by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Celebrate the birthday of French composer Gabriel Fauré, born on this date in 1845, with his Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in d, Op. 120. Click here to watch ChamberFest Cleveland players Franklin Cohen, clarinet, Oliver Herbert, cello, and Andrius Žlabys, piano in a performance at Harkness Chapel at CWRU in June, 2017.
The Cleveland Orchestra shares its “Mindful Music Moments” with over 20,000 students in more than 50 schools in Northeast Ohio, providing a way to “start each day with calm and focus.” Here’s such a moment, an excerpt from Má Vlast by Bohemian composer Bedřich Smetana, who died on this date in 1884. And click here to listen to a 1970 performance of the entire “Moldau” movement by the Orchestra under George Szell.
The music world lost another luminary on this date in 1931 when French composer Eugène Ysaÿe died in Brussels at the age of 72. ChamberFest Cleveland violinist Yura Lee (who’s also a violist) included two movements from his Sonata No. 5 on her Transformer Station solo recital in June, 2016, along with works by Biber, Enescu, Ernst, and J.S. Bach — and some Norgewian Fiddling. Watch the performance here.
And American organist, pianist, harpsichordist, and teacher Anthony Newman was born on this date in 1941 in Los Angeles. Newman was scheduled to play a recital at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Akron this weekend, before the pandemic interfered. Watch his performance of J. S. Bach’s Passacaglia et thema fugatum here — a controversial interpretation of the well-known work which is vintage Newman.
TODAY ON THE WEB AND THE AIRWAVES:
See the Concert Listings for details about today’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra on WCLV (featuring Benno Sach’s chamber reduction of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), and tonight’s MET Opera archive performance of Thomas Adès’s The Tempest as well as the latest edition of Oberlin Stage Left with the Oberlin Sinfonietta.
INTERESTING READ:
Writing in California’s Voice of Orange County, Timothy Magnan muses about how classical music performances will evolve as we move forward. Read his article, “Coronavirus Conditions Make Us Rethink Classical Music for Decade Ahead” here.