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DIARY: Thursday, July 1, 2021

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by Mike Telin

TODAY’S EVENTS:

Although our concert calendar is void of performances today, there are plenty taking place during the long Fourth of July weekend. Visit our Concert Listings page here.

IN THE NEWS:

Season tickets go on sale today for the four concerts in the Kent Blossom Music Festival Faculty Series, featuring Kulas Visiting Artists Paul and Helen Huang (pictured), Demarre McGill, and Rodolfo Leone, plus the Miami String Quartet and members of The Cleveland Orchestra. This season’s concerts are offered in a hybrid format: in-person in Ludwig Concert Hall (limited to 200 guests), and by live stream. Read a preview here.

A quick reminder that tickets also go on sale today for Tuesday Musical’s performance by   Chanticleer at E.J. Thomas Hall on July 27 at 7:30 pm. The celebrated 12-voice male chorus from San Francisco will present “Awakenings,” with music by Monteverdi, Byrd, Vicente Lusitano, Villa-Lobos, Augusta Read Thomas, Ulysses Kay, Steven Sametz, Burton Lane, and a newly commissioned work by Ayanna Woods. Click here for ticket information.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today marks the anniversaries of two births of note — German composer Hans Werner Henze in 1926 and American conductor Philip Brunelle in 1943.

We’ll begin with Henze whose extensive body of works incorporated neoclassicism, jazz, twelve-tone technique, serialism, as well as rock and some popular music. [Read more…]

DIARY: Wednesday, June 30, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

Akron’s Tuesday Musical Association has announced that tickets will go on sale tomorrow, Thursday, July 1, for the Chanticleer concert in E.J. Thomas Hall on July 27 at 7:30 pm, rescheduled from last season due to the pandemic. The celebrated 12-voice male chorus from San Francisco will present “Awakenings,” with music by Monteverdi, Byrd, Vicente Lusitano, Villa-Lobos, Augusta Read Thomas, Ulysses Kay, Steven Sametz, Burton Lane, and a newly commissioned work by Ayanna Woods. Click here.

Chagrin Arts will present the Callisto Quartet — Paul Aguilar and Rachel Stenzel, violins, Eva Kennedy, viola, and Hannah Moses, cello — in a free, outdoor performance on Friday, July 16 at 7:00 pm in Solon Bicentennial Park. Formed at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2016, the ensemble won the 2018 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and took Second Prize at the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. Currently serving as the Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the Shepherd School of Music at Houston’s Rice University, the Callisto have been appointed Fellowship Quartet in Residence at the Yale School of Music. Their concert on July 16 will include Haydn’s Quartet Op. 20, No. 1 & Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 59, No. 3. Details here. [Read more…]

DIARY: Tuesday, June 29, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Composer Hale Smith was born in Cleveland on this date in 1929. A precocious musician whose talents were recognized early on by Duke Ellington, after service in the U.S. Army, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1950 and 1952. Smith went on to enjoy a widely varied career in New York, where he moved easily between classical styles (including serial music), and jazz. He died in New York in 2009 at the age of 84.

As Dennis Dooley wrote when Smith won the Cleveland Arts Prize for Music in 1973,

His prolific output includes everything from TV advertising jingles to incidental music for stage productions of Lysistrata and Lorca’s Blood Wedding. His “Castle House Rag” was used in the documentary The Making of Citizen Kane. Smith has, nevertheless, always found time to lend his prodigious energies to such important undertakings as the Detroit Symphony’s annual Symposium on Black American Composers. He gladly served as an advisor to the Chicago-based Center for Black Music Research, but “bristled at the designation [Black composer],” The New York Times noted in its lengthy obituary, “He wanted his work, and that of his black peers, to appear on programs with that of Beethoven, Mozart and Copland” and to be judged simply as music. 

A list of Hale Smith’s works (click the link to “Hale’s Music”) suggests that Cleveland should rediscover one of its hometown composers. Sample some of his music here,.

