by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Live performances: solo organ, chamber music, uncommon sounds
. British Coronation music announced
. Stephen Hough podcast
. Remembering Widor, Alford, Segovia, Auden, the launching of a celebrated magazine, a troubled opera company, and the careers of two sopranos, plus a famous assassination and a state visit
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12:00 pm the Tuesday Noon Organ Plus Concert hosts Chase Loomer. The program includes J.S. Bach’s Wir glauben all an einen Gott, BWV 680, Francisco Correa de Arauxo’s Quinto Tiento de medio registro, FO 29, Juan Cabanilles’ Tiento lleno séptimo tono por A la mi re, M386 no. 4 and Jean-Baptiste Robin’s Cinq Versets sur le “Veni Creator.” Church of the Covenant
At 7:30 pm Cleveland Chamber Music Society presents Paul Huang & Danbi Um, violins and Amy Yang, piano. Their fascinating program includes Leclair’s Sonata in e, Op. 3, No. 5, Moszkowski’s Suite, Op. 71, Ysaÿe’s Sonata, Rogerson’s Afterword, Barlowe’s Hebraïque Elegie and Sarasate’s Navarra. Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Hts. Tickets available online.
And at 8:00 pm, Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project welcomes the Decho Ensemble, who perform on vintage Buescher saxophones built in the United States, with Carolyn Borcherding, composer & sound artist. Works by Robert McClure, Lila Meretzky, Mark Mellits, Lori Laitman, and Ruby Fulton. Convivium 33 Gallery, Cleveland.
CORONATION MUSIC ANNOUNCED:
The BBC has announced that the music for the May 6 Coronation of King Charles in Westminster Abbey will include a dozen newly-commissioned works by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Patrick Doyle, Iain Farrington, Sarah Class, Nigel Hess, Paul Mealor, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanna Panufnik, Shirley J. Thompson, Judith Weir, Roderick Williams and Debbie Wiseman.
Part of the service will be sung in Welsh and Sir John Eliot Gardiner will conduct a program of choral music. A gospel choir will sing and there will be Greek Orthodox music in memory of the King’s father, Prince Philip. Read the article here.
HOUGH BOOK, CD & PODCAST:
British pianist Stephen Hough has recently released a new podcast. He meets up here with Gramophone’s Martin Cullingford to talk about his latest book, a childhood memoir called Enough (published by Faber), his new recording which features Mompou’s Música callada and his String Quartet No 1, recently recorded by the Takács Quartet (both recordings available from Hyperion).
ALMANAC FOR FEBRUARY 21:
There’s a wide choice of historical events to raise up on February 21. Among the births, French composer and organist Charles-Marie Widor (1844, in Lyon, author of the famous Widor Toccata), English bandmaster Kenneth Alford (pen name of F.J. Ricketts, in the hamlet of Ratcliff in London in 1881, a good time to whistle the Colonel Bogey March), guitar master Andrés Segovia (1893 in Spain), and poet and lyricist W.H. Auden (1907 in York, who provided so many words for Benjamin Britten (pictured) and Igor Stravinsky to set to memorable music).
As for events that took place on this date: In 1925, The New Yorker first hit the newsstands with its extended essays on music, in 1944, New York City Opera began its dappled history with Tosca at New York’s City Center, and in 1961, Marilyn Horne and Joan Sutherland launched their careers with Bellini at New York’s Town Hall. Also in the news, on this date in 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in New York, and in 1972, President Richard Nixon made his historic visit to China.
Click here to watch England’s Voces8 perform Britten’s Hymn to St. Cecelia unconducted, with text by W.H. Auden. And if you have a couple of hours to devote to The Rake’s Progress (music by Stravinsky, libretto by Auden and Kallman), here’s a video of a controversial production at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1992 directed by Alfredo Arias and conducted by Kent Nagano.
And click here to watch a ten-minute excerpt from John Adams’ opera Nixon in China in a production by Peter Sellars at The MET.
Adams and Sellars talk about Adams’ opera here during a scene change in The MET’s HD production of La fanciulla del West in 2011. To bone up on Nixon’s famous visit, watch a PBS documentary here.
