by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Tonight at 7:30, Robert Walters steps out in front of The Cleveland Orchestra to play the U.S. premiere of Geoffrey Gordon’s Mad Song for English horn and orchestra. (Read our preview interview here.) Also on the program: Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. Tugan Sokhiev conducts at Severance Music Center.
NEWS BRIEFS:
In a November 12 news release, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture reports that “The Board of Trustees … has approved grants totaling $12.9 million to support more than 300 Cuyahoga County nonprofit organizations of all sizes in 2026. To date, CAC has invested more than $270 million in more than 500 organizations. The Board approved grants for general operating support and project support during a public meeting on Thursday, November 12, 2025.
The Violin Channel reports that “the Verona Quartet [the ensemble-in-residence at the Oberlin Conservatory] has recently begun its Arts-in-Education Residency with the Fischoff National Chamber Music Association, which will see them undertake a wide variety of outreach programming across Indiana’s St. Joseph and Elkhart Counties.“As part of the residency, the quartet will visit schools, community centers, and libraries, providing free educational programming to more than 2,500 local children. This will include 11 performances of Fischoff’s flagship program, Stories and Music (S.A.M. I Am), which features a musical re-enactment of a popular children’s book as part of the Explore-a-Story Festival at the St. Joseph County Public Library.’ Read more here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Italian bel canto opera composer Gioachino Rossini died on this date in 1868, having written 39 operas by 1829, when he laid down his pen for the last 40 years of his life. Cleveland Opera Theater responded to the Covid-19 pandemic by reworking his The Barber of Seville into six educational episodes. Start watching here.
French organist and composer Louis-Lefébure-Wély was born on this date in Paris in 1817. Closely associated with the symphonic organs built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, he occupied important positions at Saint-Roch, the Madeleine, and Saint-Sulpice. Nowadays, Wély’s exuberant, over-the-top compositions usually find their way onto recital programs as period novelties, but they reflect the taste of Parisian church-goers in the mid-19th century.
YouTube offers a wide selection of his works, some played on harmoniums (not the same as American reed organs!) Click here to listen to René Saorgin play a selection of Wély’s pieces on the 1845 Nicolas-Antoine Lété instrument in Nantua.
On this date in 1943, New York Philharmonic conductor Bruno Walter was in bed with the flu, giving the Orchestra’s young assistant conductor Leonard Bernstein — relatively unknown at the time — his big break on the podium. Read about that event here.
On November 13, 1951, Russian-born pianist and composer Nikolai Medtner died in London at the age of 71. It took some 25 years after his demise for the concert world to recognize him as a worthy colleague of Rachmaninoff and Scriabin in the Russian piano pantheon.
Here are three performances of single works by Medtner: first, his Tale in B-flat, played by the composer himself in 1930; then his Tale Op. 26, No. 3, performed by Daniil Trifonov at Carnegie Hall in December, 2016;, and finally, his Canzona matinata and Sonata tragica from Op. 39, recorded by Alex Tuchman at CIM in April, 2019.
