by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 6 pm, Piano Cleveland Live presents Chaeyoung Park and friends at Edwins in Cleveland Heights. And at 7:30 the Cleveland Museum of Art hosts Grammy Award–winning jazz pianist Brad Mehldau and his Trio with Felix Moseholm and Jorge Rossy in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
For details of these and other classical music events, please visit the ClevelandClassical.com concert listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
This weekend marks an unusual collaboration between three of Cleveland’s musical organizations as Apollo’s Fire artistic director Jeannette Sorrell conducts CityMusic Chamber Orchestra with two of ChamberFest Cleveland’s artistic directors, violinist Diana Cohen and pianist Roman Rabinovich, in Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture, Mendelssohn’s Concerto for violin, piano, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in four different venues from Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon. See our concert listings for details about the free performances.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this date in 1842, composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan was born in London. As the musical half of the Gilbert & Sullivan team, he joined librettist William Schwenk Gilbert in skewering many elements of British society in fourteen comic operas produced by Sir Richard D’Oyly Carte — many of them at London’s Savoy Theater.
As a good Victorian, he also wrote oratorios and church music (most of that forgettable, including the triumphalist hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” and the hyper-sentimental The Lost Chord).
Gilbert and Sullivan got skewered themselves by British comedienne Anna Russell in her sketch, “How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera,” captured along with other famous parodies. Watch here.
Also on today’s date in 1949, British conductor and composer Jane Glover was born in Helmsley, England. Through her headmaster father, she was introduced to Benjamin Britten while still in her teens, a meeting she recalls here. Glover has made several appearances with The Cleveland Orchestra, but since we’re highlighting Arthur Sullivan today, it’s a good time to recommend her performance of Iolanthe at the Proms in London in 2000 with the BBC Singers and Concert Orchestra. Watch here.
