by Daniel Hathaway
ONLINE TODAY:
You could spend this entire weekend watching online events from the comfort of your couch. Here are a few highlights.
In lieu of the live concerts of works by the Cantor of Leipzig that usually draw listeners to Berea for the Baldwin Wallace Bach Festival, the proprietors are offering a retrospective of Matthew-Passions that have been presented every four years beginning in 1954. Tune in on Saturday at 7 pm.
Also on Saturday, Oberlin Conservatory presents a 2:00 pm outdoor performance of Schütz’s Musikalische exequien by the Chamber Singers (also available online), and a 7 pm performance by its large ensembles. On Sunday, the focus switches to student composers in a 2 pm broadcast, and Arts & Sciences chamber ensembles play chamber music excerpts at 5 pm.
Classical guitar fans can choose between a pre-recorded concert by Cuban artist Edel Muñoz from the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society, and the live stream of a recital by Jason Vieaux from New York’s 92nd St. Y, both on Saturday at 7:30 pm. (Both should be available for on-demand viewing later, so you may not have to choose.)
Local fans of violinist Augustin Hadelich and pianist Orion Weiss can catch their recital on the Peoples’ Symphony Concerts (Saturday at 7:30 pm), as can followers of chanteuse Ute Lemper (a Carnegie Hall concert centered on music created during the Holocaust, Sunday at 8).
And patrons who enjoyed Dan Tepfer’s take on Bach’s Goldberg Variations (including some of his own) during the 2016 Cleveland International Piano Competition will want to view the final episode in this season’s Tri-C Classical Piano Series on Sunday at 2.
Check our Concert Listings for links to connect with these and other events.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
We’ll mention in passing the birthdays of Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel (April 17, 1882) and Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (April 17, 1903), the demise in Cleveland of American composer Herbert Elwell (April 17, 1974) the births on April 18 of Italian composer Giacomo Carissimi (1605), Austrian composer Franz von Suppé (1819), British-born conductor Leopold Stokowski (1882), and of American composer Kent Kennan (1913). April 18 also marks the passings of Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1936) and French composer Cécile Chaminade (1944).
We’ll zero in on four intriguing personalities who make the honors list this weekend.
On April 17, American composer Adolphus Hailstork was born in Rochester, NY in 1941, and Canadian composer and conductor Srul Irving Glick wrote finis to his career in Toronto in 2002. On April 18, 1957, Chinese composer Tan Dun was born in central Hunan, and on that date in 1965, contralto Marian Anderson capped her 30-year concert career with a New York concert in Carnegie Hall.
Hailstork currently teaches at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, but served on the faculty of Youngstown State University from 1971-1976. He’s featured and interviewed in the second episode of We, Too, Sing America. Former Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor James Feddeck led his Baroque Suite with the Detroit Symphony in October of 2020, the Oberlin College Choir sang his Three Dunbar Hymns in an outdoor concert led by Gregory Ristow that same month, and Scott MacPherson and Cleveland Chamber Choir will include two of his pieces in its forthcoming Madrigals of All Times online concert on May 15.
Among the Canadian composers who are little known in the United States, Glick has written extensively on Hebrew themes and composed a number of works for the synagogue (he also served as music director for several Toronto congregations before his untimely death at age 67). Taste some of this repertoire in his Psalm Trilogy, and in his six-movement Suite Hebraique. I had the honor of conducting his Concerto for Piano and Strings with Halida Dinova and Trinity Chamber Orchestra (with the composer present) during my time at Trinity Cathedral
Tan Dun talks about his life as a composer in the video Composing Myself. ChamberFest Cleveland patrons will remember the performance of his Ghost Opera with Groundworks Dance Theater in 2014 (watch the video here). For another example of his music, listen to Elegy: Snow in June played by Third Coast Percussion with cellist Joshua Roman (and hope the title doesn’t come true!)
And Carnegie Hall taps into its archives for documentary evidence of Marian Anderson’s seven-decade association with the New York venue (as a board member, she helped save the Hall from demolition in the 1960s. Watch Seven Decades at Carnegie Hall and Beyond here.
