by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today’s events: Oberlin Orchestra and Contemporary Music Ensemble, and The Cleveland Orchestra
•Interesting reads: the environmentalism surrounding Yolanda Kondonassis’s latest recording project, and a new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio aimed at both hearing and deaf audiences
•Videos of CityMusic’s recent premieres
•Almanac: Van Cliburn on The Tonight Show, Metallica sues Napster, and a feature on Handel’s Messiah
HAPPENING TODAY:
Two options for you tonight at 7:30 pm.
Conductor Kahchun Wong (above) will make his Cleveland Orchestra debut, leading a concert of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta and Beethoven’s Violin Concerto featuring Christian Tetzlaff as soloist. Read Mike Telin’s interview with the charming conductor here, and get tickets here.
And Oberlin Conservatory will pair up its Orchestra and its Contemporary Music Ensemble tonight at Finney Chapel. Raphael Jiménez and Timothy Weiss will trade off on the podium for a program that includes Jimmy Lopez’s Avec Swing, James Stephenson’s Chamber Concerto, Jacob Druckman’s Come Round, and Aaron Copland’s Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra with soloist Evyn Levy. It will also be streamed.
INTERESTING READS:
With her new recording project Five Minutes for Earth, CIM harp professor Yolanda Kondonassis has not only expanded the solo repertoire for her instrument through fifteen commissions, but has also created a unique way to raise funds to protect the environment. As Zachary Lewis writes for Cleveland.com, “For every verified performance of any work on the album by any musician worldwide, Earth at Heart, a non-profit founded by Kondonassis, will give a gift to a known conservation agency.” Read the article here.
A new production of Beethoven’s Fidelio will bring together the LA Philharmonic and the Deaf West Theater. Aimed at both hearing and deaf audiences, the project will feature both a vocalist and an actor portraying each character. The actors will join a chorus from Venezuela at center stage, “expressively enacting the lone opera of a composer who had progressive hearing loss while writing masterpiece after masterpiece.” Read the story by Adam Nagourney in The New York Times here.
CITYMUSIC VIDEOS:
If you’ve missed out on the series of world premieres that have been commissioned and performed this season by CityMusic Cleveland, fortunately the ensemble has also been arranging recording sessions. Listen on YouTube to Kotoka Suzuki’s Furusato (“Home of the Heart”) for string trio and electronics, Michi Wiancko’s Are You You for string quartet and harpsichord, Elena Ruehr’s Equality, Justice, Freedom (or lack thereof…) for piano quintet, and Jungyoon Wie’s Songs of My Grandmother for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
In a quick follow-up to a feature in yesterday’s almanac — American pianist Van Cliburn winning the gold medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow on April 13, 1958 — the next day, the pianist made his national television debut when he joined host Jack Paar on The Tonight Show. Too bad there’s no clip.
Forty-eight years later, on April 14, 2000, the heavy metal band Metallica filed a lawsuit against Napster, making Metallica, et al. v. Napster, Inc. the first case where an artist sued a peer-to-peer file sharing organization. Napster would soon be plagued by more legal troubles centered around copyright infringement. It closed up shop in 2001 and filed for bankruptcy in 2002, but the brand has since been acquired by other companies, resurfacing as a digital music store and a streaming service.
Hopping back a couple of centuries, George Frideric Handel died on this date in 1759. The last performance he attended? Fittingly for a composer, it was his own music: Handel’s Messiah, that beloved work that also comes with a wide range of interpretations.
One pair of contrasting recordings: here from Boston Baroque led by Thomas Pearlman, and here from the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir. They almost sound like two different pieces.
As conductor Jane Glover noted in an interview with Daniel Hathaway in 2018, her 100+ performances of the work have involved choirs ranging in size from 24 to 450 members. Since it’s quite a long piece, she also likes to condense it — or as she said, “make the odd nip and tuck.”
She also speculated as to what Handel might think of the work’s popularity in the present day. “Even for someone as confident and outgoing as he was, he would be astonished to learn what it has meant to every single generation of music lovers ever since.”