by Jarrett Hoffman

2021-2022 SEASON ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Cleveland Chamber Music Society will present a full season of eight live, in-person concerts in 2021-2022. The Imani Winds (pictured) will open the Tuesday evening series on October 5, followed by cellist Edgar Moreau and pianist Jérémie Moreau on October 26, the Cavani Quartet on December 7 (an episode in its “Beyond Beethoven” cycle), the Danish String Quartet on January 25, Cuarteto Casals on February 22, the Rosamunde String Quartet on March 15, tenor Lawrence Brownlee on April 26, and the Takács Quartet with cellist David Requiro on May 3. Performances will take place at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights with the exception of October 5 (Kulas Hall at CIM), and October 26 and April 26 (Maltz Performing Arts Center at Case).

Summit Choral Society’s 32nd season, titled “Forward,” reflects its return to live performances, although the organization notes that it is “proud to have provided in-person singing throughout the COVID19 pandemic with no instances of transmission.” Summit’s programs include the Metropolitan Chorus, which will give three concerts during the year in Akron’s St. Bernard Church and Greystone Hall, community sing sessions with the Akron City Gospel Singers, its extensive Children’s Choir Program, “Drumming,” a hybrid experience for high schoolers and young adults, the early childhood program “Sing With Me” for children up to 5 years of age and their caregivers, and its one-week Summer Music Camps for children of school age. Read a press release here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On the 173rd anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention — the first women’s rights convention in the U.S. — we’ll begin by celebrating an underrecognized female American composer and conductor.

Peggy Stuart Coolidge, born on this date in 1913 in Swampscott, Massachusetts, is known for her distinctly American compositional voice influenced by popular and folk music.

Despite that, she’s better known abroad. Significant performances overseas during her lifetime included a 1967 concert of American music in Tokyo (she was also received by the Crown Prince of Japan) and, in 1970, a program presented in the Soviet Union that was devoted entirely to her music — a first for any American composer. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

EVENTS THIS WEEKEND:

Ohio Light Opera is busy this weekend, with afternoon performances of Trial by Jury and The Fantasticks as well as an evening edition of “The Musical Magic of OLO.” All planned for the great outdoors, but with rain plans at the ready.

Online piano events include the beginning of the second round of the Cleveland International Piano Competition and the continuation of the Oberlin-Como Piano Festival (with an interview featuring conductor Robert Spano).

Encore Chamber Music Institute hosts its Blooming Artist Marathon online all afternoon and into the evening on Saturday.

And on the Blossom stage Sunday evening, vocalist Capathia Jenkins (pictured) opens that mythical volume, “The Great American Songbook,” joining The Cleveland Orchestra for American standards by Gershwin, Ellington, and others.

Details in our Concert Listings

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

A year ago today, July 17, we highlighted the birth in 1935 in Ames, Iowa of American composer Peter Schickele (whose alter ego was the fictional P.D.Q. Bach), and the death of French composer, conductor, and organist Gabriel Pierné in Ploujean, Brittany in 1937.

This weekend, we’ll celebrate the birth of British pianist, scholar, and composer Sir Donald Francis Tovey in Eaton (July 17, 1875), and mark the demise of American harpsichordist and pianist Rosalyn Tureck in New York City (July 17, 2003).

Tovey, who held a professorship in music at the University of Edinburgh from 1914, is best known for his scholarly writings about music — his Essays in Musical Analysis were published by Oxford in six volumes from 1935 to 1939. But he contributed some impressive works to the British canon of orchestral and chamber works as well. Based on those pieces and on his scholarly editions of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier and The Art of Fugue, Elgar is said to have recommended him for a knighthood in 1935.

Listen here to Tovey’s 1913 Symphony in D, Op. 32 performed by the Malmö Opera Orchestra under George Vass, and here to a scratchy archive recording by Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony of his Cello Concerto, Op. 40, dedicated to Pablo Casals, who is the soloist.

As part of his editorial work on Bach’s great fugal textbook, Tovey wrote a completion to Contrapunctus XVI, which he plays here on the piano.

And for a sample of Tovey’s chamber music, listen here and follow along with the score to his Op. 1 Piano Trio, which he dedicated to his mentor, Sir Hubert Parry.

Rosalyn Tureck’s early and lifelong advocacy of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach survived her training at the Juilliard School which she entered at the age of 16. She found the faculty unencouraging about her favorite composer, a situation that she also encountered elsewhere. In his New York Times obituary, Alan Kozin wrote,

When she entered the Naumburg Competition, she made it to the finals and presented an all-Bach program as her closing recital. As she told the story years later, the members of the jury said they could not give her the award “because they were sure that nobody could make a career in Bach.”

Well, she did, as you can learn from the video Rosalyn Tureck: Remembering a Legend, produced for what would have been her 100th birthday in 2014, and featuring a number of interviews with those who knew her best, including former Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor Michael Charry. Watch here.

