by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
On Saturday the Oberlin Conservatory continues a weekend of festivities to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Flentrop organ in Warner Concert Hall. Today at 11, current students give a recital, followed by alumni at 4:30. Both events will be live streamed.
Oberlin viola professor Kirsten Docter and pianist Tatiana Lokhina perform at 4:30 in Kulas Recital Hall, Singers Companye celebrates its 25th anniversary (5 pm in Cuyahoga Falls), CIM Opera Theater opens Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’étoile (pictured, 7 pm in Playhouse Square), Apollo’s Fire continues its run of “Hope and Solitude” (7:30 at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts.), and the Lorain County Civic Orchestra plays at the same hour at the Stocker Center in Elyria.
And on Saturday at 8 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra continues its Beethoven Piano Cycle with Concertos Nos. 1 & 5 featuring Minsoo Sohn (First Concerto) and Yunchan Lim (Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center).
On Sunday, cellists will be interested in a Cleveland Cello Society lecture recital by Liam Battle (2 pm at Judson Park Auditorium), and pianists in a Tri-C Classical Piano recital by Chelsea Guo (2 pm at Tri-C Metro Auditorium) as well as in the final Cleveland Orchestra Beethoven Piano Cycle performance (3 pm at Severance Music Center). CIM Opera Theater performs Charbrier’s L’Étoile (2 pm in Playhouse Square), Apollo’s Fire ends its run of “Hope and Solitude” (4 pm at Rocky River Presbyterian), Erie Waters flute choir plays at 4 pm (St. Noel in Willoughby Hills), Music from the Western Reserve hosts violinist Haig Hovsepian and pianist Matias Nestor Cuevas (5 pm, Christ Church, Hudson), Singers Companye celebrates its 25th anniversary at 5 pm at Bath Church, and The Now Chorale sings premieres (7:30 at Sacred Heart Church in Oberlin).
For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.TODAY’S ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
Saturday
Paul Hindemith — that celebrated composer of the first half of the 20th century who was also a violist, conductor, and important music theorist and compositional pedagogue — was born on this date in 1895 in Hanau, Germany. His greatest works include the opera Mathis der Maler and the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, but going just slightly off the beaten path, wind players owe him a debt of gratitude for several major works of chamber music.
Oberlin Conservatory faculty members surveyed five of his sonatas on the 2018 album Convergent Winds: Music of Paul Hindemith (read Jeremy Reynolds’ review here).
And for a different and compelling take on standard repertoire — in this case Hindemith’s wind quintet — one can turn as usual to the Carion Quintet, that Danish-Latvian ensemble known for performing with choreography, and without chairs and stands. In this video of the first movement, they add even more theatricality: their performance is paralleled by a silent film that presents the music as a metaphor for disagreement — and maybe reconciliation — among the players.
Sunday:
American composer and arranger Hershey Kay was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1919. He studied at the Curtis Institute, where he was a classmate of Leonard Bernstein, who entrusted the scores of On the Town, Peter Pan, and Candide to Kay for orchestration (only rarely do composers take that task on themselves).
Among Kay’s other products was the reconstruction and orchestration of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Grande Tarantelle, choreographed by George Balanchine and famously performed by New York City Ballet’s Patricia McBride and Edward Villela. Watch them dance the score here.
And on November 17, 1959, Brazilian composer, pianist, and conductor Heitor Villa-Lobos died in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 72. Among his most celebrated works are the nine Bachianas Brasileiras suites. Written between 1930 and 1945 for various instrumental ensembles, they meld Baroque compositional forms and techniques with Brazilian folk and popular music.
Suite No. 5 for soprano and eight cellos, is among the most-performed. Watch Mark Kosower’s Cleveland Institute of Music cello studio play the two-movement work here with soprano Natasha Simmons in a concert from February 29, 2016.
