by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Historical events in classical music that took place on February 9 range from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Let’s start with Austrian composer Alban Berg, who was born in Vienna on this date in 1885. A student of Arnold Schoenberg, Berg is credited with humanizing his mentor’s 12-tone compositional system, overlaying it with a veneer of expressive Romanticism. His fame is inversely proportional to his output, which includes two operas — Wozzeck and the unfinished Lulu — a violin concerto, and some smaller works.
Alas, the pandemic resulted in the cancellation of Cleveland performances of the two-act concert version of Lulu, starring Barbara Hannigan, which was to have anchored The Cleveland Orchestra’s “Censored: Art and Power” Festival in May of 2020.a
The BBC highlighted Berg’s life in a documentary, and ChamberFest Cleveland included his Adagio for violin (Diana Cohen), clarinet (Franklin Cohen), and piano (Roman Rabinovich) on a concert in CIM’s Mixon Hall on June 21, 2018. That movement was extracted from Berg’s Concerto de chambre for piano, violin, and 13 instruments. And Pierre Boulez chose Berg’s Der Wein to open the 2011 Salzburg Festival with soprano Dorothea Roeschmann and the Vienna Philharmonic.
Two important figures in British choral music were born on this date, Sir George Guest in 1924, and Paul Hillier in 1949.
Guest, born in Wales, was the longtime organist and choirmaster of St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he saved the day school that provided trebles for the chapel choir, and developed a choir that rivaled that of King’s College. Perhaps by design, John’s and King’s scheduled their Choral Evensong services so you could catch both at the expense of a brisk walk.
Guest is the subject of the documentary, “A Guest at Cambridge,” and his last Evensong service, including Gerald Finzi’s Lo, the Full Final Sacrifice was broadcast by the BBC in 1991.
And baritone and conductor Paul Hillier, known for his equal interest in early and contemporary music, founded the Hilliard Ensemble in 1974 and the Theatre of Voices in 1990. Having crossed the pond to direct the Early Music Institute at Indiana University, he extended his geographical reach with the directorship of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (2001), Ars Nova Copenhagen (2003) and the National Chamber Choir of Ireland (2008).
For a taste of his work with the Estonian choir, listen to Baltic Voices I, and/or his recording of Arvo Pärt’s Da Pacem.
Some will remember a remarkable noonday concert by Ars Nova Copenhagen at Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral some years ago, thanks to a happy gap in their touring schedule. I will remember their visit because we all went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Playhouse Square where the proprietor had just installed a new karaoke machine and was eager to have the Danes try it out. That didn’t happen, but it would have added to the fun.
And in the end-of-career category, Hungarian composer, pianist and conductor Ernst Von Dohnanyi died on this date at the age of 82 in New York. Grandfather of Cleveland Orchestra music director laureate Christoph, Ernst (Erno) was an important figure in the Hungarian resistance movement against the Nazis. He moved to Florida after the War and taught at Florida State University in Tallahassee for ten years.
Two early works suggest the range of Dohnanyi’s compositional style: on the one hand, his Piano Quintet No. 1 in c, here played by the Cleveland Quartet and Barry Snyder, and on the other by his Variations on a Nursery Tune (the same song Mozart later used). It’s subtitled, “For the enjoyment of humorous people and for the annoyance of others.” The composer plays it here at the age of 79 with Sir Adrian Boult and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
And to end with the ridiculous, it was on this date in 1967 that cellist and performance artist Charlotte Moorman was arrested “by two policemen who interrupted her performance at the Cinematheque in Manhattan of Opera Sextronique by Nam June Paik, a composer, video artist and performance artist.” (NY Times Obituary). Moorman was playing in the nude for an invited audience, an episode that branded her as “the topless cellist.”
