by Daniel Hathaway
ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES THIS WEEKEND:
On Saturday, violinist Mari Sato plays music by George Walker, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and Delores White on her program of works by African American composers on the Weekend of Chamber Music series. The organization normally programs live summer concerts in the Catskills.
WCLV’s Cleveland Orchestra on the Radio revisits a September 2010 concert on Saturday evening (works by Takemitsu, J.S. Bach, and Debussy, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring), and on Sunday afternoon, rebroadcasts Herbert Blomstedt’s interpretation of Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony from late February — one of the last performances before the pandemic shutdown.
The MET Opera offers free streams of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Saturday, from 2014) and Puccini’s La Bohème (Sunday, from 1982).
And on Sunday evening, “Best of ChamberFest Cleveland” revisits performances of John Adams’ Shaker Loops (from 2009), and André Caplet’s Conte fantastique, after Poe’s “The Mask of the Red Death” (from 2016). See the Concert Listings for details.
Two new streaming sources launch this weekend.
Cleveland’s BOP STOP has completed installation of state-of-the-art streaming equipment. The first performance on Saturday evening by the Jonathan Thomas Trio, will be filmed at BOP STOP and broadcast to Dizzy’s Club and Jazz at New York’s Lincoln Center. Read more here.
Cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, artistic co-directors of California’s Music@Menlo, have announced “Intermezzo,” a digital chamber music experience to take place during the originally-scheduled festival dates of July 17-August 8. “Listeners can enjoy a variety of artist interviews, live and archival performances, master classes, and more from past Music@Menlo seasons.”
Read details here, and catch the first performance on Saturday featuring composer and pianist Michael Brown.
INTERESTING READS:
National Public Radio reports that its listenership has dropped off by 25% in the last quarter, a decrease directly attributable to work-from-home orders that steeply reduced commuting during the pandemic. Read the article here.
In his article “That Sound You’re Hearing is Classical Music’s Long Overdue Reckoning with Racism,” Washington Post critic Michael Andor Brodeur writes that during recent events, “the rifts and inequalities that define American culture since its inception have become more visible than ever. And the call to improve institutions from criminal justice to arts organizations to newsrooms is extending to the stages (and offices) of the classical world.”
And conductor Leonard Slatkin weighs in on the subject of diversity in classical music with an excerpt from his soon-to-be-published book. Read the post from his personal website here.
And when did an article about classical music — not to mention organ music — last appear in the Op Ed pages of a major newspaper? Today’s New York Times features an essay by Annik LaFarge, “10 Fingers, 2 Feet and 5,000 Pipes, Breathing Life Into the Present,” on the art of improvisation as practiced by organists.