by Stephanie Manning

IN THE NEWS:

Violinist Jennifer Koh’s new album, Alone Together, is “a snapshot not just of the pandemic, but of the musical community right now,” friend and collaborator Missy Mazzoli said in a recent interview with NPR. Koh (pictured), who graduated from Oberlin, developed the project as a way to bring the musical community together after falling on hard times during the pandemic.

The violinist called the collaborative effort, which has been more than a year in the making, “one of the most beautiful experiences I’ve had.” The album includes 39 pieces from both renowned and emerging composers, all under five minutes long. Listen to the album here, and read the full article from NPR.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

As we celebrate the recent return of the Met Orchestra and Chorus to Lincoln Center, today we look back on the life of Rudolf Bing (pictured below), who died on this day in 1997. The famed general manager of the Metropolitan Opera oversaw the company’s move to Lincoln Center in 1963.

The “dapper and acerbic” Bing never shied away from conflict, even with international opera stars. In 1958, he canceled the contract of soprano Maria Callas over a disagreement, but spent years convincing her to come back. She eventually returned to the Met seven years later in the title role of Tosca, which would mark the end of the 42-year-old soprano’s stage career.

In a review for the performance, New York Times journalist Harold Schonberg described New York City’s excitement over the return of Callas (pictured below):

Hours before the curtain went up, the street outside the opera house looked like one of the circles of Dante’s Inferno. […] The picketers were being jostled by citizens pleading for tickets, at any price. Some bore plaintive signs: ‘A single ticket, please.’

Another person Bing clashed with was Cleveland Orchestra conductor George Szell, who left the Met in 1954 after an argument over his contract. Someone commented afterwards that Szell was his own worst enemy, to which Bing famously replied: “Not while I’m alive.”

Despite Bing’s tenuous relationships with some well-known figures, he was also renowned for integrating the Met’s artist roster and nurturing the careers of singers such as Leontyne Price, who became one of the first African American singers to perform for the company in a leading role. In 1950, while facing some backlash over announcing he would hire singers regardless of race, Bing wrote to a disgruntled subscriber: “I am afraid I cannot agree with you that as a matter of principle, Negro singers should be excluded. This is not what America and her allies have been fighting for.”

Jennifer Koh photo by Juergen Frank

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 8 in Evans Amphitheater in Cain Park, the BlueWater Brass Quintet (Neil Mueller and Larry Hermon, trumpets, Ken Wadenpfuhl, horn, David Mitchell, trombone, and Ken Heinlein, tuba) will close out the last month of summer with music by J.S. Bach, Victor Ewald, Paul Dukas, and George Gershwin, along with a selection of Civil War-era brass band music. It’s free.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two very different figures in Germanic classical music history were born on this date one year apart: Albert Riemenschneider in Berea, Ohio in 1878, and Alma Schindler Mahler-Werfel in Vienna, Austria in 1879.

Riemenschneider’s father was president of German Wallace College, which later became Baldwin-Wallace College, then Baldwin Wallace University (dropping a hyphen on the way). Albert was offered the directorship of the music department in 1898 while still an undergraduate, and went on to found the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival in 1932, modeled after the one in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That became a Riemenschneider family enterprise with the agenda of allowing students to participate in each of J.S. Bach’s four great choral works — the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Mass in b-minor, and the Christmas Oratorio — during their undergraduate years.

His most well-known contribution to Bach studies was his publication of the 371 Harmonized Chorales in 1941 (along with 69 chorales with figured bass), a collection that had previously been published by Bach’s sons and others, but which has remained in publication and popularity.

Riemenschneider’s wife, Selma, was instrumental in founding the Baldwin Wallace Bach Institute with her 1951 gift of Albert’s books and manuscripts to the College (he died in 1940).

Tom Riemenschneider and Laura Kenelly considered his legacy in a paper on the 75th anniversary of the Festival. Click here to watch a video featuring the 2016 Matthew-Passion performance with Rufus Müller as Evangelist, Dashon Burton as Christus, and soloists Yulia Van Doren, Luthien Brackett, Matthew Anderson, and Jason Steigerwalt, with Dirk Garner conducting.

Alma Mahler was one of the truly liberated women of the early years of the 20th century, having become notorious for her serial marriages (Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius, Franz Werfel) and numerous interlocking affairs. She abandoned composing at Gustav’s insistence (he later relented), but her music, mainly Lieder, makes for interesting listening. Click here for a selection performed by soprano Charlotte Margiono and members of the Brabant Orchestra.

