By Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
2:00 & 7:00 pm – Cooper International Piano Competition: Seven contestants perform full concertos with piano accompaniment in Oberlin’s Warner Concert Hall. Free. Read a news release and click here for a live webcast. At 10 pm, the jury will name the three pianists who will move into the Final Round and award the 4th through 6th prizes, and Audience Prize.
At 7:30 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall on the Kent State campus, the final Kent Blossom Music Festival Faculty Concert will feature current and former Cleveland Orchestra musicians Jessica Sindell, flute, Joela Jones, piano and Richard Weiss, cello (pictured) in works by Bloch, Dohnányi, Janáček & Loggins-Hull.
Click here to visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings page for more information.
NEWS BRIEFS AND INTERESTING READS:
Les Délices is seeking a part-time production assistant. Read the details here.
Born without arms, BBC virtuoso hornist Felix Klieser learned to work the instrument’s valves with his left foot and, without a hand to put into the bell, to create the characteristic sound of the horn by using only his lips and tongue. Today and Thursday, he’ll solo in Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 4 at The Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall. Read a BBC article here.
New Yorker critic Alex Ross delivers a scathing review of classical music streaming services in his article, Apple Again Fails to Save Classical Music. Read it here and relish such Rossian phrases as “the obnoxious chaos of Spotify, with its random vomiting of symphonic movements,” “It’s akin to sinking into a pleasantly musty old hardback as opposed to scrolling through the babbling infinity of social media,” or “Spotify is openly contemptuous toward non-millionaire artists, telling them to be more like Taylor Swift.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
By Stephanie Manning
Today marks three years since pianist and conductor Leon Fleisher died in Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of 92. A child prodigy, Fleisher performed at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic at the age of 16.
But it was the Cleveland Orchestra with which the pianist formed the strongest relationship. Fleisher became known for his outstanding recordings with the Orchestra and George Szell from the 1950s and 60s — particularly the concertos of Beethoven and Brahms. Listen to his recording of Beethoven’s five piano concertos here.
Focal dystonia in his right hand created a major setback for the pianist in the 1960s, but Fleisher persevered, turning to one-handed works like Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand. His career path expanded into conducting and teaching, and he eventually made a triumphant return to two-handed playing in the 1990s.
Fleischer returned to Cleveland time and time again, resulting in the longest relationship of any visiting artist with the Orchestra. In 2013, he took to the podium for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture and Beethoven’s second and third piano concertos. His student Jonathan Biss stepped in to replace Mitsuko Uchida, a testament to Fleisher’s teaching legacy.
In our interview before that concert, Biss (pictured below with Fleisher) said of his former teacher: “He really has earned his legend. Not through any razzle dazzle or publicity, but just because he is so inarguably great.”
Photo by Roger Mastroianni
