by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

We have just two anniversaries to mark today. 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. After a hiatus back in Switzerland, he helped found the Music Academy of the West, and taught in the summers at the University of California, Berkeley.

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. Or click here to listen to a January, 2019 performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music by Lydia Rhea, with pianist Evan Solomon.

Another CIM performance, this one by Cleveland Orchestra first assistant cello Richard Weiss, features the first of Bloch’s trio of solo suites, inspired by Bach and composed between 1955 and 1957. Click here to watch the video from September, 2009.

The second is that of English composer Harrison Birtwistle, born on this date in 1934 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.

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

In a normal summer, Ohio Light Opera and Kent Blossom Music Festival would be in full swing. In this abnormal season, both institutions are offering blasts from the past in place of live events. This afternoon’s OLO Virtual Summer Festival features the 2020 company in selections from Jacques Offenbach’s 1875 Voyage to the Moon, inspired by Jules Verne. Tonight, the third concert in Kent Blossom’s Virtual Music Festival features members of The Cleveland Orchestra, festival young artists, and Kent State faculty in music by Barber, Nicolas Roussakis, Jean-Michel Damase, Mendelssohn, Erwin Schulhoff, and Brahms.

Today’s Lunchtime Special from The Cleveland Orchestra includes Sibelius and Brahms, and tonight’s episode from the MET Opera Archives is a production of Puccini’s Turandot from 2009 led by Andris Nelsons. Check our Concert Listings for details. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS:

The Akron Symphony has announced the postponement of its previously announced season to 2021-2022. During 2020-2021, an Interlude Season of free events will feature the Orchestra’s musicians “performing live, small-ensemble experiences with a wide variety of community partners.” Read more here.

Following the conclusions of experts that “there is no safe way for singers to rehearse together until there is a COVID-19 vaccine and a 95% effective treatment in place,” Cleveland Chamber Choir will also move its 2020-2021 plans forward by a year. In the interim, the Choir will broadcast past performances on WCLV and plans a flexible sixth season of live or streamed performances, depending on changing circumstances. Read more here.

Episode 15 of Apollo’s Fire’s “Music for the Soul” features five of the Orchestra’s musicians in solo performances, including violinist Alan Choo, luternist and troubadour Brian Kay, violinist Carrie Krause, oboist Debra Nagy, and violinist Augusta McKay Lodge, as well as introducing Alan Choo’s Singaporian ensemble, Red Dot Baroque. Watch here.

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

WCLV and The Cleveland Orchestra offer a lunchtime concert of French music for Bastille Day, organist Matt Bickett plays music by African American composers on the organ at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, and the MET Opera Archives reaches into its treasure for a 1981 production of Verdi’s La Traviata. Details in our Concert Listings.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Who hasn’t amused themself — and hopefully their dining companions as well — by applying a moistened finger to the rim of a wine glass? In technical terms, you’re creating a hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica, a type of friction idiophone. Benjamin Franklin, fascinated by the sound, created a mechanical version he called the armonica, a large spinning drum of glass bowls, which he announced on this date in 1762.

Click here to watch Dennis James play Mozart’s Adagio for Glass Harmonica on the Ars Lyrica Houston concert series, and here to join Mister Rogers on his final visit to Negri’s Music Shop. He meets seasoned performer Dean Shostack, and tries his own classically-trained pianist’s hands at the instrument. (Yes, the video is a mirror image with the bass and treble ends of the instrument reversed!)

On July 13, 1951, composer Arnold Schoenberg died in Los Angeles — ironic because he was a triskaidekaphobic who was obsessed by the number 13. See below for the Opéra de Paris’ production of his unfinished work, Moses und Aron, and click here for a breezy introduction by Samuel Andreyev to Schoenberg’s fascinating progress as a composer.

One of his best-known works, the string sextet Verklärte Nacht, was performed on July 16, 2017 by Encore Chamber Music on its Sunday Unplugged series in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Watch the performance by violinists Jinjoo Cho and Nancy Zhou, violists Ettore Causa and Dimitri Murrath, and cellists Amit Even-Tov and Mindy Park here.

