by Daniel Hathaway
No events are scheduled for today. Enjoy an interesting read and celebrate a classical music milestone from the past.
For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
The Cleveland Orchestra’s 45th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Concert, scheduled for January 19 at 7 pm at Severance Music center, will offer “a journey through the life of civil rights leader and author Coretta Scott King,” the wife of Dr. King, “an accomplished soprano and activist who used music to inspire, uplift, and mobilize people.” Free tickets will be available beginning at 10 AM on Saturday, January 4, with a limit of four per household. Learn more here.
INTERESTING READ:
Opera is for Everyone
Although opera has a reputation as an antiquated pastime for rich people, this thrilling art form ought to be enjoyed by all. Read the article by Annie Levin in Current Affairs here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC by Jarrett Hoffman:
One of the most interesting characters to appear in our Almanac has to be Victor Borge (pictured above), the Danish-American comedian and pianist who was born on this date in 1909 in Copenhagen.
Also known as “The Clown Prince of Denmark,” “The Unmelancholy Dane,” and “The Great Dane,” Borge combined his prodigious talent at the keyboard (he received a full scholarship to the Royal Danish Academy of Music at age nine) with a sense of humor that ranged from wry and satirical to physical and slapstick.
One of his early radio acts was a regular stint on the variety program Kraft Music Hall, hired on by then-host Bing Crosby, which resulted in Borge being named Best New Radio Performer of the Year by the American press in 1942. On television, he hosted The Victor Borge Show on NBC in 1946, and on Broadway, he created and performed the one-man show Comedy in Music, which ran for 849 performances, making it by some accounts the longest running solo show in the history of theater.
Not to mention the concert stage, where he appeared with ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic, and Royal Danish Philharmonic.
Of course, credits don’t matter so much as actually watching him perform. Enjoy a 10-minute stand-up routine here, and his classic four-hands, limb-twisting performance of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 with pianist Şahan Arzruni here.
