by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

English composer Frederick Delius died on this date in 1934 in Grez-sur-Loing, near Paris, blind and paralyzed by syphilis. His music, a London Times critic wrote, “belongs to no school, follows no tradition and is like no other composer in the form, content or style of his music,” although other commentators have noted the influence of Debussy, Wagner and African American music — which Delius heard in England by the touring Fisk Jubilee Singers and on Florida plantations where he was sent by his father to manage a citrus grove.

Cleveland hasn’t heard much of Delius’ music live, though British conductors like Bramwell Tovey and Andrew Davis have brought his music along to their Cleveland Orchestra appearances, and a smattering of his smaller pieces have been played by university and avocational orchestras. Here’s a tiny piece, the “Serenade” from Delius’ incidental music to the play Hassan with violinist Rafel Druian and the Cleveland Sinfonietta, led by Louis Lane. And here’s a seasonally appropriate work, Song for Summer, performed by the London Symphony under Sir John Barbirolli (you can follow along with the score).

And on June 10, 1911, harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick was born in Leominster, Massachusetts. One of the early champions of the instrument, he gave his first recital while studying art history at Harvard in 1930, and went on to work with Nadia Boulanger and Wanda Landowska in Paris. While serving as a professor at Yale from 1940-1976, he wrote a biography of Domenico Scarlatti and devised a chronology of his harpsichord works, which are identified by their “K” numbers. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY ON THE WEB:

The new daily Wigmore Hall live streams from London continue with a lunchtime recital by violinist Hyeyoon Park and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor (no audience present, and available on-demand), Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra features a Mozart piano concerto with Leif Ove Andsnes, a live feed from Carnegie Hall is hosted by pianist Emanuel Ax, a conversation from the Kennedy Center is emceed by soprano Renée Fleming, and the MET Opera’s nightly HD re-broadcast is a double bill of Tchaikovsky and Bartók. Details in the Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Danish composer Carl Nielsen was born on this date in 1865 in Norre-Lyndelse. The BBC “Workshop” Series chronicled his life and career in the 1970s in Espansiva: a Portrait, leading one viewer to write, “The BBC used to do this kind of thing very well back in the day, and since there weren’t many channels to choose from, many people had to learn new things despite themselves.”

Watch that documentary here, and enjoy a memorized and choreographed performance of his woodwind quintet by the Denmark-based Carion Quintet (who played on the Latvian Concert Association series in Cleveland in February). And here’s a video of his Flute Concerto from a CIM Master’s Degree recital in November, 2018. Moisés López-Ruiz is the soloist, and Yohan Kwon conducts the CIM Orchestra. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

ChamberFest Cleveland and WCLV are collaborating on a series of broadcasts featuring performances from ChamberFest’s 2012-2019 seasons, including three Wednesday programs on WCLV’s Ovations Series (June 24, August 5 and August 12), and a series of Sunday evening programs of highlights from concerts, many being broadcast for the first time. See tomorrow’s edition for a detailed schedule.

Oberlin Conservatory has announced a virtual memorial service for the late David Boe, Professor of Organ and former Dean of the Conservatory. The event on June 14 at 4:00 pm will be live streamed from Fairchild Chapel. Details here.

Today is the deadline for registration for the online Oberlin Summer Organ Academy 2020, which includes Zoom lessons, organ demos, harpsichord and clavichord demos, classes on organ design and constructions, organ literature, sacred music, and a live-streamed faculty concert. The Academy is accepting all levels of instruction, ages middle school and up (adults too). Information here.

In response to recent events, on New Music Box, Will Robin asks the question, “How can Artists Respond to Injustice?” and collects thoughts from seven musicians. Read the article here.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE TODAY:

Who were those masked men? Classical guitarists Jason Vieaux and Colin Davin rehearse a duet they’ll play at the end of their live-streamed concert, which starts at 2:00 pm on Saturday. This would have been the weekend of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival on which Vieaux and Davin are normally featured performers. Click here to purchase $10 tickets and follow the link to their real-time performances in the showroom of Guitars International.

Festival artistic director Armin Kelly has also posted a series of videos of performances by Czech classical guitarist Petra Poláčková, “a particularly popular regular at our Festival who was scheduled to join us once again this June. These videos were shot within the last fourteen months at various times and underwritten by my company, Guitars International.” Watch the performances here.

Check our Concert Listings for today’s events: a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic Octet, the MET’s HD rebroadcast of Verdi’s Otello, and The Cleveland Orchestra’s rebroadcast of Haydn and Shostakovich from January 2005. On Sunday, highlights include the Florida Grand Opera’s Nabucco, a George Szell birthday performance of Beethoven’s  Missa Solemnis, Sitdown with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, and the MET Opera’s Thaïs. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE TODAY:

Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra will live stream a performance today at 2:15 pm EDT from its customary venue, but the Concertgebouw has reconfigured its floor area so the musicians can perform with the recommended physical distancing — and without an audience present. Watch a clip from a rehearsal of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 under Gustavo Gimeno here, and click here at concert time for the life stream. [Note: the information we received from another listing was incorrect. This concert actually takes place on Friday, June 5 at 2:15. We regret the error.]

