by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Although it may look like a mistake in the Concert Listings, CityMusic Cleveland and No Exit are indeed performing the same programs on Saturday as they did on Friday, but in different venues — CityMusic at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, and No Exit at Heights Arts, both at 7 pm.

Indoors on Sunday at 3 at Youngstown’s DeYor Center, the Dana Ensemble opens its second season with William Walton’s Façade (lampooned in the photo), and Stravinsky’s A Soldier’s Tale — two iconic 20th-century theater works, and at the same hour, pianist Jeffrey Siegel returns for another season of his long-running “Keyboard Conversations” series, but now presented at the Maltz PAC.

Unfortunately for two planned al fresco events, rain is in the forecast for Sunday afternoon. MusiCLE Yours has just informed us that the “Porchester Concert” at the Cozad-Bates House (Underground Railroad Museum) has been moved one week later to Sunday, October 10 at 3.

Rain may dampen the spirits but won’t stop the bells of the McGaffin Carillon from ringing out over University Circle. The 4pm “Healing Bells” guest concert by Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra will go on as scheduled, and can be enjoyed under an umbrella, from your car, or via live stream. Read more about the program here.

INTERESTING READS:

Attempts to use technology to complete unfinished classical music works usually prove to be misguided and futile, but a recent experiment using artificial intelligence to bring Beethoven’s tenth symphony to life piqued our interest because of the involvement of pianist Robert Levin, who has applied his own impressive human intelligence to improvising cadenzas in the style of Mozart and Beethoven. Click here to read “How a Team of Musicologists and Computer Scientists Completed Beethoven’s Unfinished 10th Symphony” in The Conversation.

With reference to the Boston Pops and the Pittsburgh Symphony, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette classical music critic Jeremy Reynolds considers how orchestral pops programming has evolved since 1885, when symphony orchestras in Boston began venturing outside standard symphonic repertoire.

He writes, “The classical canon has grown at tortoise speed, while rock, hip-hop and other genres have proliferated faster than rabbits — a trend that has continued to accelerate in the digital age. Orchestral pops programming now ranges from film scores, cartoon medleys and video game music to rap artists and jazz and circus acts. It’s whatever fusion of orchestral music and flavor-of-the-day entertainment the ensemble selects.”

Click here to read “America’s classical pops tradition is evolving, and PSO’s Byron Stripling has a new vision for it.”

NEWS BRIEFS:

This week, classical music media are reporting the deaths of Opera composer Carlysle Floyd, 95, on September 30 in Tallahassee, Florida, and of concert violinist James Buswell, 74, in Boston (no date given). Read obituaries here for Floyd in Opera News, and here for Buswell in The Strad.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

Two prominent Black composers appear in this weekend’s honors list: R. Nathaniel Dett, who died on tour in Battle Creek, Michigan on October 2, 1943, and Zenobia Powell Perry, born in Boley, Oklahoma on October 3, 1908. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

The new month begins with concerts by two university orchestras — interim director David Becker and student conductor Jacob Kaminsky lead the BW Symphony in Brahms, Dvořák, and Saint-Saëns with faculty soloists Khari Joyner, cello, and Nicole Keller, organ. And Victor Liva and student conductor Jimmie Parker preside over the CSU Symphony for works by Haydn, Saint-Saëns and Fauré, featuring cello soloist Ovidiu Marinescu.

Meanwhile, CityMusic Cleveland plays Bruch, Kotoka Suzuki, Paul Schoenfeld, and Mozart at St. Noel in Willoughby Hills, and No Exit new music ensemble debuts works by Derrik Balogh, Giuseppe Desiato, and Jiří Trtík (pictured), along with pieces by Timothy Beyer and Agata Zubel, at SPACES Gallery.

Details in our Concert Listings.

MANDELS MAKE STUNNING GIFT TO THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA:

Cleveland Orchestra president and CEO André Gremillet announced on Thursday that the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation has bestowed a $50 million gift on the Orchestra — the largest in the ensemble’s 103-year history, as well as the largest in the 68-year history of the Foundation. $31.5 million of that will go to endowment funds that will support an annual Mandel Opera Festival, the Orchestra’s global digital offerings, and local programs and partnerships.

Gremillet added that “In recognition of the historic impact of this grant, we are naming our main performance space the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Concert Hall.” The building, which also houses the Reinberger Chamber Hall, will henceforth be referred to as Severance Music Center, “or simply Severance.” Read the press release here. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni.)

