by Stephanie Manning
LOOKING AHEAD:
Today marks the start of a pretty quiet week on the concert calendar. But there are some highlights waiting in the later half, including Laufey’s visit to Blossom on Thursday for “A Night at the Symphony” and the first round of the “Fencing Match” series from Apollo’s Fire.
For more details and to check out what else is coming up, visit our Concert Listings.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
After Barbara Bachtell’s retirement earlier this year, the Broadway School of Music and the Arts has named its new executive director. Christopher Kaboth will now lead the organization, which is based in the Slavic Village neighborhood and provides arts education to the residents of southeast Cleveland. Read the full press release here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
While not a major day for classical music anniversaries, August 4 marks a notable day in world history. At 11:00 pm on this day in 1914, Britain formally declared war on Germany in the conflict that would become World War I. This came one day after Germany declared war on France.
The four-year struggle between the two nations extended far beyond the battlefield and into cultural life. British classical music institutions were immediately pressured to stop performing works by German composers. Conductor Sir Henry Wood (pictured) swiftly removed almost all contemporary Austrian and German music from the 1914 Proms lineup.
As Erik Levi writes for BBC Music Magazine, “it was widely accepted that further performances of such repertoire would be off-limits in Britain as long as the country was at war.” However, standard works by Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert were generally allowed to stay.
One composer who faced plenty of scrutiny was Richard Strauss, who — despite remaining largely apolitical — was “presented to the British public as the musical embodiment of the enemy.” The score and parts to his Ein Alpensinfonie (“An Alpine Symphony”) were even impounded for months at the Liverpool docks before being allowed to continue their journey to the U.S.
Once the war ended, contemporary German and Austrian music made a slow return to British concert halls. And for decades, Strauss has been back at the Proms — on August 19 of this year, Sir Antonio Pappano will conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in the German composer’s Symphonic Fantasy from Die Frau ohne Schatten.
