by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7, Trobár Medieval presents “A Room of Her Own: Christine de Pizan’s Defense of Women,” in the words of the 15th-c. author (pictured), performed by actor Chris Szajbert and reflected in the music of her contemporaries, played and sung by Allison Monroe. Elena Mullins Bailey, and Sian Ricketts (St. Paul’s Church, Cleveland Hts.)
Three orchestra concerts all begin at 7:30:
- CityMusic Cleveland continues its four-performance October Orchestra Series at St. Noel Church in Willoughby Hills with a concert featuring Cleveland Orchestra violist Eliesha Nelson in Margaret Brouwer’s Viola Concerto,
- the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra presents clarinetist Taein Yi in Carl Nielsen’s Concerto at the Maltz PAC,
- and Carl Topilow leads the Cleveland Pops Orchestra in Broadway’s Best at Severance Music Center.
Also at 7:30, Kent State Faculty & Graduate Students perform their works in the Roy Minoff Award Concert (Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State campus).
For details of these and other upcoming events, go to our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
Two composers and one virtuoso highlight today’s anniversaries. Johann Strauss II was born on this date in 1825 in Vienna, and Georges Bizet followed suit thirteen years later in Paris. And Japanese-born American violinist Midori Gotō, better known by her stage name Midori, turns 53 today.
That king of the waltz’s music is widely known even among those who don’t know his name, thanks to ubiquitous pieces such as The Beautiful Blue Danube. Closely associated with Austria, it’s considered an unofficial national anthem. And speaking of Austrians — Franz Welser-Möst leads the Vienna Philharmonic in a Blue Danube performance from 2023 here.
Fun fact: the piece was originally written for choir, with a text by poet Joseph Weyl of the Vienna Men’s Choral Association, the group that gave the premiere. The instrumental version was an adaptation that Strauss made a year later for the 1867 World’s Fair. Listen to a performance by the Vienna Boys Choir here.
It might be surprising to learn that Bizet’s Carmen — his final work, written three months before his death at age 36 — was initially panned. Critics in Paris struggled to reconcile it with their expectations of something lighter and more Offenbach-esque (the work’s two librettists had worked on many of that composer’s operettas) or something more in line with Wagner. One review called the music “dull and obscure,” adding, “the ear grows weary of waiting for the cadence that never comes.”
Nor was the general populace particularly enthused, as evidenced by half-empty audiences — though interest picked up after Bizet’s death, which came the day following the 33rd performance. And when the opera was revived soon afterwards in Vienna, things really started to turn around for its popularity. Click here to watch Maria Callas sing the “Habanera” live in Hamburg in 1962.
Carmen is a useful transition to Midori — at the age of 16, she performed Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony, part of a birthday celebration for Leonard Bernstein. Watch here.
A child prodigy, Midori made her public debut at the age of six. Her choice of repertoire? One of Paganini’s famously difficult Caprices. By her mid-teens, having just graduated from Juilliard Pre-College and moved into a full-time professional career, she already had a glittering resume, including performances with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic, and with Bernstein at Tanglewood.
As Michael Zwiebach writes in San Francisco Classical Voice, the years since have seen the violinist “deepen her artistry and repertory, found a nonprofit for educating underserved children in the U.S. and Japan in classical music, earn a master’s degree in psychology from NYU in 2005, while still performing, and become a highly beloved teacher” — she’s currently on the faculties of both USC and Curtis. She has also written a memoir, although it hasn’t yet been translated from German to English. (Someone out there, hop to it!)
Zwiebach also selects highlights from Midori’s extensive discography in that article, titled “The Essential Midori.” One recommendation: her 2017 performance of the Chaconne from J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 2, performed in a very fitting place.
Midori will appear with pianist Özgür Aydin on Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series on March 5, 2025 in works by Che Buford, Johannes Brahms, Francis Poulenc, and Maurice Ravel.
