by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today’s concerts: organist Daniel Jacky at Church of the Covenant, Trio Terzetto at Holy Trinity Lutheran, an homage to Robert Casadesus at the McDonough Museum, and the Harlem Quartet with pianist/composer Aldo López-Gavilán at Tuesday Musical
•R.I.P. Megan Thompson
•A kids concert with “Miss Jody,” and auditions for the Ohio Light Opera orchestra
•Almanac: the ties between two pianist-composers (Chopin and Adés)
HAPPENING TODAY:
The Tuesday Noon at the Covenant series features organist Daniel Jacky in works from the Lüneburger Orgeltabulatur and pieces by Michael Praetorius and Max Reger.
Arts at Holy Trinity plays host to Trio Terzetto (guitar, cello, piano), who will celebrate Fat Tuesday with Mardi Gras music from around the world at 7:00 pm.
The McDonough Museum Muse Series presents an homage to Robert Casadesus, including music by Gregory Mertl, Brahms, and Casadesus himself at 7:30 pm.
And Tuesday Musical shares a program from the Harlem Quartet and composer/pianist Aldo López-Gavilán (brother of the Quartet’s founder Ilmar López-Gavilán) that includes music by Aldo as well as Robert Schumann at 7:30 pm.
Details in our Concert Listings.
R.I.P. MEGAN THOMPSON
Cleveland Opera Theater and Cleveland Chamber Choir have shared news that Megan Thompson of Cleveland Heights passed away on February 24 after a kayaking accident in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Thompson, 34, pictured above, was the director of marketing and public relations for COT and a member of CCC.
“It was with a heavy heart and profound sense of loss that we learned of the sudden death of Megan Thompson, a cherished member of CCC and a wonderful person beloved by many,” the Choir wrote on Facebook. “Megan was instrumental in helping to craft the sound of CCC’s early years, and we all have great memories of performing music with her…We are devastated and grieving.”
COT described Thompson as a warm and generous collaborator “whose passion for the arts, arts education, and community engagement enriched the lives of thousands throughout Northeast Ohio.”
The company also noted the integral role Thompson has played in steering the organization through the pandemic, “with creativity, imagination, and determined vision.” Her work was recognized when she was selected as one of four arts administrators to participate in the 2020 cycle of the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors.
“Details about a service in Cleveland will be shared as they are available.”
NEWS BRIEFS:
On Thursday, March 3 at 5:30 pm, Firelands Symphony flutist and piccoloist Jody Chaffee, a.k.a. “Miss Jody,” will give a mini-concert in the Main Meeting Room at Birchard Public Library in Fremont. The event, which will also include an instrument petting zoo, is part of the Library’s “Craftin’ Careers” series aimed at kids in grades K-6, with this edition focused on being a musician. Registration is required.
Ohio Light Opera announces orchestra auditions for its 2022 season. Applications, including the submission of recordings, are being accepted online through March 21. More details here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
It’s interesting to examine the ties between two pianist-composers who share a birthday today: Frédéric Chopin (born in 1810 in Żelazowa Wola, Poland) and Thomas Adés (1971 in London).
“He’s the No. 1 piano composer for me,” Adés said of Chopin in an interview for the San Francisco Examiner in 2015. “Listening to his music, the piano is a bottomless pool. His music seems to float freely and rises or falls, seems to have no stability at all…It has this total aquatic fluency.”
Poland’s most famous composer, Chopin was also considered one of the great virtuoso pianists of his time, and that interest certainly played a part in his oeuvre. All of his known compositions include the piano — most of them solo works such as his collections of Études and Preludes, but also two concertos, works of instrumental chamber music, and at least nineteen songs for voice and piano (some have been lost).
And while Adés began his career as a pianist and continues to perform with impressive results (in addition to having made his mark in conducting), he has been clear that he identifies most strongly with pen and ink. “When you come to see me play the piano, you’re seeing a composer who is a pianist,” he has said. The piano has played an important part in his writing, but his most famous works range from opera (The Tempest) to orchestra (Tevot and Asyla, the latter of which made him the youngest winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Composition).
One notable occasion in which Chopin and Adés shared a program was pianist Emanuel Ax’s three-part celebration of Chopin’s (and Schumann’s) 200th birthday at Carnegie Hall in 2010. Partway through the second program, Ax juxtaposed three Chopin mazurkas — a genre the composer made entirely his own, even while using the traditional Polish folk dance as a model — with three Adés mazurkas, Op. 27, that were receiving their premiere.
Critics and musicologists have pointed out similarities between the Adés and Chopin mazurkas, such as the prevalence of three-quarter time, the specification for rubato, and the use of drone — while noting that things are imaginatively a little bit off in the Adés. For Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times, that’s evidenced by spiky harmonies and a fractured sense of rhythm. Paul Griffiths, writing for the Faber publishing company, remarked the “dotted rhythms in triple time and the heave of its shifting accents are now caught from further off, in a stranger world.”
Listen to the Adés Mazurkas here in a live performance by Kirill Gerstein from 2018, and listen to 51 of Chopin Mazurkas here in a playlist of recordings by the great Chopin interpreter Arthur Rubinstein.
As for playing Chopin himself — asked which Chopin Etude he finds most difficult, Adés had a clear choice. “The very first one!” he said in an interview with Elijah Ho. “I tried for weeks and weeks. It should be easy for me because I have extremely large stretch, but that’s obviously one of the things that makes it so difficult — you have to change your hand position…Actually, that was the piece that made me think, I’d better try to be a composer instead!”