by Jarrett Hoffman
NEWS FROM THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA:
Late last week, The Cleveland Orchestra announced that its January and February 2021 performances at Severance Hall have been postponed due to the dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases in Ohio. The Orchestra plans to invite a limited audience to Severance beginning the weekend of March 4. (Details for spring programming will be announced in January.)
In the meantime, they will continue with on-demand offerings on the Adella app, for which they announced a couple of updates to the schedule. First, the 38th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Concert will be available for free on Adella beginning on January 14 at 7:00 pm.
That performance took place in 2018 as part of the Orchestra’s centennial season. As explained in a press release, one of the highlights of that season was the Prometheus Project,
an exploration of the myth of Prometheus, the daring Greek Titan who defied Zeus to bring the gift of fire on humanity. This gift is linked to the spark of creativity that has powered and inspired humanity, the belief in justice and goodness, the fight for right, and individual freedoms. Dr. King is a modern day Prometheus, and Music Director Franz-Welser Möst explored his life and legacy — and his dedication to the struggle for racial equality — through a program of music inspired by his spirit.
Those selections included classical works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Verdi, as well as traditional hymns and spirituals such as Down by the Riverside, Precious Lord, and Lift Every Voice and Sing, and featured narrator James Pickens Jr., guest soloist Ryan Speedo Green, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Chorus., directed by William Henry Caldwell.
The second update to the Orchestra’s winter schedule is that “Musical Patterns,” Episode 5 of the In Focus series, will premiere on January 28 at 7:00 pm on Adella premium. Pianist Marc-André Hamelin will join assistant conductor Vinay Parameswaran in J.S. Bach’s Keyboard Concerto No. 5 and Philip Glass’s Glassworks: Opening. Also on the program are Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, featuring associate concertmaster Jung-Min Amy Lee, and John Adams’ Shaker Loops.
Read the full press release here.
ON THE WEB TONIGHT:
Les Délices continues its SalonEra series with “Medieval Christmas,” featuring members of Blue Heron and Trobár in “a captivating mix of mysticism and merriment” in this episode illuminating Medieval music for Advent and Christmas. Click here at start time. It’s free, but a $10 donation suggested.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1788, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach passed away in Hamburg at age 74. That second surviving son of Johann Sebastian and Maria Barbara Bach is known for retaining the influence of his father’s music while charting a path of his own in the early Classical period.
Here’s one throwback of a listening recommendation: the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble released a record of three C.P.E. Bach sonatas in 1982. Fortunately it’s been digitized and is available on YouTube: click these links to hear the Sonata in g (oboe and continuo), Trio Sonata in d (flute, violin, and continuo), and Sonata in D (viola da gamba and continuo), played by such names as James Caldwell, Catharina Meints, Lisa Goode Crawford, Robert Willoughby, and Marilyn McDonald.
For a neat contrast, today is also the birthday of composer/conductor/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn, born in 1959 in Chicago. He’s known for his diverse musical interests, including post-minimalism, jazz, pop, Balinese traditional music, and cross-cultural collaborations. Those latter two arenas informed his 2017 visit to Northeast Ohio, when he brought Gamelan Galak Tika (the Balinese gamelan ensemble he founded and directs) to the Cleveland Museum of Art for a celebration of composer Lou Harrison.
I had the chance to interview Ziporyn before that concert, and one topic we discussed was the contrast between Harrison’s music and his own. As Ziporyn said,
In Lou’s mature music, there’s a serenity and a sense of being comfortable with who he is and with what he regards as beautiful, noble, and coherent… I think my compositions…are more about embracing the contradictions that come with making music in a busy world…Particularly when there’s a cross-cultural linkage, I’ve always wanted to deal with the ways that can be complex and thorny.
Along those lines, check out Ziporyn’s 1990 Kekembangan for saxophone quartet and Balinese gamelan, heard here in a performance from October 2019 as part of the Bowling Green New Music Festival.
