by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. The weekend is filled with chamber music and orchestra concerts
. The Music Settlement to celebrate Winter’s Solstice.
. Ernst Levy, Lawrence Moss, and the first concert to be preserved on magnetic tape celebrate birthdays.
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
Chamber Music:
On Friday at 7:00 pm at Praxis Fiber Workshop CityMusic Cleveland presents “Perspectives for String Quartet.” The program includes Arvo Pärt’s Psalom, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Pisachi (Reveal): Six Epitomes for String Quartet, Akua Dixon’s We the People (commissioned by CityMusic), and Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F. Free. Read a preview article here.
And on Sunday at 7:00 pm Daveed Buzaglo, tenor and Nara Avetisyan, piano will present a free recital at the Church of the Western Reserve. Program to be announced. Click here for more information.
Orchestra Concerts:
On Friday, November 18 at 7:30 pm The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes composer/conductor John Adams, Lauren Snouffer, soprano Josefina Maldonado, mezzo-soprano Davóne Tines, bass-baritone Daniel Bubeck, countertenors Brian Cummings and Nathan Medley, Cleveland Orchestra Chorus Cleveland Orchestra Children’s Chorus. The program is Adams’ El Niño (oratorio for solo voices and orchestra). Severance Music Center. The program is repeated on Saturday at 8:00 pm. Tickets are available online.
On Saturday at 7:30 pm Daniel Meyers and Blue Water Chamber Orchestra are joined by soprano Laura Pederson in “Magnetic Mozart.” The program includes the Concert recitative and aria: Misera, dove son / Ah, non son io che parlo, K.369. Serenade for winds No. 12 in c, and Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter”. All at Plymouth Church — Pay what you like.
On Sunday, at 3:00 pm Daniel Reith leads the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra in Boulanger’s Of a Sad Evening, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with Moshi Tang, and excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Severance Music Center. Tickets are available online.
At 3:30 pm Jorge Sarmientos joins the Suburban Symphony in Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Beachwood High School. Free
Also at 3:30 pm at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, guest conductor Travis Jurgens leads the Heights Chamber Orchestra in Bruch’s Swedish Dances, Grieg’s In Autumn, and Bizet’s Symphony in C.
For details of these and many other weekend performances, visit our Concert Listings page.
IN THE NEWS:
The Music Settlement’s Signature Series program continues Wednesday, December 21st with their popular Winter Solstice concert. Offering a broad range of styles, the program will include works by Vivaldi, Brubeck, Ravel, and Piazzolla, a brief presentation of the science behind the solstice, and film footage of deep outer space and satellite travel throughout the solar system.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
On November 18, 1895, Swiss composer, pianist and conductor Ernst Levy was born in Basel. 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 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”.
On November 19, 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.
