here by Pears, hornist Dennis Brain (playing natural horn in the Prologue and Epilogue), and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by John Hollingsworth. The playlist with start times:

Prologue 0:00 Pastoral – The Evening Quatrains (Charles Cotton) 1:19 Nocturne – Blow, bugle, blow (Alfred Tennyson) 5:16 Elegy – The Sick Rose (William Blake) 8:51 Dirge – Lyke-Wake Dirge (Anonymous) 13:45 Hymn – Hymn to Diana (Ben Jonson) 17:42 Sonnet – To Sleep (John Keats) 19:42 Epilogue 23:37.

Mumford (pictured at top) is a prolific composer with a predilection for colorful titles like an expanding distance of multiple voices. Here’s a performance of his 2015 work becoming… at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Shuai Wang, piano, Ethan Ramaly, flute, Susannah Greenslit, horn, James Thompson, violin, Julian Maddox, violin, Tess Krope, viola, Daniel Blumhard, cello, Tristen Jarvis, double bass, Grace Cross, harp, Matt Moore, vibraphone, and Charles Renneker, marimba. Dean Buck conducts.

Milhaud was also prolific, and some will remember attending summertime performances of his operas at the Central City Opera House in Colorado with the composer in attendance. Here’s a strange little “Visit With Darius Milhaud” documentary, much of it in French, that “shows him with former student Dave Brubeck in an informal jazz session at his home and watches Milhaud compose a sonatina for violin and cello.” There are also some highlights of his sonatinas and operas.

And now that people are contemplating travel again, if Philadelphia is on your road trip itinerary, you might consider visiting the Grand Court of the former John Wanamaker department store (now Macy’s) in City Center, where the world’s largest operational pipe organ was first played on this date in 1911. Its curious story is woven into this guided tour (there’s a second part, too!)

If it were all in working order, you could hear the largest pipe organ in the world not far away in Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. It’s being gradually restored and is worth a visit. Here’s a performance by John Wanamaker organist Peter Richard Conte, who knows his way around such outrageous instruments. The seven-manual console alone is a daunting prospect (pictured here on a recent visit by Organ Clearing House CEO John Bishop, left, and curator Nathan Bryson).

by Daniel Hathaway

LIVE THIS WEEKEND:

On Friday, ENCORE Chamber Music presents The Evelyn Wright Jazz Quartet at the Dodero Center at Gilmour Academy, and ChamberFest Cleveland presents pianist Roman Rabinovitz (pictured) in Bach’s Goldberg Variations — moved indoors at St. Paschal Baylon due to rain.

Saturday’s in-person lineup on the new official national holiday, Juneteeth, includes ChamberFest’s “Nature Emerging” at The Grove Ampitheater, the Akron Symphony Strings and Symphonic Winds at Lock 3, and Cleveland Opera Theater in Medina’s Uptown Park.

On Sunday — Father’s Day — ChamberFest tells the tale of Ferdinand the Bull at The Grove, organist Karel Paukert plays music from Paris at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights, and the Cavani String Quartet plays a Sunday Discovery Concert on the ENCORE series in Gates Mills.

ONLINE THIS WEEKEND:

On Friday, Carnegie Hall replays Leonard Bernstein’s performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony in Ely Cathedral, and the final round of the James Stroud Classical Guitar Youth Competition features four young guitarists.

On Saturday, Saratoga Opera observes Juneteenth, as do the Harlem Chamber Players with Adolphus Hailstork’s Pity These Ashes: Tulsa 1921-2021, 

And on Sunday, Renovare Music presents a virtual benefit concert on World Refugee Day.

Check details on our Concert Listings page.

CIPC BOX OFFICE OPENS:

Tickets are now on sale for Piano Cleveland’s 2021 Cleveland International Piano Competition (July 8—August 11), including both in-person and virtual options. Click here for details.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

On June 18, 1818, French composer Charles Gounod was born in Paris. Instead of linking to one of his popular operas or symphonic masses, here’s his Petit symphonie pour vents in honor of all the wind players who have been watching the game from the bench for the last 14 months. The Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France performs it in January, 2018 at the Maison de la Radio in Paris.

