by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Apollo’s Fire begins its run of “Hope and Solitude,” with countertenor Reginald Mobley (pictured), oboist Debra Nagy, and violinist Alan Choo performing music by Henry Purcell and J.S. Bach at 7:30 in Akron’s First United Methodist Church
And at 8 at Cleveland’s Calicchia Gallery, Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project hosts Dani Dobkin & Matt Sargent, who are traveling in support of their new album, Bend.
For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
DEPARTURES:
“Born in 1925 in Warren, Ohio, Walfrid Kujala served as flute and piccolo of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1954 until 2001 and was a professor of flute at the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music from 1962 to 2012.” He passed away at the age of 99. Read a Bienen School obituary here.
REINVENTIONS:
In today’s print edition of The New York Times, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim writes, “When the soprano Lucy Shelton opened a recital at Merkin Hall in 2019 with Adieu à la vie, a song by Rossini, she was about to turn 75. And though she was not bidding farewell to life as the song’s title suggests, she felt she was done with performing. For decades, she had been one of the most sought-after interpreters of contemporary vocal music. But she had reached a point where ‘I couldn’t sing the things that I used to sing,’ she said in an interview. ‘And that’s depressing.
‘I figured I was probably winding down, she added. ‘But then I got wound up again.’
“On Thursday, Shelton, 80, takes center stage at the Abrons Arts Center in the world premiere of Lucidity, an opera about identity and dementia, composed by Laura Kaminsky, with a libretto by David Cote.” Read the article here.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On November 14, 1900, American composer Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York. His career was permanently bound up with that of his student, composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. The two met for the first time on November 14, 1937 in New York on Copland’s 37th birthday.
November 14 turns out to have been the date for several more milestones in Bernstein’s (and Copland’s) life.
On that date in 1943, the young conductor stepped in for the ailing Bruno Walter to lead a Sunday afternoon performance by the New York Philharmonic without benefit of a rehearsal, a feat that propelled Bernstein into national fame.
And on November 14, 1980 in Washington, D.C., Bernstein conducted the National Symphony in a tribute to Copland on the composer’s 80th birthday. On the program: Copland’s Lincoln Portrait with Copland as narrator.
Finally, on November 14, 1990, “A Concert Remembering Lennie” at New York’s Carnegie Hall, memorialized Bernstein a month after his death. The participants included cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, baritones Thomas Hampson & Chester Ludgin, soprano Clamma Dale, soprano, mezzo-sopranos Marilyn Horne & Christa Ludwig, tenor, Jerry Hadley, speaker Jamie Bernstein, narrators Lauren Bacall, Nina Bernstein, Schuyler Chapin & Alexander Bernstein, the Westminster Choir, the New York Philharmonic with musicians from the Boston Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic & the Santa Cecilia Orchestra, led by conductors Michael Tilson Thomas, Michael Barrett, Christoph Eschenbach & James Levine.
Introducing Maestro, the recent film about Bernstein, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca “talks with Bradley Cooper, the movie’s star, co-writer, producer and director, about playing one of the most charismatic and controversial musical figures of the 20th century. He also talks with Bernstein’s children (Jamie Bernstein, Nina Bernstein Simmons, and Alexander Bernstein) about the life and legacy of their father being brought to the screen.” Watch the story here.
