by Daniel Hathaway
VIRTU(AL)OSO FINALS BEGIN TODAY:
Tune in tonight at 7 for the first of two final rounds in Piano Cleveland’s all-online 2020 Virtu(al)oso competition. Tamila Salimdjanova, Arseniy Gusev and Madoka Fukami perform 30-35 minute solo programs. Click here at start time.
GIDDENS NAMED SILKROAD ARTISTIC DIRECTOR:
Rhiannon Giddens has been named artistic director of Silkroad, founded by Yo-Yo Ma in 1998. Read the New York Times article here. Giddens graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory program in 2000, and was profiled in an article by Erich Burnett when she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017.
INTERESTING READS:
In an Early Music America article, Natasha Roule relates the story of a 17th-century French opera company in Lyon that survived plague, revolt, and bankruptcy, an experience that may have lessons for today’s organizations.
Following up on news of the death of Leon Fleisher, Olivia Giovetti considers the difficulties the pianist experienced along with his triumphs. Read her article, “A Coda for Leon Fleisher,” in VAN Magazine here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Paraguayan composer-guitarist Augustín Barrios Mangoré died on this date in 1944 in El Salvador, where he had been invited to settle in 1939 by El Salvador’s president. Composer of some 300 songs and a vast quantity of solo guitar music that drew heavily on the folk music of Paraguay.
Barrios Mangoré’s music will be the subject of a Cleveland Classical Guitar Society International Series concert by Berta Rojas and friends to be streamed online on August 15. In the meantime, listen here to 3-½ hours’ worth of historical recordings by the composer-guitarist, who was one of the first classical guitarists to preserve their performances for posterity.