by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
The Fine Arts Association of Willoughby presents a violacentric guest recital by Katrin Meidell (pictured), joined by her compatriot Melissa Lund Ziegler. Max Reger and J.S. Bach are the well-known composers, but there’s also music by Sarah Dubois, Scott Slapin, and Shawn Renzoh Head.
Apollo’s Fire is taking its eminently portable all-Vivaldi program to Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, and guest conductor Kenneth Bean and the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble are in charge of tonight’s Fridays@Finney concert, performing recent works by Jessie Montgomery and David Ludwig, and a not-so-recent, 1916 Chamber Symphony by the difficult-to-classify Austrian composer Franz Schreker.
Details in our Concert Listings.
THOM MOORE UPDATE:
Yesterday’s Plain Dealer published an appreciation by Zachary Lewis of the late oboist and recording producer Thom Moore that referred readers to a Facebook page on which friends and colleagues are posting tributes, and announced plans for an early December concert in his honor, details to be posted here.
CIPC WINNER TAKES THIRD AT CHOPIN:
Spanish pianist Martin Garcia Garcia, who won the Cleveland International Piano Competition last summer, has now claimed third prize at the 18th Chopin International Competition in Warsaw, as well as the Warsaw Philharmonic Prize for the best performance of a concerto. Watch a video of his final round performance of Chopin’s f-minor Concerto on October 19 here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
There are several Boston Symphony-related events to mark on this date in history: the Orchestra’s first concert at the Old Boston Music Hall in 1881 conducted by Sir George Henschel, the concert in New York in 1969 when 25-year-old Michael Tilson Thomas took over on the first of many occasions for the ailing William Steinberg, and the birth of German conductor Karl Muck in 1959, who became involved in a scandal that became a political flashpoint for BSO during World War I (read a New England Historical Society story here.)
Continuing with Orchestral history, Leopold Damrosch, who founded the New York Oratorio Society in 1874 and the New York Symphony Society (now the New York Philharmonic) in 1878, was born in Poznan, Prussica in 1832.
And moving to Opera history, the original Metropolitan Opera House opened on this date in 1883 with Gounod’s Faust. A hundred years later, the MET celebrated its 100th birthday on this date with a daylong concert featuring such headliners as Joan Sutherland, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti. Visit the playlist on YouTube here.
While we can happily take note of the birth of piano virtuoso and composer Ferenc Liszt in 1811, we also have to bid adieu to Spanish cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (1973), and French conductor and pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (1979).
Backing up to the 18th century, there’s one bizarre death to report: French violinist and composer Jean-Marie Leclair who was allegedly murdered by his jealous violinist nephew, Guillaume-François Vial, as he entered his Paris apartment in the dangerous Marais neighborhood. No-one was ever tried for the crime.
In tribute, click here to enjoy all three hours and 19 minutes of Leclair’s complete violin concertos as performed on period instruments by Igor Ruhadze and the Ensemble Violini Capricciosi.