On June 18, 1942, Paul McCartney (Sir Paul since 1965 when The Beatles were inducted into the Order of the British Empire) was born in Liverpool, England. In addition to his career with the groundbreaking Liverpudlian band (who memorably played Cleveland in 1964 and 1966), he made a foray into classical music with his Liverpool Oratorio, featuring Kiri Te Kanawa. But while searching for that video link, I ran across a Wired Autocomplete Interview where Sir Paul answers “the internet’s most searched questions about himself.” Too charming to pass up. Watch here.

On June 19, 1819, Rhenish-Jewish conductor, cellist, and composer Jacques Offenbach was born in Köln (Cologne). To celebrate his lesser-known side as a cellist, here’s his Grand Concerto for Cello in G, nicknamed “Concerto militaire,” written in 1848. Mark Minkowski leads Les Musicians du Louvre with soloist Jérôme Pernoo.

by Mike Telin

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 7:00 pm The Cleveland Orchestra debuts In Focus Episode 13, “Dance & Drama.” Franz Welser-Möst leads Edvard Grieg’s Holberg’s Time: Suite in Olden Style and Erich Korngold’s Symphonic Serenade. Free to subscribers and patrons who donate $300 or more to the Orchestra, premium subscriptions available. View here and on-demand. There’re plenty of concerts happening in the area the weekend — check our concert listings page for details.

The Crafting Change symposium continues today at 3:00 pm with “How to Teach in a Pandemic: A Case Study” Chicago-based new media artist Chris Collins is fascinated by digital technologies as a cultural force…which means he probably learned more from his COVID year than the rest of us did. He’ll discuss the ways he re-envisioned the spring 2021 class he taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: what worked, what didn’t, and what we all might take away from the experience. The fascinating series continues through June 18. Click here for details.

IN THE NEWS:

The Cleveland International Piano Competition has announced that tickets for both in-person and virtual options are now on sale. Click here for details.

APOLLO’S FIRE ANNOUNCES NEW SEASON:

Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra will present seven local programs in 2021-2022, including a Messiah cycle led by guest conductor Nicholas McGegan, and a May performance at Severance Hall celebrating the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season. View the announcement here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this day in 1882 Igor Stravinsky (pictured at top) made his world debut in Oranienbaum, Russia.  One year ago, Daniel Hathaway celebrated the composer’s birth by recounting the composer’s debut as guest conductor with The Cleveland Orchestra in February of 1925 conducting his Fireworks, Chant du Rossignol and Firebird Suite. 

Hathaway reported that conductor Nikolai Sokoloff found Stravinsky to be “something of a showman and not entirely endearing,” adding, “He was, in short, a pain in the neck.” (Rosenberg, The Cleveland Orchestra Story, p. 87). Stravinsky was more complimentary about his experience: “I have never seen an orchestra in which there was finer discipline and a greater responsiveness than right here in your Cleveland Orchestra.” Here’s a live performance of Le chant du rossignol by Pierre Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra from November, 1970.

Today we should revisit the controversy that surrounded the premiere of Le Sacre du printemps.

In his book, First Nights, Harvard professor Thomas Forrest Kelly begins his description of the premiere of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps on May 29, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris with reflections by its ballet master and a famous composer who happened to be in the audience.

I think the whole thing has been done by four idiots: First, M. Stravinsky who wrote the music. Second, M. Roerich who designed the scenery and costumes. Third, Mr. Nijinsky who composed the dances. Fourth, M. Diaghilev who wasted money on it. —Enrico Cecchetti

The choreography is ridiculous, the music sheer cacophony. There is some originality, however, and a certain amount of talent. But taken together, it might be the work of a madman. —Giacomo Puccini

Stravinsky’s score for Sacre was revolutionary in 1913 and still sounds fresh and inventive today. Similarly, Nijinsky’s choreography represented a complete disconnect with classical ballet when it was first unveiled a hundred years ago — and may have been largely responsible for the rowdiness of its first night audience. In an article for Dance Research Journal, Millicent Hodson traced the origins of Nijinsky’s concept from visual images of pre-Christian Russian idols. She quotes from an essay by Jacques Rivière written several months after the premiere. The body, he says,

...moves only as a whole, it forms a totality and its manner of speaking is to leap suddenly with arms and legs outspread, or to move to the side with knees bent and the head on the shoulder…If one can, for once, stop confusing grace with symmetry and the arabesque, he will find it on every page of Le Sacre du printemps, in the sight of profiles of faces posed upon full-front shoulders, in the elbows glued to the body, in the horizontal forearms, the rigid and open hands, in the trembling which descends like a wave from the head of the dancers to their feet, in the obscure, sparse, and preoccupied march of the adolescents in the second act.