Today at 1:00 pm on IDAGIOLive, baritone Thomas Hampson hosts a conversation with clarinetist Anthony McGill, and soprano Julia Bullock, “The Arts + Artists Answer Racial Unrest: Enough is Enough.” Hampson says “We will talk about race relations in the US and beyond, and what we in the arts world can do to inspire meaningful change. Click here at start time.

Tonight at 7:30 pm, the latest episode of Oberlin Stage Left features the Oberlin Conservatory’s TIMARA Program (Technology in Music and Related Arts), which is marking its 50th anniversary. Professors Peter Swendsen, Tom Lopez, and Aurie Hsu will do a show-and-tell about the program and talk about combining electroacoustic composition with dance. Watch here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

REMEMBERING FLORENCE PRICE:

On this date in 1953, African American composer Florence Price died in Chicago at the age of 69, leaving behind a legacy of some 300 works. Dozens of her scores escaped destruction when they were discovered in 2009 in an abandoned house in St. Anne, IL.

Born in 1887, Price grew up as Florence Beatrice Smith in the integrated city of Little Rock, Arkansas, just a few houses away from William Grant Still. She attended the New England Conservatory in Boston, originally enrolling as a piano and organ major, but she later convinced conservatory director George Whitefield Chadwick to take her on as a composition student.

Returning to Little Rock, she married attorney Thomas J. Price in 1912, and after racial tensions flared up in her hometown, moved to Chicago with her husband and two daughters in 1927. There, she won the Wanamaker Competition for her first symphony, which was debuted by Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony in 1933 on a concert of music by black composers during the World’s Fair.

Price’s life and career have been captured in The Caged Bird, a 57-minute documentary produced in 2015 by the University of Arkansas. “Price’s remarkable achievements during the racist ‘Jim Crow’ era were a testament to her gifts. This is the inspiring story of one woman’s triumph over prejudice and preconceptions.” Watch a 15-minute excerpt here (a DVD is available for purchase). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

AFTER A WEEKEND OF VIOLENCE — PART TWO:

Continuing yesterday’s theme, and mindful of the challenge to the music industry by the organizers of Blackout Tuesday to set aside normal work today “for an honest, reflective, and productive conversation about what actions we need to collectively take to support the Black, community,” we can think of no more eloquent words to recommend than those of Wynton Marsalis in his long Facebook post from May 30.

“This is my response to injustice in our country and the world across the last forty years,” he writes at the end, sharing album covers of his compositions that draw on African American music and stories. Listen here to his 1997 oratorio Blood on the Fields, that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

We will resume posting and send our weekly newsletter on Wednesday.

by Daniel Hathaway

AFTER A WEEKEND OF VIOLENCE:

This is a day to push COVID-19 concerns to the side and consider our institutional and individual responses to the tragic death of George Floyd last week in Minneapolis and the chaos that event inspired across the nation over the weekend. Here are a few musical selections to focus our thoughts, with more to come.

The New England Conservatory Music Hub offered a song by Cleveland composer H. Leslie Adams on May 29:

Today we welcome #NECHealingMusic from alumna Denyce Graves and Collaborative Piano chair Cameron Stowe, offering this moving rendition of “Prayer” by H. Leslie Adams, with text by Langston Hughes, part of Adams’s song cycle Nightsongs: Six Afro-American Songs.

“I believe that it’s a moment for us to be quiet, to be still, and to step aside and let the divine intelligence come in and do its work. I’ve always believed that things don’t happen to us; they happen for us, and I believe that this is a moment that will make us all better human beings and create a better world.” — Denyce Graves ’88, ’14 hon. DM [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

WEEKEND ALMANAC

There are a number of musical milestones to reflect upon this weekend.

American classical and jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman was born in Chicago on May 30, 1909. Jazz at Lincoln Center gave a full-length family concert on November 17, 2017, “Who is Benny Goodman.” Watch that here, and hear Goodman play Mozart’s concerto and quintet on an unidentified recording here. The clarinetist was a featured performer on the inaugural season of the Blossom Music Festival.

Dutch harpsichordist, organist, teacher, and conductor Gustav Leonhardt was born in Graveland on May 30, 1928. A documentary, Reiziger in Muziek details his career (it’s in Dutch, but there are subtitles that quit part way through. Watch here). There are few videos of the master in action, but here’s an interesting excerpt from J.S. Bach’s Cantata 42 with Leonhardt conducting Musica Antiqua Amsterdam in 1977 with a young Ton Koopman at the harpsichord.

The elaborate documentary film Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach from 1968 cast the slim and patrician Gustav Leonhardt in the role of the famously well-nourished Johann Sebastian Bach.

On one of Leonhardt’s visits to the Cleveland Museum of Art that coincided with the recent installation of a Dutch organ in Trinity Cathedral, I had the privilege of being an audience of one while he improvised for an hour on the 1977 Flentrop organ. Like Bach, Leonhardt may have been even more impressive as an improviser than an interpreter. [Read more…]