by Daniel Hathaway
ON THE WEB AND THE AIRWAVES TODAY:
WCLV’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra features hornist Richard King, an episode of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s Mahler Festival from Amsterdam presents the Fourth Symphony led by Iván Fischer, a piano trio from CIM’s archives plays Shostakovich, pianist Jeremy Denk talks about “How to Think Like Bach” from The Greene Space, and the nightly episode from the MET Opera will be Massenet’s Werther. Details in the Concert Listings.
TODAY’S FEATURED VIDEOS:
In lieu of this year’s cancelled Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, director Armin Kelly is offering nine videos featuring Czech classical guitarist Petra Poláčková, “a particularly popular regular at our Festival who was scheduled to join us once again this June. These videos were shot within the last fourteen months at various times and underwritten by my company, Guitars International.” Watch the performances here.
Conductor Randall Craig Fleischer introduces the Youngstown Symphony’s Virtual Concert Hall in an episode featuring violist Michael Strauss in a movement from J.S. Bach’s C-Major Suite and Alan Hovhannes’ Chahagir, and bassoonists Mackenzie Brauns and Arleigh Savage in a selection from Eugene Bozza’s Duettino. Watch here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
American choreographer Martha Graham was born on May 11, 1894 in Pittsburgh. A few weeks ago, Jeffrey Beecher organized a virtual performance of Aaron Copland’s “Simple Gifts” from his Appalachian Spring: Ballet for Martha with colleagues from the Toronto Symphony. That inspired members of the Martha Graham Dance Company to add movement. Watch that collaboration here.
And on this date in 1895 — or maybe it was 1898 — African American composer William Grant Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi. In 1944, Still anonymously entered his Festive Overture in a nationwide competition organized by the Cincinnati Symphony, winning the CSO’s Jubilee Prize and a $1,000 War Bond for “Best Overture.” Click here to listen to the work as performed by the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra conducted by John McLaughlin Williams.
INTERESTING READ:
At the end of what should have been the final Metropolitan Opera Saturday Matinee radio broadcast of the season last weekend, it was announced that the programs would be continued indefinitely. Not for the first time has technology assisted the MET through difficult periods in its history. Read about that in Technology in Troubled Times, an article by Peter Clark, the Met’s Director of Archives.