Among the better-served composers born on this date are Leroy Anderson (1908, beloved Boston creator of light classical music), Frank Loesser (1910, Broadway tunesmith), and Bernard Herrmann (1911, popularly known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, but a fine composer in his own right).

On June 29, 1934, radio station W2XR, a “noncommercial high fidelity experiment,” began broadcasting in New York City, soon to become WQXR when it was granted a commercial license in 1936. Always at the forefront of experimental broadcasting, in 1952, the station devised a way to broadcast in stereo, using two microphones placed six feet apart. Listeners could enjoy the stereo effect by similarly positioning two radios, one tuned to the station’s AM feed, the other to its FM feed.

And on this date in 1941, Polish piano virtuoso Ignacy Jan Paderewski died in New York at the age of 80. Also a diplomat and statesman, the pianist had served as the newly independent Poland’s prime minister and foreign minister in 1919 when he participated in the signing of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I.

Paderewski’s dual career led to a curious situation after his demise in a New York hotel room while on a concert tour. Because of his diplomatic service and the exigencies of the Second World War, President Roosevelt granted permission for his body to be temporarily laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. But there it stayed in the vault of the U.S.S. Maine Mast Memorial until the fall of communism in 1992 when his remains were transferred to Warsaw Cathedral. With the exception of his heart, which is preserved in a bronze sculpture in the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Read about that strange saga in detail here.

DIARY: Monday, June 28, 2021

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by Jarrett Hoffman

FREDERIC RZEWSKI, 83:

American composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski passed away at the age of 83 on Saturday after suffering cardiac arrest. Political themes have been at the center of much of his stylistically varied music, including his well-known set of piano variations The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, considered a classic of the modern era.

ClevelandClassical.com’s Daniel Hathaway had a fascinating interview with Rzewski in 2010, discussing his path to new music and improvisation, and more. Read that here, and read William Robin’s obituary in The New York Times here.

RE:SOUND PLAYLIST:

The Re:Sound New Music Festival continues through this Wednesday, June 30. Register  if you haven’t already, then check out the final weekly playlist, “Persistence.”

GUITAR SOCIETY:

The latest video in the Creative Fusion series from the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, in collaboration with the Mexican Committee of Cleveland, brings us Hermelindo Ruiz’s To Soar Beyond for guitar and string quintet. It’s inspired by the Puerto Rican genre of danza, and “reflects the composer’s thoughts on how music can provide solace in difficult times…” Hermelindo is joined by five Cleveland Orchestra musicians. Watch here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Look past the long series of discarded marriages — more than one ending with a beheading — and you might find interest in the musical side of Henry VIII (born on this date in 1491). BBC Music Magazine explored his impact on the music scene (both harm and help), and his own musical contributions in an article from 2016.

Another historical figure who had a keen interest in music, but who is more famous for his contributions to other disciplines, is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (born today in 1712). That writer and philosopher was also a composer, with seven operas to his name, including the one-act Village Soothsayer. Watch a 38-minute video production dating from 1962, featuring the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, led by Samuel Baud-Bovy.

Rousseau was also a music theorist, developing a system of musical notation that would be compatible with typography: it would use a single line, with numbers expressing different intervals, and periods and commas indicating rhythm. He presented it to the Academie Des Sciences and was rejected, though they seem to have been impressed, and even requested that he have another go at it.

Moving onto names most famous for their music-making, we continue with Hungarian violinist, composer, and conductor Joseph Joachim, born on this date in 1831. One of the great violinists of the 19th century, he was a close collaborator of Brahms, premiering the composer’s Violin Concerto in 1879 with Brahms himself on the podium. Even much earlier, at age 13, his performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto (with Felix Mendelssohn conducting) helped bring that work into greater esteem.

In 1903, Joachim became one of the earliest violinists to be recorded: hear him in fuzzy but fascinating renditions of Brahms’ Hungarian Dances Nos. 1 and 2.

And finally, composer Richard Rodgers was born on this date in 1902 in New York City. He’s most famous for his work in musical theater, particularly in collaboration with Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II — the latter partnership became the most successful in the history of American musical theater.

