By Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Quick list of (many!) weekend events
. Almanac: Celebrating the debuts of a concert hall (Carnegie), a fanfare (For the Uncommon Woman No. 3) and a composer (George Perle)
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
More than once: Trobár Medieval presents Tudor music on period instruments in “The Mary Rose” on Friday at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts. & Saturday at the Hermit Club at Hofbrau House in Playhouse Square, Blue Water Chamber Orchestra (pictured) features cellist Linda Atherton in “Celtic Charisma” Friday at Rocky River Presbyterian & Saturday at Plymouth Church, Shaker Hts., and The Cleveland Opera (formerly Opera Circle) stages Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri with piano Friday at St, Cyprian, Perry, Saturday at Immanuel Lutheran (matinee) and First Baptist (evening), & Sunday at St. Stanislaus (afternoon).
Members of The Cleveland Orchestra are out and about this weekend, on Friday as the Cleveland Bluegrass Orchestra in a benefit for Broadway School of Music & the Arts at the Polish American Culture Center, and on Sunday as individual recitalists on Music from the Western Reserve in Hudson.
On Friday, the Wayne Center presents the Escher String Quartet in Wooster, Cleveland Jazz Orchestra hosts Joe Lovano & Judi Silvano at the Maltz, Oberlin Opera Scenes Part One goes up at Warner Concert Hall, Oberlin Orchestra presents competition winner Jonathan Kronheimer in Finney, and Daniel Reith leads Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and violin soloist Marina Ziegler in the Sibelius concerto.
On Saturday, Cleveland Jazz Orchestra rewinds its Friday program at Akron’s BLU Jazz+, Oberlin Opera presents part two of its Opera Scenes in Finney Chapel (including a workshop performance of Stephan Hartke’s Rhino)!, The Cleveland Orchestra repeats its Thursday concert with cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and No Exit New Music revisits highlights of its current season at Valley Arts in Chagrin Falls.
Wait — there’s more! Sunday’s agenda includes concerts by the Parma Symphony, Akron Youth Orchestras in Tallmadge, Heights Chamber Orchestra at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights, harpsichordist QinYing Tan with violinist Guillermo Salas Suárez at Fairmount Presbyterian, and violinist Jinjoo Cho and pianist Hyun Soo celebrate the birthdays of Brahms and Tchaikovsky on the season finale of Arts Renaissance Tremont at St. Wendelin’s.
For details of these performances, including repertoire, venue addresses and ticketing information, visit our Concert Listings page.
WEEKEND ALMANAC FOR MAY 5, 6 & 7:
by Jarrett Hoffman
Carnegie Hall — originally known as the Music Hall — opened its doors on May 5, 1891 with a concert featuring as guest conductor none other than Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. (Pictured: Oberlin Orchestra in Stern Auditorium). Archivist Gino Francesconi has the scoop — watch one video about opening night, and another about the connections between that famed Russian composer and that famed New York venue.
Perhaps it’s not surprising, then, that Carnegie Hall was also the site of a notable premiere on this date in history — a commission by the hall to celebrate its centennial. That would be Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 3 by Joan Tower (pictured), a piece she dedicated to Frances Richard, director of the symphony and concert department at ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers).
Written for double brass quintet, the work was first performed on May 5, 1991 at Carnegie in the hands of the Empire Brass Quintet and members of the New York Philharmonic under the baton of Zubin Mehta — an event that was captured on video. Watch here.
by Daniel Hathaway
On May 6 composer George Perle was born in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1915. After graduating from DePaul University, he served in the United States Army during World War II and later earned his doctorate at New York University in 1956. As a composer, Perle employed his own technique that he called “twelve-tone tonality” — somewhat related to what was used by composers of the Second Viennese School. In 1968, along with Igor Stravinsky and Hans F. Redlich, Perle co-founded the Alban Berg Society. His work on that composer’s music included documenting the third act of Lulu.
After retiring from Queens College Perle became a professor emeritus at the Aaron Copland School of Music and in 1986 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Fourth Wind Quintet as well as a MacArthur Fellowship. Perle also served a three-year appointment as composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Symphony, and authored several books including The Listening Composer. Click here to listen to the Dorian Wind Quintet’s performance of the fourth Wind Quintet, and pianist/composer Michael Brown performs Perle’s Toccata here.
On May 7 in 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach met the Prussian king Frederick II in Potsdam while visiting his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel, and accepted the flute-playing monarch’s challenge of improvising a three-voice Ricercar on a theme that Frederick supplied. Back home in Leipzig, Bach the father turned that royal theme into A Musical Offering, a suite that included Ricercare for three and six voices, twelve canons — a number of them expressed as musical puzzles to be solved (see picture) — and a trio sonata featuring Frederick’s instrument, the flute.
Click here to hear the entire collection conducted by Jordi Savall, with harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï, and here to listen to the Trio Sonata played by Cleveland Orchestra principal flute Joshua Smith, violinist Allison Edberg, gambist Ann Marie Morgan, and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour.
A version of the polyphonically dense six-voice Ricercar arranged by Anton Webern has been recorded by Christoph von Dohnányi and The Cleveland Orchestra, and Arseniy Gusuv tackled the piece on his semifinal round of Piano Cleveland’s Virtu(al)oso competition in 2020. Watch his performance here.
