by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
An unusually busy Tuesday brings the first of three distinguished British choirs to Cleveland during October. Stephen Layton will lead Polyphony (pictured) in works by William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, Francis Poulenc, Arvo Pärt, Eric Whitacre, Charles Villiers Stanford and others tonight at 7:30 in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights.
What amounts to a mini-festival of English vocal ensembles continues on October 28 in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel with Voces8, and on October 30 with The Gesualdo Six at the Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights. And later this season, St. Paul’s will present the Westminster Abbey Choir on April 29, 2026.
But getting back to Tuesday: today at Noon, organist Jonathan Moyer will play selections from Olivier Messiaen’s Le Livre du Saint–Sacrement at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle, and tonight at 7:30, the Cleveland Chamber Music Society will host the Belcea Quartet at Disciples Christian Church and Tuesday Musical will present pianist Marc-André Hamelin in major works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Maurice Ravel at E.J. Thomas Hall in Akron.
For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On October 21, 1896 American composer and conductor Howard Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, 26 years after its founding by Czech, German, and Scandinavian settlers (and named after the eastern wahoo, a shrub indigenous to the area).
Tapped by industrialist George Eastman in 1923 to be the second director of his new Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, Hanson served the school for 40 years, during which he was also prolific as a composer. (Speaking of music schools, on this date in 1926 in New York City a charter was granted to another famous institution, the Juilliard School, the successor to the Institute of Musical Art where Hanson had studied in 1912).
As a conductor, Hanson led the premieres of many American works including William Grant Still’s Symphony No. 1 “Afro-American,” which debuted on this date in 1931. His own Symphony No. 2, subtitled “Romantic” was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky to mark the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony, who premiered it in November of 1930.
Hanson recorded the symphony three times. Click here to listen to the first, with the composer conducting the Eastman Rochester Symphony Orchestra, captured on May 11, 1939 in the Eastman Theatre in Rochester, New York, on RCA Victor 78-rpm matrices CS-035859 through CS-035866. This recording was issued around April, 1940, as Victor Musical Masterpiece set M-648 (records 15865 through 15868).
One of his most popular works, Symphony No. 2 has recently been arranged by Cameron Carpenter for his innovative International Touring Organ. Have a taste here.
