by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7:30, the Rocky River Chamber Music Society presents the Phaeton Piano Trio (Friedemann Eichhorn, violin, Peter Hörr, cello, and Florian Uhlig, piano) at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church (live stream available)
JEAN GEIS STELL, 99:
We’ve just been informed of the July 25th death of Jean Geis Stell, 99, the concert pianist who founded the Rocky River Chamber Music Society in 1958 with five other professional musicians. A memorial service was held on November 8. Read an obituary here
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1483, German theologian, religious reformer and composer Martin Luther was born in Eisleben. Author of more than 30 hymns in the German vernacular, Luther joined composer Johann Walther to publish the first protestant hymn book in 1524. Probably his best-known hymn is Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, based on Psalm 46 and originally set to an “isorhythmic” tune whose dance-like rhythms had been smoothed out by the time J.S. Bach used it in his Cantata BWV 80. Organist Bálint Karosi improvises on that sturdier version of tune on the 1995 Richards & Fowkes organ in St. John’s Lutheran Church, Stamford, Connecticut.
French composer, claveciniste, and organist François Couperin was born on this date in 1668. Part of the Couperin dynasty that long occupied the organ bench at the church of St. Gervais in Paris, he wrote two complete organ masses, one for parishes, another for convents, as well as some 230 individual harpsichord works and suites of chamber works. He also carried on a correspondence with Johann Sebastian Bach — a visitor to the Bach household after the composer’s death found that his thrifty widow had cut up the letters to cover jam pots.
The noted French organist Olivier Latry recorded the Mass for Parishes on the 1710 organ at the Chapel of Versailles. Click here to hear him play the Offertoire.
Two of Couperin’s most delightful works are the Apotheoses of Corelli and Lully, narrated musical portraits of the two composers and their different national styles. Watch a video of a Juilliard master class where Les Arts Florissant’s William Christie comments on student performances of Le Parnasse, ou L’Apothéose de Corelli, recorded at the school in September, 2019.
And on this day in 1909, Gustav Mahler led the New York Philharmonic from the keyboard of an altered piano in his own symphonic arrangements of movements from J.S. Bach’s orchestral suites. In a letter to a friend back in Europe, Mahler wrote,
“I had great fun recently with a Bach concert, for which I worked out the basso continuo conducting and improvising quite in the style of the old masters, playing on a rich-toned spinet specially adapted by Steinway for the purpose. This produced a number of surprises for me – and also for the audience. It was as though a floodlight had been turned on to this long-buried literature.”
Too bad we don’t have a recording to share.
