by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
It’s a busy three days in Northeast Ohio. We’ll organize events by their organizers.
The Cleveland International Piano Competition moves forward with its Grand Piano Playoff on Sunday at 6 at the Hanna Theater, when the sixteen Quarter-Finalists will play transcriptions of 80s and 90s pop songs (SOLD OUT). Before that, the CIPC Concert Truck will bring portable performances by the competitors to Cleveland City Hall (Friday at Noon) & North Union Farmers Market in Shaker Square (Saturday at 10).
Stage crews will be busy in Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster, changing sets for five of Ohio Light Opera’s six summer shows: The Sound of Music (Friday at 2), The Arcadians (Friday at 7:30), The Gondoliers (Saturday at 2), The Count of Luxembourg (Saturday at 7:30), and Guys and Dolls (Sunday at 2).
Apollo’s Fire “rediscovers” Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and programs stormy Italian arias sung by soprano Amanda Forsythe on Friday at 7:30 in Avon Lake, and at the same hour, a Cleveland Chamber Choir octet celebrates the Queens of England in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall.
The Kent Blossom Chamber Orchestra opens for The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom on Saturday at 6. The 7 pm side-by-side concert that follows, led by Hannu Lintu, will feature Mark Kosower in William Walton’s Cello Concerto and the combined orchestras in Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.
The Akron Symphony plays an outdoor summer concert at Forest Lodge Park on Sunday at 7:30, at the same hour when Oberlin Piano Festival faculty recitalist Carl Cranmer plays indoors in Clonick Hall.
For details of upcoming concerts, visit our Concert Listings page.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
BlueWater Chamber Orchestra has named Tricia Bohanon as its new executive director. Read more on the Orchestra’s web site.
SOME HEADLINES culled from today’s ArtsJournal:
New Live Recordings By Louis Armstrong (BBC)
Alleged Victim At Center of New York Philharmonic Rape Scandal Reveals New Details (Vulture — MSN)
John Eliot Gardiner Fired By The Board Of The Choir And Orchestra He Founded (The Guardian)
San Francisco Symphony’s Ongoing Turmoil (San Francisco Chronicle — MSN)
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
July 26: by Stephanie Manning
On this day in 1882, Richard Wagner‘s opera Parsifal premiered in Bayreuth, Germany. The German composer’s last completed opera, Parsifal is based on an epic poem from the 13th century about the knight Parzifal and his search for the Holy Grail.
This was the first work Wagner composed specifically for the acoustic of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which had opened seven years earlier.
One of the many orchestral conductors to record the music from Parsifal was Serge Koussevitzky, who was born on this date in 1874. Listen to his Boston Symphony Orchestra recording of the “Prelude” from Act I and “Good Friday Spell” from Act III here.
July 27: by Daniel Haathawy
On July 27, 1741, Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi died in Vienna. He made his reputation in Venice, especially as music director for 30 years of the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for young women. He continued his career in Mantua, eventually migrating to Vienna in hopes of advancing his fortunes as an opera composer.
Of course, Vivaldi is best known for his hundreds of orchestral concertos, including The Four Seasons, which have provided a central stream of music for Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire — see “Happening This Weekend.” Click here to watch a performance of his Concerto for Two Cellos (René Schiffer and Mimé Brinkmann), and here to witness Jeannette Sorrell’s infectious arrangement of his La Folia, both from performances at Tanglewood.
July 28: by Stephanie Manning
And on this date in 1951, Alice in Wonderland, the film with the most songs of any Walt Disney feature was released. Though now regarded as a classic, the film was initially met with a lackluster reception, leading Decca Records to decide against releasing a soundtrack album.
Five years later, the newly formed Disneyland Records and producer Tutti Camarata set out to record a new, non-soundtrack version of the score. Camarata, who arranged and conducted the music, assembled an orchestra and chorus to create this recording (pictured), which was released in 1957. The 13-song album stars child actress Darlene Gillespie, who gives a wonderful performance as Alice. Learn more about that story here, and listen to the album on Spotify.