There’s also a video of her all-Bach recital in the Great Hall of the Philharmonic in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1995 that includes the Capriccio on the Departure of a Beloved Brother, and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue.

by Mike Telin

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 7:00 pm it’s the Cleveland International Piano Competition Round 1, Session 5. Contestants perform their solo recitals of 20 minutes from around the world. Suah Ye (20, South Korea), Philipp Lynov (22, Russia), Clayton Stephenson (22, United States) and Arsenii Mun (21, Russia). Click here at start time to watch the free videos.

Want to hear the event with others? Pack a picnic and bring lawn chairs to watch performances under the stars on the big screen at the Beachwood Community Center, 25225 Fairmount Blvd., Beachwood.

Also at 7:00 pm is Day 3 of the Oberlin-Como Piano Festival: Master Classes and Interviews. The Marvel of the Baroque on the Pianoforte will feature an interview with William Grant Naboré and performances by Xiaoyu Liu, Leonardo Pierdomenico, Anastasia Vaorotnaya, and Daniela Jiménez Ochoa. The free event is part of Oberlin’s Stage Left series. View here at start time.

IN THE NEWS:

Tuesday Musical is offering a 50% discount on tickets for groups of 6 or more for the concert by Chanticleer (pictured) on Tuesday, July 27, 7:30 pm at Akron’s EJ Thomas Hall. Stay after and celebrate during an audience reception. This offer is only available by calling 330-761-3460 by July 22 at 5 pm — it is not available online. Single tickets can be purchased here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

July 15 presents a number of noteworthy events beginning with the death of Carl Czerny in 1857 at age 66 in Vienna. For those who only know the celebrated teacher as the person who wrote the many technical studies we all had to endure as piano students, one must remember that he was also a prolific composer  with over one thousand works — sonatas, chamber music, symphonies, and choral pieces — to his credit. Click here to listen to his Variations on a Theme by Rode, Op. 33 (“La ricordanza”) played by pianist Alexis Weissenberg.

Another passing of note is that of violinist Leopold Auer in 1930 at Loschwitz, near Dresden. While he was the dedicatee of many works during his lifetime, perhaps the best known is Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Although he initially regarded the work as unplayable and refused to give the concerto’s premiere, he later — after some re-editing of the solo part — became a champion of the piece.

July 15, 1933 saw the birth of English guitarist and lutenist Julian Bream in London. With a career that spanned over a half-century, Bream is credited with transforming the classical guitar — in the eyes of the public —  into an instrument worthy of being performed in the world’s great concert halls. The list of composers who dedicated pieces to Bream include Malcolm Arnold, Richard Rodney Bennett, Leo Brouwer, Hans Werner Henze, Toru Takemitsu, Michael Tippett, William Walton, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Benjamin Britten. Bream plays Britten’s Nocturnal here.

One year later, English composer Harrison Birtwistle was born in Accrington, Lancashire. His 1986 Earth Dances have been compared to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Christoph von Dohnányi recorded the work in 1996 with The Cleveland Orchestra for Decca (listen here), but there’s also a video of a performance by Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra led by Marcus Stenz.

1946 saw the birth of American singer Linda Ronstadt in Tucson, Arizona. She began her prolific career as a member of The Stone Poneys — Click here to listen to their 1967 hit Different Drum. Never content to be boxed into a genre, Ronsdadt would later star in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, first with the New York Shakespeare Company, and later on Broadway and in the 1983 film version — listen to Poor Wandering One here. She also toured with The Nelson Riddle Orchestra. She sings Falling in Love Again here.

We conclude today’s list with two local connections. The first is that of Swiss American composer Ernst Bloch, who died on this date in 1959 in Portland, Oregon. Bloch served as founding director of the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1920-1925 before moving on to the San Francisco Conservatory. Among Bloch’s music based on Jewish themes is his tone poem about King Solomon, Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque. Listen here to a live Blossom Festival performance in 1980 by cellist Janós Starker with The Cleveland Orchestra, led by Eduardo Mata.

And July 15 1988 saw Robert Shannon give the premiere of John Harbison’s Piano Sonata No. 1 In Memoriam Roger Sessions at the Dorothy Taubman Piano Institute in Amherst, MA. The sonata was written for Shannon, a long-time faculty member at the Oberlin Conservatory, and for Ursula Oppens and Alan Feinberg, on a consortium commission from the National Endowment for the Arts. Click here to listen to Shannon’s recording.

by Jarrett Hoffman

GUITAR SOCIETY NEWS:

As we wait for the organization’s final three Creative Fusion videos to emerge in the last week of July and first week of August, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society has made an announcement to tide us over: the lineup for this fall’s International Series, set to be presented in person.

