by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
ON FRIDAY, University of Akron JazzWeek presents Hubb’s Groove Jazz Vespers (7 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church), the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival (pictured) features Bach’s solo cello suites and motets (7 pm in Gamble Auditorium), The Singers’ Club of Cleveland’s Spring Concert theme is “Let Me Tell You a Story” (7 pm at The Church of the Saviour), Carl Topilow and Cleveland Pops Orchestra revisit Rock ‘n’ roll from the ’50s through the ’00s (7:30 at Severance Music Center), Raphael Jiménez leads the Oberlin Orchestra in Mahler’s First Symphony (7:30 in Finney Chapel), and The Chinese Association Musicians of North America presents “The Sound of Blooming: A Musical Tale of Spring” (7:30 in Gartner Auditorium at the Art Museum).
ON SATURDAY, for the first time, the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival presents George Frideric Handel’s Messiah, Dirk Garner, conducting, with BWV: Cleveland’s Bach Choir, BW Motet Choir, and the BW Festival Orchestra with ACRONYM (7 pm in Gamble Auditorium), Baldwin Wallace Men’s Chorus joins the University School Glee Club (7:30 at Federated Church, in Chagrin Falls), and Carl Topilow leads Firelands Symphony Orchestra in “Through Space and Time” (7:30 at Sawmill Creek Convention Center in Huron.)
ON SUNDAY, Young Artist Anthony Yang solos in the Tchaikovsky violin concerto with the Euclid Symphony Orchestra (3 pm at Shore Cultural Centre), Heights Arts Close Encounters presents “Music from an Age of Empires” (3 pm at a private villa in Shaker Heights to be announced), Cleveland Composers Guild and Sestina Cleveland introduce new music by members Geoffrey Peterson, Jeffrey Quick, Eric Charnofsky, Inna Onofrei, Lorenzo Salvagni, and Nick Puin (4 pm at Holy Rosary Church in Little Italy, and Good Company: A Vocal Ensemble presents “Voices of Earth” with works by Ola Gjeilo, Joan Szymko, Johannes Brahms, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Katerina Gimon “Earth” from Elements, as well as works by Good Company members Adam Smith, Jennifer Scolnick, and Michael Carney (4 pm at Lakewood Presbyterian).
For details of these and other events, please visit our Concert Listings page.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
April 11:
There were multiple births on this date — French composer Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682 in Avignon), Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni (in 1866 in Empoli, near Florence), American composer, conductor, organist, and music critic Harvey B. Gaul (1881, in New York), Czech conductor Karel Ancerl (1908 in Tucapy), and Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera (1916 in Buenos Aires).
And many firsts — perhaps the debut of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Josias Priests’ school, the first performance of Bach’s Matthew Passion and Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, the visit of Mozart and his father to the Sistine Chapel, after which the young composer wrote Allegri’s famous Miserere down from memory, stealing one of the chapel choir’s closely guarded secrets, the opening of Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw in 1888 (the orchestra was born later that year), and the release of tenor Enrico Caruso’s first recording in 1902 (with 497 to follow).
We’ll concentrate on Ginastera, the most prominent composer on the list, who like many Porteños (denizens of Buenos Aires) was of mixed Spanish and Italian ancestry — his father was Catalan, his mother Italian. He spent most of his career in Argentina, with brief sojourns in the U.S. (the first in 1945-47 to study with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood) before moving to Europe in 1970. (Photo: Ginastera with his wife, Argentine cellist Aurora Natola, and Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.)
Ginastera’s compositions incorporated varying elements of traditional Argentine music in the course of his career, though those influences became more abstract over the decades.
Cleveland Orchestra principal cello Mark Kosower recorded the First Cello Concerto with his former orchestra, Germany’s Bamberg Symphony (follow along with the score), and played the Second Concerto with Cleveland in October of 2018 (here’s a brief excerpt from a Severance Hall rehearsal with guest conductor Gustavo Gimeno).
In other Cleveland Orchestra performances, George Szell led Pampeana No. 3 in a live concert in November, 1956, and Louis Lane conducted the Variaciones Concertantes in a live radio broadcast in 1969.
More recently, Oberlin Harp Professor Yolanda Kondonassis recorded the Ginastera Harp Concerto on the Oberlin Music CD Ginastera: One Hundred. Her performance of the work with Raphael Jiménez and the Oberlin Orchestra was also featured in the inaugural edition of Oberlin Stage Left, where she talks about the piece with Conservatory Dean William Quillen.
April 12 — by Jarrett Hoffman
On this date in 1907, British composer, writer and conductor Imogen Holst was born in Richmond on the Thames river west of London. She wrote music sporadically in between assisting her father, the composer Gustav Holst (she published his biography in 1938), and later served as Benjamin Britten’s assistant at the Aldeburgh Festival in Sussex beginning in 1950. Click here to watch a short film, shot in her former home in Aldeburgh and presented by Dr. Lucy Walker (Head of Public Engagement at Britten Pears Arts), which celebrates her life in music, and features movements from one of her most beautiful works, Fall of the Leaf for solo cello, performed by Wallis Power.”
Imogen Holst is unaccountably missing from most discussions of women composers. Click here to visit the web page of The Holst Project, “which consists of 375 boxes of material comprising the personal papers, correspondence, working files, music manuscripts and published music of Imogen Holst. Imogen was passionate about her father’s musical legacy and collected many of his papers during her life. As a result the collection includes important papers, correspondence and music manuscripts of her father, Gustav.”
And click here to watch a video of a performance of her Phantasy Quartet by the London Conchord Ensemble on the 2013 BBC Proms from Cadogan Hall, London.
April 13 — by Jarrett Hoffman:
Important events that have taken place on this date in music history range from the Medieval era (the death of a leading composer of the period, Guillaume de Machaut, in 1377) to the Baroque (premiere of Handel’s famous Messiah in 1742 — “Hallelujah” for that), the late Classical and early Romantic (death in 1826 of German composer and cellist Franz Danzi, best known for his woodwind quintets), the first half of the 20th century (the birth of one great pianist-composer, Frederic Rzewski, in 1938, and the passing of another, Cécile Chaminade, in 1944), and the latter half of the century (American pianist Van Cliburn’s historic victory at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958).
Here are selections by the two lesser-known figures in that list. First, Chaminade, who was the first woman composer to be elected a Chevalier of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour. Click here to listen to her Concertino, Op. 107, as played by flutist Jasmine Choi.
Second, Danzi, whose Op. 56 wind quintets paid tribute to another famous composer in that genre, Anton Reicha. The Monet Bläserquintett recorded Op. 56, No. 1 in B-flat as part of their final-round performance at the Lyon International Chamber Music Competition in 2017. Listen here.