NEWS BRIEFS:

Violinist Philip Setzer, already a  member of the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music, has been named Artistic Director of String Chamber Music at CIM, a capacity in which he will work with Si-Yan Darren Li, now promoted to Program Director. Setzer, a native Clevelander both of whose parents played in The Cleveland Orchestra, is a founding member of the Emerson String Quartet, which will disband at the end of the current season, and a longtime collaborator with cellist David Finckel and Wu Han in the piano trio that bears all three of their names.

VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET BROUWER:

The Canton Symphony returns to live, in-person performances on October 10 with a program led by Gerhardt Zimmerman that includes Cleveland composer Margaret Brouwer’s The Art of Sailing at Dawn. Click here to watch a 25-minute interview in which associate conductor Matthew Jaroszewicz asks the composer about her life, career, and the inspiration behind her work.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

Last year on this date, we noted the births of French composer Paul Dukas and Russian American pianist Vladimir Horowitz, and the departures of Austrian American composer Ernst Toch and American composer Roy Harris. If you missed that diary, you can still read those entries here.

This October 1st we remember the launching of two American institutions.

On the first day of the tenth month of 1921, American choral conductor Margaret Hillis was born in Kokomo, Indiana, and three years later, the Curtis Institute of Music opened its doors in Philadelphia. [Read more…]

by Mike Telin

NEWS BRIEFS:

The biggest news in American music occurred this past Monday with the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Terrance Blanchard’s Fire Shot Up in My Bones (above, New York Times photo of Blanchard on the Met stage by Wayne Lawrence as published on The Hub (League of American Orchestras).

Yes it was the first performance on the Met stage in 18-months, but more importantly it was the first time the company has staged an opera by a Black composer (Blanchard), a Black librettist (Kasi Lemmons), a Black co-director for a main-stage production (Camille A. Brown), as well as an almost entirely Black cast, chorus and dance troupe. The Opera is based on a 2014 memoir by New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, recounting his turbulent upbringing in rural Louisiana.

Writing for NPR, Nate Chinen says that “Blanchard’s music for Fire is glowingly consonant but full of subtle harmonic and timbral surprises (along with strategic flickers of dissonance). He goes on to say: “Strikingly, given Blanchard’s profile as a jazz artist, Fire eludes description as a ‘jazz opera.’ Its language is avowedly classical, with elements drawn from the canonical composers, like Puccini, that defined Blanchard’s early exposure to the art form.” [Read more…]

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).

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S PERFORMANCES:

There’s only one event on today’s calendar, but it’s a significant one. Oberlin cello professor Darrett Adkins opens Lorain County Community College’s Signature Series in Elyria with a recital of contemporary solo works “narrated by” J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 6. The format is what Adkins calls a “hypersuite,” an existing work conflated with pieces by Jeffrey Mumford, Elliott Carter, Philip Cashian, Su Lian Tan, and Mistislav Weinberg. It’s free in the Cirigliano Studio Theatre at 7:30 pm.

NEW OBERLIN MUSIC CD:

On September 17, Oberlin Music released a new recording featuring faculty composers and musicians in three concertos: Jesse Jones’ Persona Mechanica for solo piano and chamber orchestra that envisions a piano coming to life in a workshop, Steven Hartke’s Ship of State for piano and 20 players that likens a government to a storm-tossed vessel at sea, drawing on poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Elizabeth Ogonek’s where we are now for six male voices, four percussionists, and piano. The featured pianist is Xak Bjerken, performing with Timothy Weiss and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. Read the press release here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two American musical scholars and three contemporary composers share birthdates on September 28, and a British musical humorist bade adieu to the world of classical music, leaving it a bit less serious about itself than before.

Donald J. Grout, born in 1902 in Rock Rapids, Iowa, and H. Wiley Hitchcock, who wrote the first entry in his own bio in 1923 in Detroit, left indelible marks on classical music as author and editor, respectively, of A History of Western Music (known to generations of students simply as “Grout”), and The New Grove Dictionary of American Music.

American composers Vivian Fine and Laura Kaminsky came onto the scene in 1913 in Chicago, and 1956 in New York City, and Chinese-American composer Huang Ruo followed in 1976 on Hainan Island off the southern coast of China.