And on this date in 2013, former Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Lorin Maazel died at his Castleton Farms estate in Virginia. His appointment in Cleveland to follow George Szell was fraught with controversy. In The Cleveland Orchestra Story, Donald Rosenberg quotes then Plain Dealer critic Robert Finn in a neat summation of the issue: “Lorin Maazel is a strong personality. Where his ideas suit the music, they create real sparks. Where they do not, they become annoying mannerisms.” [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

THIS WEEKEND ONLINE AND ON THE RADIO:

It’s all nostalgia from the past this weekend, as organizations tap their archives for pre-pandemic performances, featuring singers with Northeast Ohio connections. Saturday’s streams and broadcasts come from Ohio Light Opera, the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society (a look back at educational projects), the MET Opera (Madama Butterfly starring Oberlin grad Elizabeth DeShong, left), and The Cleveland Orchestra performing Haydn’s Harmoniemesse.

Opera on Sunday includes Florida Grand Opera’s Eugene Onegin (starring CIM faculty member Dina Kuznetsova), and the MET’s Tristan and Isolde (featuring former Baldwin Wallace faculty member Jane Eaglen). The Cleveland Orchestra remembers Beethoven and Berg performances from 2010, and Best of ChamberFest Cleveland revisits Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G from June of 2014. Details here.

FEATURED VIDEO:

Violinist Ida Haendel died on July 1 in her 90’s in Florida, and was remembered in a New York Times obituary by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim published on July 8. Praised by the composer for her interpretation of the Sibelius concerto, she also championed works by Benjamin Britten and William Walton. Click here to watch her play the Sibelius with the Montréal Symphony in 1981.

INTERESTING READ:

Helmsing Associates has alerted us to a recent Wall Street Journal article by organist Paul Jacobs about the organ concertos of George Frideric Handel. Jacobs is featured in the third of the Cleveland Orchestra’s A New Century CDs in the world premiere recording of Okeanos, Bernd Richard Deutsch’s concerto for organ. Read Jacob’s thoughts on Handel here (WSJ subscribers can click through to the original article). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

In a conversation with Musical America’s Susan Elliott, Sphinx Organization President and Artistic Director Afa Dworkin characterizes the impact of the pandemic as simultaneously “abrupt, disturbing, and transformative.” Through its focus areas of education, artist development, performance, and leadership, Sphinx is “the core program for the creation of diversity in classical music. COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter Movement have only added urgency to its mission: transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts.” Listen here.

Beginning on July 13, Early Music America and Voices of Music will offer a five-part webinar series, “Creating and Sharing Video Online from Home.” The 45-minute sessions cover Recording at Home: the Basics (July 13), YouTube and Social Media for Musicians (July 15 & 17), Putting it all together: the inter-    connectedness of all things (July 20), and Video and Social Media for ensembles, orchestras, and organizations (July 22). Find more information and register here.

Viewers who have enjoyed streaming Hamilton may be interested in hearing what Harvard historian Annette Gordon-Reed has to say about the Broadway hip-hop phenomenon. Holder of endowed chairs in the History Department as well as at Harvard Law School, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Gordon-Reed told a student-sponsored event last week that she likes the show, but found it problematic in its portrayals of Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, the Founding Fathers, and the issue of slavery, adding, “Artists have the right to create, but historians have the right to critique.” Read a story here.

Singers everywhere are approaching the future of their art with trepidation, but especially those who sing in close proximity to each other in choirs. Read a story by Ysenda Maxtone-Graham in The Spectator about how the pandemic is threatening choirs in Britain.

FEATURED VIDEO:

In its series, LA Opera at Home, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who grew up in Youngstown, invites viewers inside his digs in Florida for an informal hour-long program featuring selections from every beginning vocal student’s bible, 24 Italian Songs. Watch here (start at 8:00, after Larry settles a few technical matters!) Myra Huang accompanies him remotely from New York. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

Chagrin Arts announces a free, live, open-air concert by the Callisto Quartet, formed at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2016, winners of the 2018 Fischoff Competition, and now the graduate quartet-in-residence at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston. The performance in Solon Community Park on Friday, July 17 at 7:00 will require face masks and promote social distancing.