But her racy emotional life eclipsed everything else. Here’s a rare, brief interview. And Harvard math instructor and witty cabaret performer Tom Lehrer had a field day with her story in his song Alma:

Her lovers were many and varied

From the day she began her beguine

There were three famous ones whom she married

And God knows how many between

Alma, tell us

All modern women are jealous

Which of your magical wands

Got you Gustav and Walter and Franz?

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Cleveland Orchestra concerts at Blossom this summer have normally been scheduled for Sunday evenings, but one exception is tonight’s performance featuring pianist Jonathan Biss in Caroline Shaw’s Watermark (read a preview here). Also on tap, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and Elgar’s Enigma Variations, with associate conductor Vinay Parameswarn on the podium, replacing Elim Chan, a victim of pandemic travel complications.

Also on for Saturday: Cleveland Opera Theater’s annual Opera for All concert returns to the Dunham Tavern Museum.

Sunday is packed with mostly outdoor events: Tuesday Musical’s al Fresco Passport series (two concerts featuring Opus 216 in fiddle music at Akron’s historic Barder House), Canton Symphony musicians popping up at the Beach Creek Botanical Garden in Alliance, a University of Akron faculty recital by clarinetist Stanislav Golovin, a Stars in the Classics Garden Concert in Orange Village, the Cavani Quartet with the Amici String Quartet on Tremont’s Arts in August Festival, and at Cain Park, the world premiere of Caliban Ascendant, a new ballet with music by Ty Alan Emerson choreographed by Bill Wade for Inlet Dance Theatre and performed — along with other works — by Cleveland Chamber Collective (rehearsal photo above). Read a preview article here.

For details, check our Concert Listings.

ONLINE SATURDAY:

Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year Festival returns for a second day of online performances by the world-class ensembles nominated for the magazine’s 2021 Orchestra of the Year Award — including The Cleveland Orchestra. Today’s program begins at 2 pm Eastern time, and will be available to watch for 24 hours on the British magazine’s website.

Saturday’s 2 pm lineup  includes music by Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Shostakovich, Florence Price, Handel, Bach, Vivaldi and Smetana performed by Paavo Järvi and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Santtu Matias-Rouvali with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Franz Welser-Möst with the Cleveland Orchestra, Jakub Hrůša with Bamberger Symphoniker, and Richard Egarr with the Academy of Ancient Music.

INTERESTING READ:

In the Diary for Tuesday, August 17, we relinked to video interviews we conducted eight years ago with Colin Davin from Kabul, where the classical guitarist was serving as guest teacher at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (click here to watch). Now, the BBC considers the future of the school in an article by Tiffany Wertheimer. Read Afghan music school falls silent under Taliban rule here.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC

Colorado’s Aspen Music Festival and School was founded on August 28, 1949 as a two-week event celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of German social philosopher and dramatist Johann Wolgang von Goethe, who entered the world on August 28, 1749 in Frankfurt.

Watch A Bridge to Beethoven, a live performance by violinist Jennifer Koh and pianist Shai Wosner from the 2015 Festival, and, from the Aspen School, a faculty-student showcase led by oboist Elaine Douvas.

Goethe’s most celebrated work is his tragic play, Faust, which became a German cultural monument, and whose mystical final lines have inspired settings by Schumann (Scenes from Goethe’s Faust), Liszt (Faust Symphony), and Mahler (Symphony No. 8).

And August 29, 1952, saw the premiere by pianist David Tudor in Woodstock, Vermont of one of the most controversial — and misunderstood — works of the 20th century: John Cage’s 4’33.” Usually characterized as four and a half minutes of silence, Cage actually intended the three-movement piece to allow listeners to tune in to the ambient sounds around them.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Indoors this evening, Broadview Heights Baptist Church presents its Serenity Chamber Players with pianist Stephen Muzzi in excerpts by Beethoven and Brahms at 6:00 pm.

Outside, Tremont’s Arts in August brings Ashtabula’s Erie Heights Brass Band Sextet (pictured) to Lincoln Park for a wide-ranging program at 7:00 pm.

And Online, No Exit New Music Ensemble spotlights two of its musicians in a 7:00 pm program that will take just about 20 minutes to watch. Pianist Nicholas Underill will play Béla Bartók’s Sonata, and violinist Mari Sato will play Adam Robert’s 2008 solo piece Sinews.

Details in our Concert Listings.

