by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
This evening at 7 pm, the Cleveland International Piano Competition continues with part one of its Salon Round. Evren Ozel (USA) and Maxim Lando (USA) will each perform a 45-60 minute program in historic Glidden House on Ford Drive in University Circle. “In the grand tradition of salons, personal narratives and histories will be interspersed throughout the program.” Click here for ticket information.
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassicaal.com Concert Listings.
INTERESTING READS:
In a Facebook post yesterday, assistant principal oboist Jeffrey Rathbun offered an insight into The Cleveland Orchestra’s three performances of a Lord of the Rings film last weekend. “The Return of the King movie that we played at Blossom Music Center the last 3 nights is like doing two Mahler 3rd Symphonies in one evening. The 1st half of the movie is a little shorter than a Mahler 3, the 2nd half a little longer. A total of 200 minutes, not counting the 20 minute intermission. Thus, an equivalent of six Mahler 3s in 3 nights.” And in that humidity!
Artist manager Frank Salomon, who manages the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, and administers the Marlboro Music School and Festival, has forwarded the PSC’s recent newsletter with some fun stories about chamber groups that appeared early in the concerts’ 125-year history. Read it here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1619, composer and singer Barbara Strozzi was baptized in Venice. She survived an outbreak of the plague to become the most-published composer of her era, with eight books of mostly secular songs to her credit.
Click here to listen to her i baci sung by Burning River Baroque sopranos Malina Rauschenfels and Josefien Stopplenburg at St. Alban’s Church in Cleveland Heights in September, 2016, and here to watch Adriana Ruiz sing several of Strozzi’s works at Indiana University as part of Early Music America’s 2018 Emerging Artists Showcase during the Bloomington Early Music Festival.
And on this date in 1945, the United States, with the consent of the United Kingdom, detonated the first of two atomic bombs over the Japanese city of Hiroshima (a second bomb was dropped over Nagasaki three days later).
Click here to watch a performance of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s 1960 Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima for 52 string instruments, as performed by Sinfonia Varsovia led by Krzysztof Urbański at Penderecki’s 80th Birthday Celebration in Warsaw in November, 2013.
