By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. A hearty list of weekend events, some with multiple performances
. Quire Cleveland (pictured) launches grants initiative before dissolving, Midgette withdraws from CIM Commencement amid Kalmar investigation
. Almanac — Quite the guest list: Giovanni Battista Viotti, Jules Massenet, Gabriel Fauré, Wu Fei, Arthur Sullivan, Otto Klemperer.
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
Apollo’s Fire presents “A Return to Bach’s Coffeehouse” with a new playlist led by assistant artistic director and violinist Alan Choo, in multiple performances at St. Paul’s Episcopal in Cleveland Hts. on Friday, May 12 and Saturday, May 13, and at Rocky River Presbyterian on Sunday afternoon, May 14.
No Exit presents itself in a revisiting of highlights from its current season at Waterloo Arts on Friday, May 12, the same evening that Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project reinterprets the torch song at Convivium 33 Gallery.
The Cleveland Orchestra’s end-of-season festival, “The American Dream” kicks off on Saturday, May 13 with “United in Song,” a community choral celebration hosted by Orlando Watson, and a concert of music by Carlos Simon, Dolores White, and Florence Price, emceed by Dan Moulthrop, both at Severance. The centerpiece of the festival, Puccini’s opera, The Girl of the Golden West, featuring Emily McGee and Limmie Pulliam, opens for three performances on Sunday afternoon, May 13.
The Akron Symphony is the latest organization to mount Brahms’ A German Requiem this season, but in an unusual pairing with the premiere of Timothy Adams’s commissioned work Harriet Tubman & The Underground Railroad (Friday at E.J. Thomas Hall).
Then on Saturday, CityMusic Cleveland highlights its clarinetists, Dan Gilbert and Ellen Breakfield-Glick, in “Clarinet Dialogues” at Praxis Fiber Workshop.
Visit the Clevelandclassical.com Concert Listings page for details including addresses of venues and information about even more concerts in Northeast Ohio.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Quire launches grants initiative
As Quire Cleveland prepares to go out of business after its final round of concerts in the fall, the professional vocal ensemble is launching a Grants Initiative program “intended to foster the growth of early a cappella vocal ensemble music in north/central Ohio. Paired with our final concert series in early fall 2023, this initiative will invest Quire Cleveland’s remaining financial reserves in the production of grant-funded performances and experiences of this treasured genre of music, and, hopefully, seed the creation of some new local ensembles during our final season.
“These community grants – of up to $5000 each – are available to fund professional singer fees for collaborative projects that pair a group of professional singers with a hosting venue. A typical partnership might involve the choir director or a staff singer at a hosting church, or a music teacher/choir director at a hosting school. Venues and singers are encouraged to seek out partners to develop a collaborative project proposal and submit an application together.
“Projects must take place before June 1, 2024 in Cuyahoga or adjacent counties of Ohio. The next application deadline is July 1, 2023. If you’re curious and want more information, check out the detailed guidelines and application form here.”
Midgette withdraws from CIM Commencement
From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 10: Cleveland Institute of Music has launched an investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior by principal conductor Carlos Kalmar. The inquiry is still in its early stages, but there’s already been some fallout. This week, Anne Midgette, the former longtime classical music critic at the Washington Post, declined an honorary doctorate from the higher education institution and withdrew as keynote speaker at the commencement ceremony on May 20. Read the story here.
ALMANAC FOR MAY 12, 13 & 14:
May 12 by Jarrett Hoffman
Today we host a party for four esteemed musicians born on this date in history: Italian violinist and composer Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755), French composers Jules Massenet (1842) and Gabriel Fauré (1845), and Chinese American composer and guzheng player Wu Fei (1977).
It’s a joint birthday party, so it’s a given that all of them will go home feeling a little neglected — no one will have a good time. But maybe something interesting will come of it?
Despite some generational differences, Viotti and Wu Fei might end up enjoying each other’s company, both being virtuoso string-instrumentalists with distinctive brands of improvisation. Listen here to an example of the Nashville-based artist’s musical language on the guzheng, combining East and West as well as traditional and contemporary. Or how about a duet? The guzheng can make a nice pairing with the violin, as evidenced by several videos on YouTube, including this one.
It can be a good thing for a party when some people already know each other — like Fauré and Massenet, who in their time were both members of the Société Nationale de Musique, which promoted new French music.
Or maybe not such a good thing, depending on their history. After Massenet was passed over for the directorship of the Paris Conservatoire (having apparently insisted on being given a lifetime appointment), he resigned from his post as professor of composition. His replacement was Fauré.
May 13 & 14 by Daniel Hathaway
On May 13, 1842, British composer Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan entered the world in London. Sullivan exhibited his musical prowess early on — at the age of eight he composed his first anthem and soon after became a soloist in the boys’ choir of the Chapel Royal. At age 14 the Royal Academy of Music awarded Sullivan the first Mendelssohn Scholarship, allowing him to pursue his musical studies at the Academy as well as the Leipzig Conservatory. His early works include a ballet, a symphony, and a cello concerto, as well as some 80 popular songs, parlor ballads and hymns.
Today Sullivan is best known for his fourteen light opera collaborations with librettist William Schwenck Gilbert. This summer, recalling its roots as a summer Savoy company, Ohio Light Opera will give eight performances of H.M.S. Pinafore at The College of Wooster beginning on June 29.
In addition to providing musical undergirding for Gilbert’s penetrating satire, Sullivan wrote his own musical parodies of hallowed musical forms, like his sendup of the Renaissance madrigal in “Strange Adventure” from Yeomen of the Guard, and in some of his serious compositions reflected the spiritual crises of the Victorian era. Commentators have found his a cappella song, The Long Day Closes, to be as much of a valedictory to the 19th century as many of Mahler’s songs and symphony movements.
German conductor Otto Klemperer, born on May 14, 1885 in Breslau, was forced to leave his post at the Hamburg Opera in 1915 after a scandal involving a recently married soprano. In popular culture, his son Werner probably eclipsed his father’s fame as the actor who played the bumbling Colonel Klink in the CBS television series Hogan’s Heroes. But back to the concert world, here’s Otto Klemperer’s take on the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the New Philharmonia Orchestra. (Werner Klemperer is playing in the second violin section).
