TODAY ONLINE:
Two options at noon — catch either “Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra,” or organist Michael Messina in a Virtual Brownbag Concert from Trinity Cathedral. Then take in a 2:30 symposium on the impact of dance on the suites, sonatas, and partitas of J.S. Bach, led by violinist and dancer Julie Andrijeski (with a second part beginning at 4:15). And cap off the day with Mozart’s Così fan tutte from the Met at 7:30. Details in our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today’s a happy day in our almanac: no deaths, all birthdays. We’re throwing a six-way party for — count ‘em — Henri Reber, Joseph Canteloube, Georg Solti, Malcolm Arnold, Shulamit Ran, and Lera Auerbach. And just like the real thing, none of them will get their deserved level of attention. A few might even leave bitterly because we won’t talk about them at all. (That would be a little sad at a real birthday party.)
We’ll focus just on the two living members of that group, both of whom have visited the Cleveland Institute of Music in recent years, and both of whom have been interviewed by ClevelandClassical.com’s Mike Telin.
Ran — an Israeli-American composer born on this date in 1949, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1990 Symphony, and who taught composition at the University of Chicago for 42 years — gave a residency at CIM in 2016, shortly after retiring from academia. That visit included a CIM Orchestra concert dedicated to her works. And one of those performances, of her Legends, made it to YouTube — listen here, and read our preview conversation with Ran here.
A few years earlier, in 2013, CIM used its Mixon Masters Series to celebrate composer-performers, including Russian-born Lera Auerbach, who was born on October 21, 1973, and is a winner of the Hindemith Prize. Thus Auerbach sat down at the piano in Mixon Hall in September of that year to play her own 24 Preludes as part of her Cleveland debut recital.
Here’s Auerbach playing eight of those preludes as part of the Grand Piano Series in Naples, Florida, and here’s cellist Kellen Degnan and pianist April Sun at CIM playing selections from a different set of two-dozen preludes by Auerbach. (As she told Mike Telin in an interview, “I have always loved cycles of 24 preludes.”)