by Daniel Hathaway
APOLLO’S FIRE AL FRESCO:
Although its two “Tuscan Sun” concerts at Gervasi Vineyard in Canton on Friday, August 21 are sold out, Apollo’s Fire offers five “Drive-In Parking Lot Concerts” of the program this weekend. On Saturday, August 22 at 3:30, 5:30 and 7:15 pm, you can pull your vehicle into the spacious lot at First Baptist Church in Shaker Heights for a performance of rustic music from the Italian Baroque. Performers include Jeannette Sorrell, harpsichord and direction, Amanda Powell, soprano, Brian Kay, plucked instruments, Emi Tanabe, violin, Kivie Cahn-Lipman, cello, and Jamey Haddad, percussion.
The concerts will be repeated on Sunday, August 23 at 5:30 and 7:30 pm in the parking area of St. Noel Church in Willoughby Hills. Check our Concert Listings for ticket information.
TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:
In addition to the daily Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra broadcast (Richard Strauss and Respighi) and nightly MET Opera Stream (Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini), you can catch the third program in an every-Tuesday-in-August new opera stream from OperaVision, pianist Conrad Tao’s live performance from National Sawdust including his own improvisations, Akron Symphony music director Christopher Wilkins conducting his other ensemble, the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, in music by women composers, and Oberlin grad Jeremy Denk in piano music by Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin from New York’s 92nd St. Y. Details here.
IN MEMORIAM PETER HORN, LUTHIER:
Area string players will lament the passing of Peter Horn, who died on August 14 in Brecksville. Horn emigrated from Germany to the U.S. in 1956 and began a long career as violin maker and string instrument master repairman in Cleveland. Read an obituary here.
INTERESTING READS:
In a Washington Post interview, cellist Yo-Yo Ma talks about “how music can be like touching during these socially distant times.”
And in a posting on his blog, Toks Dada, the classical program manager at Town Hall Symphony Hall in Birmingham, England asks whether arts venues “should hibernate or adapt in order to survive” the pandemic.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On August 18 in 1750, Italian composer and conductor Antonio Salieri was born in Legnago, near Verona. During his long career as the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister in Vienna (1788-1824), he composed 37 operas and taught Liszt, Schubert, Beethoven, Hummel, and Mozart. Victim of a major shift in musical styles as well as the subject of an almost completely fictional play by Peter Shaffer that became the hit film Amadeus, Salieri’s popular reputation as an arch-rival of Mozart has obscured his historical legacy. (The Cleveland Orchestra played two performances of the score during Severance Hall screenings of the film in February, 2020, conducted by Vinay Paramesawaren.)
Toward the end of his career, Salieri switched from opera to composing sacred music. His Requiem received its premiere at the composer’s funeral. Click here to hear the Agnus Dei performed by the Mastersingers Inc. Chorale and Orchestra, led by the late J.D. Goddard.
On this date in 1942, Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff died of tuberculosis at the German concentration camp in Wülzburg. Highly influenced by jazz, Schulhoff went through a Dada phase, was influenced by the Second Viennese School, and at the end of his career, settled into soviet realism. A 2016 ChamberFest Cleveland program featured young artist Marjorie Maltias in Schulhoff’s Sonata Eroica for Solo Female Vocalist.
And on August 18, 2004, celebrated American film score composer Elmer Bernstein died in Ojai, California. Two years later, the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music orchestras celebrated the career of its former faculty member in a tribute concert. Listen here.
