by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7:30, CityMusic Chamber Orchestra begins its final peripatetic series of the season at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights. Jeannette Sorrell conducts Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, and Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Piano features violinist Diana Cohen, violin, and pianist Roman Rabinovich. Concerts continue through Sunday afternoon.
For details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.
HEADLINES:
Baltimore Public Media Presents “Classical Music for People With Short Attention Spans.” This summer, WYPR, the Baltimore-based radio station, is hosting an accessible concert for old and newcomers of classical music. Read the Violin Channel story here.
The woodwind quintet ZaRiah took home the Grand Prize and the Senior Wind Division Gold Medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition this week. Four of the members of the Connecticut-based group are Oberlin Conservatory graduates. A post on the school’s Facebook page adds:
“ZaRiah is the first woodwind quintet to win the Fischoff Grand Prize since Quintet Attacca in 2002. The win also continues a remarkable recent run for Oberlin at the competition, following the Poiesis Quartet’s Grand Prize win in 2023.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Before lighting the birthday candles for historical figures born on May 14, let’s observe the passing of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel in 1847 at the too-young age of 43.
That Felix Mendelssohn’s sister could hold her own is demonstrated in her piano cycle Das Jahr (played here on a doctoral recital in Montréal by Laurence Manning), and — all too appropriate during the recent pandemic — her “CholeraMusik” (Oratorium nach Bildung der Bibel), performed here by Cappella Clausura.
On to happier things, German conductor Otto Klemperer was born on this date in 1885 in Breslau, and forced to leave his post at the Hamburg Opera in 1915 after a scandal involving a recently married soprano. In popular culture, his son Werner probably eclipsed his fame as the actor who played the bumbling Colonel Klink in the CBS television series Hogan’s Heroes. But back to the concert world, here’s Otto Klemperer’s take on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the New Philharmonia Orchestra.
The life and career of American composer Lou Harrison, born on this date in 1917 in Portland, Oregon, is summarized in a documentary. For a taste of Harrison’s lively music, watch a performance here of his Concerto for Organ, Percussion, and Strings at Trinity Church on New York’s Wall Street in April of 2017 by organist Chelsea Chen and Rutgers Percussion conducted by Patrick Gardner, during the Lou Harrison Centennial Festival.
And Cuban-American composer Tania León, born in Havana in 1943, is credited with introducing Afro-Cuban percussion instruments into symphonic works. Her five-movement Ritmicas is a fine example. The performance was organized by the Chicago Center For Contemporary Composition.
