By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Guitar festival and youth competition at CIM through Sunday
. She Scores, three concerts of works by women composers in CSU’s Drinko Hall
. Almanac: remembering Edward Elgar, Serge Koussevitzky, Emile Berliner (inventor of the microphone), and the release of Radio Shack’s TRS-80 personal computer
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
On Friday, June 12, the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival continues its 23rd edition with recitals, master classes, and lectures in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music. This year’s performances include duos (Solo Duo from Italy on Saturday at 7:30, and the Patterson/Sutton Duo on Sunday at 1), and solo recitals by Petra Polácková (pictured, Czech Republic, Friday at 7:30), lutenist Nigel North (England, Saturday at 4), and Hao Yang (China, Sunday at 4).
A special feature of this year’s guitar festival will be the live semi final and final rounds of the James Stroud National Classical Guitar Youth Competition in Mixon Hall. Semi-Finalists ages fourteen to eighteen will perform before the public and a panel of internationally acclaimed judges on Friday at 10 am and 1 pm, and four Finalists ages fourteen to eighteen will perform on Sunday at 6:30 (to be live streamed). Prizes will be announced at the close of this Round.
Want to check out all the details of the Festival including repertoire, master classes and lectures, and ticketing (some events are free)? Read a preview article here, and visit the Festival website here.
She Scores
When the Institute for Composer Diversity analyzed the 2019-20 seasons of 120 American orchestras, it found that just eight percent of all pieces performed were composed by women. For Amber Rogers, artistic director of the Local 4 Music Fund, that statistic was a call for action.
On June 2 and 3 at 7:00 pm and June 4 at 4:00 pm in Cleveland State University’s Drinko Hall, She Scores 2023 will feature nineteen compositions by fourteen composers. Emily Laurance will present a pre-concert lecture 45 minutes prior to each free performance.sRead a preview article here.
Visit our Concert Listings page for robust listings of these and other events —composer names, composition titles, and performers.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
June 2, by Jarrett Hoffman
Sir Edward Elgar was born on this date in 1857 in Lower Broadheath, England, outside of Worcester.
Classical musicians know him best for the orchestra piece Enigma Variations (heard here in a 1957 live recording by William Steinberg and The Cleveland Orchestra) and the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. But the general public is more likely to recognize the trio from Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, a popular choice for graduation ceremonies — sometimes performed on repeat until every last senior has come and gone from the stage. (Pro tip for performers to keep themselves entertained: switch off every other note with your stand partner.)
Click here to watch Elgar conduct the trio as part of a ceremony marking the opening of Abbey Road Studios in 1931. (He instructs the orchestra to “play this tune as though you’ve never heard it before”). Or for a memento from the early months of the pandemic, hear Cleveland Orchestra trumpeter Michael Sachs play the melody as part of a congratulatory message to graduates in May of 2020.
Elgar was also a performer: an excellent violinist, as well as a bassoonist. Perhaps that was part of his inspiration behind the Op. 62 Romance — the other part being the playing of Edwin F. James, who was then principal bassoon of the London Symphony, and who premiered the work in 1911 with Elgar on the podium.
Here are two recordings of this short, lyrical, poetic work. One as written, with that beautiful orchestration — performed here by bassoonist Klaus Thunemann and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, led by Sir Neville Marriner. And one that replaces the ensemble with an organ (yet another instrument in Elgar’s performing arsenal), creating a much more intimate color. Watch it here performed by Sophie Dervaux and organist Wolfgang Kogert.
That first link isn’t a video, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t contain anything visual of value. What accompanies the music is a still of a portrait of Elgar — and if you’re considering a change in your facial hair style, look no further than this full-bodied, elegantly shaped topiary of a mustache as something to aim for.
Hats off to you, Sir. Hats off to you indeed.
June 3, by Daniel Hathaway
On June 3, 1929, German-born inventor Emile Berliner died in New York City of a heart attack at the age of 78. Like many second-wave innovators, Berliner has largely gone unmentioned for his pair of contributions to the classical music recording industry. The first was his development of the circular disk that replaced Edison’s cylinders and made the mass production of recordings possible. To that end, he founded several companies, including Deutsche Grammophon and the Victor Talking Machine Company.
Berliner was also among those who invented the microphone. His achievements are on display at the Library of Congress (click here to view), including such non-musical inventions as a loom for mass producing cloth and an early version of the helicopter. Somewhere in between falls his invention of a type of acoustical tile.
The second milestone for which we can thank August 3 is the introduction of the Tandy Corporation’s TRS-80 personal computer through Radio Shack, a model that was snapped up by thousands of early adopters within weeks of its release in 1977 for $600 each (some $2,600 in today’s currency).
Lacking such mod cons as the ability to render lower case letters, the machine eventually became a device for tinkerers, even though until 1982, it outsold the Apple II series five to one. Most importantly, the TRS-80 presaged today’s ubiquitous PCs through which we’ve been notating and streaming music, attending classes on Zoom, and conducting our business affairs throughout the Pandemic. It’s difficult to imagine 1977 without access to that magic box, much less 2021.
June 4, by Daniel Hathaway
Russian-born double bassist and conductor Serge Koussevitzky died on this date in 1951 in Boston, where he had led the Boston Symphony for 25 eventful years.
It’s difficult to imagine 20th century music without the long list of works that Koussevitzky commissioned and premiered, or the young musicians he mentored at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts beginning in 1940, two years after the BSO had established its summer home there. Watch The Tanglewood Story, a 1949 movie about Tanglewood’s early years produced by the U.S. Information Service that features rare footage of Koussevitzky and Aaron Copland, pictured above with “Koussey’s” star pupil Leonard Bernstein.
Those commissioned works include Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (listen here to a recording made in Symphony Hall in October 1930), Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, as well as occasional works like Randall Thompson’s Alleluia (ordered for the opening of the school at Tanglewood) and The Last Words of David (watch a rare video of Koussevitzky conducting at Tanglewood in 1950).
Self-taught as a conductor, Koussevitzky spawned many stories about his baton technique and grasp of scores. Flummoxed about when to come in during a soft passage (the conductor unhelpfully said “Ven my stick touch de air, you play”), some of his players determined that the proper moment was when the baton passed the third button on his vest.
And Nicholas Slonimsky reported on his attempts to help Koussevitzky master the complex rhythms in The Rite of Spring in his autobiography, Perfect Pitch. “To my dismay, I realized Koussevitzky was incapable of coping with these complications.” Slonimsky’s solution was to work out an alternate score that simplified changes of meter but preserved the composer’s rhythms.
