by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Finnish composer Jean Sibelius was born on December 8, 1865, an event The Cleveland Orchestra marked in an amusing little 2019 video. “Things got a little crazy as you can see.”
The composer’s symphonies have been played frequently by the ensemble over the years. Here’s a rare performance of the four-movement version of the Fifth from December, 1941 led by Artur Rodzinski (taken from 78 rpm discs with side breaks left intact).
There’s also a recording of a live performance of the Second led by George Szell in May, 1970 in Tokyo’s Bunka Kaikan Hall, and Christoph von Dohnányi led a performance of the Fifth in June, 1999 when the Orchestra was in exile at the Allen Theater in Playhouse Square during the renovation of Severance Hall.
More recently, here’s a promotional snippet for a performance of the Second led by Franz Welser-Möst during the Orchestra’s Miami residency in February, 2017.
Finland — which didn’t yet exist as a country when Sibelius was born — celebrates the composer’s legacy each year on December 8 with “A Day of Finnish Music.” Although, rather like Rossini, he stopped composing in mid-life, he has inspired a widespread national educational initiative which has produced a distinguished list of musicians, classical, folk, and popular.
Celebrate Sibelius’ birthday with Fifteen Fun Facts from Classical FM.
Other celebrities blowing out the candles today include composers Manuel Maria Ponce (1882), and Bohuslav Martinu (1890), American singer Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925) and French baritone Gerard Souzay (1918). On a more somber note, the Beatles’ John Lennon was shot and killed on this date in 1980 outside his apartment in New York, shortly after a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz. And in American history on this date, Washington crossed the Delaware with his retreating troops in 1776, and Congress declared war on Japan in 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 6.
To end on a lighter, non-musical note, American humorist James Thurber was born on December 8, 1894 in Columbus, Ohio. His drawings and writings for The New Yorker include updated versions of such fables as Little Red Riding Hood, and the following, which, like all good humor, has a timeless quality:
INTERESTING READ:
On his ‘Unanswered Question” blog, American cultural critic Joe Horowitz refers his readers to his 8,000-word American Scholar essay about the impact of the pandemic on the arts in the US. Check out his abbreviated readers’ guide here, and follow a link to the entire piece.
