by Stephanie Manning
HAPPENING TODAY:
The holidays have officially arrived for The Cleveland Orchestra, which kicks off its 12-performance run of festive concerts tonight at 7:30 pm.
Vocalist Jimmie Herrod (pictured), The Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, and Blossom Festival Chorus will deliver some holiday cheer, conducted by Sarah Hicks.
Or, for those looking for something different this Wednesday evening, you have two other choices.
Head east to the Cleveland Museum of Art to hear jazz singer-songwriter Magos Herrera and her quartet — or head west to hear the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble play music by Elizabeth Ogonek and Jesse Jones. Both concerts are at 7:30.
For more details, visit our Concert Listings.
THE YEAR’S CONCERT HIGHLIGHTS:
If you heard The Cleveland Orchestra perform Mozart’s The Magic Flute in May, you were lucky enough to witness one of the best classical concerts of 2024, according to the New York Times. Chief critic Zachary Woolfe praised the production’s “fresh, youthful voices” and playing of “elegant transparency.”
Later in the article, Joshua Barone singled out Asmik Grigorian, “one of the fiercest sopranos on the European scene.” We can look forward to her Cleveland Orchestra debut this coming March, when she’ll perform Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs and the final scene from Puccini’s Suor Angelica.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Daniel Hathaway
French composer Hector Berlioz entered the world on December 11, 1803. A seasonally appropriate way to celebrate would be to listen to his Sacred Trilogy, L’Enfance du Christ, for which he wrote the libretto, and intended it to be staged. The quirky and ultimately charming work treats the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, where they suffer antisemitic taunts but find their way into a Jewish household that welcomes them with a wonderful trio for two flutes and harp. Other luminous moments include the “Shepherds’ Farewell” and the concluding chorus where the orchestra drops out, leaving the narrator and a choir of angels to finish the piece a cappella.
Spotify will provide you with a number of complete performances of the work, but having sung in it, I have a personal preference for the December 13, 1966 performance led by Charles Munch with the Boston Symphony, Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society, and soloists John McCollum, Florence Kopleff, Theodor Uppman, and Donald Gramm. You can still purchase the DVD. Here’s just a taste: the aforementioned “Shepherds’ Farewell.”
And here’s a trio of “firsts” in classical music history to memorialize today.
On December 11, 1918, Russian conductor Nikolai Sokoloff led the debut concert of The Cleveland Orchestra in Grays Armory. The program, a benefit for St. Ann’s Church, included Liszt’s Les Préludes, Victor Herbert’s American Fantasy, Bizet’s Carmen Suite, excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, and Liadov’s Enchanted Lake.
Jumping ahead, December 11, 1950 saw the debut of Paul Hindemith’s Clarinet Concerto by Benny Goodman with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Two years later, some 70,000 viewers in more than 30 theaters witnessed the first Pay-TV presentation of an opera (Richard Tucker in Carmen).
To dig a little deeper, take a 2-½ minute video tour of Grays Armory here, watch a performance of the Hindemith Clarinet Concerto by Adrián Hernández Altelarrea and the Brussels Symphony here, and update your calendars here for the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD Series for 2024-25.
