by Jarrett Hoffman
HAPPENING TODAY:
A McGaffin Carillon Holiday Lunchtime Concert at 12:15 pm at McGaffin Tower will feature guest carillonneur Sheryl Modlin. Email info@ucbells.org to make requests, and if you prefer to stay home, stream it here.
And 7:00 pm brings the first of two performances of the Chagrin Falls Studio Orchestra’s Annual Wassail Christmas Concerts, led by Stephan A. Eva at Chagrin Valley Little Theatre. (The second performance takes place tomorrow.) Program to be announced. Get tickets here.
Since this is our last Diary entry until we return January 3, be sure to visit our Concert Listings for information about events happening between now and then.
ARTS IN THE PANDEMIC:
An article in The New York Times titled “The Pandemic Struck Orchestras With Underlying Conditions Hard,” by Javier C. Hernández, focuses in particular on the San Antonio Symphony, where budget woes are not new, and where musicians have been on strike since September.
Amidst the spread of the Omicron variant, news of cancelled performances on Broadway already arrived several days ago. And Jagged Little Pill, the musical inspired by Alanis Morisette’s popular album of the same name, will not reopen. “The causes are multiple,” Michael Paulson reports in The Times, noting the show’s “soft” tickets sales since its restart in October, and now multiple COVID-19 cases within the company.
And on a more positive note — albeit from eight days ago, when Omicron didn’t feel quite as immediately threatening — Anne Midgette investigates the good that came out of the COVID shutdown for some opera singers in an article for NPR. “During this period, I’ve seen my colleagues become insanely creative,” said soprano Christine Goerke.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Four important names, then one essential piece of music to honor with a spot in your Christmas playlist (I’m confident you’ll thank me).
Venezuelan pianist, soprano, conductor, and composer Teresa Carreño was born on this date in 1853 in Caracas. An internationally renowned virtuoso at the keyboard, her concert career lasted 54 years, and she earned the nickname “Valkyrie of the Piano” for the power and spirit in her playing.
Among the works dedicated to her is Amy Beach’s Concerto in c-sharp. Listen here to a performance by the English Chamber Orchestra, led by Paul Goodwin, and featuring soloist Joanne Polk, a renowned interpreter of Beach.
Carreño’s 75 or so compositions include music for piano, voice, choir, and orchestra, as well as pieces of chamber music. In the latter category, enjoy the Scherzo from her String Quartet in b here, part of an album titled The Essential Latin American Composers Collection.
Sharing this birthday with Carreño are two Italians and one French-born composer.
Only Giovanni Bottesini (born on this date in 1821 in Crema, Lombardy) has a nickname to match Carreño — the most important criteria in evaluating anyone’s career. He was known as “the Paganini of the double bass,” and his extraordinary technique changed the way people perceived the instrument and what it’s capable of.
Listen to his Concerto No. 2 in b in the hands of another virtuoso who has expanded the frontiers of the bass: Edgar Meyer, who joins Cornelia Laemmli Orth and the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra in this live recording from 2018 that showcases pathos and dexterity in equal measure.
In a recent Diary, we mentioned flutist Claire Chase’s Density 2036 project, which began in 2013 and results in a newly commissioned program of flute music each year leading up to 2036 — the centennial of the solo work Density 21.5 by Edgard Varèse (born on December 22, 1883 in Paris). Pictured: Varèse in full Christmas spirit.
As Chase writes in the essay In Search of the New Density, “Oskar Fischinger once told a young John Cage: ‘Everything in the world has a spirit that can be released through its sound.’ Varèse unleashed this spirit for the flute, for the one all alone, in these staggering four minutes of music.”
Watch her play it live here in 2019 in Cambridge, then check out one of her albums devoted to the project — this one on SoundCloud contains music by Suzanne Farrin, Tyshawn Sorey, Vijay Iyer, Pauchi Sasaki, and Richard Beaudoin.
Giacomo Puccini (born on this date in 1858 in Lucca) is very famous for his very popular verismo operas, including La bohème, and fittingly for us, its opening takes place on Christmas Eve. Revisit Cleveland Opera Theater’s 2019 production at Playhouse Square in full on YouTube.
And finally — putting a bow on our Diaries until they return the first week of 2022, along with our weekly newsletter — we honor a piece of music that won three Grammy Awards in 1958, that reached #1 on the Billboard Top 100 on this day that year, and that involves the varying of tape speeds to achieve striking alterations of pitch.
Listen to the voice of Ross Bagdasarian (using the stage name David Seville) in The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late) here.