by Daniel Hathaway
LOCAL NEWS BRIEFS:
The Akron Symphony has announced the postponement of its previously announced season to 2021-2022. During 2020-2021, an Interlude Season of free events will feature the Orchestra’s musicians “performing live, small-ensemble experiences with a wide variety of community partners.” Read more here.
Following the conclusions of experts that “there is no safe way for singers to rehearse together until there is a COVID-19 vaccine and a 95% effective treatment in place,” Cleveland Chamber Choir will also move its 2020-2021 plans forward by a year. In the interim, the Choir will broadcast past performances on WCLV and plans a flexible sixth season of live or streamed performances, depending on changing circumstances. Read more here.
Episode 15 of Apollo’s Fire’s “Music for the Soul” features five of the Orchestra’s musicians in solo performances, including violinist Alan Choo, luternist and troubadour Brian Kay, violinist Carrie Krause, oboist Debra Nagy, and violinist Augusta McKay Lodge, as well as introducing Alan Choo’s Singaporian ensemble, Red Dot Baroque. Watch here.
TODAY ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:
WCLV and The Cleveland Orchestra offer a lunchtime concert of French music for Bastille Day, organist Matt Bickett plays music by African American composers on the organ at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, and the MET Opera Archives reaches into its treasure for a 1981 production of Verdi’s La Traviata. Details in our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1789, Parisians stormed the infamous Bastille prison, liberating seven political prisoners as well as its cache of arms and munitions, creating what has become France’s Independence Day. Six years later, the revolutionary song La Marseillaise was adopted as the French national anthem. Claude-Benigne Balbastre, a famous Parisian organist of the time, wrote a set of variations on the tune that might be considered the equivalent of Charles Ives’ playful Variations on ‘America’.
Balbastre, who had served as organist of Notre-Dame and the Royal Chapel and taught keyboard lessons to Marie Antoinette, somehow survived the political upheaval of the Revolution. Click here to enjoy his La Marche des Marseillois et l’air “Ça ira” performed by Michel Chapuis on the organ at the church of St-Roch, where Balbastre played to great popular acclaim. As Charles Burney reported, Balbastre introduced into his improvisations “minuets, fugues, imitations, and every species of music, even to hunting pieces and jigs, without surprising or offending the congregation.”
On July 14, 1900, English composer Gerald Finzi was born in London. One of the great individual voices of the 20th century, Finzi is instantly recognizable for his unique brand of lyrical pastoralism. The BBC summed up his career on the 50th anniversary of his death in 1956 with this tribute.
Two of his pieces are fine examples of his style. Watch a video here of pianist Roberto Plano performing his Eclogue for piano and strings, and listen here to his luminous song cycle Dies Natalis on texts of Thomas Traherne, sung by tenor Wilfred Brown with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Finzi’s son Christopher.
And on this date in 1961, Korean composer Unsuk Chin was born in Seoul. One of her more striking — and controversial — works is the opera Alice in Wonderland, here performed by Kent Nagano and the Bavarian State Opera. See what you think!
