by Daniel Hathaway
Apollo’s Fire has announced that its February programs, “Elegance: The Harper’s Voice,” featuring Parker Ramsay and originally scheduled as in-person events from February 18-21, will be replaced by a video to be released to subscribers and ticket holders on March 10 and viewable on-demand for 30 days. More information here.
Early Music America and the panel of Emerging Artists Showcase judges have announced the performers who will take part in the 2021 Emerging Artists Showcase, a virtual festival of video presentations in May. The list includes the Cleveland ensemble Time Stands Still (Anna O’Connell, voice and triple harp, and Addi Liu, violin), and Oberlin alum John Walthausen, harpsichord. Read the article in ENotes here.
Liza Grossman, who founded the Contemporary Youth Orchestra and served as its music director for more than two decades, announces the founding of the Kaboom Collective, “the first national initiative of its kind that provides young adults ages 16 – 21 an immersive real-world entertainment industry experience.” Read the press release here.
Parma Recordings is launching a Call for Scores for a program of solo violin works to be streamed online and archived on its Live Stage. The opportunity has been designed specifically for artists who have had concerts cancelled in the last year due to the pandemic. More information here.
Pittsburgh’s Chatham Baroque has posted the latest episode in its video concert series. “Multiplied” features its three artistic directors, each performing on multiple instruments to create a sextet: Andrew Fouts (violin & viola), Patricia Halverson (tenor viol, bass viol & violone), and Scott Pauley (archlute, theorbo, & baroque guitar). The program includes music by J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel, Henry Purcell, G.G. Kapsperger, John Jenkins, and Carlo Farina. Previous episodes are available on demand, including last month’s program by viola da gambist Jaap ter Linden and Oberlin harpsichord professor Mark Edwards, who perform works by Marin Marais, Georg Philipp Telemann, François Couperin, and J.S. Bach recorded at Church of the Redeemer.
ON THE WEB TODAY:
Tonight at 7:00 pm, the International Contemporary Ensemble presents Jacob Greenberg, Wendy Richman and audio engineer Ryan Steber of Oktaven Audio in conversation about “Creating an album.” A Zoom session follows in which they discuss the ins and outs of releasing an album on a label vs. producing one independently. See our Concert Listings page for more information.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1594, Italian polyphonic master Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina died in Rome and was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican where he had served in various important positions, most notably as maestro di cappella of the Cappella Giulia. The quality of his counterpoint marked the culmination of Italian Renaissance church music.
Cleveland choirs have regularly programmed Palestrina’s masses and motets, including Quire Cleveland (who sing Sicut cervus under guest conductor Jameson Marvin here), and Contrapunctus Cleveland (watch them sing Super flumina Babylonis here, led by David Acres).
Other Palestrina works, not so expressive as those two, can seem a bit cold in their perfection. I personally enjoy some of his later pieces that tend toward the freer Baroque style. Like O magnum mysterium, performed here by The Sixteen with a follow-along score.
Just a birthday nod today to two celebrated violinists who need no introduction — Fritz Kreisler, born in Vienna in 1975, and Jascha Heifetz, born in Vilnius, Lithuania (then part of Russia) in 1901.
And then on to celebrate the birth of American pianist Ursula Oppens in New York in 1944, and the departure of American composer Lou Harrison in 2003.
Oppens (interviewed here by vocalist Tony Arnold in 2020) has an affinity for contemporary music, as she demonstrates by joining Jerome Rosenthal in Frederic Rzewski’s Four Hands at the Spectrum Rzewski Festival in 2018. For something completely different, watch her interpretation of Ravel’s La Valse.
Lou Harrison was the subject of an interview by John Cage and Virgil Thomson, and his music was featured in a centennial concert at the Cleveland Museum of Art in October of 2017. Read two articles in ClevelandClassical.com about that event — a preview by Jarrett Hoffman, and a review by Timothy Robson.
A similar tribute took place that year at New York’s Trinity Church, Wall Street. Click here to watch organist Chelsea Chen and the Rutgers Percussion Ensemble perform Harrison’s thrilling Concerto for Organ, Percussion. and Strings.