by Daniel Hathaway
THIS WEEKEND ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:
Piano Cleveland streams the second session of the final round in its Virtu(al)oso online competition on Saturday at 7, with 30- to 35-minute pre-recorded programs by Byeol Kim, Martin James Bartlett, and Lovre Marušić. Find out who the winners are at Sunday’s 7 pm Awards Ceremony, which will also feature some encore performances.
Also on deck this weekend: Ohio Light Opera offers reflections from company veterans in “Taking Light Opera Seriously” (Saturday), the MET Opera pulls Handel’s Agrippina (Saturday) and Mozart’s Don Giovanni (Sunday) out of its archives, WCLV’s Cleveland Orchestra on the Radio revisits Strauss’ Oboe Concerto with Frank Rosenwein (Saturday) and Matthias Pintscher’s Chute d’Étoiles with trumpeters Michael Sachs and Jack Sutte (Sunday), and Cleveland composer H. Leslie Adams’ Violin Sonata is featured in a program by violinist Igor Kalmin and pianist Rochelle Sennet (Sunday). The weekend ends with pianist Daniil Trifonov’s recital from the Sun Valley Music Festival, available free online.
Check our Concert Listings for more details, times, and access points.
NEW APOLLO’S FIRE VIDEOS POSTED:
Episode 16 of Apollo’s Fire’s “Music for the Soul” Video Series is now available. “Vivaldi Fireworks” includes three new videos of performances as well as three old favorites. Click here for the complete playlist.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On August 9, 1874, Venezuelan-French composer, conductor, and music critic Reynaldo Hahn was born in Caracas. Closely associated with Marcel Proust, Hahn is best known for his salon songs.
Click here to listen to Venezia, songs in the Venetian dialect sung by Matthew Polenzani with pianist Julius Drake. One of Hahn’s most-recorded pieces is A Cloris, sung here by Matthew Maisano in a 2016 Cleveland Institute of Music master’s recital, and here by Joyce DeDonato, accompanying herself from her home as part of last May’s “Call to Unite” global initiative.
And on August 9, 1975, Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich died in Moscow. His symphonies have figured in Cleveland Orchestra programs for decades. Artur Rodzinski recorded No. 1 in 1940 (it took up eight sides of 78 records), and No. 5 in 1942 (on a monophonic LP). There’s also an interesting live performance of No. 10 from December of 1967, when George Szell passed his baton to David Oistrakh after the violinist had just played the Brahms Concerto.
The Fifth Symphony is the subject of a San Francisco Symphony “Keeping Score” episode hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas. The full-length concert performance was recorded at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall. Watch here.
