by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Local #4 Music Fund sponsors the Amethyst String Quartet, the CIM Orchestra plays at Severance Music Center
. Piano Cleveland announces 32 contestants for this summer’s Young Artist Competition, CIM alums among Grammy winners & Gustavo Dudamel, following Deborah Borda to the NY Philharmonic, exchanges the west coast for the east
. Almanac: the premiere of Sibelius’ (pictured) Violin Concerto called “dismal” and “a disaster.” Follow links to Leonidas Kavakos’ recordings of the first (1904) and second (1905) versions
HAPPENING TODAY:
Local #4 Music Fund of the Musicians Union will pick up the tab for the Amethyst String Quartet’s 1:30 concert on the Haff-Paluck Chamber series at Rocky River Senior Center, 21014 Hilliard Blvd, Rocky River. Free.
And at 7:30 pm the CIM Orchestra and student pianist Soo Ji Lee will play Liszt’s Totentanz & works by Narong Prangcharoen and Tchaikovsky under Carlos Kalmar at Severance Music Center, 11001 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland. Free but tickets required.
See our Concert Listings for details.
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Piano Cleveland has released the names of pianists who will take part in the Cleveland International Piano Competition and Institute for Young Artists 2023 (July 5-16). Read the article here.
Two CIM Grammys
Projects featuring three CIM alumni won Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, two for their work on Caroline Shaw: Evergreen (Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance), an album produced and engineered by CIM’s recording arts and services director Alan Bise that featured the Attacca Quartet of which violinist Domenic Salerni is a member.
On the Best Orchestral Performance album, a recording by the New York Youth Symphony of works by Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery and Valerie Coleman, CIM graduate pianist Michelle Cann is the featured soloist, and CIM percussion student Angelo Antinori appears on the album as a member of the NYYS.
Gustavo Dudamel has been named music director of the New York Philharmonic, an appointment many had anticipated following the earlier departure of his Los Angeles Philharmonic mentor, Deborah Borda, for New York. Read a New York Times article here that poses the question of whether “the Dude” will turn out to be the new Leonard Bernstein.
ALMANAC FOR FEBRUARY 8:
On this date in 2021, we featured a trio of American musicians: composers Margaret Brouwer (who turns 82 today) and John Williams (turns 90), and conductor James DePreist (died on February 8, 2013). This time, we’ll turn to a notable premiere: that of Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto.
The first performance — which took place on this date in 1904 in Helsinki, when Victor Nováček played the solo part and Sibelius conducted the Orchestra of Helsinki Philharmonic Society — has been variously characterized as “dismal” and “a disaster.”
There are a few possible reasons, beginning with the fact that Sibelius (above) only turned to Nováček after the original dedicatee, violinist Willy Burmester, was unable to travel to Finland — Sibelius’ own fault, as he changed course from the original plan of performing it in Berlin.
Was Nováček the lesser player? Did the composer finish it so late that it couldn’t be properly learned in time? Both of those are probably true, and the result, as Sibelius biographer Erik Tawaststjerna writes, is that poor Nováček was “red-faced and perspiring” as he “fought a losing battle.”
It doesn’t help that this original version of the concerto was not only longer, but also significantly more difficult than the revised version (1905) that is almost exclusively heard today. Only on a few occasions have Sibelius’ heirs granted permission for the original to be performed, and Leonidas Kavakos is one of the rare soloists to have taken on both of them.
Listen to Kavakos play the original in 1991 with Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra here, then hear him perform the revised version in a live performance from 2012 with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra here.
