by Daniel Hathaway
We invite our readers to suggest online articles and links to live streams they’ve discovered that would be of interest to classical music fans in Northeast Ohio. Please submit your recommendations by email.
VIDEO MESSAGES FROM THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA:
Cleveland Orchestra CEO André Germillet comments on the cancellation of the rest of the 2019-2020 season in a video issued on March 24. Before the pandemic emerged, guest conductor Herbert Blomstedt mused about the reputation of the Orchestra in a February 20 video that preceded his astonishing performances of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony.
RECOMMENDED ONLINE STREAMS AND ASSETS:
Cleveland Opera Theater is beginning to roll out online content. Today from 5:00 to 6:00 pm, you can join a Zoom master class with conductor Domenico Boyagian to explore such topics as Audition Prep, Language & Diction, Drama, Interpretation, Business and more. It’s designed for Conservatory and College-aged students, but all fans are welcome. More information about future online material here.
Baseball’s Opening Day should have happened yesterday — another disappointing postponement. Just to keep America’s national sport in our consciousness, here’s a performance of Frank Proto’s Casey at the Bat (a setting of Ernest Thayer’s “Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888”) commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony in 1973. The West Point Band plays the popular classic with narrator Rich DeMarco at West Point in 2016.
Knoxville, Tennessee’s Big Ears Festival has been cancelled, but the organizers are posting daily online videos in its place. Today’s episode includes an interview and performance with Terry Riley from the mid-1970s, “one of the programs in composer Robert Ashley’s series of video portraits, Music With Roots in the Aether. It all takes place at Terry’s Sri Moonshine ranch in California, starts with him milking a goat, ventures into discussions about music (especially interesting in discussing his studies with Pandit Pran Nath), and ends with a hypnotic solo organ concert. It’s two hours well spent.”
The Budapest Festival Orchestra continues its Quarantine Soirées series at 2:45 pm (7:45 pm Central European Time). The program is listed on the linked web page.
Cellist Jan Vogler’s “Music Never Sleeps NYC,” a 24-hour marathon featuring many different performers, goes live at 6:00 pm tonight. Click here to view the live stream on YouTube or here on Facebook.
Wagner week continues for the HD archive streams from New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Tonight at 7:30 pm, the featured work is Götterdämmerung, starring Deborah Voigt, Wendy Bryn Harmer, Waltraud Meier, Jay Hunter Morris, Iain Paterson, Eric Owens, and Hans-Peter König, conducted by Fabio Luisi, from February 11, 2012. Click here to watch. The stream will be available for 20 hours. (For best quality, the company advises the use of one of its apps: Apple, Google.)
Now that The Met’s Ring Cycle is complete, it’s time to rediscover Anna Russell’s analysis of Der Ring des Nibelungen from The (First) Farewell Concert in 1984. The video isn’t great, but Russell is dryly funny, as always. This will distract you from current events for a good half hour.
CONCERT LISTINGS UPDATES:
The Akron Symphony has now cancelled the rest of its season, including Appalachian Spring on March 28, the Akron Youth Symphony Spring Concert on May 3, Concerts for Kids from May 5 through May 7, Akron Symphony Chorus Concert on May 8, and Symphonic Dances on May 16.