by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At Noon, Wit’s Folly features historical clarinetist Dominic Giardino in movements from works by Michel Yost, Ignacio Pleyel, and Wolfgang Amadé Mozart on the Tuesday Organ Plus Series at the Church of the Covenant.
And tonight at 7:30, The Bowerbird Collective — cellist Anthony Albrecht & violinist Simone Slattery, — present their program Where Song Began, “a cinematic concert celebrating songbirds” at Disciples Church.
Visit our Concert Listings for details of these and other events.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
On Monday, the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University announced the appointment of Annie Fullard (pictured above) as its new Chair of Chamber Music. Read the press release here.
Another feather in their cap: The Poiesis Quartet are among the winners of the 2024 Concert Artists Guild Competition. Read more here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
German conductor Otto Klemperer was born on this date in 1885 in Breslau, and forced to leave his post at the Hamburg Opera in 1915 after a scandal involving a recently married soprano. In popular culture, his son Werner probably eclipsed his fame as the actor who played the bumbling Colonel Klink in the CBS television series Hogan’s Heroes. But back to the concert world, here’s Otto Klemperer’s take on Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony with the New Philharmonia Orchestra.
The life and career of American composer Lou Harrison, born on this date in 1917 in Portland, Oregon, is summarized in a documentary that includes interviews with John Cage and Virgil Thomson. For a taste of Harrison’s lively music, watch a performance here of his Concerto for Organ, Percussion, and Strings at Trinity Wall Street in April of 2017 by organist Chelsea Chen and Rutgers Percussion conducted by Patrick Gardner, during the Lou Harrison Centennial Festival.
And Cuban-American composer Tania León, born in Havana in 1943, is credited with introducing Afro-Cuban percussion instruments into symphonic works. Her five-movement Ritmicas is a fine example. The performance was organized by the Chicago Center For Contemporary Composition.
