by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7, No Exit New Music hosts the Meridian Arts Ensemble in Daniel Grabois’ Drift, Moshe Shulman’s Subito, George Lewis’s Tightrope, Joseph Haydn’s Feldpartie, and David Sanford’s Credo, free at Trinity Cathedral.
The Cleveland Orchestra continues its Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle with a repeat of Wednesday’s program: the Triple Concerto (Orion Weiss, piano, Augustin Hadelich, violin, and Julia Hagen, cello) and Concerto No. 3 (Sir Stephen Hough, soloist — pictured). 7:30 in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center.
And at 8 pm, Oberlin Opera Theater raises the curtain on the first of four performances of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon (Cinderella), directed by Stephanie Havey, with James Feddeck conducting the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra (repeated in Hall Auditorium Friday & Saturday at 8 & Sunday at 2).
For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Violin Channel reports that “The principal performance space of the Opéra de Paris, the historic Palais Garnier, will close for at least two years to allow the organization to carry out urgent renovations on the building. The 150-year-old space, which is among the city’s most prominent landmarks, will shut in mid-2027 for an estimated period of two years.
“The company’s newer space, the Opéra Bastille, will become the company’s major venue during the renovations. This 1989 building is also in need of serious work and will close for its own two-year renovation in mid-2030 (once work has been completed on the Palais Garnier).”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1877, British composer and promoter Henry Balfour Gardiner was born in London. His name pops up these days in Anglican music lists as the composer of the Evening Hymn (Te lucis ante terminum), a dramatic anthem often sung at Choral Evensong services. Listen here to a follow-the-score performance by The Sixteen, directed by Harry Christophers.
But Gardiner should also be remembered as an advocate for the works of such contemporary British musicians as Arnold Bax, Gustav Holst, Percy Grainger, and Roger Quilter, whose music was featured in concerts Gardiner underwrote at London’s Queen’s Hall in 1912-1913. Self-critical, he stopped composing in 1925 and devoted himself to an early ecological project, planting trees on his pig farm in Dorset.
On this date in 1926, the celebrated Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland was born in Sydney. Have a look at The Best of Joan Sutherland Live from the Sydney Opera House, a film produced by her husband-conductor Richard Bonynge.
And on this date in 1949, American composer Steven Stucky entered the scene in Hutchinson, Kansas. During his relatively short career (he died of a brain tumor in Ithaca, New York in 2016), Stucky was affiliated with a number of Orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic (resident composer from 1988–2009), the New York Philharmonic (host of its Hear & Now series from 2005–2009, and the Pittsburgh Symphony (Composer of the Year, 2011–2012).
One of Stucky’s most intriguing projects was The Classical Style, the comic opera on which he collaborated with the pianist Jeremy Denk, but died before its completion (Denk carried the piece forward). Based on Charles Rosen’s book The Classical Style, the work received its first full staging at Aspen in 2015, when Opera News wrote
At times the performance veered close to the sophomoric humor of an end-of-year fraternity or sorority review, but it never arrived there. The opera is hugely entertaining, not least because Steven Stucky is a parodist of genius whose knowledge of the language of classical music over the past 250 years is astoundingly detailed and seemingly infinite. The majority of the score is based on the music of the Big Three, and Stucky was clearly most at ease and enjoying himself as he parodied Mozart.
November 7, 1983 saw the departure of French composer Germaine Tailleferre in Paris at the age of 91, the only female member of the Group des Six, which included Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honneger, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc.
Watch a performance of Tailleferre’s Petite suite pour orchestra by l’Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France led by Mikko Franck.