Kaminsky was featured by Jarrett Hoffman in the Diary one year ago, so we’ll zoom in on the other two composers this time around. [Read more…]

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.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS THIS WEEKEND:

Presenters seem to be taking Saturday off, but there are five varied concerts to choose from on Sunday afternoon: Tuesday Musical’s Al Fresco Passport series (Zydeco on the lawn of Akron’s Historic Barder House both at 1 and 3 pm), Divinity Lutheran’s Parma Heights recital by Cleveland Orchestra musicians Elanya Duitman, violin, and Carolyn Warner, piano at 3 pm, an American Guild of Organists, Cleveland Chapter retrospective of Music by H. Leslie Adams (pictured) for piano, voice, violin and trumpet in Rocky River, and Spanish Renaissance music performed by Duo Mignarda with EnsAmble Ad-Hoc and baritone José Gotera at St. John’s Cathedral, both at 3 pm, followed by the Cavani String Quartet’s latest “Beyond Beethoven” episode on the Music From the Western Reserve Series in Hudson at 5 pm (LvB’s Op. 18, No. 5 and Op. 59, No. 3 plus Gabriela Lena Frank’s Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout.

Details in our Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READS:

In a September 22 entry on his blog, Unanswered Question, musical scholar and concert promoter Joe Horowitz discusses two examples of “Buried Treasure,” works by Black composers that he argues need to come into the mainstream.

Of the first, he writes, “It’s finally become inevitable that William Levi Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, premiered by Leopold Stokowski in 1934, will become known as a galvanizing achievement in American symphonic music. Incredibly, our major orchestras still haven’t gotten around to it – but they will.”

The second work, Arthur Farwell’s 1922 Hako String Quartet, will be released in October on Naxos in a performance by the Dakota String Quartet. Horowitz writes, “Farwell isn’t played for reasons political, not musical. As the leader of our Indianist movement in music, he’s today condemned as a cultural appropriator…He believed it was a democratic obligation of Americans of European descent to try to understand the indigenous Americans they displaced and oppressed — to preserve something of their civilization; to find a path toward reconciliation. His Indianist compositions attempt to mediate between Native American ritual and the Western concert tradition.” Read his article here.

And in an NPR story, Eleanor Beardsley writes about French pianist Colette Maze, who has just released her sixth album at the age of 107 (she records on Sundays in her 14th floor apartment overlooking the Seine, “when the neighbors are likely to be out and the building is quieter.”) Read or listen to the six-minute broadcast here.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

Two musicians born on September 26 figure in other entries in the weekend’s Diary. American composer and trombonist William Levi Dawson (1898 in Anniston, Alabama) is the composer of the Negro Folk Symphony mentioned in Joe Horowitz’s blog, and American composer Gabriela Lena Frank (1972, Berkeley, Caifornia) is the author of Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout, to be played on Sunday by the Cavani Quartet.

Why not spend some time today visiting recordings of those two works. Click here for Leopold Stokowski’s performance of the Dawson Symphony with the American Symphony Orchestra, and here for a performance of the string orchestra version of Frank’s Leyendas by Lina Gonzaléz-Granados and the New England Conservatory Philharmonia live streamed on October 17, 2020 from NEC’s Jordan Hall in Boston.

Other notables to acknowledge this weekend include Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (born on September 25, 1932, Toronto), and on September 26, French conductor Charles Munch (Strasbourg, 1891), and American composer George Gershwin (Brooklyn, New York, 1898. Those who left us on September 26 include colonial New England composer William Billings (Boston, 1800), and Bela Bartók (New York, 1945).

Archival recordings can put us directly in touch with these musical personalities. Click here to revisit the famous incident of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto involving Gould and Leonard Bernstein, here to watch Munch conduct Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique with the Boston Symphony, here to listen to Gershwin play excerpts from the F-Major Piano Concerto, and here to enjoy Bartók’s own interpretations of excerpts from Music for Children.

Billings departed the scene too early for recordings, but Ross W. Duffin and Quire Cleveland brought his infectious motet I Am the Rose of Sharon to life in a concert at Historic St. Peter’s Church in April, 2014. Watch here.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

CIM violin professor Jaime Laredo celebrates his 80th birthday tonight at 7 by conducting the CIM Orchestra in works by Prokofiev, Mozart, and Brahms in a hybrid concert you can attend in person (free reservation required) or watch online.

CityMusic Cleveland’s Pantheon Ensemble goes live at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus tonight at 7 with a program featuring the world premiere of Denise Ondishko’s A More Perfect Union: Reflections on American Equality, Justice and Hope, along with pieces by Gershwin, Lili Boulanger, and Dvorák.