The season opens with the free Showcase Concert on September 18 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center, featuring a triple billing of artists from around the region: the Gruca White Ensemble (guitarist Robert Gruca and flutist Linda White), guitarist Andy Poxon with violinist Jeanelle Brierley, and Cincinnati composer and guitarist Jeremy Collins.

That will be followed by solo recitals from Celil Refik Kaya (October 23) and Andrea González Caballero (November 20) at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights. Tickets for those two events are available here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Russian composer Anton Arensky, German flutist and composer Johann Quantz, and English composer and folksong collector George Butterworth turned up in the calendar last year on July 12. This year we’ll turn our attention to American clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, born on this date in 1942 in Omaha.

A two-time Grammy winner, Stoltzman has also achieved some important firsts among the woodwind family, and of his instrument in particular. He was the first wind player to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize, and he gave the first clarinet recitals in the history of Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. He’s also a rare breed as a solo clarinetist rather than an orchestral player.

Acclaimed in both the classical and jazz realms, for a long time Stoltzman struggled with being musically categorized. As he told Kathy Wilson of Cincinnati-based publication CityBeat in 2000, “When I was younger, RCA would say, ‘We have to figure out what bin you’re in.’”

Musicians who occupy multiple genres are often asked how they change gears when the time calls for it. “What I like to feel is that I don’t switch from a so-called Classical person to a Jazz person, but that I listen to what the composer is saying,” he told Wilson in that same interview.

On that occasion, Stoltzman was returning to Cincinnati, the city where he graduated high school (one of two significant regional connections — he’s also an Ohio State grad), to join the Cincinnati Symphony for Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, which moves from a smooth, elegant, and beautiful first movement to a jaunty, modernist, and jazz-influenced second, with a fascinating cadenza bridging the gap stylistically.

About that cadenza, he said, “…you turn around the corner, and that’s where Copland basically says, ‘Kick it up a notch.’ That changes how you’re going to play…how you’re going to use your tongue, your breath, your bravado.” Listening to the composer — and responding.

Click here to watch him perform that work with Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony in 1993, in a recording full of incredible playing, engaging videography, and old-fashioned hairdos. (The cadenza begins at 6:25.)

Chamber music is what won Stoltzman both of his Grammys — in 1983, Brahms’ Clarinet Sonatas with pianist Richard Goode (listen to the first movement of No. 2 here), and in 1996, the Clarinet Trios of Brahms, Beethoven, and Mozart with pianist Emanuel Ax and cellist Yo-Yo Ma (first movement of the Brahms here).

And for something jazzy, check out Chick Corea’s Marika Groove, written in 2012 for Stolzman and virtuoso marimbist Mika Yoshida (now his wife, Mika Stoltzman). In this live recording, they’re joined by drummer Steve Gadd, bassist Eddie Gomez, percussionist Duke Gadd, and guitarist John Tropea.

by Daniel Hathaway

THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:

On Saturday, Ohio Light Opera presents a cabaret of songs from musicals the company has produced since 1979 (outdoors in Wooster’s Public Square), Cleveland International Piano Competition releases the Round 1, Session 3 videos of performances by Vitaly Starikov (25, Russia), Anastasiya Magamedova (23, United States/Tajikistan), Ziyu Liu (22, China), Daria Parkhomenko (29, Russia), and Rafael Skorka (32, Israel), and Apollo’s Fire features violinists Olivier Brault, Alan Choo, and Emi Tanabe in showpieces by Telemann and J.S. Bach in Avon Lake.

On Sunday, Cleveland International Piano Competition contestants Bowen Li (24, China), Roman Lopatynskyi (27, Ukraine), Martín García García (24, Spain), Svetlana Andreeva (32, Russia), and Byeol Kim (31, South Korea) perform via video in Round 1, Session 4, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute wraps up its concert series in Gates Mills with a program sparked by young environmental activist Greta Thunberg, The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes guests — conductor Dame Jane Glover and pianist Conrad Tao (pictured) — in its second Blossom weekend, and two orchestras perform al fresco: the Suburban Symphony in Shaker Heights, and the Akron Symphony at Hale Farm.

Details in our Concert Listings.

Just a reminder that we’ll be posting mini-reviews of the piano competition rounds soon after each session in the special CIPC section of our front page, and that once the individual round videos have debuted, they’ll remain available for viewing on the PianoCleveland website.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

On this weekend’s list of commemorations: conductor Herbert Blomstedt (born on July 11, 1927), who will conduct Beethoven at Blossom on August 1, Jerry Herman (born on July 10, 1933), composer of such Broadway hits as Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage aux Folles, pianist Ferdinand Joseph Morton (a.k.a. Jelly Roll), who claimed to have invented jazz, a boast about which Gunther Schuller wrote there is “no proof to the contrary,” and Arthur Fiedler, longtime Boston Pops conductor (who died at the age of 84 on June 10, 1979). Here is some rare footage of the Boston Pops July 4, 1976 concert at the Esplanade that drew more than 600,000 people. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS AND UPDATES:

We’ve just received news of the death of Kathleen Shamp (pictured, right) on June 10 at the age of 93. The Wooster native served as music librarian at the Cleveland Public Library for 50 years (1950-2000), sang with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under George Szell and Robert Shaw (1954-1974), and served on the music staffs of Epworth-Euclid (now University Circle) United Methodist and Plymouth churches. A Memorial Service will be held at 11:00 am on Saturday, July 24 at the University Circle United Methodist Church, 1919 E. 107th Street. Read an obituary here.

