by Daniel Hathaway
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Grammy Awards: The L.A. Times has compiled a list of all the 2025 Grammy Award winners. Congratulations to Elaine Martone, who won Producer of the Year – Classical. Click here to read the story (which looks as though it’s behind a paywall, but you can navigate past the pop-up).
Tuesday Musical has extended the deadline for applications for its 2025 scholarship competitions to 11:59 pm on February 7. Details here.
HAPPENING TODAY / TODAY’S ALMANAC:
With no live classical performances scheduled for today, let’s honor a famous composer whose birth anniversary comes up in our Rolodex.
On February 3, 1809, German composer and conductor Felix Mendelssohn began his short tenure in the world in Hamburg, where he also passed on in 1847 at the age of 38. Historically famous for reviving J.S. Bach’s Matthew-Passion in a performance in Berlin at the age of 20, he revisited that work at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig a dozen years later, revising some of his earlier revisions (read a Gramophone review here).
An organist (he wrote six sonatas for the instrument) as well as a symphonist and composer of concertos, oratorio and chamber music, Mendelssohn was a popular recitalist during visits to London, and a palace guest of keen amateur musicians Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (pictured above).
But in a Northeast Ohio mid-winter, perhaps the best way to celebrate Mendelssohn’s birthday is with a listen to his altogether charming incidental music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for which he penned a concert overture at the age of 17, and later added more movements. Here’s a performance from Montréal’s McGill University led by Alexis Hauser that underscores Mendelssohn’s particular success in writing music that invokes the imaginary world of fairies.
For details of upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
