by Daniel Hathaway
WEEKEND ALMANAC
There are a number of musical milestones to reflect upon this weekend.
American classical and jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman was born in Chicago on May 30, 1909. Jazz at Lincoln Center gave a full-length family concert on November 17, 2017, “Who is Benny Goodman.” Watch that here, and hear Goodman play Mozart’s concerto and quintet on an unidentified recording here. The clarinetist was a featured performer on the inaugural season of the Blossom Music Festival.
Dutch harpsichordist, organist, teacher, and conductor Gustav Leonhardt was born in Graveland on May 30, 1928. A documentary, Reiziger in Muziek details his career (it’s in Dutch, but there are subtitles that quit part way through. Watch here). There are few videos of the master in action, but here’s an interesting excerpt from J.S. Bach’s Cantata 42 with Leonhardt conducting Musica Antiqua Amsterdam in 1977 with a young Ton Koopman at the harpsichord.
The elaborate documentary film Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach from 1968 cast the slim and patrician Gustav Leonhardt in the role of the famously well-nourished Johann Sebastian Bach.
On one of Leonhardt’s visits to the Cleveland Museum of Art that coincided with the recent installation of a Dutch organ in Trinity Cathedral, I had the privilege of being an audience of one while he improvised for an hour on the 1977 Flentrop organ. Like Bach, Leonhardt may have been even more impressive as an improviser than an interpreter.
And on this date in 1971, French organist and composer Marcel Dupré died in Meudon at the age of 85. Ten years earlier, Netherlands Radio captured his improvisation on the Gregorian hymn Veni creator spiritus at the church of St. Sulpice in Paris, where he played for 37 years. Listen here to a piece particularly appropriate for Pentecost weekend (the more so because Dupré died on Pentecost in 1971). Before succeeding his teacher, Widor, at St. Sulpice in 1934, Dupré began the first of many tours to North America, appearing at the Cleveland Museum of Art on March 9, 1923, when he was identified as the organist of Notre-Dame in Paris.
May 31, 1656 marked the birth of French composer and violist da gamba Marin Marais in Paris. Speaking of historical films, in 1999 Gérard Depardieu starred as Marais in Tous les Matins du Monde, bow-syncing to the playing of Jordi Savall in opulent scenes from the court of Louis XV shot in the Golden Gallery of the Bank of France. Savall, who has also been a distinguished visitor to the Cleveland Museum of Art’s performing arts series, plays himself in a video of Marais’ Suite d’un goût étranger with Hyperion XXI — watch here.
In 1809, Joseph Haydn died in Vienna on May 31, leading to the curious story of the theft of the composer’s head. The now-defunct Lyric Opera Cleveland commissioned a one-act comic opera from Larry Baker on the subject in 1987, thus described by Plain Dealer critic Robert Finn: “There are intricate ensembles, elaborate musical parodies (including a page or two of ‘Salome’ for connoisseurs of severed-head music) and bursts of lyricism.” The composer himself added, according to Wilma Salisbury’s Cleveland Arts Prize bio of Baker, “the work is ‘absurd’ rather than ‘creepy or spooky’ and involves ‘no blood and gore whatsoever.’ Maybe worth a revival.
And pioneering English countertenor Alfred Deller was born on May 31, 1912 in Margate. Deller, who created the role of Oberon in Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, also teamed up with Gustav Leonhardt (see above) in 1954 for a pioneering recording of Bach Cantatas with the Leonhardt Baroque Ensemble. Hear Deller and Leonhardt in five Purcell songs recorded live in Hilversum in 1952 (note: photos of the harpsichordist probably aren’t of Leonhardt!) Deller performed with his trio at the Cleveland Museum of Art in September, 1955.
THIS WEEKEND ON THE WEB AND AIRWAVES:
Cleveland Orchestra on the radio this weekend begins on Saturday at 8:00 pm with a May 2004 concert of Rossini’s Overture to William Tell, Dvořák’s Piano Concerto in g with Pierre-Laurent Aimard, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 in A. On Sunday at 4:00 pm, it’s the Verdi Requiem from June 2004, with the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and soloists Twyla Robinson, soprano, Nancy Maultsby, mezzo-soprano, Piotr Beczala, tenor, and Raymond Aceto, bass. Franz Welser-Möst is on the podium for both weekend rebroadcasts.
Check in to see how pianist Igor Levit is doing with his 20-hour marathon of Satie’s Vexations, enjoy the Bergen International Festival’s stream of Philharmonix with violinist Noah Bendix-Balgely and colleagues, catch the MET Opera’s L’Elisir d’Amore on Saturday and Salome on Sunday, and view violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson’s cameramusic concert from Brattleboro, Vermont. Details here.
