by Daniel Hathaway
WEEKEND HIGHLIGHTS:
Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony three more times this weekend at Severance Music Center — Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 3 pm. The famous work can stand alone, but these performances will preface it with Jean Sibelius’ Tapiola.
Cleveland Chamber Choir (pictured) will give two performances of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigil in its hour-long version — coupling the Russian composer’s choral masterpiece with Reena Esmail’s A Winter Breviary, which celebrates the movement from winter to spring just as Rachmaninoff marks the progress from darkness to light. Friday’s 7:30 concert is at Trinity Cathedral and Saturday’s in Fairchild Chapel at Oberlin College. Gregory Ristow conducts.
No Exit will open its 17th season of new music concerts with “American Descent” on Saturday at 7 pm at Praxis Fiber Workshop. On the menu: Garth Knox’s Viola Spaces, Geoffrey Burleson’s Cryptic Locomotion, June Young Will Kim’s After days of rain, construction fills the air, and the world premiere of Andrew Rindfleisch’s American Descent.
And on Sunday at 2:30, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Women’s Orchestra will celebrate its 90th anniversary season with a program featuring Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C, Edward Elgar’s Sea Pictures (with mezzo soprano Kira McGirr), Clara-Jane Maunder’s The Coast (U.S. premiere), and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1. Eric Benjamin conducts.
For more information, please visit our Concert Listings.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
The prolific keyboard composer Domenico Scarlatti was born in Naples on October 26, 1685, the son of composer Alessandro Scarlatti, and the third eminent member of the Class of ‘85 that includes Handel and J.S. Bach. Scarlatti spent most of his career in Spain churning out some of the most imaginative keyboard music of the period — his 555 Sonatas, which have become favorite program starters for keyboardists ranging from Liszt to Horowitz to Hamelin.
Thanks to the Petrucci Library, all of them are available here in eleven volumes immaculately edited by Kenneth Gilbert. Keyboardists: hone your sight reading by taking on one sonata every day, a challenge that might either thrill or frustrate you for the next year and a half!
And on this date in 1965, The Beatles kissed hands at Buckingham Palace and emerged as Sir John, Sir Paul, Sir George, and Sir Ringo, Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Lennon later returned his medal — read the story here.
October 26 in history also witnessed the birth of French pianist and composer Jacques Loussier (1934). These days, crossing between musical genres is commonplace, but Loussier mixed Bach with jazz improvisation and swing during a time when critics were much more likely to frown upon that kind of practice — read more in his obituary from The Guardian in 2019.
To get a taste of Loussier’s sensibilities, listen to his group the Play Bach Trio in a 2007 performance at the Burghausen International Jazz Week.
