by Daniel Hathaway
TUESDAY MUSICAL SCHEDULE CHANGES:
First the pandemic, and now the vaccination schedule for artists, has changed two dates in the spring lineup for Akron’s Tuesday Musical series, to be held in-person at E.J. Thomas Hall.
Bassist Edgar Meyer, originally scheduled for March 4, has moved to Tuesday, April 20, so that he can complete his COVID vaccine shots. Meyer’s concert will range from bluegrass to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1.
Chanticleer, originally scheduled for April 20, has moved to Tuesday, July 27, to give the San Francisco-based “Orchestra of Voices” more time to rehearse together in person.
The remaining three concerts will proceed as scheduled: pianist Emanuel Ax on March 25, clarinetist Anthony McGill and the Pacifica Quartet on May 4, and the Sphinx Virtuosi on May 26. Visit the TMA website for health protocol details and other information.
CIM’S MUSIC FOR FOOD:
The annual Music for Food concert, sponsored by the student government association of the Cleveland Institute of Music and featuring both faculty and student performers, will be performed online this year. All proceeds will go to the Kosher Food Bank. The concert will originally be live-streamed from CIM on February 24 at 7 pm. This performance will be repeated on Music for Food’s YouTube channel on the 28th at 7:30 pm and on The Violin Channel’s VC Live on March 2 at 5 pm. Details about performers, repertoire, and how to donate here.
ON THE WEB TODAY — iCELLISTI:
Round Two of the Cleveland Cello Society’s “iCellisti! 2021” tonight at 7:00 pm features cellists Sharon Robinson, Dmitry Kouzov, and Dane Johansen with pianists Anita Pontremoli, Yulia Fedosseva, and Evan Solomon in an all-Beethoven event: his Sonata in g, Op. 5, No. 2 (Robinson and Pontremoli), Sonata in A, Op. 69 (Kouzov and Fedosseva), and Sonata in D, Op. 102, No. 2 (Johansen and Solomon), live streamed from the Bop Stop. Click here at start time. Free but donations welcome.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
There are two major British composers to celebrate today, one adopted, the other very much a native of “England’s green and pleasant land.”
George Frideric Handel was born in Halle, Saxony on February 23, 1685. Details of his life are so well known — except perhaps his recently documented financial involvement with the slave trade — that a few random references may be welcome.
Like the British monarch at the time, Handel’s native tongue was German, which didn’t prevent him from becoming an English musical icon — but still gave him a bit of trouble when composing. In his book Handel, Christopher Hogwood relates this story told by John Taylor in 1832:
I heard [Morell] say that one fine morning he was roused out of bed at five o’clock by Handel, who came in his carriage a short distance from London. The doctor went to the window and spoke to Handel, who would not leave his carriage. Handel was at the time composing an oratorio. When the doctor asked him what he wanted, he said, ‘What de devil means de word billow?’ which was in the [libretto of the] oratorio the doctor had written for him. The doctor, after laughing at so ludicrous a reason for disturbing him, told him that billow meant wave, a wave of the sea. ‘Oh, de vave,’ said Handel, and bade his coachman return, without addressing another word to the doctor.
In 1723, Handel moved into rooms at 25 Brook Street in Mayfair, where he remained until his death in 1759. Some 230 years later, Jimi Hendrix moved into No. 23, and now you can visit a joint museum featuring the two musicians. Imagine if those two had been occupying adjacent digs at the same time.
When tastes changed away from Handel’s main source of income, Italian opera, he applied his dramatic gifts to oratorio. One of the most dramatic of those — and one that has in fact been performed as opera — is Belshazzar, performed here by René Jacobs and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.
The oratorio Samson allowed the composer to address a personal malady: his failing eyesight due to cataracts. He began it immediately after completing Messiah, and Samson’s “Total eclipse” aria is poignant. Listen to the entire piece conducted by Harry Bickett here (the aria comes at 0:25:11). Tragically, the same incompetent surgeon who unsuccessfully operated on Handel later botched a job on the eyes of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Another oratorio, Israel in Egypt, was to have been performed this spring by Apollo’s Fire, but has been cancelled due to the pandemic. John Eliot Gardiner conducts the double-chorus-rich work here with the English Baroque Soloists (you can follow along with the score).
That native English composer is Edward Elgar, who died on this date in 1934 in Worcester. Best known to concert audiences for his Variations on an Original Theme (aka the “Enigma” Variations), Elgar scored an unlikely music coup with his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, composed for the Birmingham Festival in 1900. His setting of a Roman Catholic poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman became much beloved in a Protestant country and frequently performed by choral societies.
(Watch a live performance from the BBC Proms in 2005 by the Halle Orchestra and Choir and the London Philharmonic Choir led by Mark Elder with Paul Groves as Gerontius here.)
A similarly unlikely meeting of cultures occurred when the Oberlin Musical Union performed Gerontius in 1907 and 1908. Oberlin musicology professor Steven Plank explores those events in his monograph, Elgar in Oberlin: A Meeting of Worlds.
Finally, I vaguely recall that The Cleveland Orchestra was scheduled to perform the work a few decades back when the featured soloist had to withdraw due to illness. But through sheer luck, the only other tenor active on the concert scene who knew the role of Gerontius was just leaving town and was able to be tracked down at the Cleveland airport. Anyone remember the dates and details?