by Daniel Hathaway
ON THIS WEEKEND:
You’d have to clone yourself several times over to take in all this weekend’s live concerts. Here’s a bucket list to help you choose.
Orchestras: Canton with pianist Sarah Davis Buechner (Sat.), Cleveland with Dames Jane Glover & Imogen Cooper (Sat. & Sun.), and Firelands with Ilya and Olga Kaler (Sat.)
Operas: Last chances for The Secret Marriage at Oberlin (Sat. & Sun.) and The Marriage of Figaro at BW (Sat. & Sun.)
Recitals: David Bowlin and Tony Cho at Oberlin (Sat.), Karim Sulyman (pictured) and Yi-heng Yang at Youngstown (Sat.), Elizabeth Frey, Brian Skoog, and Karel Paukert in Cleveland Hts. (Sun.) & Alistair Howlett, Katherine Jolly, and Tatiana Lokhina at Oberlin (Sun.)
Pianists: Brian Wallick at CMA (Tri-C series, Sun.), Inna Faliks in Akron (Holy Trinity Lutheran, Sun.), Nicholas Underhill in Painesville (Sun.) and Jiarui Cheng in Hudson (Sun.)
Plus organist Damin Spritzer in Oberlin and the Mozart Requiem in Painesville (Sun.)
Details in our Concert Listings.
INTERESTING READS:
A new book by Philadelphia native Mark Ludwig, who played viola in the Boston Symphony for 36 seasons, delves deeply into the music created by the Jewish composers who were imprisoned at Terezin during the Second World War. In his review of Our Will to Live, Philadelphia Inquirer critic David Patrick Stearns writes,
Even for those who find Holocaust literature too painful to bear, this collection of artifacts by Jewish artists and musicians — subtitled The Terezín Music Critiques of Viktor Ullmann, Illustrations by Terezín Artists — is exhilarating in humanity-affirming ways. The 328-page hardcover book published by Steidl ($45) is superbly organized with sketches of the camp’s inner recesses, music programs, and a meticulously curated playlist that includes historic recordings made in the camp as well as modern recordings by Yo-Yo Ma. This isn’t just a book. It’s a world, and one that elicits almost every possible emotion.
And here’s more for those who were intrigued by the Cleveland Museum of Arts’ program in January of 2015 that brought Italian musicologist, composer and musician Luciano Chessa to town for a look into the “Orchestra of Future Noise Intoners” or “Intonarumori,” which challenged listeners to hear the musical possibilities that can be found in noise. Click here to read Peter Tracy’s Public Domain Review article, “Luigi Russolo’s Cacophonous Futures,” where Tracy explores what he calls “the splendiferous din of Italian futurist music.”
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was born on March 26, 1925 in Montbrison, while Renaissance composers Heinrich Isaac and Antonio de Cabezon, and German composer Ludwig van Beethoven took their final bows in 1517, 1566, and 1827 in Florence, Madrid, and Vienna, respectively.
Cabezon, who was blind from early childhood, rose to become the first major Iberian composer for keyboard instruments and a member of the Spanish royal household. Listen here to his Diferencias sobre la Gallarda Milanesa played by Arturo Barba Sevillano on the historic organ at Villar de Cañas, Cuenca, in 2013.
One of the most prolific and well-traveled of Renaissance composers, Isaac enjoyed the patronage of the Medicis, whose coat of arms is associated with his Palle palle, played here by Voices of Music.
If you’ve been missing wind music (allegedly the super-spreaders of the COVID-19 era), here’s another Isaac tune, A la battaglia, performed by the Italian Consort.
Beethoven’s music has been in everyone’s ears during — and after — the 250th anniversary year of his birth, but maybe not this piece. His Elegischer Gesang for string quartet and four voices dates from 1814 and was dedicated to a friend whose wife had died three years earlier at the age of 24. It’s a lovely way to celebrate the departure of Beethoven as well. Listen to it here performed by the San Francisco Choral Artists.
Lest we become too sentimental, it’s worth remembering that the earthy composer was told on his deathbed that a gift of a dozen bottles of wine had arrived from his publisher. According to his American biographer Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Beethoven’s last recorded words were “Pity, pity — too late!”
Pierre Boulez enjoyed a special relationship with The Cleveland Orchestra, palpably represented by his performance with them of the Adagio from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, but also preserved in musicians’ tributes on the occasion of his 90th birthday. And more recently, in principal trumpet Michael Sachs’ remembrances in the 10th episode of the Orchestra’s On a Personal Note podcasts.
Published on ClevelandClassical.com March 26, 2022.
