by Daniel Hathaway
CLASSICAL MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS:
MAY 29 – FRIDAY
No Exit presents Songs, Soundscapes and Sonnets with Anika Kildegaard, soprano. The program includes three pieces for voice and ensemble: the world premiere of Robert Honstein’s Sonnets, Annika Socolofsky’s Don’t say a word, and Timothy Beyer’s Malekhamoves (7 pm at the Bop Stop, repeated on Saturday at Heights Arts, Free).
MAY 31 – SUNDAY
Renovare Music presents Journeys of Home, featuring original songs written collaboratively with refugee & immigrant storytellers from Syria, South Africa, and Peru, and instrumentals by Afghani composer Babrak Wassa, Layale Chaker, and South African traditionals. (2:30 at Young Latino Network, 2085 W. 114th St., Cleveland. Free, but RSVPs requested.)
CityMusic Cleveland presents its Brass Quintet performing James Stephenson’s Fanfare for an Angel, Nicole Piunno’s Monterey Sketches, Margaret Brouwer’s Timespan, and James Johnston’s Yale Quick March and Two-Step. (7 pm at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus, Free).
For details of these and other classical music performances, please visit our Concert Listings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz was born on this date in Camprodón.
Taste just one of his iconic Iberian portraits in a 2010 performance of Sevilla by Jason Vieaux in Kulas Hall at CIM.
(On June 4, Vieux, who won a Grammy Award in 2015, will play works by Barrios, Morel, Orbon, Ponce, Pujol, Villa-Lobos, and Segovia, as well as one of his own compositions, to open this year’s Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival at CIM.)
Born on May 29 of 1897 in Brno, Bohemia, Eric Korngold was one of several European composers who settled in Hollywood in the 1930s and contributed distinguished scores to the motion picture industry. Jinjoo Cho talks about his Violin Concerto, which she played with the Akron Symphony in March, 2019, in a 3-Questions interview here.
And 16-year-old violinist Christina Nam won the 2019 Frieda Schumacher Award and the opportunity to play a concerto with the Cleveland Philharmonic. She chose the Korngold. Listen to her performance here, led by music director Victor Liva.
And in 1935, Czech composer Josef Suk died in Benesov. He wrote his Second Symphony (“Asrael”) in 1905-1906 in memoriam both to his teacher and father-in-law Antonín Dvořák, who died in 1904, and his wife, Dvořák’s daughter, who died in 1905. Guest conductor Jakub Hrůša led The Cleveland Orchestra in a performance of the work in April 2018. No recording of that is readily available, but click here to watch a video of the work by the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek.
