by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. A bulging weekend concert calendar
. Almanac: Clara Schumann dies, Verdi’s Requiem receives its first performance, and Richard Wagner is born
THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:
There appears to be something for everyone this weekend, which offers music from the very old to the very new performed by chamber groups, choruses, and orchestras. Check our Concert Listings page for program details and ticket information.
MAY 20 – FRIDAY
At 11:00 am Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in Berg’s Lyric Suite and Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 at Mandel Concert Hall, and almost next door at 12:15 pm, the McGaffin Carillon Springtime Concert & Live Stream will feature George Leggiero performing an all-Dutch program from the 17th and 20th centuries.
Friday evening at 7, Trobàr medieval music trio presents “Found in Translation 2.0” at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Hts. (repeated on Saturday at 8 at Hildebrandt Artist Collective in Cleveland).
Also on Friday, violinist Regina Carter joins the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra at 7:30 at Maltz Performing Arts Center, and at the same hour, Steven Plank leads the Oberlin Collegium Musicum in Fairchild Chapel (Bosworth Hall), program to be repeated on Saturday, same time, same place. Also in Oberlin at 7:30 pm, Fridays at Finney features Raphael Jiménez leading the Oberlin Orchestra in works by Sebastian Quesada, Edward Elgar, and Shawn Okpebholo.
MAY 21 – SATURDAY
At 2:30 pm the Oberlin Guitar Ensemble, Steven Aron, director plays works by John Dowland, Mauro Giuliani, Ferdinand Rebay, Margaret Bonds, Joaquín Rodrigo, and Franz Schubert in Oberlin’s Kulas Recital Hall, and at 8:00 pm Franz Welser-Möst will lead The Cleveland Orchestra, Children’s Chorus, and an all-star cast in Verdi’s Otello in Mandel Concert Hall [pictured above, Limmie Pulliam, tenor (Otello), Tamara Wilson, soprano (Desdemona)].
MAY 22 – SUNDAY
At 2 pm, Organist Nicole Keller, soon to decamp to the University of Michigan, will play a free recital on the Holtkamp organ in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art (postponed from January due to COVID). And at 3:30 pm on the Sacred Heart Concert Series in Oberlin, the Steven Plank Trio +2 plays Nikolai Medtner’s Piano Quintet in C.
At 4:30 pm in Akron’s St. Sebastian Church, Singers Companye, the Chamber Choir, Samuel Gordon, artistic director, presents a program titled “Flower into Kindness.” Then at 7:00 pm in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Blue Streak Ensemble will perform “Mystery and Lively Beats.” A half hour later in Umstattd Hall, Gerhardt Zimmerman will lead the Canton Symphony in works by Daniel Perttu and Jessie Montgomery. To round out Sunday and the weekend, at 7:30 the Oberlin College Choir led by Ben Johns, performs in Warner Concert Hall.
IN MEMORIAM :
Oscar winning composer Vangelis has died at the age of 79. In addition to creating the theme to the film Chariots of Fire, he also wrote the music for Blade Runner, Missing, and Carl Sagan’s PBS series Cosmos. Read a Washington Post article here.
IN THE NEWS:
The Saint Cecilia Choral Society, established in 1921 as an auxiliary to Tuesday Musical, is celebrating its anniversary with a Centennial-Plus-One Cocktail Party on Friday, June 17, 5 to 7 p.m. at Fairlawn Country Club. Tickets are $35 and are available from any Saint Cecilia member or from Tuesday Musical at 330-761-3460 or info@tuesdaymusical.org.
The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society has announced their 2022-23 International Series. Click here for more information.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
On May 20, 1896, Clara Wieck Schumann died in Frankfurt am Main. The pianist, teacher, and wife of Robert Schumann was known principally as a concert pianist, a career she pursued for more than six decades — four of them after Robert’s death in 1856.
She also composed sporadically through most of her life, including two piano concertos (the second left unfinished), choral and vocal pieces, and other occasional works. Two chamber works stand out: her Three Romances, op. 22 and the Piano Trio in g, written in 1846 just before she turned 27.
Click here to watch a performance of the Romances by Rebecca Benjamin and Christine Hill in Mixon Hall at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and here for a performance of the g-minor work by the Atos Trio (Annette von Hehn, violin, Thomas Hoppe, piano, and Stefan Heinemeyer, cello) in a live concert at the Konzerthaus in Berlin.
Icons of the Romantic-era, the lives of Clara and Robert Schumann have proven film-worthy and durable. The oldest movie, Träumerei, dates from 1944, followed by The Song of Love in 1947 (with Katharine Hepburn playing Clara), Frühlingssinfonie in 1983, and Geliebte Clara in 2008.
If you have an hour and three-quarters to spare and want to brush up on your German, Geliebte Clara is available here (no subtitles!)
On May 22 in 1874, Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem was first performed at the church of San Marco in Milan, ending a long requiem saga for the composer, who had originally proposed a collaborative work by several Italian composers to honor Gioachino Rossini after his death in 1868. Verdi himself contributed the final movement, “Libera me,” but for various reasons, the project fell through a week before its premiere in November of 1869.
Verdi found an opportunity to recycle that “Libera me” when Alessandro Manzoni died in 1873 and he embarked on writing a new Requiem all on his own in honor of the famous Italian author and humanist.
(PS: the Requiem for Rossini was finally performed in 1988 in Stuttgart, conducted by Helmuth Rilling. Listen here.)
And on May 22, 1813, Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig. It’s now next to impossible to talk about the composer of the Ring operas without referencing his popularity with the perpetrators of the Third Reich.
British actor and writer Stephen Fry addresses Wagner’s complicated legacy and his own fascination with the composer’s music in his hour-and-a-half long Wagner and Me, available for free in an occasionally spotty posting on YouTube, and for a fee on various streaming services.
Former Cleveland Orchestra assistant conductor Brett Mitchell joins Bill O’Connell in WCLV’s 35-minute video discussion of The Ring. Watch Gods and Monsters: The Musical Journey of Wagner’s Ring Cycle here.
If that’s all too heavy a subject for a warm spring weekend, British singing comedienne Anna Russell is only a click away with her priceless analysis of The Ring. This video from her first farewell recital in 1953 is well worth 28 minutes of your time.