by Jarrett Hoffman
IN THIS EDITION:
•Today’s schedule: Art Song Festival master classes, organ at the Covenant, “Honoring Black Composers,” and the premiere of a violin concerto with the composer on the podium.
•Oberlin digs up old photos of tenor and alum Limmie Pulliam, currently starring in The Cleveland Orchestra’s “Otello in Concert.”
•The strange and complicated story behind Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata
HAPPENING TODAY:
The musical schedule kicks off with a 10:30 am master class by pianist Warren Jones, who will lead another class at 3:00 — both held at CIM’s Mixon Hall as part of the Art Song Festival (free registration recommended).
At 12:00, the Church of the Covenant’s Tuesday Noon series features organist Annika Sundberg in music by Dieterich Buxtehude, William Grant Still, Otto Olsson, and Jean Langlais (in person and online).
The evening begins with an event that has been sold out for some time now. The first of three presentations of The Cleveland Orchestra’s “Honoring Black Composers” chamber program will be held at Karamu House at 7:00 pm, and will include music by Brian R. Nabors, William Grant Still, Dolores White, George Walker, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, H. Leslie Adams, and Allison Loggins-Hull. (A shorter version of the program will be presented twice this weekend at Reinberger Chamber Hall.)
And at 7:30 pm at Finney Chapel, guest composer-conductor Donald Crockett will lead the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble in a program featuring the premiere of his own Violin Concerto. Soloist David Bowlin will not be the only Oberlin faculty member in the spotlight: the concert will also include works by composition chair Stephen Hartke and visiting composer Jihyun Kim (watch in person or online).
You can find more details about all of these events in our Concert Listings.
THROWBACK — PULLIAM AT OBERLIN:
Tenor Limmie Pulliam may be making his Cleveland Orchestra debut in the ongoing production of Otello in Concert, but his roots in the area go back to the late 1990s, when he attended Oberlin. On that note, the Conservatory has shared a couple of photos by John Seyfried from back in the day (#ThrowbackThuesday).
As the Conservatory writes on Facebook: “Pictured here are photos of Limmie back in the day in the Oberlin Opera Theater productions of Gounod’s “Romeo et Juliette” (1998, with Dea Lunsford ‘00) and Bizet’s “Carmen” (1997, with Marie Lenormand ‘99).”
Two more performances of “Otello in Concert” remain on Thursday, May 26 and Sunday, May 29. Get tickets here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Among the famous pieces that have been premiered on this date in history, Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata wins out in the category of Strangest, Most Complicated Story.
After being impressed by a young, star violinist — George Bridgetower (left) — Beethoven scrambled to write a new piece in time for them to perform it together at a concert on May 22, 1803. When the piece wasn’t ready, the event had to be postponed until May 24.
The scrambling continued at 4:30 am on concert day, when Beethoven instructed one of his students to copy out the violin part of the first two movements. (The third, fortunately, had already been written out — discarded from the earlier Op. 31, No. 3 Sonata.)
But the student only finished half of what must have been an impossible — and impossibly stressful — job. (Imagine getting that call, at that hour, working all day long, and then probably disappointing your hot-tempered teacher…who also happens to be Beethoven.) So Bridgetower had to read the second movement from the composer’s manuscript.
From there, different versions of the story carry slightly different details, but what is agreed upon is that Bridgetower was sight-reading for at least a chunk of the premiere, that he impressed Beethoven with a inspired moment of improvisation, and that the performance was also very well-received, to boot.
The two musicians had apparently hit it off from their first meeting, and you would think that a harrowing but ultimately positive experience like this premiere would have solidified that friendship for all time. But that was not to be. Apparently, after going out for an ill-fated drink together before Bridgetower left Vienna, the violinist spoke poorly of a woman whom Beethoven admired. The result? The removal of Bridgetower’s name from the dedication, and an everlasting sense of bitterness all around.
The irony is that the new dedicatee, Rodolphe Kreutzer, never ended up playing the piece. He didn’t even like it, describing it as “outrageously unintelligible.” And yet his is the name that, through this piece, has gone on to be spoken over and over through two centuries.
Fortunately, in recent years the name of George Bridgetower — the great Black musician responsible for giving this piece a positive first impression, in wildly unideal circumstances — is becoming more widely known.
The fraught relationship between Bridgetower and Beethoven is the backdrop for the first several entries in the podcast that the Akron Symphony started up in 2020, Unorchestrated.
Joining the two hosts — music director Christopher Wilkins and director of marketing Thomas Moore — in the opening 14-part series is Akron-born poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove (right) to discuss her book of poems Sonata Mulattica, which uses fact and fiction to tell the story of Bridgetower and to explore the nature of fame and of public memory. Click here to find out where you can listen.