by Daniel Hathaway
WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:
Here are our top classical music recommendations for the weekend before Christmas, culled from our master concert listings calendar. There are other holiday events to support in Northeast Ohio, many of them free. Visit our listings here.
Beginning on Thursday at Trinity Cathedral, Jeannette Sorrell leads Apollo’s Fire in Michael Praetorius’ elaborate Christmas Vespers, featuring antiphonal choirs, and exotic late Renaissance instruments — trumpets, sackbuts, cornettos, lutes, harp, strings and recorders. Singers include sopranos Rebecca Myers, Andréa Walker and Molly Netter, countertenor Doug Dodson, tenors Michael Jones & Matthew Newhouse, baritone Matthew Dexter, and Apollo’s Singers and Apollo’s Musettes (Treble Youth Choir). This Nativity extravaganza will be repeated on Friday at Trinity, on Saturday at First Baptist in Shaker Heights, and Sunday afternoon at St. Raphael in Bay Village.
The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus plus guest choirs will continue their Holiday Concerts with guest conductor Sarah Hicks and chorus conductor Lisa Wong in Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center on Thursday evening, with two shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The matinees are at 2:30, the evening performances at 7:30.
Burning River Brass, the 13-member brass and percussion ensemble, an annual highlight of the Christmas holiday season, will begin its progress around the region at The Bath Church in Akron on Thursday, return to its birthplace — Pilgrim Church UCC in Tremont (pictured above) — on Friday, and visit Wooster United Methodist Church on Saturday afternoon, Federated Church in Chagrin Falls on Saturday evening, and Port Clinton Performing Arts Center on Sunday.
For details of these and other classical events, visit the ClevelandClassical.com Concert Listings.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
On December 18, 1737, Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona, having crafted some 1,100 instruments — mostly violins, but also violas, cellos, harps, guitars and mandolins, of which some 650 survive today. 
That includes instruments in the collections of the Library of Congress (pictured) and the Smithsonian Institution that regularly make appearances in concerts. View a fascinating list of Stradivari’s surviving instruments, their owners, and lendees here.
There’s a mystique about the stringed instruments that came out of the ateliers of the great 17th and 18th century Italian makers in Cremona. Multiple explanations have been put forward about what makes them stand head and shoulders above those of other makers, although there are performers who debunk their superiority over later instruments.
Strads are priceless these days. Many are owned by hedge funds and put out on long-term loans to performers, or are held in museums or libraries where violinists are hired to play them regularly to keep their sound alive. That hasn’t prevented artists from leaving their instruments in taxicabs (as did cellist Yo Yo Ma and violinist Philippe Quin in New York) or in the luggage rack of a train (as did an unnamed violinist in Germany). All were happily returned within a few hours. Other instruments have simply been stolen, as in the case of Roman Totenberg’s fiddle, which disappeared from his office at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA in 1980, only to be recovered 35 years later.
Back home in the U.S., today marks the anniversaries of a number of American composers: the birth of Edward MacDowell in 1860, the death of Louis Moreau Gottschalk in 1969, the death of Horatio Parker in 1919, the birth of Bang-On-a-Can founder Julia Wolfe in 1958, and the death of Daniel Pinkham in 2006.
And on a seasonal note, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker made its debut in St. Petersburg, Russia, on this date in 1892. Only 74 years later, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas made its first appearance on CBS TV, featuring the voice of Boris Karloff. Classics both of them.
