by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
On Saturday, Sororii — cellist Carolina Borja and bassoonist Arleigh Savage — play instrumental grooves (2 pm at the Main Cleveland Library) the Cleveland Repertory Orchestra performs with violinist Ken Johnston (7 pm at Disciples Church), the Youngstown Symphony plays the score during a screening of Back to the Future (7:30 at Powers Auditorium, repeated Sunday at 7:30), and Tan Dun conducts The Cleveland Orchestra in his Water Concerto with percussionist Marc Damoulakis (8 pm at Severance Music Center).
Don’t forget to turn your clocks back at 2 am. Sunday’s calendar is overflowing with ten events: Heights Arts’ Music for Winds by Women of the Gilded Age (3 pm at Heights Theater), the Euclid Symphony with bassist Derek Zadinski (3 pm at Shore Cultural Center), Keyboard Conversations with Jeffrey Siegel (3 pm at the Maltz PAC), CIM New Music Ensemble with Marilyn Shrude (4 pm in Mixon Hall), organist Jack Mitchener (4 pm at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights), Paragon Brass Ensemble (pictured) with organist Abby Haake (4 pm at Holy Trinity Lutheran, Akron), Urban Troubadour with a Cleveland Orchestra horn quartet (4 pm at Cuyahoga Falls Sheraton), Kent Keyboard Series with Kenny Werner (5 pm in Ludwig Recital Hall), Appalachian Chamber Music Players (5:30, Guzzetta Recital Hall, U. of Akron) and a repeat of Saturday’s Youngstown Symphony screening (7:30, Powers Auditorium).
For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
The Cleveland Orchestra will present its 28th Distinguished Service Award to cultural arts activist Nancy McCann before the evening’s concert on November 7 at Severance Music Center. McCann is president and treasurer of the John P. Murphy Foundation, which sponsors arts and culture in Northeast Ohio, and of the Kulas Foundation.
Nancy McCann has served on the Orchestra’s Board of Trustees since 2001, was Gala Co-chair from 2015 to 2018 and Gala Chair from 2019 to 2022, and is part of the Campaign Cabinet and the Executive Committee. In addition, she conceived the Orchestra’s “Star-Spangled Spectacular,” a free community concert held in downtown Cleveland from 1990 to 2019. Read a press release here.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
Saturday:
On November 2, 1887, Swedish coloratura soprano Jenny Lind died in England at the age of 67. Having made her mark in opera, she retired at the age of 29 in 1849, but the next year undertook a 93-concert tour of the U.S. under the management of P.T. Barnum. She raised today’s equivalent of nearly $11 million, endowing free schools in her native country and contributing to charities. Lind settled in England in 1852, raised three children, and taught at the Royal College of Music.
Jumping across into the mid-20th century, Gian Carlo Menotti’s Piano Concerto had its debut on November 2, 1945 by Rudolf Firkusny and the Boston Symphony with Richard Burgin on the podium. An instrumental work by Menotti, who was known principally as an opera composer? Give it a try in this performance by Earl Wild and the Symphony of the Air under the baton of Jorge Mester.
On this date in 1979, Peter Shaffer’s musical Amadeus, opened in London.
And on November 2, 1960, Greek American conductor Dimitri Metropoulos died of a heart attack in Milan while rehearsing Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Orchestra of La Scala. Here’s some footage of Metropoulos rehearsing part of Liszt’s tone poem, Faust, with the New York Philharmonic.
Sunday — by Jarrett Hoffman:
There are reasons both musical and geopolitical to reflect on Korean-born German composer Isang Yun, who died on November 3, 1995.
First, he was widely admired for his inventive melding of East and West in music. One of the early pieces to bring him international renown was Réak (1966) for orchestra, which incorporates elements of Korean ceremonial music and imitations of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese traditional instruments into the avant-garde style that he had developed during his time studying at Darmstadt. Listen to a recording here by the Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra led by Stefan Asbury.
For our purposes, his 1976 Cello Concerto provides a transition into the political side of his life: it recalls his two years of imprisonment after he and his wife were kidnapped from their home in West Berlin by South Korean agents. He was given a life sentence for treason, having visited North Korea, while his wife was given three years in prison for her involvement. International pressure, as well as a petition from musicians including Luigi Dallapiccola, Herbert von Karajan, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Igor Stravinsky, eventually led to their release.
As for the concerto, it is riveting — intensely virtuosic and emotionally painful. The cadenza starting around 8:08, lighter in mood and full of pizzicati and expressive glissandi, is also quite something. Listen to a live recording here from 1986 by cellist Heinrich Schiff and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies.
That was not the only imprisonment Yun experienced in his lifetime. An activist from an early age, he was arrested in 1943 for his activities as part of an underground group opposed to the Japanese occupation of Korea. Later, he became a strong advocate for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
That all just scratches the surface of Yun’s fascinating life and career. Read more about him in Allan Kozin’s 1995 obituary for The New York Times, and in his highly detailed Wikipedia entry.
