by Daniel Hathaway
HEADS UP FOR COSTANZO:
Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo is the next guest artist to appear on the Virtual Donald P. Pipino Performing Arts Series at Youngstown State University this week. The Metropolitan Opera headliner and Musical America 2019 Vocalist of the Year, Costanza has said, “Music written before 1750 or after 1950. That’s my Life,” and has demonstrated that in his CD, ARC, where he brings music by Handel and Philip Glass into the same vocal arena, and through his title role in Glass’s Akhnaten at the Met.
Costanzo will deliver a presentation on Wednesday, March 3 at 7:00 pm and give a master class on Thursday, March 4 at 4:00 pm, both events to be streamed without charge on the Cliffe College YouTube channel.
In advance of those events, you can get to know Costanza through his interview with Zsolt Bognár, recorded in May, 2017 as episode 43 of Living the Classical Life. “In a surprisingly lighthearted conversation about the world of countertenors, Anthony describes how he stumbled into singing and acting, what is unusual and powerful about falsetto singing, and what it feels like to be naked on stage, literally and figuratively.” He begins by fearlessly interacting with a group of sixth graders from the Bronx. Watch here.
ONLINE TODAY:
Feel like a day trip out of town? Take a little excursion to Dallas this afternoon, when Fabbio Luisi leads the downsized Dallas Symphony in Klaus Simon’s 1920 chamber ensemble version of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Click here at start time. Pay $10, and you can view it on-demand until May 31.
And CIM’s Music For Food Benefit Concert makes its third and final appearance, this time as a re-broadcast on The Violin Channel. Faculty members Jaime Laredo, Lynne Ramsey, Antonio Pompa Baldi, and Sharon Robinson join student musicians. Click here at 5:00 pm. Donations welcome.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1824, Bohemian composer Bedřich Smetana was born in Litomyšl. Our reference to Smetana in a Diary entry last May brought this response from Chicago friend David Reithoffer:
I saw with interest in your recent pub that one of the Cleveland Orchestra’s “Mindful Music Moments” is excerpts from Má Vlast, and there’s a recording of The Moldau available as well.
This made me think of a wonderful moment I experienced last May in Prague. I was a guest of the Prague Marathon. I was advised ahead of time by the founder of the Berlin Marathon who was also present that at the start of the race I would hear the Moldau played over and over. I could hardly believe it, but it was true. I had tears in my eyes as the music swelled to the thousands of runners passing across the start line. I was positioned close, so here’s a 2 minute video I took that shows the start with the music immediately beginning. It takes a moment before you can hear the music well. Keep listening.
In the world of musical theater, subcategory political, Kurt Weill was born in Dessau, Germany on March 2, 1900, and Marc Blitzstein wasn’t far behind, entering the scene in Philadelphia on March 2, 1905
Weill, who was naturalized as a U.S. Citizen in 1943, collaborated early on with playwright Berthold Brecht, and wrote works that crossed the permeable border between opera and musical theater (his strangest collaboration just might have been with Odgen Nash for One Touch of Venus.)
Christoph von Dohnányi led a live performance of Brecht & Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins at the Salzburg Festival in 1992 with soprano Anja Silja. Listen here.
Locally, Oberlin Opera Theater devoted a whole week to Weill in 2014, centered around a production of Street Scene, and Baldwin Wallace Opera Theater and Cleveland Opera Theater created a joint production of Threepenny Opera at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in 2017.
Blitzstein gained national attention for his 1937 pro-union play, The Cradle Will Rock, which was shut down by the Works Progress Administration and hastily moved to a different theater. Leonard Bernstein revived it at Harvard in 1939 in that stripped-down format. Blitztein discusses his musical here.
And composer Bernard Rands was a newborn on this date in 1934 in Sheffield, England.
Last April, Oberlin Music released the album Rands at Oberlin, featuring the recorded premiere of the English horn concerto Rands wrote for Cleveland Orchestra English hornist (and Oberlin Oboe Professor) Robert Walters in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Oberlin Conservatory. Read an article and watch a video here.
Rands’ music was also featured in a concert by the Contemporary Youth Orchestra in December, 2014, and in an album by Edwin London and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony.
Finally, are any of our readers aware of Finnish composer Leif Segerstam, born in Vaasa on this date in 1944, and author — at last count — of 342 symphonies, some 100 of which have received performances? News to us, but it makes you want to look him up. Here’s No. 288, played by the Turku Philharmonic.