Erik Mann, president of the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, has written to let us know about a new video, “Beyond Ferguson, based on a melody by Michael Brown. It’s one of the few social justice pieces for classical guitar. The video was premiered for the Guitar Foundation of America convention in June and at Station Hope, a social justice event here in Cleveland.” Mann also recommended an Ideastream radio interview the Society’s education director Brian Gaudino conducted with composer Thomas Flippin and CCGS alumna Alana Colvin, now at the Berklee School.

The Music Settlement’s Bop Stop has announced that its Ohio City space is now available for rental to private parties of up to 15 attendees, as well as for rehearsals and recording. Some outdoor live, public concerts and live streams are also in the works. Read more here.

TODAY ONLINE AND ON THE RADIO:

Thursday’s online and broadcast events include Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra (featuring Respighi’s Church Windows — it’s the composer’s birthday), selections from Patience on Ohio Light Opera’s Virtual Summer Festival, a ticketed program from the Caramoor Festival about Shirley Graham Du Bois’ opera Tom-Tom (see our article about Du Bois here), an Oberlin Stage Left episode featuring the Arts and Sciences Orchestra, and a 2013 production of Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini from the MET Opera Archives. Details in our Concert Listings. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

Tonight, the second episode in the Kent Blossom Virtual Music Festival revisits Kulas Guest Artist Jennifer Koh’s solo violin recital from June 28, 2017, when she played works by J.S. Bach, Missy Mazzoli, and Luciano Berio.

And WCLV’s Cleveland Ovations rewinds Cleveland Chamber Choir’s program from February and March. “We March On: Music of Social Justice,” led by Scott MacPherson, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings.

WCLV, 104.9 Ideastream, also serves up Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra, a program of Beethoven, Wagner and Schumann, while the MET Opera Archives unearths a production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte from April, 2014. Details on these programs are in the Concert Listings.

INTERESTING READS AND LISTENING:

In his New York Times article, “Lifting the Cone of Silence From Black Composers,” Columbia University Musicology Professor and composer George E. Lewis invites readers to “Listen to how artists have explored what it means — and could mean — to be American,” with musical examples by William Grant Still, Alvin Singleton, Tania Léon, Nathalie Joachim, Courtney Bryan, Thomas Wiggins, Wadada Leo Smith, Ornette Coleman, and Anthony Davis. Read and listen here.

Alarm Will Sound director Alan Pierson talks with the Paris Review about his adaptation of John Luther Adams’ Ten Thousand Birds for 26, staged at home by Pierson and Paul Melnikow “as a tribute to far away friends during a time of social distancing.” Click here to read the interview, and here to watch “Ten Thousand Birds / Ten Thousand Screens.” [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Composer and conductor Gustav Mahler was born on this date in Kalischt, Bohemia. Instead of remembering him with one of his enormous works, why not watch cellist Oliver Herbert and pianist Teddy Abrams play Abrams’ lovely arrangement of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 at WQXR New York’s Greene Space on June 3, 2019.

Conductor, composer, and double bass virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini left the world on this date in 1889. He took up the instrument that made him famous in order to win a scholarship to the Milan Conservatory, later endearing himself to opera patrons by playing fantasies on opera tunes from the stage at intermission of shows he conducted. Enjoy a rare performance of his Gran Duetto No. 1 played by Cleveland Orchestra principal Max Dimoff and his student Russell Thompson in 2013 at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

In 1897, composer and educator Quincy Porter was born on July 7 in New Haven, Connecticut, and later studied in his home town at Yale. He taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music twice with a sojourn in Italy in between, moving on to Vassar and the New England Conservatory before returning to Yale. Cleveland Orchestra member Eliesha Nelson performed his 1948 Viola Concerto on her all-Quincy Porter album in 2009. Listen to her performance here with John McLaughlin Williams and the Northwest Sinfonia, and click here to hear the violist and the conductor answer some questions.

