by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On June 30, 1958, Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen was born in Helsinki. Although he served as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Salonen considered himself primarily as a composer (he took up conducting, he said, to guarantee that his works would be performed), but his fate was sealed when he stepped in at the last minute for Michael Tilson Thomas to lead Mahler’s Third Symphony in London.
Click here to watch a later performance of Mahler 3 with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London, when Salonen returned in October 2017 to the scene of his earlier triumph. Later, he stunned the concert world by stepping down early from his San Francisco position.
And on this date in 1987, Catalan composer Federico Mompou died in Barcelona. A miniaturist trained in Paris, his piano works and songs are characterized by simplicity and elegance. British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor plays Mompou’s Paisajes in this video recorded at the studios of WGBH in Boston, and Mompou’s Musica Callada (“Silent Music”) inspired a music video.
Pianist Jenny Lin, who has also recorded a CD with all 28 of the short pieces in Mompu’s collection, and included two of them on her NPR Tiny Desk Concert, has performed in Cleveland on the Signature Series at Lorain County Community College, on the Cleveland Contemporary Players Artist in Residency Series at Cleveland State University, on the Kent Keyboard Series, and at the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, but hasn’t been heard in Northeast Ohio since 2012.
