by Stephanie Manning
INTERESTING READ:
Those who attended Oberlin Conservatory’s production of the opera Omar last year may remember the music was co-written by Michael Abels, who also wrote the score for Jordan Peele’s film Get Out.
Anastasia Tsioulcas recently profiled the composer for The New York Times ahead of the performance of his work More Seasons by the Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center. Check out that article here.
MORE AUDITIONS:
The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus is holding auditions on August 14, and they are looking for more tenors and basses in particular. Chorus members will have the opportunity to join the orchestra at Carnegie Hall and in Florida — and tenors and basses will also be able to audition for small roles in Beethoven’s Fidelio. Learn more and sign up for an audition at this link.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Although the weather is thankfully sunny today, the skies were dark and ominous one year ago, when a record-breaking storm system swept through Northeast Ohio. The events of August 6, 2024 left over 400,000 residents without power, the most since a series of storms in July 1993. The National Weather Service reported five EF-1 tornadoes and widespread straightline wind damage.
In that vein, let’s explore some music about storms.
One of the most famous is certainly the fourth-movement Allegro from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral.” The composer evokes a thunderstorm through booming timpani, swirling strings, and flashes of piccolo. In Fantasia, this music is used when the centaurs watch dark clouds roll in and take shelter from the elements. Listen to a recording here.
In the choral realm, Eric Whitacre’s Cloudburst draws from the composer’s own experience of witnessing a desert cloudburst, a rare type of dangerously heavy rainfall. This soundscape includes the singers’ fingers snapping to imitate rain and the use of percussive thunder sheets. Watch him conduct it here.
Finally, Benjamin Britten evoked both a literal and emotional storm in his opera Peter Grimes. “Storm,” from Act I, is the final movement of his Four Sea Interludes for orchestra. As Howard Posner writes in his program notes for the LA Phil:
“When the storm music subsides, a consoling theme contains the same melody to which Grimes has just sung ‘What harbor shelters peace, away from tidal waves, away from storms?’ It will be also the last thing he sings before he goes down with his sinking boat.”
