by Daniel Hathaway
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Cleveland Institute of Music will make use of a number of alternative performing venues this season while its Kulas Hall is under renovation.
“CIM’s Mixon Hall will remain in active use but events typically held in Kulas Hall will take CIM musicians broadly into the community, to a variety of locations including Severance Music Center, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Maltz Performing Arts Center, and local high schools. Of special note will be two opera productions at Cleveland’s historic Playhouse Square.” Read a press release here.
Meanwhile, in his blog, British journalist Norman Lebrecht has his ear to the ground on other developments at CIM. Read his Slipped Disc entry from Monday here.
Stephanie Havey joins the Voice Division of the Oberlin Conservatory, where she will teach and direct two fully-staged opera productions each academic year. Read more here.
The Thomas and Evon Cooper International Competition, produced annually by Oberlin College and Conservatory, will move to January when it returns in 2025, with the opening day on January 5 and competition rounds running through January 10.
The winter 2025 edition is open to outstanding violinists from around the world between the ages of 13 and 18. The field will be limited to 18 participants, selected from applicants worldwide and applications are due October 1.
With this competition, Oberlin begins a new artistic partnership with the Columbus-based ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, led by Norman Huyn, which will collaborate with the three Concerto Finalists on Friday, January 10, in Finney Chapel.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez (pictured above, most often simply known as Josquin) died on this date in 1521 at the age of 81 in Valenciennes in the north of France. There’s a curious lack of biographical information for one of the most celebrated musical figures of his era, and scholars have been busy in recent years determining exactly which of many attributed pieces — both sacred and secular — he actually wrote while in the service of dukes, noble families, and popes.
Here are three authentic Josquin works: his Ave Maria as sung by Quire Cleveland under Ross W. Duffin (listen for the exquisite canon in the middle section), his Gaude Virgo performed by Mignarda at Cleveland’s Immaculate Conception Church, and Nymphes des Bois, (La Déploration des Johannes Ockeghem), his memorial lament on the death of his teacher, whose style he imitates in the piece, sung by the Hilliard Ensemble (you can follow along with the score.)
On the 500th anniversary of Josquin’s departure, former Oberlin English professor and ClevelandClassical.com correspondent Nicholas Jones wrote a tribute for San Francisco Classical Voice. Read the article here.
And on this date in 1886, British-American composer and violist Rebecca Clarke was born in Harrow. Clarke came to prominence with what she called “my one little whiff of success” in 1919 when her Viola Sonata tied for first place in a competition sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge with a piece by Ernst Bloch. Her reputation has enjoyed more “whiffs of success” since her death in New York in 1979, as evidenced by the establishment of the Rebecca Clarke Society.
Here’s a performance of the Sonata by one of the viola legends of our time, Nobuko Imai, who at the time of the recital was just a month shy of her 80th birthday, performing with pianist Albert Tiu, at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Concert Hall in Singapore.
