by Daniel Hathaway
At Noon on the Tuesdays at the Covenant series, Oberlin senior organ major Chase Olson plays both the Newberry and Chancel organs at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle.
And this evening at 7:30, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society continues its 75th anniversary season with the Imani Winds and pianist Michelle Cann at Disciples Church.
For details of these and other concerts, visit our Concert Listings page.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
German philosopher, philologist, poet, cultural critic and sometime composer Friedrich Nietzsche was born on this date in 1844. His ideas exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history, and on the music of Gustav Mahler, Frederick Delius, and Richard Strauss, although Nietzsche admitted that he himself was probably “a thoroughly unsuccessful musician.” Conductor Hans von Bülow agreed, describing one of Nietzsche’s pieces as “the most antimusical draft on musical paper that I have faced in a long time.”
Strauss incorporated Nietzsche’s philosophy into his tone poem based on the book Also sprach Zarathrustra. Listen here to a rare, 1944 high-fidelity recording of the composer conducting the work with the Vienna Philharmonic. And the Cleveland Institute of Music marked the passing of conductor Louis Lane with a recording of the piece by Lane and the CIM Orchestra in March, 2000.
Two important American concert venues made their debuts on this date in history.
On October 15, 1900 The Boston Symphony — founded in 1881 — opened Symphony Hall with a gala program. Based on such traditional European halls as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the venue has been celebrated for its excellent acoustic, partly due to its coffered ceiling and sixteen statues in niches that help distribute the sound. Take a tour of the building with Amariah Condon and meet one of the Orchestra’s librarians here.
And 32 years later, the first municipally-owned opera theater in the U.S., San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, opened its doors with a performance of Tosca. Take a look behind the scenes of San Francisco Opera’s 2011 Ring cycle here.