By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Charnofsky’s latest discoveries
. Pressler passes away at 99
. Almanac: the elder Oscar Hammerstein
HAPPENING TODAY:
During the brief lull in live concert activity today, expand your classical music horizons with Eric Charnofsky’s every-Monday program, “Not Your Grandmother’s Classical Music,” which airs on WRUW, 91.1 FM and online from 2-4 pm. Today’s revelations include William Alwyn’s Sinfonietta for Strings, Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s The Maiden’s Blush, Pasquinade & Bamboula (works for piano), Paquito d’Rivera’s Aires Tropicales (woodwind quintet), Sergei Prokofiev’s Two Pushkin Waltzes (orchestra), Henry Cowell’s Trio in Nine Short Movements (violin/cello/piano), and electronic music by Otto Leuning. Click here to listen online or tune in to 91.1 FM in the greater Cleveland area.
SEASON ANNOUNCEMENTS:
ChamberFest Cleveland will present its eleventh season of concerts throughout Greater Cleveland from June 14 through July 1. Browse the calendar of performances here.
ENCORE Chamber Music has announced plans for its eighth Music & Ideas Festival in 2023 at Gilmour Academy and around the region. Read more here.
DEPARTURES: Menachem Pressler, 91
From the obituary by Robert D. McFadden in the New York Times on May 8:
Menahem Pressler (pictured above), the celebrated pianist who fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and, after establishing himself in postwar America, co-founded the Beaux Arts Trio, which became the world’s reigning piano-violin-cello ensemble and dazzled audiences for a half-century, died on Saturday in London. He was 99.
His death was announced by the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, where he had been on the faculty since 1955.
At 14, Mr. Pressler hid on Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, as Nazi thugs smashed his father’s shop. When World War II began in Europe, his Jewish family landed in Haifa, in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. Traumatized, he nearly perished at 16, but in a haunting Beethoven sonata he found the will to live. In 1946, he won an international piano competition in San Francisco. A year later, he made his Carnegie Hall debut.
ALMANAC FOR MAY 8:
Everybody knows the name Oscar Hammerstein II — the lyricist half of the Broadway creative team Rodgers & Hammerstein — but did you ever wonder about Oscar Hammerstein I?
Born in Stettin, Germany on this date in 1846, Oscar II’s grandfather was an opera composer and impresario who also founded several opera houses, most notably the Manhattan Opera House in 1906, which engaged in a fierce competition with the Metropolitan Opera. Oscar I sold both the Manhattan and Philadelphia houses to the Metropolitan in 1910, agreeing not to produce grand opera in New York for the next decade. Along with Elektra, Thaïs, and Salome, he was responsible for the American premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande.
Listen to Erich Leinsdorf’s arrangement of “Preludes and Interludes” from Debussy’s symbolist opera recorded live by The Cleveland Orchestra in Severance Hall in February 1945, shortly before Leinsdorf left the podium to serve in the U.S. Army. The Orchestra presented a production of Pelléas et Mélisande in 2017 staged by Yuval Sharon and conducted by Franz Welser-Möst, both of whom commented on the work in a promotional video.
