by Daniel Hathaway
Les Délices launches its online subscription series with Bewitched, in which soprano Hannah DePriest channels the sorceress Circe and the witch Medea in works by de Blamont, Clérambault, and Charpentier — a bit early for Halloween, but the episode will be available through November 2. Above, DePriest and Artistic Director Debra Nagy talk over the scores. Check the Concert Listings for details, and read a preview article by Jarrett Hoffman here.
NEWS BRIEFS AND INTERESTING READS:
In a ground-breaking deal financed by an anonymous donor, The San Francisco Conservatory of Music has acquired the artist management firm Opus 3. Read a San Francisco Chronicle article where SFCM president David Stull (formerly dean of the Oberlin Conservatory) talks about the deal and its ramifications with Joshua Kosman.
Director Yuval Sharon, who has staged operas for The Cleveland Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, has begun his Michigan Opera tenure with Twilight:Gods, a compressed version of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung set in a Motown parking garage. Read a New York Times article by Joshua Barone and watch a television story from Detroit’s Channel 4 here.
The latest entry into the ongoing debate about coronavirus transmission through aerosols involves a study of Minnesota Orchestra wind players by the University of Minnesota. Read the Star Tribune story here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today’s calendar mostly records historic finales, perhaps none so tragic as that of French Baroque composer Jean-Marie Leclair. On this date in 1764, he was murdered in his home, supposedly by his jealous nephew, although no one was ever tried for the crime.
Making a more natural departure, Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, father of the prolific keyboard composer Domenico, died on this date in 1725 in Naples at the age of 65. In his memory, we suggest his extraordinary setting of Stabat Mater for ten solo voices and organ, sung here by Ars Nova Copenhagen, led by Paul Hillier and recorded in the Garnisonskirken in April, 2014.
Another in memoriam is due to Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, who was welcomed into the heavenly cello section in San Juan, Puerto Rico on this date in 1973 at the age of 96. In a 1955 documentary filmed at his home in Prades, France, he talks with a former student about various subjects including his exile during the Franco regime, and plays one of Bach’s solo suites, in the revival of which he played a central role.
In a more civilized era, Casals played at the White House during the Kennedy Administration on November 13, 1961, a performance captured here on an LP recording.
Enough departures! Our birthday boy is Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist Franz Liszt, born near Bayreuth on October 22, 1811. His eventful life and career included his single-handed invention of the solo piano recital, for which he wrote an enormous number of pieces to challenge keyboardists and make listeners swoon.
One familiar example from that repertoire is his Mephisto Waltz No. 1, played here by Megan-Geoffrey Prinz at the Cleveland Institute of Music on May 20, 2018 (the fantastic story behind the piece is included in the notes).
Liszt also invented and championed the tone poem, of which he wrote a dozen during his years in Weimar. Orpheus tells the tale of the singing poet and lyre player who learned his art from Apollo himself. It was first performed as an orchestral introduction to Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, but Liszt later made a transcription for organ. So did Jean Guillou, who played the work in 1977 at Notre-Dame in Paris. Listen here.