by Daniel Hathaway
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
During Women’s History Month, it’s appropriate to start this weekend’s Almanac with a tribute to American conductor and opera director Sarah Caldwell, born on March 6, 1924 in Maryville, MO. After studies at the New England Conservatory and the Berkshire Music Center, Caldwell launched her career as assistant to Boris Goldovsky, and founded the Opera Company of Boston in 1957.
Her colorful career is touched upon in an episode of Virginia Eskin’s “First Ladies of Music,” and related in some detail in Richard Dyer’s Boston Globe obituary of March 25, 2006 following her death at the age of 82.
Stories about Caldwell’s brilliance and eccentricities abound. I recall hearing about an almost nightly ritual when her staff fanned out to try to find where she had parked her car that day. And I showed up with hundreds of other ticket holders for a performance of Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron only to discover a note taped to the theater door announcing the indefinite postponement of the production. (Dyer notes that she “once sold tickets for Verdi’s spectacular and popular Aida, but offered Mozart’s intimate and little-known La Finta Giardiniera instead”).
Continuing with famous women in music, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa was born on March 6, 1944 in Gisborne, New Zealand. After studies at the London Opera Centre, she made an auspicious American debut as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro at the Santa Fe Opera in July of 1971, a production that also featured the debut of Frederica von Stade as Cherbino.
Her later career included her appearance as Maria in the “Operatic” version of West Side Story, along with José Carreras as Tony, Tatiana Troyanos as Anita, Kurt Ollmann as Riff, and Marilyn Horne as the offstage voice. Here, she’s featured in a 1986 Montreal Symphony Concert led by Charles Dutoit in arias by Handel, Mozart, Bellini, Gounod, Boito, Puccini and Charpentier.
English composer John Wilbye was baptized on March 7, 1574 in Diss, Norfolk. He settled in London, earning a reputation as a first-class composer of madrigals through two books totaling 64 pieces published in 1598 and 1609.
Watch Ars Nova Copenhagen perform one of his most famous works, Draw on Sweet Night, and follow that up with his My Throat is Sore, recorded by the English Vocal Consort of Helsinki during the COVID-19 lockdown.
And on March 7, 1875, French composer Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure. Franz Welser-Möst led his La valse during The Cleveland Orchestra’s centennial celebrations in 2018, and violinist Jessica Lee and cellist Mark Kosower recently performed his Sonata for Violin and Cello on the Orchestra’s Music Medicine series.
It’s difficult to tip the hat to Ravel without mentioning his most famous piece, Bolero. Since former Cleveland Orchestra music director Lorin Maazel was born on March 6, 1930 in Neuilly, France, we can combine two celebrations with Maazel’s performance of the piece with the Vienna Philharmonic. Or perhaps you’ll prefer this version by Daniel Barenboim and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the ensemble he founded to bring together two normally disparate factions in the Middle East.
ONLINE THIS WEEKEND:
On Saturday, Oberlin Stage Left features the Conservatory’s large ensembles in four newly recorded performances, and classical guitarist Ana Vidovic performs on the 92nd St. Y series from New York.
On Sunday, Boston’s A Far Cry chamber orchestra offers a far-ranging menu of music by Josquin, Jessie Montgomery, Matana Roberts, Caroline Shaw, and Beethoven. In VOCES8’s Live from London, pianist Joanna MacGregor hosts a program that includes Florence Price’s spirituals, Margaret Bond’s Troubled Water, Mary Lou Williams’ jazz solos from Zodiac Suite, and Eleanor Alberga’s work based on Pushkin’s ‘It’s time, my friend, it’s time’, as well as Nina Simone’s Blackbird, Little Girl Blue and Good Bait, a melding of Bach, Liszt, and jazz.
On the local scene, Sunday also brings a recital from Fairlawn Lutheran Church by young organists Nicholas Stackpole and Daniel Colaner, and 88bit, the alter ego of composer/pianist Rob Kovacs, who plays note-for-note piano arrangements of Nintendo soundtracks live from Silver Hall at the Maltz Performing Arts Center at CWRU. And WCLV’s Cleveland Orchestra on the Radio features an archive performance of Verdi’s Don Carlo led by Franz Welser-Möst.
Details in our Concert Listings.
