by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
On Saturday at 7:30, Khari Joyner (pictured) solos with Christopher Wilkins & the Akron Symphony in Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in E.J. Thomas Hall. At 8 pm Apollo’s Fire plays concertos by Vivaldi and Bach at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Hts., and Carl Topilow takes Cleveland Pops on “A Mediterranean Cruise,” embarking from Severance Music Center. Also on Saturday at 8, CUSP presents experimental music by Jelly Ear & Ishmael Ali at Convivium 33 Gallery.
It’s a busy Sunday afternoon with pianist Marc-André Hamelin in recital at 3 pm in Reinberger Chamber Music Hall at Severance Music Center, and the final performance of Handel’s Alcina at CIM. Heights Chamber Orchestra led by Frank Wiley performs with pianist Donna Lee at 3:30 at Fairmount Presbyterian, and four performances are scheduled for 4 pm — Apollo’s Fire at University Circle United Methodist Church, Boston-based organist Peter Sykes at Akron’s Holy Trinity Lutheran, violist Jordan Bak with the Cavani Quartet at St. Wendelin in Tremont, and Samuel Gordon’s Singers Companye with the VoxMix Chamber Ensemble at The Bath Church.
For details of these and other events, visit our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
On January 27 and 28, CIM Opera Theater will stage Tom Cipullo’s Glory Denied in Gartner Auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
The 2007 work, “which relates the true story of Col. Jim Thompson, a longtime prisoner of war in Vietnam who survived on memories of his wife and children,” will be guest directed by Kathryn Frady (Opera Louisiane and Marble City Opera), and conducted by Kamna Gupta.
Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project (CUSP) is accepting proposals through December 1 for performances and sound art works for its Re:Sound 2024 Festival, which runs from May 17-19, 2024. Read the proposal guidelines and click here for the application form.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
November 18 – by Mike Telin
Today we celebrate the births of Carl Maria von Weber (1786), conductor Eugene Ormandy (1899), and violist/composer Lillian Fuchs (1901). As I scrolled through the list of other musical figures who were born on this day, I was curious to know who many of them were, or are. So today we celebrate the births of three people who were randomly selected from the list.
On this day in 1895, Swiss composer, pianist and conductor Ernst Levy was born in Basel, Switzerland. A noted musicologist, Levy taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago and the New England Conservatory. His book, A Theory of Harmony, published in 1985, delves into his concept of harmonic “undertones.” His compositional output includes 14 works for orchestra, a cello concerto, over 30 chamber music works, and 7 piano sonatas. He retired from academia in 1966 and returned to his native Switzerland where he lived for the remainder of his life. He died in 1981 in Morges, Switzerland.
Click here to listen to his live performance of Brahms’ Intermezzo in A, Op.118, No.2.
In 1914, composer and organist Leif Solberg was born in Lena, Norway. Following the completion of his studies at the Norwegian Academy of Music. From 1938 to 1982 Solberg served as the organist in Lillehammer. In addition to numerous works for organ, his catalog includes cantatas, a string quartet, a violin sonata, and the Symphony in g. He died in 2016 at the age of 101.
Click here to listen to organist Tim Collins perform the Fugue from Solberg’s Fantasy and Fugue on the Folktune Se solens skjønne lys og prakt.
In 1927, composer and teacher Lawrence Moss was born in Los Angeles, California. Moss earned his B.A. at the University of California, Los Angeles, an M.A. from the Eastman School of Music, and a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. His teachers included Leon Kirchner and Ingolf Dahl. A recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Fulbright Scholarship, and four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Moss has served on the facilities at Mills College, Yale University, and since 1969 has taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. His students include Northeast Ohio’s own Jeffrey Mumford. Moss makes his home in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Click here to listen to an interview with Lawrence Moss titled “Alive and Composing.”
November 19
On this date in 1828, 31-year-old Austrian composer Franz Schubert died from typhus — even younger than Mozart when he departed this life. Among his late works are the three Opus Posthumous piano sonatas and the “Great” C-Major Symphony. The B-flat Sonata is a personal favorite that I first heard from the fingers of Leonard Shure at the dedication of a new Harvard building back in the 1960s, but fans of Mitsuko Uchida will cherish her performance here.
And the C-Major Symphony is a personal favorite of Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Möst, as he notes in a heartfelt statement in this “On a Personal Note” episode on the Orchestra’s Adella streaming platform.
On this date in 1936, the first concert to be preserved on magnetic tape was recorded by Sir Thomas Beecham and the London Philharmonic in the concert hall of the BASF Corporation in Ludwigshaven, Germany. Hostilities followed and the German technology that made tape recording viable only became available worldwide when Allied forces seized machines at the end of World War II.
Read more about the history of analog tape recording here.
And on this date in 1957, Leonard Bernstein was named Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, making him the first American-born and educated conductor named to lead a major American orchestra. His NY Phil career was summed up by Composers Datebook:
For sports fans, these were Bernstein’s “stats” as of May 17, 1969:
He had conducted 939 concerts, more than anyone else in Philharmonic history. He had given 36 world premieres, 14 U.S. premieres, 15 New York City premieres and led more than 40 works never before performed by the orchestra.
At Philharmonic concerts Bernstein conducted Vivaldi, Bach, and Handel, but also Babbitt, Cage, and Ligeti. He led the world premiere performance of the Second Symphony of Charles Ives and included other elder American composers like Carl Ruggles and Wallingford Riegger on Philharmonic programs, as well as works by his contemporaries, Ned Rorem and Lukas Foss, and his own compositions as well.
Bernstein would continue to appear with the New York Philharmonic as its Laureate Conductor, and as a popular guest conductor with major orchestras around the world. His final concerts were with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in the summer of 1990. He died in October of that year.
