by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S FEATURED VIDEOS:
At 7:00 pm today, Baldwin Wallace launches its Virtual Bach Festival with “Motets and Suites,” five of J.S. Bach’s motets interleaved with movements from the solo cello suites played by Apollo’s Fire principal cello René Schiffer. Dirk Garner conducts BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir and the Festival Chamber Orchestra. Click here to go to the event page, where you can access the stream and view the concert program.
As the final entry in this week’s Earth Day observance, watch Act IV of Margaret Brouwer’s Voice of the Lake, with Domenico Boyagian leading Brouwer’s Blue Streak Ensemble and Chamber Singers, soloists Angela Mortellaro, soprano, Sarah Beaty, mezzo-soprano, Brian Skoog, tenor, and Bryant Bush, bass and the CIM Children’s Choir in Kulas Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music on October 19, 2018.
“Sunrise at the Lake. The tenor is walking on the beach. Everything is beautiful until he comes to the algae. At first he ignores it, but finally must come to terms with his feelings of revulsion for it. He hurries back to the good area of the beach where he finds the children and the others. They sing about how beautiful it is this morning, and their hope that the lake will remain this way. They resolve to clean up the lake.”
TODAY’S LIVE STREAMS:
At 12 Noon today, the National Orchestral Institute is sponsoring a live performance from Baltimore featuring members of the Stefanovic family — Oberlin second-year cellist Luka, his violist brother Sebastian, and father Ivan, who is associate principal second violin of the Baltimore Symphony. They’ll play Beethoven’s “Eyeglass” Duo and Dohnányi’s Serenade, Op. 101 with a Q&A to follow. Watch here.
And Oberlin (and University of Michigan) grad Andrew Lipian, who was recently featured in the countertenor role of Oberon in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Oberlin Opera Theater, is giving 15-minute Front Porch concerts on Fridays at 6:00 pm from his home in Elyria. “Today’s concert includes some requests, “Empio Diro Tu Sei” from Handel’s opera Giulio Cesare, as well as “Phantom of the Opera” and pieces with pianist Cheng Zhi” (who has pre-recorded tracks for Lipian’s live performance). Click here to watch.
TODAY ON THE WEB:
For details of today’s Cleveland Orchestra on The Radio, Joshua Bell’s archived performance at WQXR’s Greene Space, CIM’s Virtual Recital, and the MET Opera’s archived HD production of Verdi’s La traviata, check our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On April 24 of 1801, Joseph Haydn put the final touches on his oratorio The Seasons and performed it on the same day at the Schwartzenberg Palace in Vienna. Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Möst talks about the work here before conducting it at Severance Hall in April of 2013 (he led the work again in January of 2018). Listen to a full performance from the 2013 Salzburg Festival here. The late Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducts.
On this date in 1934, Chicago inventor Laurens Hammond patented his electric organ, little realizing that a later model, the Hammond B3 — when teamed up with Leslie speakers — would become a prominent voice in jazz. Click here to listen to a set by the young phenomenon Matthew Whitaker, who turned many heads at last summer’s Tri-C JazzFest. The performance is from the 2019 from Jazzahead! festival in Bremen, Germany.
And 20 years ago this week, flutist Claire Chase and her colleagues in the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble gave a concert of five world premieres led by Timothy Weiss in Warner Concert Hall that would inspire the creation of ICE, the International Contemporary Ensemble, a year later. Chase has recently unearthed an audio recording of the event. Listen here.
VIRTUAL TOUR OF MAHLER’S NEW YORK:
New York City is not a place to visit at the moment, but the New York Philharmonic’s digital archives will allow you to time travel back to the first decade of the twentieth century and take a virtual walking tour of the city at the time when Gustav Mahler served as music director of the orchestra. Step off here.