by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
Friday: Re:Sound New and Experimental Music Festival begins at Transformer Station | The Mandel Festival presents The Moth Mainstage at Severance | CityMusic Chamber Orchestra moves to St. Noel in Willoughby Hills.
Saturday: The Mandel Festival presents United in Song at Severance | Master Singers Chorale perform at The Bath Church | Federated Church hosts Sammy DeLeon y su Orquestra in Chagrin Falls | The Cleveland Orchestra stages its first performance of Leoš Janáček’s opera Jenůfa at Severance | BlueWater Chamber Orchestra (pictured) and Cleveland Chamber Choir collaborate at Trinity Cathedral | the Re:Sound New and Experimental Music Festival continues at Transformer Station | CityMusic Chamber Orchestra calls in at St. Stanislaus.
Sunday: Cleveland Composers Guild holds its 33rd annual junior concert at the Music Settlement | Suburban Symphony features violinist Aika Birch and pianist James Carson at Beachwood H.S. | members of the Jenůfa cast light on Janáček’s opera at Severance | CityMusic Chamber Orchestra ends its season in Rocky River | Music at Bath presents Alla Boara in Italian folk music | Chucho Valdés and his Royal Quartet play Afro-Cuban jazz at Severance.
HEADLINES:
The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst appoint Joel Link as Concertmaster (Cleveland Orchestra Press Release)
American Classical Musicians Publish Letter Criticizing Trump Administration’s Threats to Free Speech (The Violin Channel)
Canceled CSO recital signals bigger brewing visa crisis for musicians in Trump era (WBEZ, Chicago)
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
Let us now praise famous musicians who arrived or departed on May 18.
First, two German composers. Johann Froberger was born on this date in 1616 in Stuttgart, and Georg Böhm took his leave in Luneburg in 1733.
When not in the service of the noble families of Stuttgart, Froberger traveled throughout Europe, establishing himself as a virtuoso organist and harpsichordist, and was the inventor of the dance suite that served the formal needs of composers well into the 18th century. He also pushed the Arca Musarithmica, an early A.I. device that assisted in the creation of music.
Watch French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau perform Suites by Froberger — and by Louis Couperin, whose music he influenced — in a live broadcast from Salle Cortot in Paris in 2020, and read more about the Arca Musarithmica here.
Böhm was working for the French-influenced court in Luneburg when Johann Sebastian Bach was a teenaged chorister at a church down the street. Enjoy two of Böhm’s engaging works played on the Schnitger organ in Groningen by Wim van Beek. We’ll start with his multi-sectioned Präludium in g, then move on to his variations on Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele — the next-to-last variation introduces some surprising blue notes into the harmony.
Two basses come up in today’s list: the birth of Ezio Pinza in Rome in 1892, and the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 2012. We featured the latter in an earlier Diary, so we’ll move on to Pinza, who, despite never having learned to read music, enjoyed a long and distinguished opera career beginning in Milan under Toscanini and continuing at the MET in New York.
Watch some rare video of Pinza rehearsing for a Bell Telephone Hour program in 1947, and recall his second career on Broadway in clips from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific, where he appeared opposite Mary Martin as the French planter Emil de Becque.
German composer and conductor Gustav Mahler died in Vienna on this date in 1911, leaving nine-and-a-half monumental symphonies that were performed during his lifetime, but languished until their revival later in the century, notably by Leonard Bernstein. The works suited the conductor’s extroverted personality, as can be witnessed in this 1973 performance of No. 2, the “Resurrection” Symphony, at Ely Cathedral. (In 2018, the film of the performance was screened at Ely, preceded by these interviews). I had the unforgettable experience of singing the work with Bernstein and the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in the early 70s.
The roots of Mahler’s music are explored by Bernstein’s spiritual successor, Michael Tilson Thomas, in two episodes of Keeping Score with the San Francisco Symphony.
Finally, on this date in 1975, American composer and arranger Leroy Anderson died in Woodbury, Connecticut. Long associated with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, the Harvard grad was famous for such light classics as Bugler’s Holiday, played here by Cleveland Orchestra principal trumpet Michael Sachs with the UCLA Wind Ensemble and two of his young colleagues. Occasionally, Anderson aspired to more ambitious works. Explore a Naxos recording of his Piano Concerto performed by Jeffrey Biegel with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin conducting.
