by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7 in Berea, Baldwin Wallace’s FOCUS Festival features the compositions of Omar Thomas, and CityMusic Cleveland continues its chamber music series, Landscape of Memory at Praxis FIber Workshop.
At 7:30 at Severance Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra plays the live underscore for a screening of the 1987 “fantasy comedy adventure film,” The Princess Bride, and Apollo’s Fire presents the second of four performances of “Sacred Mysteries: Biber’s Rosary Sonatas for Violin” featuring Alan Choo at St. Paul’s in Cleveland Hts.
Then at 8, Oberlin Conservatory hosts Part II of The Danenberg Honors Recital in Warner Concert Hall.
Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other performances.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1938, American composer John Corigliano (pictured above) was born in New York City, the son of John Sr., who served for 23 years as concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. Although he came late to composition, Corigliano was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, the Grawemeyer Award, and an Oscar.
Cleveland pianist and interviewer Zsolt Bognár featured Corigliano in Episode 60 of Living the Classical Life, and CityMusic Cleveland celebrated his 80th birthday in 2017 with Tessa Lark’s performances of his Red Violin Concerto, for which the composer was present (pictured left).
In 1980, the Metropolitan Opera commissioned a score from Corigliano — his first opera, and the MET’s first commission in 30 years. After a delay, Ghosts of Versailles finally had its sold-out debut in 1991. Watch the complete show here. Other compositions memorialized those who perished in the AIDS crisis (his Symphony No. 1, written in 1987 when he was composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony), and in the 9/11 attacks (his One Sweet Morning, 2011).
And on February 16, 1968, English-Canadian organist, choirmaster, and composer Healey Willan passed over the great divide in Toronto at the age of 87. While known principally for his Anglican Church music, Willan composed more than 800 works during his lifetime, in all forms from opera to band music. Watch a December 1966 Canadian television interview with him here (continued here).
Contemplating Willan’s life and career reminds us that many “consumers” of classical music encounter the genre from sources other than concert halls, and that young people brought up in British choral traditions have gone on to a variety of distinguished careers in music.
Here are three snippets of Healey Willan’s art: His motet, Rise up, my love, my fair one (sung by the Sydney Chamber Choir), an anthem, The Three Kings (performed by Tom Trenney and the choir of First-Pilgrim Church in Lincoln, Nebraska), and a hymn and improvisation recorded at the Church of St. Mary Magdalen in Toronto when Willan was 86. The tempo is stately.
