By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Lunchtime concert, a Rimsky one-act, pianist Maria Pires at Severance, percussion and gospel at Oberlin
. La Scala expands online programming, farewell to Gordon Lightfoot
. Almanac: how Heinrich Biber ended up in Salzburg
HAPPENING TODAY:
Trinity Cathedral’s free Bach Fest continues both in-person and online at noon, when Julie Andrijeski will play the G Major Violin Sonata and organist Todd Wilson will follow with the E-flat Trio Sonata (webcast available).
The Cleveland Opera (formerly Opera Circle) is touring Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s 1897 one-act opera Mozart and Salieri, with Brian Skoog as Mozart, and Jason Fuh as Salieri. Tonight at 7, the free one-act show will be staged at the Beachwood Branch of Cuyahoga County Public Library.
Tonight at 7:30, Severance Music Center hosts pianist Maria João Pires in Reinberger Chamber Hall (Schubert & Debussy), and two events at the same hour (webcasts available) will feature the Oberlin Percussion Group (Ross Karre director, in Warner Concert Hall, works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Jlin, Vija Iyer, Anahita Abbasi, and Jessie Cox) and the Oberlin Gospel Choir (led by La Tanya Hall in Finney Chapel, arrangements by Brandon Waddles, Moses Hogan & Kathy Tayor).
INTERESTING READS:
When La Scala Is Sold Out, You Can Still Get In (Online)
The opera house in Milan is sharing select performances online through LaScalaTv, a platform that started streaming in February. Its first live offering was a broadcast of Verdi’s opera “I Vespri siciliani,” conducted by Fabio Luisi and featuring such soloists as Marina Rebeka and Luca Micheletti.
The program also includes concerts and ballets. On May 11, Alberto Malazzi conducts “Petite Messe Solennelle” by Rossini, to commemorate the anniversary of La Scala’s restoration and reopening after World War II. The ballet “Romeo and Juliet” by Sergei Prokofiev takes the screen to choreography by Kenneth MacMillan on June 28.
Dominique Meyer, the theater’s current artistic director and chief executive, said that technological advances in recent years had made it easier for an opera house to widen its reach.
Mr. Meyer has prioritized a wide view of the stage. “It was important to me to respect a certain distance,” he said. “One doesn’t need close-ups that show the sweat on the face of Gilda at the end of ‘Rigoletto.’”
Read the New York Times article here.
Gordon Lightfoot, 84
Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian folk music laureate who crossed over to major pop fame in the U.S. during the ‘70s, died of natural causes on Monday evening at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. He was 84 years old.
Reflecting on the reason for his popularity in an expansive 2019 Rolling Stone profile, Lightfoot explained that audiences embraced his songs because of “the turn of the phrase. Or the fact that they’re so simple… They’re all tunes that move along and have a forward momentum, which is what I look for in my writing. Forward momentum.”
Among Lightfoot’s greatest admirers was his contemporary Bob Dylan, who appeared at the 1986 Juno Awards (the northern equivalent of the Grammys) to induct the musician into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Read more from Variety here.
ALMANAC FOR MAY 3:
by Jarrett Hoffman
There’s an interesting story about how Bohemian composer Heinrich Biber got to Salzburg, where he lived from his mid-twenties until his death on this date in 1704 at the age of 59.
The Bohemian-born composer and violinist was working in Kremsier in present-day Czechia when his employer — Karl II von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn, the Prince-Bishop of Olomouc — sent him on a work trip of sorts in the summer of 1670. Biber was to meet with Jacob Stainer in Absam to negotiate the purchase of new instruments from that famed luthier.
Anyone who’s ever been part of a classroom knows about the technique of taking the hall pass for a trip to the bathroom before going AWOL, wandering distant hallways of the school — freedom. Biber’s situation isn’t quite the same, though it brings to mind the same devious energy.
He never made it to Absam — at a distance of over 300 miles from Kremsier, no mere bathroom trip. Instead, he got about three-quarters of the way there before finding work in Salzburg under Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph von Kuenburg. Basically, Biber used the company card to jet off for a new job.
And it worked out pretty well for him. Within fifteen years he got married, began publishing his music, performed for Emperor Leopold I, and reached the post of Kapellmeister. After another decade, he had entered into the nobility — with the incredible title of Biber von Bibern — and was appointed to the position of Lord High Steward.
Of course, leaving one’s employment under Karl II without formal release is not quite the same as skipping out on one’s job at Carl’s Jr. Fortunately, Karl and Maximilian were on friendly terms, so no action was taken — though apparently Karl was hurt. (“Prince-Bishops having feelings too…” you can imagine him writing into his own Diary, the ink smudged by a fallen tear, or two…or ten.)
Notably, he did wait six years before officially granting Biber’s release — and perhaps as a form of mea culpa, Biber sent many a composition back to Kremsier in the early years after taking up his new position. (“I’m real sorry, boss…It’s not you, it’s me.”)
It was probably around this same time, the 1670s, when Biber wrote what is now his most famous work, often referred to as the Mystery Sonatas or Rosary Sonatas, which were only published in 1905. Highly virtuosic and programmatically intriguing, one of their most remarkable features is their frequent use of scordatura — the re-tuning of the strings.
“What I love about it is that it changes the resonance of the instrument so much,” Karina Schmitz told Daniel Hathaway in an interview in 2019, when she took turns with three other violinists playing several of the sonatas in a concert under the banner of Apollo’s Fire.
“You get these enormous four-note chords that are easy to play and make the instrument explode with sound. Then there’s a sonata where the tuning is super tight and compact, and creates a very intimate feeling.”
Watch a performance of the work’s Passacaglia here by Baroque violinist Elicia Silverstein.
