by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 Noon, organist Daesean Lawson (pictured) plays works by J.G. Walther, J.S. Bach, & Fela Sowande on the Tuesday Noon series at the Church of the Covenant. Click here for the live stream.
And tonight at 7:30 in Stull Recital Hall, Oberlin Conservatory presents Linking Legacies with tenor Cornelius Johnson, violinist John McLaughlin Williams, cellist Khari Joyner, & pianist Diana White-Gould in music by Joyner, James Lee III, Ulysses Kay, H. Leslie Adams, Dolores White, Margaret Bonds, & Uzee Brown Jr., plus the traditional spiritual, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other forthcoming concerts.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
February 18 marks the birth of Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos in Athens in 1896.
Mitropooulos (pictured with Herbert von Karajan (left), and Leonard Bernstein (right) in Salzburg, 1959) exhibited musical talents at an early age and by his early teens hosted Saturday afternoon concerts at his home.
He studied at the Athens Conservatory as well as in Brussels and Berlin, where his teachers included Ferruccio Busoni. During the early to mid-‘20s he assisted Erich Kleiber at the Berlin State Opera.
The conductor made his U.S. debut with the Boston Symphony in 1936, and from 1937 to 1949 was principal conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now the Minnesota Orchestra). In 1949 he became co-conductor with Leopold Stokowski of the New York Philharmonic, and in 1951 was named the Orchestra’s music director.
In addition to making numerous recordings for Columbia Records, Mitropoulos and the Philharmonic sought out new audiences by making appearances on television and giving performances at the Roxy Theater.
During his tenure, he expanded the Philharmonic’s repertoire by commissioning new works and championing the symphonies of Mahler. Upon his departure in 1958, he was succeeded by his protégé, Leonard Bernstein. Click here to listen to Mitropoulos conduct the New York Philharmonic in a performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.
