by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12 Noon in the Ames Family Atrium at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Great Lakes Theater will present A Sondheim Showcase featuring Jillian Kates and Alex Syiek in a selection of solos and duets from Sunday in the Park with George, accompanied by musical director Matthew Webb. Photo credit: Roger Mastroianni.
INTERESTING READ:
Wanted: classical music influencers
“Expert, well-dressed, wisecracking reviewers once delivered first-night juice” by Norman Lebrecht in The Critic (“Britain’s most civilised magazine”). Read the article here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today marks the anniversaries of the births of Irish composer and organist Charles Villiers Stanford (1852) and Russian violinist David Oistrakh (1908), and the death of American composer and music critic Virgil Thomson (1989).
Here are a couple of local performances to celebrate those musicians. Here, Quire Cleveland sings Stanford’s motet Beati quorum via under guest conductor Tim Brown at Trinity Cathedral in 2011. And here, Oistrakh joins George Szell and The Cleveland Orchestra in a 1969 recording of Brahms’ Violin Concerto.
In 2020, the Metropolitan Opera presented Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All (libretto by Gertrude Stein) in a collaboration with The Juilliard School and the New York Philharmonic on the eve of American social reformer and women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony’s 200th birthday. Watch the video here.
Thomson’s influence as a music critic is discussed in a 2016 NPR interview with Tim Page. Read Critical Condition: Revisiting Composer Virgil Thomson’s Masterful Prose here in conjunction with today’s Interesting Read.
