By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Haewon Song and Robert Shannon (pictured) perform in Oberlin, Daniel Gilbert plays Golijov with CityMusic
. The Cleveland Orchestra adds a free concert, CIM seeks Academy students
. The Almanac reports a mixed list of arrivals and departures
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 7:30 pm Oberlin faculty pianists Haewon Song and Robert Shannon play Schubert, Messiaen, Mozart, Khachaturian & Pabst’s Paraphrase de Concert sur l’opera on Eugene Oneguine de P. Tchaikovsky in Warner Concert Hall. Oberlin Conservatory, 43 South Professor St, Oberlin. Free. Click here for live stream.
Also at 7:30 pm, CityMusic begins its run of concerts titled The Visionary Clarinet. Klezmer, classicism and Jewish melodies swirl together in Golijov’s The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind, performed by Daniel Gilbert. The Temple — Tifereth Israel, 26000 Shaker Blvd., Beachwood. Free.
Check our Concert Listings for details.
IN THE NEWS:
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced that it will host a free concert, Ellis Island: The Dream of America at Severance Music Center on Tuesday, April 18 at 7:30 pm as part of its Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival: The American Dream. The performance will be led by the Orchestra’s assistant conductor Daniel Reith.
The multimedia work for orchestra honors the immigrant experience by combining music, narration, and historic images. Created by Grammy-nominated composer Peter Boyer, it features seven actors who portray the journeys of seven immigrants from seven countries on their way to America, beginning in the early parts of the past century. Spoken texts and historic images come from the Ellis Island Oral History Project. The concert is one hour long with no intermission. Click here for free tickets.
The Cleveland Institute of Music seeks dedicated young musicians for the 2023-24 Academy program. Participants range in age from three to 18, from Pre-K to high school seniors, and run the gamut from novices to advanced performers. All students, no matter their age or ability, participate in ensembles and take an array of general musicianship courses as well private lessons with CIM faculty. Most coursework takes place on Saturdays. Click here for more information.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
There’s quite a mixed list of arrivals and departures to acknowledge on this 16th day of March. Italian composer Giovanni Pergolesi (who died in 1736 in Pozzuoli of tuberculosis at the age of 26), American composer and conductor Edwin London (born in Philadelphia in 1929), English conductor Sir Roger Norrington (born in 1934 in Oxford), American composer David Del Tredici (born in 1937 in Cloverdale, California), Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (who died in Los Angeles in 1968), and American composer Roger Sessions (who died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1985 at the age of 88).
A pastiche of their compositions and performances would make a remarkably varied concert program.
We could start with Pergolesi’s popular Stabat Mater, performed here by Nathalie Stutzmann (conductor), Philippe Jaroussky (countertenor), and Emöke Barath (soprano) at the Château de Fontainbleau), and follow that with something completely different: Ed London’s The Declaration of Independence with saxophonist Howie Smith.
To end a rather long first half, how about Norrington’s take on Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique with the Royal College of Music Symphony?
Transitioning after intermission to another world of fantasy, we could launch the second half with one of Del Tredici’s Alice (in Wonderland) pieces — an obsession of his.
Then as an entremet, one of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s classical guitar works. There are a hundred to choose from, but here are some interesting possibilities: Korean guitarist Bokyung Byun performing his Escarraman for the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society; Petra Poláčková playing the first movement of his Omaggio a Boccherini; Chaconne Klaverenga playing the fourth movement of his Quintet with Rebecca Benjamin and Andrew Ma, violins, Mark Liu, viola, and Sarah Miller, cello, at the Cleveland Institute of Music in April, 2016; or Klaverenga performing his Capriccio Diabolico at CIM in May, 2015.
For a finale, why not the work that earned Sessions his Pulitzer Prize in 1982. Click here for a 1981 performance of his Concerto for Orchestra by Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony. (His opera Montezuma, premiered in 1976 by Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston, is best left for another day.)
