by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Today at 2 pm Ohio Light Opera opens Victor Herbert and Henry Blossom’s The Red Mill in Wooster, and Piano Cleveland continues its Contestant Community Concerts at the Natural History Museum.
There may still be places available for M.U.S.i.C. – Stars in the Classics’ Summer Music in the Garden today (and Friday) at 6:30 in Orange Village, and for Ohio Light Opera’s My Fair Lady (curtain tonight at 7:30 in Wooster).
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1757, Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid. Son of composer Alessandro, Domenico spent most of his career in Spain, producing mainly keyboard works including 555 sonatas.
Click here to begin watching an extensive 1985 BBC documentary about Domenico’s life with musical selections played by Rafael Puyana (part two is here). And click here to watch Oberlin harpsichord Professor Mark Edwards play three of the sonatas in Warner Concert Hall in February, 2018.
And on July 23, 1928, American pianist Leon Fleisher was born in San Francisco. Well-known to Cleveland — and worldwide — audiences for his commanding recordings of the Beethoven Concertos, Fleisher lost control of his right hand in 1964 due to focal dystonia. He spent the next decades concentrating on left-hand repertoire, teaching, and conducting, but made a famous comeback in 2004 with the Vanguard recording Two Hands.
Listen here to a Peabody Institute Founders Day interview with Fleisher by Ray Sprenkle, enjoy Fleisher’s recording of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra from 1961, and — for something completely different, watch him play a transcription of J.S. Bach’s Schafe können sicher weiden (better known as Sheep may safely graze, an aria from Bach’s ‘Hunting Cantata,’ BWV 208.)