Prior to Joffrey Ballet’s August 2013 Blossom Festival performance of Robert Joffrey and Millicent Hodson’s 1987 recreation of Nijinski’s original choreography, artistic director Ashley Wheater told ClevelandClassical.com that he agrees about that first night reaction. “I don’t think it was the music that caused the stir, I think it was more the ballet,” he said in a phone conversation from Chicago. “And to be honest, I think a lot of people did not think it was a particularly good piece of choreography. I think also the shock of it was that the Ballet Russe had become so famous for producing beautiful works from Russia — so when people went to see the ballet Russe they were expecting to see a classical ballet company.

“What upset or angered people was that they were offered something that just turned them upside down. I think people said, I don’t like this and I don’t want to see this. But it was a breakthrough in many ways. Looking back on it, would dance and music be different today if Stravinsky hadn’t written Sacre? It’s hard to say, because to me the music has always been brilliant.”

Click here to watch Joffrey Ballet’s 1987 performance of the work with the Orchestra of the National Theater of Prague conducted by Allan Lewis.

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC — A QUIZ!

See if you can identify from the bulleted clues these five composers whose milestones we celebrate today, then click through the link to check your answers and enjoy examples of their music.

Died in Paris in 1772

• worked at Versailles from 1739-1770
• wrote a set of a dozen pieces you’ll not likely hear played in June
• but you might hear a performance of Le coucou

Click here for the answer

Born in Bergen in 1843

• family name associated with the Scottish Clan Gregor
• distantly related to Glenn Gould
• honored with a statue in Seattle and a crater on the planet Mercury

Click here for the answer

Born in Armagh, Ireland in 1886

• taught both Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells
• first director of music and organist at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
• co-edited three books of carols with G.R. Woodward using Renaissance tunes

Click here for the answer

Born in Kansas City in 1894

• worked as George Gershwin’s assistant  and orchestrator
• wrote more than seven symphonies and five concertos
• wrote orchestrations for the film versions of Showboat and Oklahoma!

Click here for the answer

Born in Milwaukee in 1900

• studied with Busoni and was actor and stage manager for James Joyce’s English Players
• conducted the premieres of Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All and Menotti’s The Medium
• his manipulations of flute recordings on magnetic tape in a 1952 concert at MOMA led to an appearance on The Today Show with Dave Garroway

Click here for the answer

TODAY ONLINE:

It’s summer, and the calendar is thinning out — at least on days like today. Late tonight, tune in to the West Coast Chamber Music Concerts to hear Portraits of Josephine, by Imani Winds’ flutist Valerie Coleman, along with works by Ligeti and Beethoven.\

Or explore the Musical America calendar of (mostly) free online events through the link at the top of our Concert Listings page. We comb these listings to select items we think will be of particular interest to the Northeast Ohio audience, but you may discover something you find personally interesting. Today’s streams bring you performances by Bach Collegium Japan, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, International Contemporary Ensemble, Caramoor, the MET Opera, and The Knights (from Naumburg, Germany).

IN THE NEWS:

The Cleveland Institute of Music has appointed Scott Harrison as the school’s first executive vice president and provost, effective August 16, completing a leadership team that includes Deans Jerrod Price, Dean Southern and Madeline Lucas Tolliver. Read more here.

Oberlin’s Assistant Professor of Conducting Tiffany Chang has been named an inaugural recipient of OPERA America’s 2021 Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors. Chang will make her debut at Opera Columbus conducting Puccini’s Tosca during the 2021-22 season. Read the press release here.

Cleveland Orchestra violinist Miho Hashizume is one of five U.S. musicians to receive a Ford Musician Award for Excellence in Community Service by the League of American Orchestras. Hashizume was honored for her work with the Orchestra’s Crescendo program, which brings together musicians and students in some of Cleveland’s most under-resourced neighborhoods, and has provided instruments and music instruction to students in Slavic Village and Hough since 2018. Watch a video here.

