by Daniel Hathaway:
HAPPENING TODAY:
12 Noon – Piano Cleveland’s Piano Days presents a Kotaro Fukuma Sound Installation in the Atrium at the Cleveland Museum of Art in conjunction with its exhibition Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow. Fukuma (pictured), the 2003 Cleveland International Piano Competition First Prize Winner, will play works by Karen Tanaka, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Toru Takemitsu, inspired by the contemporary aesthetic of Murakami’s visual language.
2:00 pm – Ohio Light Opera presents its next-to-last performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel in Freedlander Theatre at The College of Wooster. Tickets available online.
Details in our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
American musician and satirist Tom Lehrer has died at the age of 97, according to US media reports. Lehrer, a Harvard-trained mathematician, wrote darkly humorous songs, often with political connotations, that became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. Read the BBC article here.
John Williams Hasn’t Stopped Composing. His Latest? A Piano Concerto.
Williams, best known for his film work, has a parallel career in classical music. His concerto, written for Emanuel Ax and haunted by the ghosts of jazz past, is premiering at Tanglewood. Read the New York Times story here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Mike Telin
Today we’ll remember British conductor Sir John Barbirolli, who died on July 29, 1970.
Born into a musical family in London, Barbirolli began his professional life as a cellist. As a young freelancer, he played in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra and in the pit of the Beecham and Carl Rosa opera companies. Never turning down a gig, Barbirolli played with orchestras in theatres, cinemas, hotels, and dance-halls.
His first conducting experience occurred during WWI while he was serving as a lance-corporal in the Suffolk Regiment. In a 1969 Gramophone interview Barbirolli told Alan Blyth:
…. In our battalion of the Suffolks we had a number of professional musicians. So we formed an orchestra and played in the equivalent of the NAAFI [Navy, Army, and Air Force Institutes] during our spare time. I was the principal cello and we were conducted by the bandmaster, one Lieutenant Bonham. The other boys knew that I was longing to conduct and one day when Bonham fell ill with flu, they thought “old Barby” – as I was known – should have a go. It was really rather romantic — I was scrubbing the floor in the Officers’ Mess when they came and invited me to take over. We did the Light Cavalry overture and Coleridge-Taylor’s Petite Suite de Concert but I can’t say I recall the rest of the programme.
His early conducting gigs included the Guild of Singers and Players Chamber Orchestra which he helped establish in 1924. He was soon invited to lead performances of the British National Opera Company, and made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1928. He would go on to be named Arturo Toscanini’s successor as music director of the New York Philharmonic, serving from 1936 to 1943, when he was asked by the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester — which was in danger of becoming extinct — to become its conductor. Barbirolli leapt at the opportunity to help revive the orchestra, and he conducted it for the rest of his life.
Click here to listen to a 1944 recording of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5 with the Hallé Orchestra conducted by John Barbirolli.
Another recording Barbirolli is remembered for is the Elgar Cello Concerto with Jacqueline Du Pré and the London Symphony Orchestra. The album also includes the composer’s Sea Pictures with mezzo-soprano Janet Baker. Click here to listen.