Also online today: Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year Festival returns for two days of online performances from the world-class ensembles nominated for the magazine’s 2021 Orchestra of the Year Award — including The Cleveland Orchestra. Each concert begins at 2 pm Eastern time on Friday and Saturday, and will be available to watch for 24 hours on the British magazine’s website.

NEWS BRIEFS

The Music Critics Association of North America has announced that Du Yun and Raven Chacon’s Sweet Land has won its fifth annual award for Best New Opera, to be presented next month at MCANA’s annual meeting in Detroit. Produced by The Industry, the experimental Los Angeles company founded by Yuval Sharon, the opera premiered in February 2020 and had a brief run until the pandemic shut down performances the next month. Read the press release here.

Apollo’s Fire announced today that proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 or proof of a negative PCR test within 72 hours of concert dates (or of an antigen text within six hours of concert time) will be required for admission to each of its events, in accordance with protocols rapidly being adopted by U.S. arts organizations that will remain in effect through December, 2021. Additionally, masks will be mandatory. Five of the seven programs this season will be available on the Orchestra’s Worldwide Watch-at-Home Virtual Series for patrons who prefer not to attend in person.

TODAY’S ALMANAC

English composer Eric Coates, born on this date in 1886 in Nottinghamshire (he died in Chichester in 1957) was both celebrated and denigrated during his career as a creator of “light music.”

Coates and his music attracted a certain amount of snobbery: The Times characterised his music as “fundamentally commonplace…but well written, easy on the ear and lightly sentimental…superficial but sincere.”  In its obituary notice, The Manchester Guardian took issue with such a dismissal, and preferred the French attitude of cherishing petits-maîtres for what they were rather than condemning them for what they were not: “better to write second-class masterpieces than fail to be a second Beethoven.” One of Coates’s most important musical gifts was the ability to write memorable tunes — “a genuine lyrical impulse,” as The Manchester Guardian put it. On first meeting him Dame Ethel Smyth said, “You are the man who writes tunes,” and asked him how he did it.

(Speaking of snobbery, that paragraph appears in Coates’ Wikipedia article, a source that many treat with general suspicion, but it’s pretty obvious when the anonymous authors are demonstrating respectable scholarship.)

Click here to listen to Eric Coates’ London Suite (London Everyday) played by Guilhem Boisson and Orchestra Symphonique Opus 31, a French amateur ensemble based in Toulouse. The listener comments are worth reading.

Two other composers born on this date whose music could fall into the “light” category are Rayburn Wright (1922) and James Christensen (1935). Wright was professor of jazz studies and contemporary media at the Eastman School, and Christensen was associated with the Walt Disney empire for most of his career. Click here to hear Rayburn’s sketch, Eastman Arrangers Holiday, and here to enjoy Christensen’s Tribute to Elvis.

Also among the August 27 births, two relatively obscure figures: English composer Herbert Menges (1902), who wrote incidental music to all of Shakespeare’s plays, and Stanley Hollingsworth (1924), whose Piano Concerto was premiered in 1980 by Neville Marriner and the Detroit Symphony.

by Mike Telin

HAPPENING TODAY:

​​At 6:30 pm, Stars in the Classics Summer Garden Concert features pianists Alexander Kostritsa, Cher Liu, Nikolay Pushkarev and John Simmons, violinists Maria Beyens, Victor Beyens, Maude Cloutier and Regina Laza, violist Brian Slawta, cellists Brendon Phelps and Mingyao Zhu, clarinetist Shihao Zhu, oboist Adrian Gonzalez, bassist Henry Samuels and vocalists Elizabeth Frey, and Isa Luchi. The program includes a selection of music by Russian, Czech, and Scandinavian composers. Socially distanced seating, prepackaged food and canned beverages included. Bring your own wine.. Private residence in Orange Village. Rain date: August 27. Tickets: $50 ($75 patron). RSVP here. If it’s sold out, there’s another performance on August 29.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year Festival returns this Friday and Saturday, bringing you online performances from the world-class ensembles nominated for the magazine’s 2021 Orchestra of the Year Award. Each concert begins at  2pm (EST), and will be available to watch for 24 hours on the Gramophone website, Facebook page and YouTube channel.

The Festival will feature performances by the Academy of Ancient Music, Accademia Bizantina, Bamberger Symphoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, The Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Philharmonia Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. Click here for more information.

