by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. The Wednesday Noon Brownbag Concert at Trinity features Todd Wilson’s CIM organ studio & Ólafsson solo piano recital in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall at Severance
. Tuesday Musical announces annual scholarship competition
. Elizabethan madrigalist Thomas Weelkes passes in 1623
HAPPENING TODAY:
At 12:00 pm – Trinity Brownbag Concert. Organist Todd Wilson & students of the Cleveland Institute of Music organ studio. Festive seasonal music played on Trinity’s two great pipe organs. Trinity Cathedral, 2230 Euclid Ave., Cleveland. Freewill offering.
At 7:30 pm – pianist Vìkingur Ólafsson (pictured above) will play a long list of short pieces by Mozart & his contemporaries in Reinberger Chamber Hall at Severance Music Center, including works by Galuppi, C.P.E. Bach, Cimarosa, and Haydn and arrangements by Liszt and Ólafsson himself. Take a deep breath and order your tickets online.
IN THE NEWS:
Tuesday Musical’s 2023 Annual Scholarship Competition is Saturday, March 18, with significantly increased cash awards. Applications will be accepted online from January 1 through January 31, 2023.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
From the passage of the first German beer purity law (1487 — it had to be just water, malt, and hops), to the only known instance of someone being struck by a meteorite (1954 — it left Ann Hodges with a big bruise, some legal complications, and a bit of celebrity), this date in history certainly has its oddness.
It also brings celebrity. Big names in all sorts of fields have come and gone on November 30: James Baldwin, Oscar Wilde, Evel Knievel, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Dick Clark, George H.W. Bush.
There’s not quite as much star power on the classical music side, but here’s one important figure to note: English composer and organist Thomas Weelkes, who died on November 30, 1623. Here I’ll pass the mic to Daniel Hathaway, who shared a strong list of listening and watching recommendations on the anniversary of that musician’s birth:
And Thomas Weelkes, one of the greatest madrigalists and church music composers of the Elizabethan period was also one its most colorful personalities. Listen here to his Hark, all ye lovely saints above, in a performance by the Sidonia-Ensemble, and here to his Gloria in excelsis Deo as sung by King’s College Choir in 2000. For insights into the craft of the English madrigalists, watch Texting With Madrigals, an Early Music America lecture by retired Oberlin English professor (and ClevelandClassical.com board member) Nicholas Jones.
