by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Piano Cleveland listening series, Quire on WCLV
. ChamberFest Cleveland season lineup, Ukrainian orchestra formed for touring
. Remembering Slonimsky and Scriabin
TODAY’S EVENTS:
Tonight at 7:30 pm in Tucker Hall at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Piano Cleveland reunites two of its Cleveland International Piano Competition medalists from 2021 in the first of three Listening Series concerts. Byeol Kim and Lovre Marušić put their four hands together in a concert titled “Piano Duo Do’s and Don’ts.” In-person tickets and virtual passes are available online.
And tonight at 8, WCLV’s Cleveland Ovations broadcasts Quire Cleveland’s March 6 performance of Demantius’ St. John Passion at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church, including John Simna’s intermission interview with artistic director Jay White.
NEWS BRIEFS:
ChamberFest Cleveland artistic directors Franklin Cohen, Diana Cohen, and Roman Rabinovich have announced details of their tenth anniversary series, which will run for three weeks in June and feature 35 works by 27 composers. Click here for the “Season at a Glance” schedule.
Even as their country is working hard to repel a brutal invasion by Russian forces, the newly-formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra is planning a new international initiative. Read “Denouncing War, Ukrainian Musicians Unite for a World Tour” in the New York Times.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in classical music history, Russian-American musicologist, composer, conductor, and (according to himself) standup comedian Nicolas Slonimsky was born in St. Petersburg in 1894. And on April 24, 1915, Russian composer Alexander Scriabin died of blood poisoning at the age of 43.
Slonimsky, who died in 1995, was one of the great characters of the 20th century. As editor of Baker’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, he penned priceless autobiographies as prefaces to its various editions, and edited such compendia as The Lexicon of Musical Invective, a collection of “critical assaults on composers since Beethoven’s time.”
Watch the documentary A Touch of Genius here, and enjoy his appearance on the Johnny Carson Show in 1986 at the age of 92, where Slonimsky “speaks about Frank Zappa (4:40), demonstrates conducting quintuple time with one hand and duple time with the other (7:21), tries to demonstrate his perfect pitch (10:51) and plays Chopin’s ‘Black Key’ Étude with an orange (12:08).”
Also check out a witty and wide-ranging interview Slonimsky had with Bruce Duffie in 1986.
Scriabin made an impressive splash in the Russian piano world during his brief lifetime, but was almost as quickly forgotten. His pieces regularly show up in piano competitions. Martin James Bartlett, winner of Piano Cleveland’s COVID-era Virtu(al)oso Competition, played Scriabin’s Fourth Sonata in the final round (watch here).
2013 Cleveland International Piano Competition second-place winner Arseny Tarasevich-Nikolaev also included Sonata No. 4 in his semi-final round program, prefacing it with Scriabin’s 5 Preludes, Op. 16.
And Martina Filjak, 2009 CIPC Gold Medalist, knocked everyone’s socks off in her semifinal round with Scriabin’s Nocturne for the Left Hand.
Scriabin’s amazing Poème de l’Extase has been recorded by The Cleveland Orchestra under Lorin Maazel. Listen here.