by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
.Cleveland Orchestra appoints Concertmaster
. Vocal music highlights this weekend’s concerts
. Thea Musgrave and Nikoli Sokoloff celebrate birthdays, and our suggestions of music for Memorial Day
THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:
A lot of vocal music and related activities are on hand this weekend. Check our Concert Listings page for program details and ticket information.
May 27 – Friday
At 10:30 am and 3:00 pm, the Art Song Festival will hold Master Classes with soprano Tamara Wilson and at 8:00 pm will present a recital by tenor David Portillo and pianist Craig Terry. All three events are in Mixon Hall at Cleveland Institute of Music.
At 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm in Finney Chapel Christopher Mirto and Johnathon Field direct Oberlin Conservatory singers in classic scenes from beloved operas.
At 7:30 pm at Severance Music Center Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in “Breaking Convention,” Program I. The playlist will feature George Walker’s Lilacs with soprano Nicole Cabelle.
May 28 – Saturday
At 10:30 am and 3:00 pm, the Art Song Festival will hold Master Classes with tenor David Portillo, and at 7:00 pm, the Festival will conclude with the ten singer-piano Teams Recital, all events in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Also at 7pm, the Lake Effect Piano Trio (Andrea Belding Elson, violin, Jeffrey Singler, cello & Elizabeth DeMio, piano) will play music by Lili Boulanger, Schubert, and Dvořák at Disciples Christian Church.
At 8:00 pm at Severance Music Center Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in “Breaking Convention,” Program II. The eclectic program includes music by Ives, Shostakovich, Gubaidulina, Walker, and Barber featuring Latvian organist Iveta Apkalna.
May 29 – Sunday
At 3:00 pm Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Music Center in the last of three performance of Verdi’s Otello. Read Peter Feher’s review here. Photo above by Roger Mastroianni of Thursday’s curtain calls courtesy of The Cleveland Orchestra.
May 30 – Monday
Add a touch of class to your holiday picnic at 2:00 pm by tuning into the Radio Broadcast: Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music with host Eric Charnofsky. He’ll be featuring music by Josef Suk, Scott Pender, Arthur Honegger, Hannah Selin, and music for Memorial Day by George Walker and Herbert Howells.
NEWS BRIEFS:
On Friday morning, The Cleveland Orchestra announced the appointment of Columbus, Ohio native David Radzynski as concertmaster, filling the position left vacant since the dismissal of William Preucil in 2018. Radzynski has served as concertmaster of the Israel Philharmonic since 2015. Read the press release here.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
On May 27, 1928 Scottish composer Thea Musgrave was born in Barnton, Edinburgh. A student of Nadia Boulanger, she also studied with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood. In 1970 she was named Guest Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and from 1987 to 2002 was Distinguished Professor at Queens College, City University of New York.
Musgrave’s catalog includes the Concerto for Orchestra (1967), Concerto for Horn (1971), and the oboe concerto Helios (1994), in which the soloist represents the Sun God. The visual arts have been a constant source of inspiration for Musgrave. The Seasons was the result of a visit to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Turbulent Landscapes, commissioned by the Boston Symphony, depicts paintings by J. M. W. Turner.
Her operas and music theater works often have historical figures as central characters including Mary, Queen of Scots (1977), Harriet Tubman (Harriet, the Woman called Moses, 1984), and Simón Bolívar (1993).
When asked by Tom Service of the BBC about being a ‘woman composer,’ Musgrave replied, “Yes I am a woman, and I am a composer. But rarely at the same time.” When asked what advice she would give to young composers she said, “Don’t do it, unless you have to. And if you do, enjoy every minute of it.”
Click here to learn more about Thea Musgrave and here for a performance of Night Music (1968) played by the London Sinfonietta under the direction of Frederik Prausnitz.