Akron’s ArtsNow has released a new video that showcases Tuesday Musical’s Annual Scholarship Competition as part of the Akron Cultural Plan. Click here to listen to Oberlin graduate and Akron Symphony clarinetist Amer Hasan talk about how being a Tuesday Musical scholarship recipient has impacted his career in music.

And this morning Kirshbaum Associates announced that the Emerson String Quartet will retire at the end of summer 2023. Truly the end of an era.

TODAY’S ALMANAC: 

Today we wish Nico Muhly a happy 40th birthday. Born in Randolph, Vermont, the composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist grew up in Providence, Rhode Island where he sang in the choir at Grace Episcopal Church. After studying at the Wheeler School in Providence he went on to enroll in the dual-degree program at Columbia University and the Juilliard School.

While at Juilliard, Muhly worked for composer Philip Glass, first as an archivist, and later as an editor, conductor, and keyboardist.

Muhly’s musical influences are diverse, ranging from the Anglican choral tradition to minimalism. He has written for and collaborated with artists including Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, James McAlister, Björk, the indie rock band Grizzly Bear, Antony and the Johnsons, and toured with Irish songwriter, actor, vocalist and guitarist Glen Hansard.

He has received commissions from The Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Tallis Scholars and St. John’s College, Cambridge. His more than 100 works for the concert stage include the operas, Two Boys and Marnie, both of which were staged by the Metropolitan Opera. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BITS:

There’s a podium change for The Cleveland Orchestra’s concert at Blossom on Saturday, August 28: the ensemble’s associate conductor, Vinay Parameswaren, will replace Elim Chan, who has experienced travel complications. The program, featuring pianist Jonathan Biss, remains the same.

The Akron Symphony will hold auditions for chorus members and paid section leaders at Faith Lutheran Church in Fairlawn on August 28 by appointment, beginning at 4:00 pm. Chris Albanese directs the chorus, which will perform Haydn’s The Creation and other works with the Orchestra this season. To schedule an audition, contact Brenda Justice, Coordinator of Choral Programs, by email.

The Canton Youth Symphonies have issued a last call for auditions for its three ensembles, led by music director Matthew Jenkins-Jaroszewicz and made up of students from six counties in Northeast Ohio. The sessions will take place from August 29 to September 1. Click here for details and signup information.

ONE YEAR LATER:

It’s informative to revisit the Diary for August 24, 2020, when the classical music world found itself heading into a new season with many unanswered questions. Even with the widespread availability of vaccines one year later, many of those questions remain as we approach 2021-2022. Here’s what we recommended as Interesting Reads then:

As some organizations begin taking exploratory steps to offer live performances once again, New York Times critic Anthony Tomassini writes about the difference between live and virtual concerts with reference to recitals of both types by pianist Conrad Tao. And his colleagues Joshua Barone and Zachary Woolfe reflect on their experience attending the same in-person concert after being deprived for nearly half a year: they heard the JACK Quartet playing in a New Jersey parking lot.

And as performing arts schools begin their fall semesters virtually or in-person, three Washington Post arts writers survey a number of officials — including Oberlin Conservatory Dean William Quillen — about the challenges ahead.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On August 24, 1924, American pianist Louis Teicher, one-half of the famous duo piano team of Ferrante and Teicher, was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The two musicians met at Juilliard, began playing together, and embarked on a very successful career playing lighter music for two pianists. Early adopters of the prepared piano, they introduced a variety of insertions and techniques that resulted in such dazzling performances as their version of this Mambo tune.

And on this date in 1985, American composer Paul Creston died at the age of 78 in a suburb of San Diego. Born in New York City in 1906 to Sicilian parents (his birth name was Giuseppe Guttoveggio), the largely self-taught composer wrote a sizeable catalogue of music including six symphonies as well as treatises on rhythm, meter, and harmony.

Click here to enjoy Creston’s Fantasy for Trombone and Piano played by the Cleveland Orchestra’s Rick Stout with pianist Christina Dahl, and here to watch Joseph Gramley and Clive Driskill-Smith, the percussion/organ duo who perform as Organized Rhythm, play his Meditation for Marimba and Organ in Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan.

And for today’s silly season, non-musical story, we turn back to August 24, 1967, when the Youth International Party, led by Abbie Hoffman, interrupted trading at the New York Stock Exchange by tossing dollar bills from the viewing gallery to the trading floor, where brokers stopped what they were doing and scrambled to grab them. Read about Hoffman’s initial foray into guerrilla theater here in the Smithsonian Magazine.