by Daniel Hathaway
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?:
Swedish violinist Johan Dalene, 19, who won first prize in Oberlin’s 2017 Thomas and Evon Cooper Competition, “is quickly establishing an international reputation as one of the most prodigiously talented instrumentalists to emerge in recent years.” Read the Violin Channel story here.
David von Behren, a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with Todd Wilson, is now assistant organist and choirmaster at Harvard’s Memorial Church, and accompanist for the Harvard Glee Club. The Nebraska native will play an Abendmusic recital at First Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln on Sunday at 5:00. (During his high school years, von Behren studied with First Plymouth music director Tom Trenney, a native of Painesville and also a CIM graduate). View the program here, and catch up with his career in a post on the Memorial Church blog, which links to the recital stream.
TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:
The Miró Quartet continues its complete Beethoven cycle on the Orcas Island Chamber Music Series (but thanks to the pandemic, they’re live-streaming from Austin, Texas), WCLV’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra serves up a Sibelius tone poem and a Schubert Symphony. The MET Opera archives turns the clock back for a 1992 production of Verdi’s Falstaff. And the American Guild of Organists’ OrganFest 2020 wraps up its virtual convention with old music, new music, and the reconstruction of a Charles Ives piece. Details here.
INTERESTING READS:
The Canadian blog Ludwig van Toronto considers a dozen ways the pandemic will change classical music.
New Music Box considers innovations and experimentations in distanced choral singing.
And The Art Newspaper catches up with progress on the restoration of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, now that major aesthetic decisions have been made.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1880, Swiss-American composer Ernst Bloch was born in Geneva. We wrote about the founding director of the Cleveland Institute of Music a few days ago on the anniversary of his death, but today we remember him through his Sacred Service (Avodath Hakodesh), a full-length, through-composed setting of the Jewish liturgy. Listen to a classic 1960 recording by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic here.