And though the EGOT was not such a historic concept at the time, Grammy Awards still being in their infancy, Rodgers became the first person to ever receive Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. (He also received a Pulitzer — only he and Marvin Hamlisch have ever taken in all five awards.)

The Sound of Music — the last musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein together — not only won five Tonys, but its film version won five Oscars. Watch a clip from the movie, where Julie Andrews memorably sings the title track.

DIARY: Weekend, June 26-27, 2021

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by Daniel Hathaway

LIVE AND IN-PERSON THIS WEEKEND:

On Saturday evening, ChamberFest Cleveland ends its season with a Festival Finale at St. Pascal Baylon Church in Highland Heights. The ticketed event includes a champagne toast. On Sunday, organist Karel Paukert plays Music from Prague at St. Paul’s in Cleveland Heights, and members of the Akron Symphony perform at the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.

ONLINE EVENTS:

On Saturday and Sunday, Local 4 Music Fund continues its three-part series “She Scores,” and on Saturday, Burning River Baroque presents a one-time only, climate-based program, “Elements Worth Fighting For.” Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEF:

Earlier this week, fire destroyed the Dobson Pipe Organ Builders Ltd. workshop in Lake City, Iowa, including an instrument being built for an Anglican Church in Australia. The firm, founded by Lynn A. Dobson, has built distinguished instruments for such venues as Verizon Hall in Philadelphia, and St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York. Read a New York Times story here.

INTERESTING READ:

This week, British oboist Nicholas Daniel will premiere one of the late John Tavener’s last works, eight years after the composer’s death. He explains the delay in a Guardian article, and writes about the complex web that frustrates musical creativity in the U.K.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC

On June 26, we note the birth of American pianist and conductor Antonia Brico in 1902 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the death of Dutch composer Henk Badings in Maarheeze, a well as the birth of Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg in Helsinki in 1958.

On June 27 in music history, French composer and claveciniste Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre died in Paris in 1729, and several 20th century composers were born: George T. Walker (1922, in Washington D.C.), Jack Gallagher (1947, in New York), Daniel Asia (1953, in Seattle), and Magnus Lindberg (1958 in Helsinki).

We wrote in some detail about Jacquet de la Guerre, Walker, Gallagher, and Asia in the Diary for June 27, 2020, so today we’ll throw a bit of light on the more obscure composers.

Born to a Dutch single mother, Brico emigrated to California with her foster parents in 1908, where she studied at Berkeley and worked as assistant to the director of San Francisco Opera. She returned to Europe for conducting studies in Berlin and made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1930. Back in the States, she was the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic, and after settling in Denver, became conductor of what was eventually named the Denver Philharmonic.

Brico’s life and career are dramatized in the Shooting Star Filmcompany’s The Conductor. Watch a trailer here (the R-rated full-length film can be rented on YouTube). There are also some poor-quality documentaries about the conductor, but you can listen here to her interview with Northwest Public Radio.

Like a number of his fellow Netherlanders, Henk Badings was born in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period, but was orphaned early on and returned to the Netherlands to study mining and palaeontology in Delft and worked as a mining engineer before turning to a career in music. His fifteen numbered symphonies and other orchestral works were championed by such conductors as van Beinum and Mengelberg, and his catalogue of 1,000 works includes various experimental pieces.

For a taste of Badings’ music, listen to his 1954 symphony Louisville, dedicated to the Louisville Orchestra and performed by the Janacek Philharmonic under David Porcelijn.

Not that Magnus Lindberg is all that obscure, having served as composer in residence with the New York Philharmonic at the invitation of incoming music director Alan Gilbert, and having commissioned works performed by The Cleveland Orchestra, but his larger works haven’t been heard locally for several years now. The composer has passed through various stylistic episodes, with side excursions into Japanese drumming and German punk rock. One of his works that has gained popularity is his Clarinet Concerto, performed here by Emil Jonason at Concertgebouw Brugge.

