by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
This evening, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes plays Edvard Grieg’s Piano Sonata, Geirr Tveitt’s Piano Sonata No. 29, “Sonata Etere,” and Frédéric Chopin’s complete 24 Preludes (7:30 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center.) Tickets available online.
And Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project hosts a double-header. Weston Olencki and Jennifer Torrence play BATTERY, a long-form work for massed marching percussion, including traditional drumline, feedback-induced crash cymbals, and an array of robotic woodblocks. On the same program, Aurie Hsu and Steven Kemper present works that combine dance, robotic musical instruments, and sound (8 pm at Calicchia Gallery Studio, Cleveland.) Suggested donation $15.
See our Concert Listings for more information about these and other events.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Guitar Society executive director Eric Mann writes, “In 2021, Cleveland Classical Guitar Society commissioned composer Thomas Flippin to write a series of etudes based on spirituals. The resulting collection, 14 Études on the Music of Black Americans, is groundbreaking and utterly unique in the classical guitar repertoire.
“For these videos, Cleveland Classical Guitar Society engaged Damian Goggans, an alumnus of the CCGS Education Program. In each, he sings the original spiritual, performs the guitar etude, and speaks about the context of the spiritual, based on his own research. As the composer states, ‘Damian has really left his imprint on these and transformed them into something more powerful than I could have imagined.’” Watch the videos, which were released on Wednesday evening, here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On March 27, Russian cellist and conductor Mistislav Rostropovich was born in 1927 in Baku, and American composer and arranger Ferde Grofé was born in 1892 in New York City.
Click here to listen to a 1969 live performance of the Dvořák concerto featuring Rostropovich with George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra.
Grofé talks about his influence on Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in an excerpt from an inter iew (skip the silly stuff and start at 1:39), and conducts a rehearsal of his Mississippi Suite. And for sci-fi buffs, here’s a cleaned-up print of the 1950 film Rocketship X-M, with score by Grofé that includes the first use of a theremin in a film score. (Sorry, we’re avoiding the Grand Canyon Suite.)
And on this date in 2005, American pianist Grant Johanneson, who served as president of the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1977 to 1985 died in Berlin. Click here for a true blast from the past: Johanneson performs the third movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 7, Op. 83 on The Ed Sullivan Show, on May 5, 1963.
“The Ed Sullivan Show was a television variety program that aired on CBS from 1948-1971. For 23 years it aired every Sunday night and played host to the world’s greatest talents…and is well known for bringing rock n’ roll music to the forefront of American culture through acts like Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones. The entertainers each week ranged from comedians like Joan Rivers and Rodney Dangerfield, to Broadway stars Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, to pop singers such as Bobby Darin and Petula Clark. It also frequently featured stars of Motown such as The Supremes, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder and The Jackson 5. The Ed Sullivan Show was one of the only places on American television where such a wide variety of popular culture was showcased and its legacy lives on to this day.” —YouTube
