by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today: recitals by organist Teddy Cheng and pianist Martín García García (pictured)
•Announcements: city of Cleveland plans new senior-level arts position, two Oberlin pianists take home prizes from Ljubljana Festival International Piano Competition, and Music From The Western Reserve seeks a new Artistic Director & General Manager.
•Almanac: Ravel and Batiashvili, including her performance of Requiem for Ukraine
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12:00 pm, organist Teddy Cheng, a doctoral student at Juilliard, will play music by Giovanni de Macque, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Francesco Correa de Arauxo, William Walton, Robert Schumann, and Akira Nishimura for his recital as part of the Tuesday Noon Organ Plus series at the Church of the Covenant. See the full program here. A freewill offering will be taken up. The concert will also be livestreamed.
And at 7:30 pm, 2021 Cleveland International Piano Competition winner Martín García García will return to Northeast Ohio for a recital at E.J. Thomas Hall as part of the Tuesday Musical series. His program includes Schumann’s Op. 13 Symphonic Etudes and Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 in f. Tickets are available here. Read Mike Telin’s interview with the pianist here.
ANNOUNCEMENTS & JOB LISTINGS:
As Lee Chilcote writes in The Land, “The city of Cleveland is planning to create a senior-level position for the arts, culture, and the creative economy to serve as the point person for the arts at city hall and help bridge the gap with local artists, according to a presentation to city council by planning director Joyce Huang earlier this month.” Read the article here.
Two Oberlin Conservatory student pianists were prize-winners at the First Ljubljana Festival International Piano Competition in Slovenia this past weekend. Kai-Min Chang earned the top prize, while Yangrui Cai took fourth.
Music From The Western Reserve is looking for its next Artistic Director & General Manager — details on their website. Those interested should send their CV to Linda McDonald at lmcdonald345@gmail.com.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
French composer Maurice Ravel was born on this date in 1875 in the Basque town of Ciboure. One of the most popular French composers, and one who is frequently associated with Impressionism despite rejecting the term, he is admired for his attention to form and craftsmanship and for his masterful orchestration. A perfect example of the latter category is a piece The Cleveland Orchestra played just last week: Ravel’s famous orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. For an illuminating comparison, listen to Evgeny Kissin play the original version for piano in a live performance from 2002 here, then hear The Cleveland Orchestra and Lorin Maazel in a 1979 recording here.
And Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili turns 44 today. Writing for The New York Times in 2015, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim describes Batiashvili’s “natural elegance, silky sound and the meticulous grace of her articulation,” while also noting the “laserlike directness to her playing that enables her to transmit concentrated emotions without a trace of affectation or theatrics: the musical equivalent to laparoscopic surgery.”
Wonderful writing. But what is particularly fascinating about the article, titled “Politics Is Personal, and Professional,” is, well, the political aspect, about the power of culture to have “a positive or negative influence on the world,” as Batiashvili says. She recounts being invited to perform with the Rotterdam Philharmonic and Valery Gergiev — the conductor who is also a Putin ally, who had endorsed Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, supported Russia’s policy toward Georgia in the conflict over South Ossetia, and who has since refused to denounce the war in Ukraine.
“I didn’t want to be part of this whole society of musicians who actually disagree with him totally about his position, about his support of Putin, but don’t ever say anything,” Batiashvili told Fonseca-Wollheim. So, as an encore burning with protest, she played Georgian composer Igor Loboda’s Requiem for Ukraine.
Read that article here, and listen to Batiashvili play the Requiem for Ukraine here in an event from March 2022 titled “Solidarity Concert for Ukraine.”