by Daniel Hathaway
NEWS BRIEFS:
In a conversation with Musical America’s Susan Elliott, Sphinx Organization President and Artistic Director Afa Dworkin characterizes the impact of the pandemic as simultaneously “abrupt, disturbing, and transformative.” Through its focus areas of education, artist development, performance, and leadership, Sphinx is “the core program for the creation of diversity in classical music. COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter Movement have only added urgency to its mission: transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts.” Listen here.
Beginning on July 13, Early Music America and Voices of Music will offer a five-part webinar series, “Creating and Sharing Video Online from Home.” The 45-minute sessions cover Recording at Home: the Basics (July 13), YouTube and Social Media for Musicians (July 15 & 17), Putting it all together: the inter- connectedness of all things (July 20), and Video and Social Media for ensembles, orchestras, and organizations (July 22). Find more information and register here.
Viewers who have enjoyed streaming Hamilton may be interested in hearing what Harvard historian Annette Gordon-Reed has to say about the Broadway hip-hop phenomenon. Holder of endowed chairs in the History Department as well as at Harvard Law School, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Gordon-Reed told a student-sponsored event last week that she likes the show, but found it problematic in its portrayals of Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, the Founding Fathers, and the issue of slavery, adding, “Artists have the right to create, but historians have the right to critique.” Read a story here.
Singers everywhere are approaching the future of their art with trepidation, but especially those who sing in close proximity to each other in choirs. Read a story by Ysenda Maxtone-Graham in The Spectator about how the pandemic is threatening choirs in Britain.
FEATURED VIDEO:
In its series, LA Opera at Home, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, who grew up in Youngstown, invites viewers inside his digs in Florida for an informal hour-long program featuring selections from every beginning vocal student’s bible, 24 Italian Songs. Watch here (start at 8:00, after Larry settles a few technical matters!) Myra Huang accompanies him remotely from New York.
TODAY ON THE RADIO, IN PERSON, AND ONLINE:
Indoors, enjoy contrasting pieces — Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 — during Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra on WCLV 104.9 Ideastream, and tonight, the MET Opera’s archive production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with Anna Netrebko (Valery Gergiev conducts). Out and about (facemasks in place), stop by the McGaffin Tower in University Circle for a 12:15 Noon Carillon Recital. George Leggiero plays a varied program and the organizers note that “your car is also a place to hear the concert. Horn honking is an accepted form of applause at the end of the program.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On July 10, 1835, Polish violin virtuoso and composer Henryk Wieniawski was born in Lubin, Poland. Joshua Bell has recorded his Second Concerto for Decca with Vladimir Ashkenazy and The Cleveland Orchestra, but for a more recent dose of Wieniawski, click here to watch Augustin Hadelich play both the violin and piano parts of the Scherzo-Tarantella from his home in May during the “COVID-19 hiatus.”
And on this date in 1895, German composer and educator Carl Orff was born in Munich. Hands-down, his most performed work is his cantata, Carmina Burana, based on the medieval German poetry of the wandering scholars. So popular and recognizable is its first chorus, “O Fortuna,” that The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus recorded it for use as in-game intros for the 2014 season of the Cleveland Cavaliers (watch Assistant Conductor Andrew Grams leading the ensembles for the recording session here.) Hear a complete recording with Franz Welser-Möst and the London Philharmonic and Chorus here.
Less well-known are the two other works in Orff’s triptych, both of which Welser-Möst also recorded. Click here to hear Catulli Carmini (Songs of Catullus) and Trionfo di Afrodite, performed by the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Mozart-Choir Linz.