DIARY: Wednesday, June 23, 2021

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by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ONLINE:

At 8:00 pm, WCLV’s “Ovations” will feature the Cleveland Chamber Choir in a rebroadcast of the ensemble’s “Madrigals of All Seasons” concert from May and selections from their recent CD, I Sing to Use the Waiting.

More details about that and many other events from around the globe can be found in our Concert Listings.

NEW SEASON FROM LD:

Les Délices has announced its 2021-22 Concert Series, Until Sky Above. Of the five programs, the first three will be available exclusively in the virtual realm — on the streaming service Marquee TV — while the final two will receive in-person performances followed by virtual releases. Plus, the SalonEra series will continue with twelve episodes (details coming later this summer).

Subscriptions will go on sale here starting August 15. Single tickets for all virtual concerts will be available via Marquee TV, while single tickets for local, live performances in February and April 2022 will go on sale in the fall.

Click here for dates and details about the Concert Series, from “Song of Orpheus” (music by Rameau, Courbois, and a new work by Jonathan Woody) to “Winds of Change” (music from the Revolutionary Age and a new work by Sydney Guillaume), “The Highland Lassie” (music from 18th-century Scotland), “Of Gods & Heroes” (Medieval song), and “The White Cat” (a fairytale Baroque opera pastiche).

Curious about the beautiful images above? They’re silkscreen monoprints that Les Délices commissioned from Cleveland-based artist Jen Craun to capture the series’ overarching theme (top left) and each successive program (continuing clockwise).

CCGS CREATIVE FUSION:

Over 100 people from Cleveland and Mexico participated in the next video in the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Creative Fusion series: Anastasia Sonaranda’s arrangement of the traditional Mexican song La Llorana. The arrangement includes original poetry by Irma Pineda Santiago written in the indigenous Zapoteco language, recited by the poet and sung by Martha Toledo Mar. Watch here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

A quartet of Ohioans and a premiere in Cleveland provide a fitting place to begin on this date in music history.

Those four musicians are all blowing out candles. The first two, both conductors, do so from the grave: John Finley Williamson (born in Canton in 1887), who founded the Westminster Choir School, and James Levine (Cincinnati, 1943), who served as longtime music director of the Metropolitan Opera until being terminated over sexual misconduct allegations.

The other two are both vocalists with operatic credits at renowned stages worldwide, and are still with us: Heldentenor William Cochran (Columbus, 1943) and two-time Grammy-winning soprano Sylvia McNair (Mansfield, 1956), who it should be noted has also successfully transitioned into Broadway and jazz over the past twenty years.

And harpsichordist Elaine Comparone (above) gave the premiere of Vincent Persichetti’s Harpsichord Sonata No. 2 on this date in 1982 in Cleveland. Further documentation about that performance doesn’t seem to exist, but some combination of that piece and that performer seems to have kicked off a spur of enthusiasm for the harpsichord from Persichetti.

He focused his energies around that instrument for the remainder of his life: seven more sonatas followed (the third one written for Comparone), as well as four other works for harpsichord. (The First Sonata is a total outlier, having arrived in 1951.)

Modern works for this “old” instrument — basically left for dead in the 19th century with the development of the fortepiano and piano before experiencing a resurgence — can be absolutely fascinating, and Persichetti’s Second Sonata is no exception. Listen to Comparone’s recording of it here.

Other notable names who grace this date in history include German composer Carl Reinecke (born June 23, 1984), American singer and actress Geraldine Ulmar (born on June 23, 1862), who was known for her Gilbert & Sullivan performances, English folk music and dance collector Cecil Sharp (died on this date in 1924), and Seattle-based pop-classical-crossover composer, pianist, and violinist Jennifer Thomas, who turns 44 today.

Watch the music video for Thomas’s piece The Fire Within, where she faces off with Kimberly StarKey (a.k.a. “The Rogue Pianist”) on a pair of Yamahas. Concerned about the instrument that’s seen engulfed in flames in the desert, whether out of principle, or for the sake of Thomas’s Yamaha sponsorship? No need.

