by Daniel Hathaway
ONLINE TODAY:
Who were those masked men? Classical guitarists Jason Vieaux and Colin Davin rehearse a duet they’ll play at the end of their live-streamed concert, which starts at 2:00 pm on Saturday. This would have been the weekend of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival on which Vieaux and Davin are normally featured performers. Click here to purchase $10 tickets and follow the link to their real-time performances in the showroom of Guitars International.
Festival artistic director Armin Kelly has also posted a series of videos of performances by Czech classical guitarist Petra Poláčková, “a particularly popular regular at our Festival who was scheduled to join us once again this June. These videos were shot within the last fourteen months at various times and underwritten by my company, Guitars International.” Watch the performances here.
Check our Concert Listings for today’s events: a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic Octet, the MET’s HD rebroadcast of Verdi’s Otello, and The Cleveland Orchestra’s rebroadcast of Haydn and Shostakovich from January 2005. On Sunday, highlights include the Florida Grand Opera’s Nabucco, a George Szell birthday performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Sitdown with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, and the MET Opera’s Thaïs.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
Saturday, June 6 marks the birthdays of English composer, organist, and musical scholar Sir John Stainer (1840 in London), Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (1903 in Tiflis), and American composer Vincent Persichetti (1915 in Philadelphia).
Sunday’s birthday boys all have Cleveland connections. Conductor George Szell was born on June 7, 1897 in Budapest, Russian-American conductor and opera commentator Boris Godovsky entered the world in 1908 in Moscow, and violinist Jaime Laredo first saw the light of day in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
There are few videos of Szell in action on the podium. Two of them — from a 1966 Bell Telephone Hour television program — show the conductor in a conversation with three young conductors, and part of his rehearsal of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Celebrate Szell’s birthday on Sunday at 4:00 pm with WCLV’s broadcast of his performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis from February of 1967.
Boris Goldovsky spent the years between 1936 and 1942 in Cleveland as assistant to Cleveland Orchestra conductor Artur Rodzinski, and founded Canton Civic Opera in 1940 (watch a video here where he recalls the company’s debut performance of Smetana’s Bartered Bride). He’s probably best known as the originator of the Metropolitan Opera’s intermission feature, the Texaco Opera Quiz, and as a popular radio commentator. Here’s a recording of his analysis of Beethoven’s Fidelio in conversation with Birgit Nilsson.
Jaime Laredo came to the U.S. in 1948 and to Cleveland (to study with Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster Joseph Gingold) in 1953. Since 2012, he and his wife, cellist Sharon Robinson, have taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Watch a video of their live performance last month for the Detroit Chamber Music Society here.
VIDEOS OF NOTE:
The Akron Symphony offers a performance of My Black is Beautiful by Gospel Meets Symphony director Jonathan Turner, cellist Erica Snowden-Rodriguez, and members of the Gospel Choir, recorded at Akron’s First Methodist Church on June 3. Watch here.
Conductor Roderick Cox hosts a live conversation among four American conductors across generational lines who share their personal stories about navigating the elusive profession of orchestral conducting, and offer their perspectives on classical music as a unifying art form for the future. Participants include Thomas Wilkins, Music Director of the Omaha Symphony and Hollywood Bowl Orchestra , Michael Morgan, Music Director of the Oakland Symphony , and Jonathon Heyward, Chief Conductor Designate of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie. Watch here.