by Jarrett Hoffman
ON TONIGHT:
7:00 brings a free CIM Faculty Recital at Mixon Hall, both in-person and online. In “Carolyn Warner & Friends XVIII” the pianist will be joined by Stephen Rose & Philip Setzer, violins, Stanley Konopka, viola, and Dane Johansen and Si-Yan Darren Li, cellos, in music by Haydn, Mahler, Schubert, and Dvořák. It’s free, but reservations are required to attend in person, though seats appear to be sold-out, or at least very limited. Fortunately, it will also be streamed.
And 8:00 brings ChamberFest Cleveland on WCLV’s Ovations, including Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4 and Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1. Listen on WCLV, 104.9 FM or online. Free.
IN THE NEWS:
Single tickets for the Akron Symphony’s 2021-22 season will go on sale Friday, October 1 on the Orchestra’s website. Programming ranges from classics such as Beethoven’s Fifth to Handel’s Water Music to jazz-influenced works by Duke Ellington and Aldemaro Romero, works involving Korean dance, a collaboration with Akron-based EarthQuaker Devices, and a spotlight on composers who deserve greater recognition, like Florence Price, Julia Perry, and William Dawson.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Let’s revisit Daniel Hathaway’s entry from last year devoted to the Christian festival of Michaelmas, or the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, which falls on this date each year and marks the beginning of autumn. Now, take it away, Dan:
It lends its name to the fall term in British universities, and gives rise to a number of folk customs, including making Michaelmas Bannock on the eve of the Feast of Saint Michael from equal parts of barley, oats, and rye without employing any metal implements. And Michaelmas draws the line after which you should stop picking blackberries. That last piece of advice derives from the legend that when the Archangel Michael expelled the rebellious Lucifer from heaven, he landed in a blackberry bush (ouch!), which he cursed and defiled in a special way. Don’t eat the berries.
Angels — divine messengers charged with delivering news good and bad to humans — are part of the rich mythology of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam alike. The archangels Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel join a trio in “The Heavens are telling” in Haydn’s The Creation (sung here by the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus under Robert Shaw). Later, Gabriel returns to the story to bring surprising news to Mary of Nazareth (listen to Franz Biebl’s Ave Maria sung by Chanticleer). He’s also likely to have been part of the heavenly host that sends the shepherds to the stable in Bethlehem (as re-enacted by Kiera Duffy and St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Chorale). And Gabriel may even have taken up a viol to entertain the bystanders as in Matthias Grünewald’s altarpiece that Hindemith turned into “The Angel Concert” in Mathis der Maler (here played by the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt).
Celebrate Michaelmas with a recent service of Choral Evensong for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels from Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle. As pianist Stephen Hough has written, “Evensong hangs on the wall of life like an old, familiar cloak passed through the generations. Rich with prayer and scripture, it is nevertheless totally nonthreatening. It is a service into which all can stumble without censure – a rambling old house where everyone can find some corner to sit and think, to listen with half-attention, trailing a few absentminded fingers of faith or doubt in its passing stream.”
Burrow deeper with Herbert Howells’ Sequence for St. Michael, written for Sir George Guest and the choir of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and dedicated to the memory of Howells’ son Michael, who died as a child. Click here for the text by Alcuin.