HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
SATURDAY:
2:00 pm – Ohio Light Opera. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. Freedlander Theatre, Wooster.
7:30 pm – ChamberFest Cleveland. “Starry Night.” Program includes Errollyn Wallen’s Dervish for Cello and Piano, and Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht at Federated Church in Chagrin Falls.
SUNDAY:
Cancelled due to heat advisory: 3:30 pm – Canton Symphony Summer Serenades. Brass Quintet at Quail Hollow Park, Hartville.
4:00 pm – The Cleveland Opera. Gala concert featuring arias and duets in Saint Casimir Church.
7:30 pm – Oberlin Organ Academy. Guest Recital by Angela Kraft Cross in Finney Chapel.
For details, addresses, and ticket information, please visit our Concert Listings.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
On June 21, 1899, Czech composer Pavel Haas was born in Brno, and died at the hands of the Nazis 45 years later at Auschwitz. Watch a video of Hass’s A Study for Strings that includes documentary images of his life and the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Another video features the string quartet that bears his name in a performance of his Quartet No. 2, “From the Monkey Mountains,” Op. 7 (1925, the version with percussion).
June 21 marks the death of the super-prolific Armenian American composer Alan Hovhaness in Seattle in 2000. Cleveland harpist Yolanda Kondonassis has recorded an entire CD of his works, many of which aren’t widely known. Fans of Hovhaness will already treasure his Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain,” played here by Gerard Schwarz and the All-Star Orchestra, and his brief but moving Prayer of St. Gregory (click here to hear a performance by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis).
And on June 21, 2015, multi-faceted composer and musician Gunther Schuller died in Boston at 89. Formerly president of the New England Conservatory, he brought that experience to bear on his commencement address at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2015. His lifelong campaign to bridge the gap between classical music and jazz is symbolized in his 1987 concert with the New England Ragtime Ensemble at Wolf Trap, and his purely classical side is represented by his orchestral work Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee, discussed and then performed here.
by Daniel Hathaway
June 22nd’s debuts on the world stage include English tenor Sir Peter Pears (born in Farnham, Surrey in 1910), and Cleveland composer Jeffrey Mumford (born in Washington, D.C. in 1955).
Pears was the life partner of composer Benjamin Britten, and their musical collaborations included Pears’ wonderful choices of texts set brilliantly by Britten and often performed by the two with Britten at the piano. One of Britten’s most superb song cycles is the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, performed here by Pears, hornist Dennis Brain (playing natural horn in the Prologue and Epilogue), and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by John Hollingsworth. The playlist with start times:
Prologue 0:00 Pastoral – The Evening Quatrains (Charles Cotton) 1:19 Nocturne – Blow, bugle, blow (Alfred Tennyson) 5:16 Elegy – The Sick Rose (William Blake) 8:51 Dirge – Lyke-Wake Dirge (Anonymous) 13:45 Hymn – Hymn to Diana (Ben Jonson) 17:42 Sonnet – To Sleep (John Keats) 19:42 Epilogue 23:37.
Mumford is a prolific composer with a predilection for colorful titles like an expanding distance of multiple voices. Here’s a performance of his 2015 work becoming… at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Shuai Wang, piano, Ethan Ramaly, flute, Susannah Greenslit, horn, James Thompson, violin, Julian Maddox, violin, Tess Krope, viola, Daniel Blumhard, cello, Tristen Jarvis, double bass, Grace Cross, harp, Matt Moore, vibraphone, and Charles Renneker, marimba. Dean Buck conducts.
Milhaud, a diplomat as well as a composer, was also prolific, and some will remember attending summertime performances of his operas at the Central City Opera House in Colorado with the composer in attendance. Here’s a strange little “Visit With Darius Milhaud” documentary, much of it in French, that “shows him with former student Dave Brubeck in an informal jazz session at his home and watches Milhaud compose a sonatina for violin and cello.” There are also some highlights of his sonatinas and operas.
