by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: Canton Symphony closes out Summer Serenades with brass quintet
•Performing opportunities: Western Reserve Chorale, YSU Youth Orchestra (pictured), and Kent State Communiversity Band
•Almanac: Albert Riemenschneider and BW Bach Festival
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 6:30 pm, the Canton Symphony’s free Summer Serenades series finishes up with a brass quintet performance at Stadium Park in Canton. Bring a chair or blanket and some picnic food, and enjoy the music (and the weather).
PERFORMING OPPORTUNITIES:
Western Reserve Chorale is looking for vocalists. Tuesday rehearsals from 7:15-9:30 pm begin on September 5 at Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights. Interested singers with prior musical experience are encouraged to come to a rehearsal or two to help decide about joining. Send the organization an email to let them know if they should expect you this season and what vocal part you sing. More info here.
The YSU Youth Orchestra is seeking string players, woodwinds, brass, and percussionists who are interested in being part of the ensemble. Details here.
And the Kent State Communiversity Band invites instrumentalists who are part of KSU or the larger Northeast Ohio community to join them. No audition necessary. Send an email to find out more.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Among those celebrating birthdays today are Italian composer Amilcare Ponchielli (1834 in Paderno — a town that is now known as Paderno Ponchielli in his honor), Armenian composer Nikoghayos Fadeyi Tigranyan (1856 in Gyumri), American performer and musicologist Albert Riemenschneider (1878 in Berea, Ohio), Austrian composer Alma Mahler-Werfel (1879 in Vienna), and Israeli-American violinist Itzhak Perlman (1945 in Tel Aviv), who turns 78.
And notable premieres that have taken place on August 31 in music history include Johann Strauss I’s Radetzky March (1848 in Vienna) and Brecht/Weill/Hauptmann’s The Threepenny Opera (1928 in Berlin).
We’ll focus today on our local man, Albert Riemenschneider. Some accounts have it that he became head of the music department at BW predecessor German Wallace College (where his father was president) during his junior year, in 1898. Others say he began teaching music that year, taking up the department’s directorship after graduating in 1899. Either way, he would remain in that role for nearly 50 years, until 1947.
Among the most important events during that tenure, in 1932 he and his wife Selma established the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival — the nation’s second oldest Bach festival and its oldest collegiate one, modeled after the Bethlehem Bach Festival.
A paper by Tom Riemenschneider and Laura Kennelly from 2007, the 75th anniversary year of the Festival, includes great details about its history. (“Albert and Selma Riemenschneider were driving back from the Bethlehem Bach Festival in 1931 when Al wondered, “Why don’t we have our own festival in Berea?”)
Albert Riemenschneider’s interest in Bach extended in other directions as well: as a scholar, notably as editor of the 371 Harmonized Chorales and 69 Chorale Melodies with Figured Bass (1941), and as a keyboardist, performing hundreds of recitals in the U.S. and Europe.
After Albert’s death in July 1950 in Akron — eight days away from the 200th anniversary of Bach’s own passing — Selma would continue managing the Festival for another four years. She would also prove instrumental in the founding of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, BW’s research center dedicated to J.S. Bach, through her 1951 gift to the University of her late husband’s collection of rare Bach manuscripts (on which the Library of Congress had also had a hungry eye or two).
Click here to listen to a recording of the St. Matthew Passion at the 2016 BW Bach Festival. The performance is led by Dirk Garner and features Rufus Müller (Evangelist), Dashon Burton (Christus), and soloists Yulia Van Doren, Luthien Brackett, Matthew Anderson, and Jason Steigerwalt.