by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 Noon, the Cleveland Museum of Art presents a free Chamber Music in the Atrium recital by Chu-Fang Huang, who won first place in the 2005 Cleveland International PIano Competition, and the Church of the Covenant’s Tuesday Organ Plus concerts presents Kaori Hongo, organ, and Tim Tavcar, reader, in Petr Eben’s Job (live stream available).
NEWS BRIEFS:
The $22 million, 15-month-long renovation of Kulas Hall, the main performance space at the Cleveland Institute of Music, officially got underway on Monday when CIM trustee Kevin Stein took a symbolic sledgehammer swing to the back wall of the stage. (Photo: Timothy Bates/Cleveland Institute of Music). Read a press release about the project here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
We’ll raise a virtual glass today to celebrate two European soloists born on the 21st of May: French trumpeter Maurice André, who greeted the world in 1933 in Alès in the Cévennes, and Swiss oboist Heinz Holliger, who followed him six years later in Langenthal.
André espoused the piccolo trumpet, a small, modern instrument invented to allow players to negotiate the high trumpet parts favored by Baroque composers. Since then, the period instrument movement has spawned players who have mastered the art of playing clarino parts — like Steven Marquardt, who recently joined Amanda Forsythe and Apollo’s Fire in a wonderful performance of J.S. Bach’s cantata Jauchzet Gott.
For listeners who have grown up with the French school of oboe playing represented locally by the late John Mack of The Cleveland Orchestra, Holliger’s European sound takes a bit of getting used to. Watch a video here where he performs several works with the Swiss Chamber Soloists in Geneva in 2021.
Holliger was also a composer who studied with Pierre Boulez. Listen along with the scrolling score to his Studie II from 1981 performed by Tamás Bartók. Judging from the comments, both the piece and Bartók’s playing made a strong impression.