Pianist Gerardo Teissonnière joins the belated LvB 250th celebrations with a concert of Beethoven’s last three sonatas tonight at 7 in the Church of the Western Reserve.

More world premieres are on the docket for the first of three fall concerts by No Exit tonight at 8 in Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, including works by Derrik Balogh,  Giuseppe Desiato, and Jiří Trtík that share the program with pieces by No Exit artistic director Timothy Beyer and Agata Zubel. (Catch later performances at SPACES on October 1 and Heights Arts on October 2 — all are free.)

JOELA JONES TO BE HONORED ON HER RETIREMENT:

The Cleveland Orchestra announced on Thursday that principal keyboard player Joela Jones (pictured above) will retire after performing Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony with the ensemble on October 17. At the performance on October 14,  she will be honored with the Orchestra’s Distinguished Service Award. Its longest-serving principal player, Jones joined The Cleveland Orchestra 45 seasons ago in 1967.

In the announcement, the Orchestra noted that “her contributions go well beyond the countless notes played on stage. These were decades filled with Monday night rehearsals, accompanying the remarkable volunteers of the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, afternoons or mornings in coaching sessions interacting with conductors and guest vocalists, countless chamber music rehearsals, and many Orchestra committee meetings, working tirelessly for the sake of her fellow musicians and the ensemble.”

Click here to watch a video about Joela Jones’s Distinguished Service Award, and here for more information about the keyboardist who has played piano, organ, harpsichord, celesta, synthesizer, and even accordion when required for nearly a half century.

ClevelandClassical.com’s Mike Telin interviewed Joela Jones in January, 2015 in conjunction with the 90th birthday celebrations for Pierre Boulez. Read that article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

British conductor and musical scholar Christopher Hogwood died of a brain tumor in Cambridge on this date in 2014. One of the forerunners in the early music revival movement, Hogwood relaunched the 18th-century Academy of Ancient Music in 1973, clearing a pathway for such later conductors as Roger Norrington, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock. The AAM eventually outgrew its concentration on Baroque music and recorded the complete symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven, as well as all of Mozart’s piano concertos with Robert Levin.

Hogwood was also noted for transforming Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society into a period instrument ensemble, along with his influential guest conducting appearances with a number of symphony orchestras. His career is detailed in Barry Millington’s obituary in The Guardian.

Click here to watch Hogwood’s performance of Haydn’s last symphony with the NHK Symphony Orchestra (misidentified as the AAM!), and here to watch a performance he led of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 15 with Robert Levin, who provided his own improvised cadenzas.

To see Christopher Hogwood in action as a musical scholar who served on the faculty of London’s Gresham College, here are two lecture-concerts: London: Music Under the Shadow of Handel, and an analysis of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.

by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

At ​​7:30 pm it’s the Vanessa Rubin Quintet. Presented in partnership with Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland, Rubin will sing classics, ballads and blues on the Maiden Lane Stage, 51 E. Market St. in downtown Akron. In case of rain, the concert moves next door into the Musica Club. The event is free.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Cuyahoga Arts and Culture reports that while the wider economy is reopening, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to be devastating for local nonprofit arts organizations and creative workers.

According to a survey of 65 of General Operating Support grant recipients, steady job loss and revenue loss has continued in 2021. The organizations reported 1,636 total people laid off, furloughed or with reduced hours between January and June 2021.

And that after more than 15 months, 65 Cuyahoga County-based arts and culture nonprofits funded by Cuyahoga Arts & Culture continue to report layoffs as organizations operate with less capacity.

The survey finds that Federal funding is helping to make up some lost revenues and helping groups to adapt programming and connect with residents. But overall, the pandemic continues to negatively impact the creative economy and community quality of life.

From March 2020, when the 65 CAC-funded organizations began tracking, through June 30, 2021, the organizations reported:

• Total people laid off, furloughed, or hours reduced: 4,793
• Total revenue loss: $146,025,012
• Total federal funds (CARES Act, Shuttered Venue Operators Grants, etc.) received: $81,294,617
• Total revenue loss not recouped: $64,730,395

“The hard truth is that the creative economy will be one of the last to recover from the pandemic,” executive director of CAC, Jill M. Paulsen said. “Ohio’s creative industry continues to suffer from the highest unemployment rate among all sectors. CAC has accelerated payment of our grants and worked with Cuyahoga County to secure CARES Act funding, but it may not be enough for some organizations.”

Read the full report here. [Read more…]