by Daniel Hathaway
THIS WEEKEND ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:
Lots to watch both locally and farther afield! Saturday morning, members of Piano Cleveland’s Virtu(al)oso jury talk about judging a virtual competition, among other pertinent subjects. Later, England’s Voces 8 streams its digital festival “Live from London” with the Academy of Ancient Music, Cleveland Classical Guitar Society presents Berta Rojas (left) and guest artists performing music by Agustín Barrios Mangoré, the MET Opera flashes back to 2014 for a production of La Bohéme, WCLV’s Cleveland Orchestra on the Radio revisits a Miami performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony from 2012, and pianist Conrad Tao plays virtually from Tanglewood (tickets required).
And on Sunday, the Salzburg Festival teams up with Medici TV to repeat Strauss’ Elektra that opened its reduced 2020 lineup with Franz Welser-Möst on the podium, The Third Bang on a Can Marathon rolls out six hours’ worth of new music from 3:00-9:00 pm, and The Cleveland Orchestra features Garrick Ohlsson in Tchaikovsky’s Second Concerto and Franz Welser-Möst leads Shostavovitch’s Tenth Symphony. Sunday ends with the closing night broadcast from New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival (a recreation by the Cincinnati Symphony of Beethoven’s marathon 1808 Akademie concert), and Verdi’s Luisa Miller from the MET Opera.
IN MEMORIAM JULIAN BREAM:
The British guitarist-turned-lutenist died at his home in Wiltshire on Friday at the age of 87. Read the New York Times appreciation by Allan Kozinn here. Cleveland guitarist Colin Davin suggests remembering Bream with one of his last recorded performances, “the haunting, simple Study in B minor” by Fernando Sor.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
Mostly births to remember this weekend, except for French violist da gamba Marin Marais, who died in Paris on August 15 of 1728 (we memorialized him on his birthday in a Diary entry last May).
So the most recent birthday toasts go to African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (born in London, August 15, 1875 — watch a 2013 documentary here), French composer Jacques Ibert (Paris, August 15, 1890), Russian inventor Leon Theremin (St. Petersburg, August 15, 1896), French organist, composer, and conductor Gabriel Pierné (Metz, August 16, 1863), and Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst (Linz, August 16, 1960).
Although Theremin, along with several of his birthday colleagues, has no particular connection to Northeast Ohio, it’s difficult to resist playing a historic video of the inventor playing one of the first electronic instruments to enter the concert world, or another video of an extraordinary gathering of 273 Theremin players going for a Guinness World Record in Japan in 2013.
Welser-Möst is well represented in this weekend’s “On the Web and Airwaves” entries above. Tune in and enjoy!
