by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS ENTRY:
Weekend concerts include Oberlin faculty recitals, two Cleveland Chamber Choir concerts with Cecilia McDowall (pictured, plus an appearance at Trinity Cathedral), CIM Shakespeare virtual Operas, pianist Nathan Carterette with Verb Ballets, duo-pianists Chang and Siskind, Les Délices goes live, Uchida with The Cleveland Orchestra, CIM’s organ studio at CMA, White-Gould & Jenkins at West Shore UU, CityMusic with Groundworks Dance at St. Stanislaus, and West Shore Chorale’s winter concert.
IN THE NEWS:
The tragic drowning of Cleveland Opera Theater’s Megan Thompson, Valery Gergiev’s Putin links result in more cancellations, and a Van Magazine satire gets taken seriously.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
Remembering Howard Hanson, Marie-Claire Alain, and Van Cliburn.
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
There’s much to choose from!
On Saturday, Oberlin faculty concerts will be presented both live and online at 12:30 and 7:30 pm. The earlier performance features music by Franz Schreker, Michael Kibbe, and Ernst von Dohnanyi played by Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin, Richard Hawkins, clarinet, Jeff Scott, horn, Drew Pattison, bassoon, Kirsten Docter, viola Dmitry Kouzov, cello & James Howsmon, piano. In the evening, bassoonist Dana Jessen and TIMARA’s Eli Stine play works for bassoon and electronics, video, and multi-channel audio.
At 7:30, CIM Opera Theater goes virtual for online-only performances of extended excerpts from operas based on Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Otello, and Macbeth. Click here for free link.
At the same hour, classical pianist Angelin Chang and jazz pianist Jeremy Siskind play the Cleveland Premiere of Siskind’s Perpetual Motion Etudes at CSU, Les Délices resumes live concerts with “Gods & Heroes” at Plymouth Church (repeated on Sunday at 7:30 pm in Akron), and pianist Nathan Carterette plays the score of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet for Verb Ballets in Akron.
On Saturday at 8, Mitsuko Uchida solos in Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto and Franz Welser-Möst leads The Cleveland Orchestra in Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony.
Sunday sees a 2:00 pm recital by CIM organ students at CMA’s Gartner Auditorium, a 2:30 pm performance at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church featuring Andrew Sords, violin, Mari Sato, violin & viola, Lynn Kabat, cello & Elizabeth DeMio, piano, a 4:00 pm program of music by Black composers with Oberlin connections played by pianist Diana Gould-White and violist Chris Jenkins at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, a 3:00 pm concert of music by Cleveland Composers Guild members at CSU, a 4:00 pm concert by CIM’s New Music Ensemble with composer Sean Shepherd, a 5:00 concert performance at St. Stanislaus Church by CityMusic Cleveland and Groundworks Dance Theatre featuring music by Messiaen and the premiere of a commissioned work by Jungyoon Wie, and the 5:00 pm repeat at CSU of Cleveland Chamber Choir’s program featuring composer Cecilia McDowall (she’ll also be on hand at Trinity Cathedral for two of her works at Sunday’s 11:15 service).
Wait — there’s more. Three events on Sunday evening at 7:30 pm include the repeat of Les Délice’s “Gods & Heroes” program at Holy Trinity Lutheran in Akron, an Oberlin faculty recital by flutist Alexa Still and pianist Scott Cuellar, and a winter concert by West Shore Chorale at St. Joseph’s Church in Avon Lake featuring a Schubert Mass and a Handel coronation anthem.
Details in our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Cleveland Opera Theater reported on Friday that Megan Thompson, its director of marketing and public relationships, drowned in a tragic kayaking accident in North Carolina on Thursday. Read the statement here, and a news article from The Charlotte Observer here.
Russian conductor Valery Gergiev continues to be sanctioned for his close links to Russian president Putin. We reported in yesterday’s Diary that he would not appear with the Vienna Philharmonic at its forthcoming performances in Carnegie Hall. Gergiev has also been dropped from the five-concert American tour that was to begin with the Carnegie Hall appearance.
Since then, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala has sent Gergiev a letter “asking him to make a clear statement in favor of a peaceful resolution in the Ukraine, or he would not be permitted to return to complete his engagement conducting Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.
And in a strong statement, Mayor Dieter Reiter of Munich wrote, “I have clarified my stance against Valery Gergiev and urge him to also clearly and indisputably distance himself from the brutal assault, Putin against Ukraine and now especially against our partner city Kyiv. If Valery Gergiev does not clearly position himself here on Monday, he can no longer remain the chief conductor of our philharmonic.”
And — shades of the reactions to Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay, A Modest Proposal — Van Magazine’s Sharon Su reports that her satire on classical musician profiles “really hit a nerve.” Read her response here.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
Howard Hanson, American conductor, composer, and longtime director of the Eastman School of Music, died on this date in 1981 in Rochester, NY.
An unrepentant Romantic, Hanson left a legacy of expressive works that deserve more performances than they receive these days. His Second Symphony, subtitled “Romantic” sets the tone here in a performance by the Peabody Symphony led by Joseph Young.
Flutist Erika Boysen illustrates a performance of his Serenade for flute, harp, and strings with American artwork here, and organist Thomas Sheehan is featured in his Concerto for Organ, Strings, and Harp in a concert from Harvard’s Memorial Church led by University Organist Edward Elwyn Jones.
And here’s a performance of Hanson’s mystical Cherubic Hymn led by the composer.
On February 26 of 2013, French organist Marie-Claire Alain made her sortie at the age of 86 in the Paris suburb of Le Pecq. She succeeded her father as organist of the church of Sain-Germain-en-Laye, playing there for 40 years.
Among her 260 recordings are three complete cycles of the works of J.S. Bach. Watch a brief documentary here, and hear her perform his Fantasia in G (aka Pièce d’Orgue) here. And be a fly on the wall as she gives a lesson to a Czech organ student in 2006.
Some big names to mention for February 27: Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, born either on the 27th or the 25th in 1873 in Naples, Russian composer Alexander Borodin, who died during a ballroom concert in St. Petersburg in 1887, German soprano Lotte Lehmann, born in Perleberg in 1883, and Texas pianist Van Cliburn, who lost his struggle with bone cancer in Fort Worth in 2013 at the age of 78.
Cliburn helped take the chill off the Cold War in 1958 when he won the inaugural Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow. Cheered by Muscovites and given the first New York ticker tape parade for a classical musician when he returned to the U.S., Cliburn founded his own competition in his hometown of Fort Worth later that year.
Click here to listen to a live recording of his winning performance of Tchikovsky’s First Concerto. A 58-minute film by Peter Rosen on Medici-TV documents that event for subscribers (watch a free trailer here).