TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On July 6, 1937, Russian pianist and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy was born in what is now Nizhny Novgorod. A frequent guest at Severance Hall, Ashkenazy recorded all of the Beethoven concertos from the keyboard. He talked about his life and career with host Zsolt Bognár in the 62nd episode of Living the Classical Life. Watch the interview here.
And on July 6, 1952, composer Stephen Hartke was born in Orange, New Jersey. Two years before he became head of Oberlin’s composition department in 2015, he won a Grammy for his Meanwhile — Incidental Music to Imaginary Puppet Plays. Listen here to a performance of the work by eighth blackbird on Naxos. And listen to a podcast interview in Off The Podium with Tigran Arakelyan here.
Considering the withering heat and humidity of the past few days, doesn’t an afternoon in a cool, dark movie theater sound enticing? Or perhaps just a couple of hours on the couch in the A/C enjoying the music of one of the world’s premier film composers — Ennio Morricone — who died on July 6, 2020 at the age of 91.
Although Morricone never left Rome and never learned to speak English, he created some 400 film scores and a hundred classical compositions. Click here to listen to 39 excerpts from his oeuvre.
Among the other aspects of his intriguing life, Morricone was a skillful chess player who once held grand master Boris Spassky to a draw in a simultaneous competition involving 27 players, of which he was the last man standing.
