by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Two summer chamber music festivals will go head-to-head in 7:30 pm concerts this evening.
In Harkness Chapel at CWRU, ChamberFest Cleveland will present “Mystical Reveries,” featuring violinist Alexi Kenney (pictured) in Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Mystery Sonata, “The Annunciation,” along with works by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Robert Schumann, John Adams & Johannes Brahms performed by a long list of his colleagues.
And in Warner Concert Hall at Oberlin, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute will present “Director’s Carte Blanche” with violinists Jinjoo Cho and Mathieu Herzog, and pianist Hyunsoo Kim performing works by George Frideric Handel (arr. by Johan Halvorsen), Edvard Grieg & Wolfgang Amadé Mozart.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Today, June 14, Naxos will release an album of Margaret Brouwer’s orchestral masterworks performed by Marin Alsop and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. The five works on this album — The Art of Sailing at Dawn, Rhapsody, Concerto for Orchestra, Symphony No. 1, “Lake Voices,” Path at Sunrise, Masses of Flowers & Pluto — which are available for the first time on a commercial recording, span a period of 24 years. Read more here.
The Cleveland Orchestra and music director Franz Welser-Möst have appointed Liyuan Xie as the ensemble’s first associate concertmaster. Xie joined the second violin section of the Orchestra in August 2023. A recent graduate of the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Miriam Fried, he will assume his new role at the beginning of the 2024 Blossom Music Festival on June 29 and will hold the Virginia M. Lindseth, PhD, Chair.
The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society will present five concerts in its International Series next season, beginning with a September 14 Showcase Concert featuring Colin Davin and Moises Borges. On October 26, Jorge Caballero will perform Antonin Dvořák’s entire Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” on solo guitar. João Luiz, one-half of the Brasil Guitar Duo, will give his first solo concert for CCGS on November 8. Ukrainian guitarist Marko Topchii, who has won more than 100 awards in international competitions, will make his Cleveland debut on March 28. And Duo Chinoiserie, guzheng virtuoso Jing Xia and classical guitarist Bin Hu, will perform on April 26. All concerts will take place at the Maltz Performing Arts Center at CWRU.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Born on this date: conductor and Oberlin grad Theodore Bloomfield in Cleveland (1923), composer, conductor, and pianist Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson (1932), and Chinese pianist Lang Lang (1982). Departed: composer Henry Mancini (1994), who was born in Cleveland in 1924, studied with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ernst Kreneck and Alfred Sendrey, and won a total of 20 Grammys and 4 Oscars.
Listen to Bloomfield’s performance of Ravel’s “Feria” from Rhapsodie espagnole with the Rochester Philharmonia (2013), Perkinson’s Sinfonietta No. 1 and Lamentations for solo cello, Lang Lang’s interpretation of Chopin’s Grande Polonaise brillante, Op. 22 — plus an encore on the BBC’s Last Night at the Proms (2013) — and Mancini leading his orchestra in a medley of his own hits: Pink Panther, Moon River, Baby Elephant Walk, and Peter Gunn.
