by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 7 tonight at the Rocky River Public Library, Les Délices presents “Sounds of Sancho’s London,” featuring music composed and published by Charles Ignatius Sancho, a man of letters, merchant, abolitionist, and theater lover who lived from 1729-1780 & made history as the first British man of African descent to vote in a general election.
At 7:30 at Disciples Church, Cleveland Chamber Music Society welcomes pianist Garrick Ohlsson for a recital of music by Beethoven, Schubert, Thomas Misson & Chopin. Read a preview article here.
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Lang Lang International Music Foundation will donate the 50 Roland electronic pianos used last Friday for the “101 Pianists” concert at Cuyahoga Community College to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District as part of the Keys of Inspiration program to support music education within the community.
The concert on May 3 featured Lang Lang, playing together with 100 regional students between the ages of 6 and 18 at Tri-C’s Metropolitan Campus Auditorium. The pianos are valued at $55,000. Watch a video of the event here.
Akron’s Tuesday Musical Association has announced that violinist Karisa Chiu and pianist Jiusi (Jameson) Zhang won the two top awards in its 2024 Annual Scholarship Competition Final Round/Winners Concert on May 5. Zhang also won the People’s Choice Award.
Chiu, a master’s degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, won the $2,000 Arden J. Yockey Scholarship. Zhang, a senior at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, won the $1,000 Arden J. Yockey Scholarship and also garnered the most audience votes to win the John M. Ream Jr. DDS People’s Choice Award. See the complete list of winners here.
INTERESTING READ:
See Daniel Barenboim’s essay in Today’s Almanac.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach met the Prussian king Frederick II in Potsdam while visiting his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel, and accepted the flute-playing monarch’s challenge of improvising a three-voice Ricercar on a theme that Frederick supplied.
Back home in Leipzig, Bach the father turned that royal theme into A Musical Offering, a suite that included Ricercare for three and six voices, twelve canons — a number of them expressed as musical puzzles to be solved — and a trio sonata featuring Frederick’s instrument, the flute.
Click here to watch a performance of the entire collection at the Old Town Hall in Leipzig during the Bach anniversary year 2000 with Barthold Kuijken, transverse flute, Sigiswald Kuijken, violin, Wieland Kuijken, viola da gamba, and Robert Kohnen, harpsichord.
And Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was first performed in Vienna on this date in 1824. Click here to read conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim’s guest essay, “What Beethoven’s Ninth Teaches Us,” in today’s New York Times — and be sure to have a look through the many readers’ comments.
