DIARY: Tuesday, August 4, 2026

August 4, 2026 by Daniel Hathaway

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Tonight at 7 pm, Olympic Brass (Amanda Bekeny & Ted Clark, trumpets, Greg Hillis, horn, Devin Roark, trombone, and J.c. Sherman, tuba) play a free concert in Cain Park’s Alma Theater in Cleveland Heights.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

American composer, educator, and administrator William Schuman was born on this date in 1910 in New York. He served as president of the Juilliard School and of the new arts complex, Lincoln Center, while writing a large catalogue of music in all classical genres.

That includes ten symphonies and the 1953 opera The Mighty Casey, based on Ernest Thayer’s poem, Casey at the Bat (Schuman was a lifelong baseball fan). Watch highlights from the opera performed by the Juilliard Opera Center and the Juilliard Orchestra led by Gerard Schwartz, or listen to the entire work here.

George Szell recorded Schuman’s A Song of Orpheus — Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra in 1964 with Leonard Rose and The Cleveland Orchestra (listen here). In a lecture co-sponsored by the Music Division of the Library of Congress, Dartmouth professor Steven Swayne discusses Schuman’s Seventh Symphony.

About Daniel Hathaway

Daniel Hathaway founded ClevelandClassical.com in September, 2008, after a thirty-one year tenure as music director of Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral, where he founded the Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert Series and Trinity Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of Harvard College and the Episcopal Divinity School, he also studied historical musicology at Princeton and Harvard Universities. Before coming to Cleveland in 1977, he served as head of humanities at the Sunset Hill School in Kansas City and as head of arts at Groton School in Massachusetts. In Cleveland, he has served on the music staff of Cleveland Opera, Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the faculty of Laurel School. As an organist, Hathaway has played recitals in the U.S., England, France, Germany, and Austria. He team-teaches Music Journalism at Oberlin College and Conservatory and is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America.

Cooper International Competition for Violin: Concerto Finals (Aug. 10)

by Daniel Hathaway

Monday evening’s Cooper International Competition for Violin concerto finals in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall marked the culmination of a week’s worth of public playing that took the measure of an impressive group of young musicians in solo recitals.

Now, joined onstage by conductor David Danzmayr and the Columbus ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, the three performers who had risen to the top would demonstrate their ability to put full concertos across. Grace under pressure, a spirit of collaboration, and a deep feeling for the music were among the requirements.

Elizabeth Poppy Song (center), age 16, from the United States, led off with a beautiful opening statement of the lyrical theme in Sergei Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2 in G minor, and gradually and with great control shifted the music into a more spirited mood. She maintained good coordination with Danzmyr and the orchestra as the first movement alternated between technical and lyric passages and culminated in an exciting pizzicato ending.

[Read on…]

Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays Debussy’s Préludes to his strengths (July 30)

by Stephanie Manning

Performing Claude Debussy’s complete Préludes in recital is rare, but Jean-Yves Thibaudet has been making a habit of it. Over the past few years, the pianist has appeared in venues across the country to play the entirety of Book I and Book II as a 90-minute concert. He presented that program on July 30 in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

What brought Thibaudet to Cleveland was not just his solo recital — he also gave masterclasses as part of the Cleveland International Piano Competition for Young Artists. By July 30, all six finalists had already participated in sessions with Thibaudet, testing their ability to adapt to feedback. And on the eve of the Competition’s concerto round, the time was ripe for both contestants and audience to sit back and listen to the master pianist himself.

[Read on…]

Kazuki Yamada brings sunny energy to multifaceted Cleveland Orchestra program (Aug. 1)

by Stephanie Manning

This article was originally published on Cleveland.com

CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio — To clap or not to clap between movements — that is the question many Cleveland Orchestra audience members faced on Saturday night at Blossom Music Center. Luckily, Japanese guest conductor Kazuki Yamada had an answer.

Hearing some scattered applause after the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 2, Yamada turned his head, smiled, and gently put his own hands together. That moment gave the crowd the green light they needed to join in.

Yamada’s willingness to engage with listeners felt like an extension of his genial personality, which allowed him to lead The Cleveland Orchestra on August 1 with both excitement and poise.

[Read on…]

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