by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
• Today’s events: the YSU flute studio, Duo Anime, Marginalized Composers at Oberlin, Classical Revolution Cleveland returns to the Happy Dog, CSU Composition Students, Buster Keaton Silent Film Classic Steamboat Bill, Jr. with Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, and the world premiere of Matthew Recio’s new opera The Puppy Episode
• More about the Cooper Competition, and the premiere of a Holocaust opera eighty years later
• A new book about the life of a professional percussionist and businessman with sage career advice for young musicians
• The Almanac: more information about John Corigliano and Healey Willan.
NEWS BRIEFS:
We noted the return of the Cooper Competition in yesterday’s Diary: in a social media post today, Oberlin violin professor Sibbi Bernhardsson writes, “Excited about my role as director of the revamped Cooper International Violin Competition and all the new prizes.”
Those include $ 40,000 in cash awards, a partnership with MKI artists Inc. to represent the 1st prize winner for two years, exclusive premiere rights to a new work for violin and orchestra by composer Jeff Scott, and the use of an Italian violin provided by Jonathan Solars Rare violins.
“Every contestant will get reimbursed for travel and hotel and food will be provided for by the competition,” Bernhardsson said. Applications are now open here.
INTERESTING READS:
The Guardian reports that a Holocaust victim’s opera that languished in a trunk in a San Francisco basement for eight decades has finally received its premiere at Theater Magdeburg in Germany. In her review of Eugen Engel’s jazz-inspired Grete Minde, Die Zeit critic Hannah Schmidt wrote
“It has everything you may wish from an opera, involving the entire ensemble, a heart-stopping storyline touching on the dream of a better, fairer life versus the dogma and bigotry of bourgeois society, accompanied with gorgeous sounds and catchy rhythms.”
Click here to read the story.
Karl Dustman’s new book, My Life in Percussion looks back at the author’s 65 years in the music products industry, and his experiences as a professional percussionist. “This is a clinic on how to survive in a changing business environment, which is moving even faster today.”
Watch a Percussive Society interview with Dustman by Ruth Cahn, longtime timpanist with the Rochester Philharmonic and director of Summer Session for the Eastman School of Music. And read a brief article about the book here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 2021, we wrote, “today’s a bit lean in the Almanac — only one birth and one departure to note.” It’s still lean, so we’ll flesh out what we wrote about today’s honorees with two new videos.
On this date in 1938, American composer John Corigliano was born in New York City, the son of John Sr., who served for 23 years as concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. Although he came late to composition, Corigliano was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, the Grawemeyer Award, and an Oscar.
Cleveland pianist and interviewer Zsolt Bognár featured Corigliano in Episode 60 of Living the Classical Life, and CityMusic Cleveland celebrated his 80th birthday in 2017 with Tessa Lark’s performances of his Red Violin Concerto, for which the composer was present.
In 1980, the Metropolitan Opera commissioned a score from Corigliano — his first opera, and the MET’s first commission in 30 years. After a delay, Ghosts of Versailles finally had its sold-out debut in 1991. Watch the complete show here. Other compositions memorialized those who perished in the AIDS crisis (his Symphony No. 1, written in 1987 when he was composer-in-residence at the Chicago Symphony), and in the 9/11 attacks (his One Sweet Morning, 2011).
For a new look at Corigliano, click here to view a Santa Fe Opera video from 2021 where Jennifer Rhodes interviews Corigliano and Mark Adamo — composer and librettist, respectively — of The Lord of Cries,
And on February 16, 1968, English-Canadian organist, choirmaster, and composer Healey Willan passed over the great divide in Toronto at the age of 87. While known principally for his Anglican Church music, Willan composed more than 800 works during his lifetime, in all forms from opera to band music. Watch a December 1966 Canadian television interview with him here (continued here).
Contemplating Willan’s life and career reminds us that many “consumers” of classical music encounter the genre from sources other than concert halls, and that young people brought up in British choral traditions have gone on to a variety of distinguished careers in music.
Here are three snippets of Healey Willan’s art: His motet, Rise up, my love, my fair one (sung by the Sydney Chamber Choir), an anthem, The Three Kings (performed by Tom Trenney and the choir of First-Pilgrim Church in Lincoln, Nebraska), and a hymn and improvisation recorded at the Church of St. Mary Magdalen in Toronto when Willan was 86. The tempo is stately.
The new video we mentioned is a performance of Willan’s Introduction, Passacaglia, and Fugue by British organist Wayne Marshall on the Klais organ in Bavaria’s Ingolstadt Munster — one of the largest churches in the province with one of the “wettest” acoustics. Commentators rightly suggest this might make a great Halloween piece, and it’s worth wondering at the beginning whether Willan or Andrew Lloyd Webber came up with the descending chromatic motive first. Watch here.
And here’s an enticing reconstruction of Willan’s unfinished Requiem for chorus and large orchestra. We have no details about the performers (any clues from our readers?)