INTERESTING READ:

Earlier in his career, the celebrated pianist Andras Schiff dismissed period instrument performances, telling a reporter in a 1983 interview, “I’ve heard some ghastly things done in the name of authenticity.” Jaws are now dropping as the pianist, now 67, has made a U-turn and recently recorded both of Brahms’ concertos using a contemporary instrument made by Julius Blüthner in Leipzig in 1859. Conducting from the keyboard, Schiff leads an ensemble of 50-some members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, who perform on gut strings. Read a New York Times story here.

by Daniel Hathaway

FOR REAL AND ON SCREEN THIS WEEKEND:

ChamberFest Cleveland continues its outdoor series on Saturday at 7 pm at The Grove Amphitheater with “Rambunctious Fun,” including folk songs from around the world arranged by Dave Morgan and Paul Ferguson and sung by Amanda Powell (pictured). Then the festival moves onto the front lawn of a Guilford Rd. property in Cleveland Heights on Sunday morning at 11 for music by Biber, Perkinson, and J.S. Bach.

In-Person events on Sunday afternoon include a 4 pm organ recital by Karel Paukert at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights, and an Encore Chamber Music Institute Sunday Discovery Concert, “Sparked by Murakami,” in the Dodero Center at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills that culminates in Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.

If the humidity or rain showers are sending you indoors, on Saturday you can spend a late afternoon hour with pipa virtuoso WuMan in Boston, join Carnegie Hall for a tribute to the late Chick Corea, and watch performances of Flamenco with choreography by Alice Blumenfeld.

Couch-viewable transmissions on Sunday include the finale of the MET Opera Orchestra’s Spotlight series, keyboardist Peter Sykes on the Music Before 1800 series from New York, the debut of a new work by Cleveland composer Margaret Brouwer by the Pacific Symphony, early duos by Mozart, CPE Bach, Joseph Boulogne, and Beethoven with fortepianist Sylvia Berry, and violinist Daniel Stepner,  from the Aston Magna Music Festival, music celebrating the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 by the Acronym Ensemble from the Boston Early Music Festival, and “Kronos Festival Kids,”  a collection of short films with music.

Details in our Concert Listings.

NEW CREATIVE FUSION VIDEO OUT

In the second video of the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Creative Fusion Series, four Cleveland Orchestra musicians — violinists Emma Shook and Isabel Trautwein, violist Lisa Boyko, and cellist Bryan Dumm — join guitarist Hermelindo Ruiz in an arrangement of Puerto Rican composer Jean Felix Acosta De Arce’s Ojos de Ensueño. Click here to watch.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC

Scottish composer and conductor Oliver Knussen was born on this date in 1952. We noted the anniversary of his untimely death on July 8, 2018 in an earlier Diary entry, and linked to the video of an evening at the Royal Academy of Music the following December celebrating his life, as well as to remarks by violinist Leila Josefowicz before her performance of his violin with The Cleveland Orchestra in February, 2020.

Otherwise, this weekend marks the death of British composer John Ireland (June 12, 1962), the birth of Mexican composer and conductor Carlos Chavez (June 13, 1899), and the death of American composer David Diamond (June 13, 2005). Although each of them have been championed by individual conductors, their music awaits wider attention.

Ireland is known for his miniatures, chamber music, songs, and the anthem, Greater Love Hath No Man, composed in 1912 but often sung in Britain to commemorate those who perished in “The Great War.” Click here to hear it sung in a live BBC broadcast from the chapel of St. John’s College, Cambridge, on August 13, 1997. But another piece much loved by Ireland admirers is his Concertino Pastorale, written on the brink of World War II.

The music of Chavez has all but disappeared as Latin American culture has faded from the American consciousness. Listen to his Toccata performed by the Eastman Chamber Percussion Ensemble in Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music, and to his Sinfonia India led by Gustavo Dudamel — apparently in a football arena.

Diamond began his musical education at the Cleveland Institute of Music before continuing studies at Eastman and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Although his eleven symphonies have been performed and recorded by Leonard Bernstein and Gerald Schwarz, they’re far from familiar to the American concertgoer. In this 1990 video, Diamond discusses his symphonies — especially the fifth — with fellow composer John Corigliano. Listen here to the premiere of his Symphony No. 5 by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic in April, 1966.