Opera composer Gian-Carlo Menotti was born on July 6 in Cadegliano, Italy. His theater pieces are well-known, but not so often performed is his delightful fable, The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore for chorus, dancers and chamber ensemble. In the days when network television was interested in cultural programming, the piece was telecast in November of 1957. A more recent performance in February, 2019, combined The Chamber Orchestra of the Springs, Colorado Ballet Society, and the Colorado Vocal Arts Ensemble, conducted by Thomas Wilson.

And on this date in 1968, American composer and organist Leo Sowerby died in Port Clinton, Ohio while teaching at a summer choir camp. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

MUSIC FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY WEEKEND:

Saturday’s edition of WCLV’s Cleveland Orchestra on the Radio reaches into the ensemble’s archives for a 1976 Bicentennial concert, “The Sounds of America,” led by Lorin Maazel and featuring narrators Dorothy and Ruben Silver and baritone William Dempsey. And Ohio Light Opera continues its virtual summer festival on Saturday with a Fourth of July Celebration (check the Concert Listings for details).

Missing fireworks this year? We talked on Thursday about Frederick Fennell’s historic digital recording for Telarc in Severance Hall with the Cleveland Symphonic Winds. In addition to the Holst Suites and a J.S. Bach Fantasia, the eventual release included Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks. Listen to the entire album here (Handel begins at 27:22).

Or here’s a 2012 performance of the Fireworks Music from the BBC’s Proms at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Led by Hervé Niquet, Le Concert Spirituel performs on period instruments using Handel’s original specifications. Count all those oboes and bassoons!

To celebrate the contribution of one Black composer to the American canon, consider New York Times music critic Seth Colter Walls’ Independence Day weekend recommendation. William L. Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony was recorded by Leopold Stokowski in 1952, by Neeme Jarvi and the Detroit Symphony in the 1990s, and in June on the Naxos label by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony led by Arthur Fagen. Read Wells’ comments here.

ALSO ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES THIS WEEKEND:

The MET Opera streams Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (Saturday), Rossini’s La Donna del Lago (Sunday), and Puccini’s La Bohème (Monday). Sunday afternoon’s Cleveland Orchestra on the Radio features pianist Uri Caine in his arrangement of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, plus Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and Walter Piston’s Suite from The Incredible Flutist. The first episode of Best of ChamberFest Cleveland on WCLV includes performances of Haydn, Kodály, and Schoenfeld from 2014. And a CREDO Chamber Music faculty recital by cellist Dmitri Kousov and pianist Yulia Fedoseeva streams on Monday evening. Details here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1854, Czech composer Leoš Janáček was born in Hukvaldy. Though steeped in Moravian folklore, his strikingly original music continues to sound fresh and modern. ChamberFest Cleveland programmed his String Quartet No. 2 (“Intimate Letters”) during its 2016 season. Watch a performance in Mixon Hall at CIM with violinists Alexei Kenney and David Bowlin, violist Dimitry Murrath, and cellist Julie Albers.

Janáček’s Sinfonietta was most recently performed by Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra last January. Enjoy earlier interpretations led by George Szell (October, 1965) and Christoph von Dohnányi (September, 1988) here and here.

Music lovers of a certain age may recall hearing Deems Taylor’s intermission features on broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic, and others may recall his commentary as emcee for the 1940 version Walt Disney’s Fantasia (for which he helped choose musical selections). The writer, broadcaster, and music critic who died on this date in 1966, was also a composer whose operas were enormously popular for a time on the stage of the Met. Click here to listen to one of his most celebrated works, Through the Looking Glass, on subjects from Lewis Carroll, played by the Columbia Symphony under Howard Barlow in 1938.

And click here to enjoy Taylor’s analysis of Strauss’ tone poem Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.

TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:

Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony, Haydn’s “Military” Symphony, and a Johann Strauss Jr. Quadrille are on the menu for Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra on WCLV, and this evening, Ohio Light Opera veterans and current company members share messages and songs, while the MET Opera offers a 2011 production of Don Giovanni led by Fabio Luisi. Details here.

Want to go exploring on the web this weekend? Click here to consult Music America’s listing of classical music streams — both free and ticketed. [Read more…]