by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 Noon today, organist Steven Kuerbitz will play music by Joseph Jongen, Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and J.S. Bach at the Church of the Covenant. Click here for the live stream.
IN MEMORIAM:
Friends and colleagues of Cleveland composer H. Leslie Adams (pictured) have reported his passing on May 24 at the age of 96. Read his bio on the American Composers Alliance website here, and on the Cleveland Arts Prize website here (on the occasion of his Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015).
JAZZFEST OUTDOOR SCHEDULE:
On Friday, Tri-C JazzFest announced the schedule for its outdoor concerts in Playhouse Square on June 21 & 22. Download the press release here.
INTERESTING READ:
“Memo to Orchestras: Do More Opera.” New York Times critic Zachary Woolfe saw a Cleveland Orchestra performance of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” last week and wrote that the production was “a reminder that ensembles can help fill the gap as opera grows harder to find.” Read his review here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Hungarian composer Gyorgy Ligeti was born on this date in 1923 in Dicsöszentmartin, Transylvania. One of the great innovators of the 20th century, he wrote music that’s as attractive to the ear as it is challenging to the intellect.
Among his more remarkable works are the Piano Etudes, and about one of the more remarkable of those Pierre Laurent Aimard has written,
When I play Ligeti’s Étude No. 13: L’escalier du diable / The Devil’s Staircase, I have the feeling of climbing and of M.C. Escher’s endless staircases that Ligeti loved so much. I have the feeling not of looking at this famous architectural illusion, but of being part of it, and in vain of looking for an exit. And I feel deeply the existential dimension that this situation had for Ligeti.
Here’s Aimard’s elegant performance of No. 13, followed by a more athletic take on the work by Greg Anderson that includes arresting video effects.