“The piano that was burned was my old Behr Brothers grand piano that I used in three of my other music videos,” Thomas writes in the caption to the video. “It was terribly damaged and had seen its day…A lot of people asked me if I was going to turn it into a table piece, or a garden ornament. I said, ‘No, I think I’m going to set it on fire.’”

DIARY: Tuesday, June 22, 2021

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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 Britten, 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).

 

DIARY: Monday, June 21, 2021

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by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ONLINE:

No timed events today, but a reminder that the Re:Sound New Music Festival runs all month, with several videos available to peruse at your leisure. If you prefer a more guided approach, check out the Festival’s third weekly playlist, “Transitions & Transformations,” but you’ll need to register first if you haven’t already.

STROUD WINNERS:

In case you missed our weekend update, Friday evening brought the results of the Stroud Classical Guitar Competition. First place went to Jack Davisson of Palo Alto, followed by two other Californians and one Floridian: Eric Wang of San Jose, Ethan Boyers of Santa Rosa, and Patricia Hernandez of Miami. Watch the final-round video and announcement here.

REFLECTING ON 2020:

The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s Creative Fusion Series continues with Thomas Flippin’s A Dark Winter in a Lost Year. That piece, written in response to the pandemic, the disruption of education, and the murder of George Floyd, weaves together sampled recordings of speech with music. It’s performed by Duo Noire — the guitar duo of Flippin himself and Christopher Mallett — who are joined by violinist Kathleen Collins and cellist Tanya Ell Woolfrey. Watch the video here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

From Rimsky-Korsakov to Lana Del Rey, and Pavel Haas to Lalo Schifrin, let’s use moods and keys to tie together a diverse playlist based on the musical anniversaries of June 21st.

Capriccio Espagnol by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (who died on this date in 1908) begins with ultimate razzle-dazzle. Its opening movement in A Major is full of flair, with clarinet trills, tambourine rolls, and lots of fortissimo, but it ends in a gentler place: a string pizzicato on A over the carpet of a timpani roll (stop at 1:26).

We pick up on an A from the electric guitar in Shades of Cool by American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey, who turns 36 today. But here we’re in d minor, setting up Del Rey’s melancholy opening verse, fully of the smoky tone that is one of her calling cards. The chorus takes us higher up into her range, and into an F Major that feels like a mirage.

Pausing at 1:57, we move from the end of that chorus into something else quite dreamy: the opening of the first movement of the wonderful Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain” by Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness, who died on this date in 2000.

After a couple minutes of enjoying the gentle and meditative qualities of that work, perhaps stopping after the celestial celesta solo at 2:18, float even higher up into an ethereal realm with the combination of organ and choir in The Darkness is No Darkness by lesser-known English composer Judith Bingham, who turns 69 today, and who was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2020.

Next, how about a shock to the system? Lalo Schifrin’s “Theme from Mission: Impossible” ought to do the trick. You likely know the classic opening material, but stick around at least until 1:19 to hear the excellent keyboard solo.

We’ll conclude with something that retains the energetic quality of that tune but that also transports us into more solemn air: the rhythmically driving opening to the Study for String Orchestra by Moravian-Jewish composer Pavel Haas (born on this date in 1899), who wrote the piece while imprisoned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in the early 1940s. It was premiered there under the baton of Czech conductor Karel Ančerl, and was reconstructed after Ančerl found the parts after the liberation of the camp. (Both musicians were among 18,000 prisoners transferred to Auschwitz in 1944; Ančerl survived, but Haas did not.)

Nothing can capture the horror of that event, but for something at least musically appropriate, listen to the most deeply reflective section of this piece, the slow section beginning at 4:02.

Diary Update: June 19

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The winners of the Stroud Classical Guitar Competition were announced on Friday evening:

1st Place — Jack Davisson, Palo Alto, CA. 2nd Place — Eric Wang, San Jose, CA. 3rd Place — Ethan Boyers, Santa Rosa, CA. 4th Place — Patricia Hernandez, Miami, FL.

Watch the final round video and announcement here.

DIARY: Weekend, June 18-20, 2021

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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.

 

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