by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Anna O’Connell, soprano & harp, Jonathan Goya, cornetto & recorder & Mikhail Grazhdanov, organ will play renaissance and early baroque music at Noon on the Tuesday Organ Plus series at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle, a performance also available as a live stream.
And tonight at 7:30 (repeated on Wednesday), The Cleveland Orchestra takes a break from its Holiday Concerts to play the live score for a screening of Elf in Concert at Severance Music Center. Brett Mitchell conducts. More information here.
Visit our Concert Listings for details of these performances.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Celebrate the December Holidays with the Bells of University Circle. Daily 12:15 concerts on the McGaffin Carillon at the Church of the Covenant will feature resident carillonneur George Leggiero (12/27), Patrick Macoska (12/21 & 12/22), Sheryl Modlin (12/26) & Keiran Cantilina (12/28 & 12/29). Cantilina will also play a special candlelight carillon concert on Christmas Eve (12/24) at 7pm.
Click here for more information and here to listen to live streams of the 30-minute concerts.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
French composer, organist, and harpsichordist Louis Nicholas Clérambault was born on December 19, 1676 in Paris. Oberlin Baroque performed one of his cantatas, Orphée, as part of Early Music America’s 2017 Young Performers Festival at the Boston Early Music Festival. Watch here.
268 years later, American harpsichordist and conductor William Christie was born near Buffalo. After graduating from Harvard in art history and studying with Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale, he moved to France to found Les Arts Florissants, taking French citizenship and becoming one of the principal gurus of French Baroque music of our time. Here’s a performance of Charpentier’s Te Deum that Christie led at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2017. And click here to watch a 2013 artist interview moderated by John Heilpern interspersed with harpsichord demonstrations.
And on this date in 1958, British cellist Steven Isserlis was born in London, going on to study at the Oberlin Conservatory with Richard Kapinsky. His colorful career as a cellist is enhanced by his other interests, which include writing such books for children as Why Beethoven Threw the Stew: And Lots More Stories about the Lives of Great Composers (2002) and Why Handel Waggled His Wig (2006), and other titles including Anthem Guide to the Opera, Concert Halls and Classical Music Venues of Europe (2007), 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die (2008), Robert Schumann’s Advice to Young Musicians Revisited by Steven Isserlis (2016), and The Bach Cello Suites: A Companion (2021).
Click here to watch Isserlis work with Oberlin graduate Aaron Wolff on Thomas Adés’ Lieux retrouvés as part of a cello master class recorded live at Juilliard’s Paul Hall on December 7, 2018.
