by Jarrett Hoffman
HAPPENING TODAY:
Eric Charnofsky’s weekly radio broadcast “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music” continues at 2:00 with music by Domenico Cimarosa, Lukas Foss, John J. Becker, Arthur Sullivan, Louis-Claude Daquin, and Eric Coates. Find program details in our Concert Listings, and tune in online here.
And at 7:30 pm, soprano Grace Srinivasan and harpsichordist Patrick Merrill join Les Délices in the latest SalonEra virtual program, “Connoisseur’s Christmas.” As the title suggests, expect to leave aside mainstream Christmas fare. Instead, the name of the game is hidden treasures — music by Philipp Friedrich Böddecker, Giovanni Battista Bassani, and Heinrich Biber, whose “Nativity” Sonata, as performed by violinist Shelby Yamin, will offer a purely instrumental interpretation of the Christmas Story. See the full program and register here.
LOCAL NEWS:
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced the return of its Family Concert Series, and tickets are on sale as of today. Programming begins on March 13 with “The Listener,” bringing with it the return of the Magic Circle Mime Co., and continues on May 7 with “The Chevalier,” which tells the story of Joseph Bologne and features Sphinx Organization violinist Brendon Elliott as well as four onstage actors.
INTERESTING READS:
Last month in our Diary, we shared news of the intriguing new opera . . .(Iphigenia), born out of a collaboration between two jazz icons from different generations in Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding.
Reviewing a recent performance at the Kennedy Center, Michael Andor Brodeur writes in The Washington Post that this is not a piece “concerned with fluffing my seat cushion, welcoming me back, celebrating the performing arts in general and making constant reference to something called ‘normal.’ . . . (Iphigenia) was good old-fashioned, avant-garde, what-the-hell-is-happening-right-now opera with a question mark. It methodically perplexed, frustrated, amused, entranced, challenged and delighted me.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC: “Vronsky & Babin Sittin’ in a Tree”
Having been born in Moscow on this date in 1908, and having spent 35 years living in the U.S. before his death in 1972, it was actually Berlin that provided the most pivotal event in the life of pianist and composer Victor Babin. For it was there that he met a fellow talented pianist by the name of Vitya Vronsky.
As the children’s song goes, first comes love being classmates in the piano studio of Artur Schnabel at the Hochschule fur Musik, then comes marriage forming one of the great piano duos of the century, then comes — well, love and marriage. (Not that it matters, but they did not in fact have any children, whether inside or outside of any carriages.)
If there were another line in the song, to really add to the romance, it would describe their time as colleagues at an institution — Babin spent about a decade as director of the Cleveland Institute of Music beginning in 1961, with Vronsky serving on the faculty, and it is said that they played a large part in raising the school’s profile. To point out other local connections, Babin received the Cleveland Arts Prize in Music in 1966, and among the actions he took at CIM was establishing a relationship between that school and Case Western Reserve University — where he also became an adjunct professor in 1969.
Alexander Borodin’s “Polovetsian Dances,” originally from his opera Prince Igor, provide an example not only of Vronsky & Babin’s keyboard partnership, but also of Babin’s skill at transcription. In his pen, and in the hands of these players, there are several instances in which the piece takes on a beautiful intimacy that’s unique to this version, recorded by the duo in 1956.
Among Babin’s most famous works as a composer is his Concerto No. 2 for Two Pianos, premiered by himself and his wife with The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell in 1957 at Severance Hall, in a concert that marked the duo’s Cleveland debut. Listen here to a recording by the piano duo Genova & Dimitrov with the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony under Yordan Kamdzhalov.
Another work of some popularity: his 1947 Hillandale Waltzes for clarinet and piano, comprising an utterly charming theme by Johann N. Hummel and eight equally charming — and creative — variations. But there’s been enough piano today — for some listening selections, let’s go with Dennis Nygren’s arrangement of that work for clarinet, sixteen winds, double bass, and percussion, as performed by soloist (and member of the Chicago Symphony) John Bruce Yeh and the DePaul Wind Ensemble under the baton of Donald DeRoche.
All the movements are collected here in a handy but slightly scrambled YouTube playlist. But if you know your Roman numerals — scrunch your eyebrows and think of monarchs and popes, or Olympic Games and Super Bowls — you’ll figure it out.