by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7:30, CityMusic Cleveland begins its current four-concert tour of the area with “Sounds of Home” at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights (pictured). John McLaughlin Williams conducts, and soprano Kirsten Kunkle will be featured in music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Samuel Barber, George Frederick McKay, and the world premiere of Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Ko’koomfena (Our Grandmother), a CityMusic commission. It’s free.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1621, Dutch organist and composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck died In Amsterdam, where he spent his entire career, although his fame spread elsewhere. He was known in Germany for his mentoring of young organists and in England for his keyboard compositions, which found their way into the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
Sweelinck was employed by the city rather than by the Oude Kerk, where he played — which shunned organ music in its Calvinist services. His duties included improvising on Dutch psalm tunes and hymns at other times.
Click here to hear Brian Wentzel play Sweelinck’s Erbarm dich mein, O Herre Gott on the recent Paul Fritts organ at First Lutheran Church, Lorain.
Sweelinck’s contrapuntal works not based on church tunes include this Ricercar, played by Nicholas Capozzoli in his senior recital on the Brombaugh organ in Oberlin’s Fairchild Chapel, and this Fantasia chromatica, played by harpsichordist Michael Maxwell Steer on a meantone-tuned instrument. That Sweelinck’s fame extends into later eras is demonstrated by pianist Glenn Gould’s performance of one of the composer’s organ fantasies at the Salzburg Festival in 1959.
Sweelinck is also known for his variations on popular tunes that surely entertained his listeners during their promenades in the Oude Kerk. Oberlin graduate Joseph Ripka recorded his More Palatino variations on the Brombaugh organ at Southern Adventist University in 2017.
And on October 16, 1750, German lutenist and composer Silvius Leopold Weiss died in Dresden. One of the most accomplished lutenists of his era, Weiss wrote something like 1,000 pieces for the instrument, and engaged in improvisation duels with Johann Sebastian Bach.
Click here to watch Robert Barto rehearsing a Weiss prelude before his Lute Society of America recital in June, 2010 in Cleveland, and here to listen to Barto performing his Partita Grande in C and two sonatas.
Weiss’s lute music is frequently played by enterprising classical guitarists. Watch this performance of his Tombeau sur la Mort de M. Comte d’Logy by Petra Poláčková.
