by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
With the opening performance of Franz Lehár’s Count of Luxembourg at 2 pm and an evening staging of The Sound of Music at 7:30, Ohio Light Opera will have five of its six summer shows running — and its stage crew busy changing sets — from now through July 28.
Read our group interview with members of the team that makes it all happen in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster. And check out our conversation with artistic director Steven Daigle about the last two shows on this summer’s menu.
Meanwhile in Cleveland, The Cleveland Orchestra is reviving its Summers at Severance series, and tonight at 7 will welcome guest conductor Oksana Lyniv & pianist Inon Barnatan to Mandel Concert Hall for music by Janáček, Rachmaninoff, Borys Lyatoshynsky & Stravinsky. Read our preview here.
For details of upcoming concerts, visit our Concert Listings page.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On July 11, 1937, American composer George Gershwin died of a brain tumor in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 38. He’s most famous for his opera, Porgy and Bess, and his Rhapsody in Blue. Click here to hear the 1924 Victor Talking Machine Co. recording of the original version of the Rhapsody with the composer at the piano. The piece was edited to fit onto two 78-rpm discs. Follow the link to part two.
Adding to the list of American composers who should be better known, George Frederick McKay was born on July 11, 1899 in Harrington,Washington. The first graduate in composition at Eastman, McKay taught for 40 years at the University of Washington. A prolific composer in all classical genres as well as jazz, his detailed Wikipedia entry notes that “his music contains a poignant evocation of the West Coast American spirit, including glimpses of a populist era of street marches, honky-tonk dance halls and social chaos along with a recognition of the great natural beauty of his home region and the vitality of its people.”
CIM graduate John McLaughlin Williams has recorded seven of McKay’s Symphonies, as well as his 1940 Violin Concerto (listen here). And his popular Epoch: American Dance Symphony from 1935 has been recorded by John Nardolillo and the University of Kentucky Symphony.
Prominent outdoor concert series on both the east and west coasts made their debuts on July 11.
The Boston Pops, the celebrated orchestra made up of Boston Symphony musicians minus principal players, started out as the Boston Promenade Orchestra, which played its first concert indoors on July 11, 1885 at the old Boston Music Hall, then moved under Arthur Fiedler’s reign to the Charles River basin when the orchestra discovered a bequest they’d never cashed in. Watch a video detailing the history of the Hatch Shell.
On July 11, 1940, a young Leonard Bernstein made his conducting debut with the Pops at that open-air Esplanade shell on the Charles River, leading Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger.
These days, most of the orchestra concerts are played by the Boston Landmarks Orchestra under the baton of Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins, who succeeded Charles Ansbacher in 2010. Wilkins has said, “To me, a perfect concert is one that appeals to people of different backgrounds who have never been together before, creating a joyful and meaningful shared new experience.”
