by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:
Today, Apollo’s Fire debuts its “Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain” HD video, recorded last season at the Cleveland Museum of Art (read our review of the previously released audio CD here). The show replaces the in-person performances that Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra had originally planned for December.
The Cleveland Orchestra has just announced a special online feature with the Orchestra Chorus. Home For the Holidays is “a heartwarming and festive visual album of seasonal music from the past and present, filled with imagery from ‘Cleveland’s most loved holiday tradition.’” Watch for free on the Adella platform.
And the Cleveland Chamber Music Society has just posted the latest episode in its Front Row series in collaboration with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Violinist Cho-Liang Lin joins pianist Jon Kimura Parker, violinist Erin Keefe, violists Hsin-Yun Huang and Paul Neubauer, and cellists Dmitri Atapine and Colin Carr in music by Foss, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky. Watch here through December 22.
Akron’s Summit Choral Society goes online with its annual Candlelight Concert, and the Western Reserve Chorale releases its third holiday program featuring Christmas music from its archives. Details in the Concert Listings.
Among today’s interesting events on the national scene: Johannes Vogel conducts Mahler’s reorchestration of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony from Synchron Stage, Vienna (also available on December 19 and 20, tickets here), San Francisco’s Old First Concerts feature pianist Daniel Glover in “Symphonies and Concertos without Orchestra (a Covid Compromise)” including works by Clementi, Beethoven-Alkan, Corigliano, and Liszt (connect here with a donation), and the Library of Congress presents the latest in its 80-year tradition of Stradivari Anniversary Concerts (link here).
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Did we just mention the Stradivari Anniversary? On this date in 1737, Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona, having crafted some 1,100 instruments — mostly violins, but also violas, cellos, harps, guitars and mandolins, of which some 650 survive today. That includes instruments in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, which regularly make appearances in concerts. View a fascinating list of Stradivari’s surviving instruments, their owners, and lendees here.
There’s a mystique about the stringed instruments that came out of the ateliers of the great 17th and 18th century Italian makers in Cremona. Multiple explanations have been put forward about what makes them stand head and shoulders above those of other makers (watch The Secret of the Violin here), although there are performers who debunk their superiority over later instruments.
Strads are priceless these days. Many are owned by hedge funds and put out on long-term loans to performers, or are held in museums or libraries where violinists are hired to play them regularly to keep their sound alive. That hasn’t prevented artists from leaving their instruments in taxicabs (as did cellist Yo Yo Ma and violinist Philippe Quin in New York) or in the luggage rack of a train (as did an unnamed violinist in Germany). All were happily returned within a few hours. Other instruments have simply been stolen, as in the case of Roman Totenberg’s fiddle, which disappeared from his office at the Longy School of Music in 1980 only to be recovered 35 years later.
While waiting for Strad owner James Ehnes to complete his Beethoven cycle in May of 2021, visit the Cleveland Chamber Music Society’s “Safe at Home” page to enjoy the sound of a Stradivari instrument in the hands of a master.
Back home in the U.S., today marks the anniversaries of a number of American composers: the birth of Edward MacDowell in 1860, the death of Louis Moreau Gottschalk in 1969, the death of Horatio Parker in 1919, the birth of Bang-On-a-Can founder Julia Wolfe in 1958, and the death of Daniel Pinkham in 2006.
And on a seasonal note, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker made its debut in St. Petersburg, Russia, on this date in 1892. Only 74 years later, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas made its first appearance on CBS TV, featuring the voice of Boris Karloff. Classics both of them.