by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S AGENDA:
First, the Holiday Concerts: The Akron Symphony’s Home for the Holidays starts at 7:30 pm in E.J. Thomas Hall, and at the same hour, Nic McGegan leads Apollo’s Fire in Handel’s Messiah at St. Paul’s in Cleveland Heights, the Baldwin-Wallace Men’s Chorus sings at St. Sebastian in Akron, The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus perform at Severance Music Center, and pianist & vocalist Jim Brickman joins the Youngstown Symphony at Powers Auditorium.
Meanwhile, at 7:30 pm, Oberlin’s Fridays@Finney welcomes guest conductor and alum Robert Spano and piano professor Peter Takác for an all-Beethoven concert with the Oberlin Orchestra, and No Exit performs music from The Collective in Ludwig Recital Hall at Kent State University. And if you had planned to hear countertenor Anthony Roth Costanza and pianist Bryan Wagorn (pictured) in recital on the Cleveland Art Song Festival’s Winter Mini-festival tonight at 8, head over to Drinko Hall at Cleveland State University, where the event has been moved.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today’s honors list tilts toward Francophones, including the birth anniversaries of composers César Franck (1822 in Liége — he was actually a Belgian by birth) and Olivier Messiaen (1908 in Avignon).
Franck’s parents vied with Mozart’s in supplying their offspring with a rich choice of baptismal names. In Franck’s case, César-Auguste Jean-Guillaume Hubert, and in Mozart’s, Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus. Imagine what their mothers yelled out to call them in for tongue-lashings!
We’ll ignore Franck’s organ music — he wrote a lot of it — and note that his only Symphony received a rare performance by The Cleveland Orchestra on last month. Brooding and dark when not triumphant, the piece seems only to inspire strong emotional responses both plus and minus. If you missed it, click here to watch a performance by Kurt Mazur and the New York Philharmonic.
One of Franck’s most-performed chamber works is the Violin Sonata. I have two Cleveland performances to recommend: one from a CIM faculty recital by Ivan Ženaty and Antonio Pompa-Baldi in 2018, and another from a ChamberFest Cleveland concert by rising stars Nathan Meltzer and Evren Ozel.
And the Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble played Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques last week on a Fridays@Finney performance. Ornithology meets theology in this riveting work that won the Cleveland Chamber Symphony an Emmy Award for a performance led by John McLaughlin Williams with pianist Angelin Chang. Listen here.
Continuing with the French theme, on this date in 1854, Hector Berlioz’ only oratorio, l’Enfance du Christ, received its first performance in Paris. A luminous account of the Birth of Christ that confronts anti-Semitic attitudes and ends with a gorgeous unaccompanied chorus, it’s a perfect piece to get to know during this season.
Click here to watch and listen to the “Shepherds’ Farewell” in a performance by Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony with the Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society from 1966 (memorable, not only because I sang in the chorus!) And click here for the charming trio for two flutes and harp with which the Egyptian Jewish family entertain Mary, Joseph, and Jesus when they welcome the Holy Family into their home.
