by Daniel Hathaway
CHRIS HAFF-PALUCK TRIBUTES:
We’re collecting tributes to the late Christine Haff-Paluck to be published on a dedicated page of the website. That includes many heartfelt comments we’ve culled from Facebook posts. Those who knew Chris and would like to submit a remembrance or a photo should send them by email here.
Among her many accomplishments was the founding of Arts Renaissance Tremont. That concert series brought distinguished area musicians to its free Sunday afternoon concerts at Pilgrim United Church of Christ, and was nearing the end of its 29th season when the novel coronavirus arrived. Here are two examples from ART’s video archives: cellist Darrett Adkins and pianist Cicilia Yudha performing the Chopin Sonata (watch here), and members of The Cleveland Orchestra bass section — the double bass was Chris’s instrument — playing François Rabbath’s Kobalds here.
TODAY ON THE WEB:
Enjoy music by The Cleveland Orchestra with your lunch, catch an early afternoon recital by violinist David Bowlin and pianist Tony Cho on Oberlin Stage Left, and watch Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda in HD from the MET Opera tonight. Details in our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S FEATURED VIDEOS:
Although many of the video streams we list have dates and times attached, most of them are still available on-demand for varying periods of time after the first viewing.
Violinist Isabelle Faust’s hour-long recital of Bach solo works in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche is available here until July 4. In early April, she played Partita No. 2 in d and Sonata No. 3 in C near Bach’s grave in the empty church where he served as Cantor from 1723-1750.
And pianist Garrick Ohlsson’s full concert program of works by Beethoven, Prokofiev, and Chopin, performed on March 14 to an empty recital hall at the 92nd St. Y in New York, is available for viewing here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On April 28, 1954, composer Michael Daugherty was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. During his time on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory (1986-1991), he organized the 1988 Electronic Festival Plus Festival, which featured music from more than 50 composers. Strongly influenced by American popular culture, he shook up the classical world by writing works like Metropolis Symphony, based on tales of Superman (the superhero invented by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in Cleveland in 1938). Here’s a performance by the Toledo Symphony, led by Alain Trudel.
And on this day in 1992, French composer Olivier Messiaen, who visited the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1978, died in Paris at the age of 83. Among his most celebrated works is the Quartet for the End of Time, composed in a German stalag in 1941 and first performed for his fellow prisoners-of-war. Watch a ChamberFest Cleveland performance from 2013 here, with Franklin Cohen, clarinet, Yura Lee, violin, Gabriel Cabezas, cello, and Orion Weiss, piano.
Like a number of Parisian composers, Messiaen was also an organist — from 1931 until his death, he served as titulaire at the Church of the Trinity, where he improvised as well as played his own compositions. Here’s a rare glimpse of the composer improvising on the Gregorian chant Puer natus.
