by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
If you’re still working in an office, you can break up your evening commute with a 5:30 pm Rush Hour Concert at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights. Today’s performance features percussionist Ethan Strickland (pictured) in When Your Name Is Called, “a program of invigorating new works.” Read about the artist here.
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced the addition of seven new events to the third edition of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera & Humanities Festival, which will take place at Severance Music Center and partner locations throughout Cleveland from May 16-25. View the schedule here.
In more news from Severance Music Center, The Cleveland Orchestra has released its first recordings of the season: a new spatial audio recording of Julius Eastman’s Symphony No. 2 and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 2, led by Music Director Franz Welser-Möst.
“The recordings are available exclusively on Apple Music Classical as part of a continued partnership with the streaming platform. They were produced by Elaine Martone, who just secured her third Grammy Award for Classical Producer of the Year and her sixth Grammy overall. Both works were recorded live at Severance Music Center in 2023.”
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On March 12, 1837, French organist and composer Alexandre Guilmant was born in Meudon. Titulaire of La Trinité for 30 years (Messiaen held the post even longer beginning in 1931), Guilmant founded Paris’s Schola Cantorum, taught Marcel Dupré at the Paris Conservatory, and left a large legacy of works for the organ — his sole compositional interest.
Guilmant played his Fugue in D at the opening concert for the E.F. Walcker & Sons organ in Latvia’s Riga Dom (Cathedral) in 1884 for an audience of 3,000. Latvian organist Aivars Kalējs played the work in July, 2012 on the same instrument (but probably for not quite as many listeners).
During the Soviet occupation of Riga, the Dom was secularized. But Moscow picked up the bill for the renovation of its famous instrument in 1984 when the entire organ was flown to the workshop of Flentrop Orgelbouw in Zaandam, the Netherlands.
While the grand organ of Notre-Dame de Paris is undergoing restoration after the fire, enjoy Olivier Latry’s performance of the Finale of Guilmant’s Sonata No. 1. And for fans of American organist Christopher Houlihan, here’s his performance of Guilmant’s March, Op. 15 based on the “Lift up your heads” chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Houlihan plays a large Allen electronic instrument. Loaded question: can you tell the difference?
On March 12, 1890, Russian ballet master Vaslav Nijinsky, famous — or notorious — for creating the role of the Faun in Debussy’s L’Après-midi d’un Faune, was born in Kvev. Although his performance seems to have been filmed, Ballets Russes impresario Sergei Diaghilev suppressed its release. But Nijinsky’s close counterpart Rudolph Nureyev contributed a tribute in 1980 in partnership with the Joffrey Ballet.
March 12, 1985 saw the death of Eugene Ormandy (born Jeno Blau in Hungary), who launched his American career with what is now the Minnesota Orchestra, then chalked up a record-winning 44 years as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Both heralded and criticized for developing “The Philadelphia Sound,” to some ears everything he conducted sounded the same. Watch a film of Ormandy conducting Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony in 1979.
And on this date in 1999, child prodigy violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin died in Berlin. For an interesting look at his artistry, watch a 1947 film of a concert by the Hollywood Symphonic Orchestra led by Antal Dorati at Charlie Chaplin’s Hollywood studios. Menuhin contributes the Mendelssohn Concerto, which he first played at the age of 7. There was no rehearsal for this pilot film — intended to be released in film theaters. The full performance requires a Medici-TV membership, but this clip is free.
