by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Today at noon, the Church of the Covenant’s Tuesday Organ Plus series presents Kailah Grace Robbins, flute, Kotomi Inaba, viola da gamba & cello, William Rehwinkel harpsichord & organ in a program of Baroque chamber music. There’s a live stream available as well.
And tonight at 7:30 pm at St. John’s Cathedral in downtown Cleveland, Thomas Fielding (pictured) the cathedral’s new music director, introduces himself with an organ recital of works by Max Reger, J.S. Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude, Thomas Fielding, Charles-Marie Widor, Henri Mulet and himself.
For details, visit our Concert Listings.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Akron’s Tuesday Musical Association reminds us that applications for its 68th Scholarship Competition are being accepted online through this Thursday, February 1. The competition is open to Ohio students majoring in music performance and/or music education. Click here for more information.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
January 30 marks the death of French composer Francis Poulenc in Paris in 1963. His Gloria exemplifies his compositional style, aptly described by a YouTube commentator: “His ingenious ability to join the secular and the sacred, in this case, French cabaret and High liturgy is unmatched, except maybe for Mozart.” That comment was in response to a live performance by soprano Else Benoit, the Netherlands Radio Choir and Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Peter Cijksatra, that took place in Utrecht in November of 2019.
An earlier work that captures Poulenc’s urbane wit is the 1928 Concert Champêtre for harpsichord and orchestra — quite a large ensemble to pit against the soloist, but Poulenc was writing for the heavy Pleyel instruments championed by the dedicatee, Wanda Landowska, during the 20th century harpsichord revival.
Jory Vinikour was featured in the Concerto in Severance Hall with Stéphane Denève and The Cleveland Orchestra in March, 2018. While waiting for that to come around on a rebroadcast, here’s a performance by Ewa Mrowca performing on Landowska’s Pleyel harpsichord with the Symphony Orchestra of the Music Academy in Kraków, Rafał Jacek Delekta, conducting.
No doubt many of our readers joined the live broadcast of Poulenc’s moving Dialogues of the Carmelites last season from the Metropolitan Opera. Click here to watch the chilling final scene as performed by The Met during its 2018-2019 season. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts, with Blanche de la Force sung by Isabel Leonard, Madame Lidoine by Adrianne Pieczonka, and Soeur Constance by Erin Morley.
