by Daniel Hathaway
THIS WEEKEND:
Over these three days, Les Délices, The Cleveland Orchestra, Oberlin Opera Theater, Cleveland State University’s Keyboard Area and The Lakewood Project, Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s Young and Emerging Composers, the Stow Symphony, classical guitarist Marko Topchii, Canton Symphony with the Steel Wheels, pianist Jeffrey Siegel, and the Parma Symphony, will all contribute performances — some repeated — to Northeast Ohio’s busy schedule of classical concerts. Please visit our Concert Listings for details.
Reminder: Daylight Savings Time starts at 2 am on Sunday (clocks advance by one hour).
NEWS BRIEFS:
Msn.com reports that “the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music have ‘paused’ the Emerging Black Composers Project, citing a memo from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that called diversity efforts ‘repugnant’ and ‘shameful’ and directed schools to eliminate them or risk losing federal funding.”
The article adds that “representatives from the Conservatory and the Symphony said in a joint statement to the Chronicle that they’re trying to save the project. Among the workarounds, the organizations are floating the possibility that the Symphony, which is not subject to Department of Education orders, fully adopt the program.
And the Oberlin Conservatory reports that “Associate Professor of Jazz Studies Billy Hart was named a Mellon Foundation Jazz Legacies Fellow and recognized as a ‘hero of jazz rhythm and esteemed mentor.’ The legendary drummer is part of the inaugural group of artists to receive the fellowship, which honors artists who’ve played pivotal roles in the formation and strengthening of the jazz ecosystem. Read more about Hart in a recent New York Times profile.”
The Cleveland Institute of Music will offer a five-day Chamber Music Experience from June 23-27 for adult amateurs of all ages and levels of experience. Participants will receive coaching by CIM faculty and take music courses as well as engaging in general education and wellness activities in and around University Circle. Click here for more information.
St. John’s Cathedral has announced a venue change for its March 18 recital by French organist Vincent Dubois. Because of renovations to its Holtkamp organ, the concert by one of the titular organists of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris will be performed at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
March 7:
English composer Henry Purcell may have been born on this date in 1659 (records are sketchy, to say the least), and in his brief 36-year career distinguished himself in a large body of music written both for church and theater after the restoration of the monarchy.
One of Purcell’s most popular works is his Dido and Aeneas, with a libretto by Nahum Tate based on Book IV of Virgil’s Aeneid.
Details of its first performance are as murky as those of the composer’s birth, but we do know that the piece was performed at Josias Priest’s girls’ school in London before the end of 1689. Is it an opera? Is it a masque? It’s safe to call it a theater piece and any further label you’d like to put on it pretty much depends on who’s performing it.
Dido retains its charms whether it’s produced by a professional organization or by amateurs, with whom the score is extremely popular. Important dramaturgical questions are posed — if not settled — by editor Curtis Price in the notes to his Norton Critical Score (example: “Was Aeneas a complete booby?”)
Dido’s final ground-bass aria, “When I am laid in earth,” is among the unforgettable moments in the score. Those who know it and are computer-savvy will appreciate this joke:
March 8:
BIRTHS: On this date in 1566 (or maybe 1564, 1560, or 1561) Italian composer (and murderer) Carlo Gesualdo, in Verona, German composer Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach (2nd son of Johann Sebastian), 1714 in Weimar, English composer, pianist & conductor Avril Coleridge Taylor (daughter of Samuel), 1903 in South Norwood, American composer Alan Hovhaness, 1911 in Somerville, MA, American composer Christian Wolff, 1934 in Nice, France & Welsh tenor Robert Tear, 1939 in Barry Glamorgan.
DEATHS: French composer Hector Berlioz, 62, 1869 in Paris, British conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, 81, 1961 in London & British composer William Walton, 80, 1983 on the Island of Ischia in Italy.
UNVEILINGS: Sibelius’ Second Symphony, 1902 in Helsinki (composer conducting).
Musical selection: click here to hear a live performance of the Walton Violin Concerto by Zino Francescati and The Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, conducting, recorded live on 25, 26, and 27 January 1968 in Severance Hall, where the work’s debut performance was played on December 7, 1939 by Jascha Heifetz under Artur Rodzinsky. Click here to read Mike Telin’s interview with Peter Otto before he played the work in March of 2022 with the Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst. Otto was only the third soloist to be featured in the piece since its debut.
March 9:
On this date in 2020, The Cleveland Orchestra announced the cancellation of its European and Middle Eastern tour due to the COVID pandemic. During the next week, some 35 Northeast Ohio musical organizations canceled or postponed their seasons, or took their events online. March 9, 2025, marks the fifth anniversary of the great shutdown.
Thanks to the availability of vaccines, musical events have continued to multiply, and pandemic protocols like masking have gradually being relaxed. But it’s been a long five years — and it’s not over yet!
On this date in 1910, composer Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Conductor Artur Rodzinky invited the 26-year-old composer to Cleveland in January of 1937 for the American premiere of his Symphony in One Movement (Symphony No. 1). Marin Alsop chose that work for her debut with the Orchestra in December of 2011, which sent ClevelandClassical.com executive editor Mike Telin into the Musical Arts Association archives at Severance Music Center to see how Barber’s visit went and how local critics had written about the work on its first outing. Read that article here.
The Rosemunde Quartet gave a rare performance of one of the composer’s most beloved pieces when Noah Bendix-Balgley (1st concertmaster, Berlin Philharmonic), Shanshan Yao (violin, N.Y. Philharmonic) Teng Li (principal viola, Los Angeles Philharmonic) & Nathan Vickery (cello, N.Y. Philharmonic) played Barber’s Adagio on March 15, 2021. Their performance on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society Series at Plymouth Church presented the piece in its original context as the slow movement of his String Quartet, Op.11.
That movement having become popular immediately after its debut in 1936, Barber arranged it for string orchestra later that year, naming it the Adagio for Strings. It’s sometimes heard in an organ arrangement by William Strickland (the assistant organist at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York at the time), as well as in a choral version Barber made himself in 1967, when he published it with the text of the Agnus Dei.
The wistful sadness of the piece has made it appropriate for memorializing events from the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to the invasion of Ukraine.
Click here to listen to a performance of the original piece by the Dover Quartet, here to listen to the string orchestra version with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein, and here to watch the Laurens Symfonisch (formerly the Rotterdam Symphony Chorus) sing the choral version or Agnus Dei. Finally, click here to watch the then-young German concert organist Felix Hell play the Strickland arrangement at Trinity Church, Wall Street in New York.
A frequently posed question is how slow Barber wanted his Adagio to be performed. Timings vary widely. The Dover Quartet only took 7:41 to play the quartet version. Bernstein — whose tempos tended to get slower as his career continued — clocked in at 10:06, and the Laurens Symfonisch at 8:17. Felix Hell was the “most adagio” at 10:20.