Pianist Conrad Tao will replace Benjamin Grosvenor with Dame Jane Glover and The Cleveland Orchestra on Sunday evening, July 11 at Blossom, and the Mozart concerto has been changed to No. 23 in A, K. 488.

The Cleveland Philharmonic announces auditions for the new season under music director Victor Liva. Openings are available in all string sections as well as percussion and oboe. Details here.

The Cleveland Institute of Music has named Alison King as its first-ever Director of Digital Media. She comes to CIM from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she served as director of marketing and business development.

HAPPENING TODAY:

Round One, Session Two of the Cleveland International Piano Competition will be conducted via pre-recorded videos made from around the world. Tune in at 7:00 pm to hear Lucas Thomazinho (25, Brazil), Zhi Chao Juli Jia (29, China), Jiarui Cheng (22, China), and Yedam Kim (32, South Korea). It’s free.

The next-to-last ENCORE Chamber Music Institute Concert of the season features guitarist JIJI, with Jinjoo Cho, Sibbi Bernhardsson and Minhye Choi, violins, Stephen Wyrczynski, viola, and Max Geissler, cello in “Sparked by Frida [Kahlo].” Music by Albeniz,  Ponce, Isabella Leonarda, Villa-Lobos, Piazzolla, Frantz Casseus, Boccherini, and Roland Dyens. The in-person event begins at 7 pm in the Dodero Center for the Performing Arts at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills. [Read more…]

by Mike Telin

TODAY’S EVENTS:

At 7:00 pm, the Cleveland International Piano Competition gets underway with Round 1, Session 1. Four of the 26 contestants perform 20-minute solo recitals, pre-recorded from around the world. Today’s lineup: Lin Ye (28, China), Stefano Andreatta (29, Italy), Ying Li (23, China) & Honggi Kim (29, South Korea). Click here at start time. Free. Click here to read a preview article.

IN THE NEWS:

When Jeanne Lamon (pictured), founder and longtime artistic director of Tafelmusik, the Toronto Baroque orchestra, passed away on June 20 at the age of 71, she left the world with many exceptional recordings she had made with that stellar ensemble. Writing in the July 6 edition of San Francisco Classical Voice, Nicholas Jones has assembled an annotated playlist in tribute to the violinist who led the ensemble for 33 years. Click here to read “The Essential Jeanne Lamon.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1883, Australian American pianist, composer, and folk tune arranger Percy Grainger was born in Melbourne — he became a U.S. Citizen in 1919. Click here to listen to a selection of piano rolls that preserve his performances of his popular works. And in 1939, Spanish composer Fernando Sor died in Paris.

July 8 also marks the world debut of American avant-garde composer and inventor George Antheil in 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey. The young George began learning piano at the age of six. In 1916, he began studying composition with Constantine von Sternberg in Philadelphia. It was there that he was exposed to conceptual art, including Dadaism.  Anthiel would later become a pupil of Ernest Bloch. Although Bloch was initially skeptical of Antheil’s talents, calling his compositions “empty” and “pretentious,” his teacher was eventually won over by the young composer’s enthusiasm and energy.

During his lifetime, Antheil composed symphonies, chamber works, film music, and operas. In addition to music, his interests included endocrinology, criminal justice, and military history, and he was co-holder (with actress Hedy Lamarr) of a patent for what today is known as “spread-spectrum technology.”

An excellent writer, at the age of sixteen, Antheil wrote an essay for the Trenton High School Spector titled “A Madman’s Narrative,” which begins “I am not mad. They are all maniacs here; all but me. I, alone am sane; a great composer, yet they tell me I am also mad. Surely, sir, you will not make that mistake. See how calm I am, how measured I talk.” Click here to continue reading. He would pen many articles during his life including his autobiography, Bad Boy of Music.

Although Antheil composed over 300 works, his Ballet mécanique is the most famous. Written in 1924 the work is scored for 16 player pianos playing four separate parts, four bass drums, three xylophones, a tam-tam, seven electric bells, a siren, and three different-sized airplane propellers (high wood, low wood, and metal), as well as two human-played pianos. Click here to read more about that notorious composition and here for a performance by Ensemble Modern, led by Peter Rundel.