by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At noon, organist Jonathan Moyer will play selections from Johann Sebastian Bach’s German Organ Mass at the Church of the Covenant, and at 7:30, Oberlin faculty duo-pianists Haewon Song & Robert Shannon will put their twenty fingers together in works by Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Shostakovich, Kapustin & Gershwin in Warner Concert Hall. You can watch webcasts of both recitals.
Click here to visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings page for more information.
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Center for Arts-Inspired Learning is offering free lessons in violin, percussion, guitar, and keyboard/voice for Cleveland students from the 3rd to the 12th grade. The Spring Session of Inspiration Through Music runs from March 11 through May 17, and instruments will be provided. Click here for details.
The Violin Channel has announced that the Poiesis Quartet, violinists Sarah Ma (21) and Max Ball (21), cellist Drew Dansby (23), and violist Jasper de Boor (22), are among the 24 soloists and 11 ensembles that have been selected to advance to the semi-final round of the Concert Artists Guild Competition for 2024.
From the ensemble’s website: “Graduates of Oberlin College & Conservatory, they have previously been mentored by Sibbi Bernhardsson of the Pacifica Quartet and the Verona Quartet, and are currently continuing quartet studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
“Poiesis presented the opening concert of the Rocky River Chamber Music Society’s 65th season, including the Cleveland premiere of a new song cycle by Cleveland Orchestra trombonist Rick Stout with illustrious mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby. For this performance, the quartet was lauded as “agile collaborators” with an “extraordinary, honeyed group sound” (ClevelandClassical.com)
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
March 5 marks the birth dates of American composer Arthur Foote (1853 in Salem, MA), Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887 in Rio de Janeiro), and Australian conductor and virtuoso hornist Barry Tuckwell (1931, in Melbourne), as well as the departure of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev (1953 in Moscow, notably upstaged by Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, who died on the same day).
And Lee De Forest became the first DeeJay on this date in 1907 when he successfully transmitted Rossini’s William Tell Overture on a radio signal from Telharmonic Hall at Broadway and 40th Street in New York City, to a receiver at the US Naval Yard — less than eight miles away.
Foote, who was a member of the “Boston Six” along with George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker, was the first American composer to have been entirely trained in the United States. Watch a performance of his Night Piece for flute and strings by Joshua Smith and the Cavani Quartet at the Cleveland Institute of Music in December, 2008.
Among Villa-Lobos’ many compositions are his Bachianas Brasileiras pieces in which he evoked the spirit of J.S. Bach. Here’s a performance of No. 5 for soprano (Natasha Simmons) and twelve cellos (students of Mark Kosower) at the Cleveland Institute of Music in February, 2016.
Lots to choose from to celebrate Prokofiev. Let’s start with his Symphony No. 1, nicknamed “Classical,” in a live performance by George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra in 1968. It’s either amusing or maddening to read YouTube comments, but in this case there are only two: “Best I’ve ever heard of the piece!” and “The forces were too large, the tempo too fast. It’s sloppy, by Szell’s standard.” Your thoughts?