Russian American conductor Nikolai Sokoloff, born in Kiev (now known as Kyiv) on May 28, 1886, was tapped by Adella Prentiss Hughes to be the first conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. At 13, Sokoloff moved to the U.S. with his family, studied at Yale and in Paris, and joined the Boston Symphony as a violinist at 17. He had returned from conducting the Manchester Orchestra in England in 1918 when he met Hugues in Cincinnati, “and was persuaded to accept a position from the Musical Arts Association to make a survey in Cleveland’s public schools and outline an instrumental music program. He accepted the position on the condition that he would be able to organize and conduct his own orchestra.” (Encyclopedia of Cleveland History)
And organize and conduct he did for the next 14 years, taking The Cleveland Orchestra on important national and international tours, developing educational programs, and initiating the recording and broadcasting of its concerts. The orchestra’s first commercial recording, made in New York on January 23, 1924 featured Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture in a much trimmed version that allowed engineers to fit the music onto 78 rpm discs.
Sokolowski’s influence on Cleveland continued even after he left town to direct the Federal Music Project in 1935, “channeling money into Cleveland for unemployed musicians, and providing the city with more opera and orchestral music than it had in many years.” (Encyclopedia of Cleveland History).
Monday of this weekend was officially declared Memorial Day only in 1971, although commemorations of those who had perished in the U.S. Civil War had been organized within a few months of the cessation of hostilities in 1865. Among the first to hold such a memorial was a group of formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina. The event, when graves were traditionally adorned with flowers, was known as Decoration Day well into the 20th century.
MUSIC FOR MEMORIAL DAY:
Gerald Finzi: A Farewell to Arms. The English composer sets a lyric poem by the 16th century poet George Peele, written for the retirement ceremony in 1590 of Queen Elizabeth I’s champion knight in which he pledges undying loyalty to his queen. It later served as the title of a novel by Ernest Hemingway. Hear it in a performance by James Gilchrist and the Bournemouth Symphony, directed by David Hill.
Paul Hindemith: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d: Requiem for Those We Love. This video follows conductor Robert Shaw from his initial meeting with the musicians, through the rehearsal process, to the final performance of Hindemith’s setting of words by Walt Whitman in Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium.
Benjamin Britten: War Requiem. Composed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral after its destruction in World War II, the work makes sensitive use of the poetry of Wilfrid Owen. Marin Alsop conducts a performance at London’s Southbank Centre commemorating the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I that features hundreds of young performers.
Karl Jenkins: The Armed Man. Composed in 1999 and drawing on the mysterious Renaissance song “L’Homme Armé,” the Welsh composer’s work is subtitled ‘A Mass for Peace’. Commissioned by the Royal Armouries Museum for the Millennium celebrations, to mark the museum’s move from London to Leeds, the mass was dedicated to victims of the Kosovo crisis. Listen here to a live performance in Sweden.
William Grant Still: In Memoriam the Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy. Written in 1943, the work was first performed by Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic on January 5, 1944. Listen here.
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem. Commissioned to mark the centenary of the Huddersfield Choral Society, the cantata was composed in 1936 when a second World War was brewing. Listen to a performance from December 7, 2012 by the Eastman-Rochester Chorus and the Eastman School of Music Symphony Orchestra, with Michaela Anthony, soprano, Siddharth Dubey, baritone, and Yunn-Shan Ma, conducting.
Edward Elgar: Sospiri (“Sighs”), Op. 70, adagio for string orchestra, harp (or piano), and organ (or harmonium), was written just before the beginning of World War I. The work was performed by BlueWater Chamber Orchestra last season (video still available). Listen to a performance here by Sir John Barbirolli and the New Philharmonia Orchestra.
Herbert Howells: Requiem. Performed by Downtown Voices, led by Stephen Sands on the Trinity Wall Street series in New York (full concert video here).
John Adams: Wound Dresser. Words by Walt Whitman. Performed here in October, 2018 by the University of North Carolina Symphony, Tonu Kalam, conducting.
Maurice Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin. Although structured like a keyboard suite written by a 17th century claveciniste and dedicated to the memory of François Couperin, each of the six movements is dedicated to the memory of one of Ravel’s friends who didn’t make it home from World War I. Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays the work here.
Gustav Holst: Dirge for Two Veterans. This is the same Whitman text Vaughan Williams set in his Dona Nobis Pacem. The U.S. Army Chorus performs the work on a Naxos Memorial Day Tribute.
Ludwig van Beethoven: Opferlied (Song of Sacrifice), Op. 121b. The composer worked on settings of a text by Friedrich von Matthisson from 1794 to 1825. Two versions are performed here.