by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7:30, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society will present the Africa → West Percussion Trio. Jamie Ryan, Ryan Korb, and Josh Ryan blend African and Afro-Caribbean traditions with Western classical and jazz influences at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church. The Society has confirmed that the event will take place as scheduled, but will be live streamed for those who would rather not venture out in our current, sub-freezing weather.
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.
AWARDS:
On Thursday, the Cleveland Institute of Music announced that conductor Leonard Slatkin has been selected to receive its 2026 Honorary Doctor of Musical Arts degree. He will accept the award and deliver the keynote address at CIM’s commencement proceedings on Saturday, May 16 in Kulas Hall.
At the same ceremony, CIM will grant a Distinguished Alumni Award to conductor-pianist Kathryn Harsha (MM ’99) and an Alumni Achievement Award to cellist Rebecca Shasberger (MM ’17), artistic and executive director of Renovare Music. Read a press release here.
TRANSITIONS:
Cynthia Snider has announced her retirement as executive director of Akron’s Tuesday Musical. Austin Ferguson, the organization’s director of artistic operations and educational engagement since 2021, will assume the leadership role when Snider retires in June. Read the announcement here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, the fifth and most obscure son of Johann Sebastian and Anna Magdalena Bach, departed this life on January 26, 1795 in the provincial town of Bückeburg, where he served as harpsichordist beginning in 1750 and as concertmaster from 1759, and composed a large number of works in all categories.
Here are three works from his pen that give some idea of what might have been heard in a small town in Lower Saxony during the transitional period from Baroque to Classical at the end of the 18th century.
First, his Lamento, arranged and performed by harpsichordist Jean Rondeau at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and Academy in 2016 — with a link to the full concert in which it was played.
Then, his Concerto Grosso in E-flat from 1792, a keyboard concerto featuring Christine Schornshelm and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra.
And finally, his hour-long setting of Psalm 51, Miserere Mei Deus, performed in 1998 by Helmuth Rilling and the Bach Collegium Stuttgart.
Born on January 26, 1981 in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, conductor Gustavo Dudamel, rose out of Venezuela’s El Sistema to become conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolivar (hear them play Arturo Márquez’s Danzón No. 2) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (listen to excerpts from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring from 2019).
Dudamel’s box office appeal inspired the character of Rodrigo in Amazon Prime’s Mozart in the Jungle series. As a conductor, he’s equally effective working with professionals and students. Click here to watch part of a rehearsal he led with the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra.
And on January 26, 2003, American pianist John Browning died in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. He maintained a long relationship with the music of Samuel Barber, whose Piano Concerto he debuted in 1962 for the opening of Lincoln Center. (Click here to listen to a performance by The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell – you can follow along with the piano score). As an interesting aside, Browning’s last performance was to an invited audience at the U.S. Supreme Court in May, 2002. Imagine!
