by Daniel Hathaway
THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:
On Saturday, Ohio Light Opera presents a cabaret of songs from musicals the company has produced since 1979 (outdoors in Wooster’s Public Square), Cleveland International Piano Competition releases the Round 1, Session 3 videos of performances by Vitaly Starikov (25, Russia), Anastasiya Magamedova (23, United States/Tajikistan), Ziyu Liu (22, China), Daria Parkhomenko (29, Russia), and Rafael Skorka (32, Israel), and Apollo’s Fire features violinists Olivier Brault, Alan Choo, and Emi Tanabe in showpieces by Telemann and J.S. Bach in Avon Lake.
On Sunday, Cleveland International Piano Competition contestants Bowen Li (24, China), Roman Lopatynskyi (27, Ukraine), Martín García García (24, Spain), Svetlana Andreeva (32, Russia), and Byeol Kim (31, South Korea) perform via video in Round 1, Session 4, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute wraps up its concert series in Gates Mills with a program sparked by young environmental activist Greta Thunberg, The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes guests — conductor Dame Jane Glover and pianist Conrad Tao (pictured) — in its second Blossom weekend, and two orchestras perform al fresco: the Suburban Symphony in Shaker Heights, and the Akron Symphony at Hale Farm.
Details in our Concert Listings.
Just a reminder that we’ll be posting mini-reviews of the piano competition rounds soon after each session in the special CIPC section of our front page, and that once the individual round videos have debuted, they’ll remain available for viewing on the PianoCleveland website.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
On this weekend’s list of commemorations: conductor Herbert Blomstedt (born on July 11, 1927), who will conduct Beethoven at Blossom on August 1, Jerry Herman (born on July 10, 1933), composer of such Broadway hits as Hello, Dolly!, Mame and La Cage aux Folles, pianist Ferdinand Joseph Morton (a.k.a. Jelly Roll), who claimed to have invented jazz, a boast about which Gunther Schuller wrote there is “no proof to the contrary,” and Arthur Fiedler, longtime Boston Pops conductor (who died at the age of 84 on June 10, 1979). Here is some rare footage of the Boston Pops July 4, 1976 concert at the Esplanade that drew more than 600,000 people.
Speaking of the Boston Pops, that celebrated orchestra (made up of Boston Symphony musicians minus principal players) started out as the Boston Promenade Orchestra, which played its first concert on July 11, 1885 at the old Boston Music Hall. And on July 11, 1940, a young Leonard Bernstein made his conducting debut with the Pops at the open-air Esplanade shell on the Charles River, leading Wagner’s Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger.
And, adding to our list of American composers who should be better known, George Frederick McKay was born on July 11, 1899 in Harrington,Washington. The first graduate in composition at Eastman, McKay taught for 40 years at the University of Washington. A prolific composer in all classical genres as well as jazz, his detailed Wikipedia entry notes that “his music contains a poignant evocation of the West Coast American spirit, including glimpses of a populist era of street marches, honky-tonk dance halls and social chaos along with a recognition of the great natural beauty of his home region and the vitality of its people.”
CIM graduate John McLaughlin Williams has recorded seven of McKay’s Symphonies, as well as his 1940 Violin Concerto (listen here). And his popular Epoch: American Dance Symphony from 1935 has been recorded by John Nardolillo and the University of Kentucky Symphony.
Finally, on July 10, 1900, the U.S. Patent Office registered the trademark “His Master’s Voice” (pictured above) to the Victor Recording Company, later to become RCA Victor. Hear one version of the back story behind this famous logo on MattTalksVinyl.