by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Two events on Saturday include a 3:00 pm, hour-long concert by BlueWater Chamber Orchestra at the Breen Center “celebrating what makes Cleveland so special,” and a 7:30 pm recital by Spanish guitarist Andrea González Caballero on the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society series at Plymouth Church.
On Sunday, the Cavani Quartet assumes artistic directorship of the Art Renaissance Tremont series as well as continuing their “Beethoven and Beyond” project with a 4:00 pm recital at St. Wendelin Church, the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra returns to Mandel Hall at Severance after a long intermission for a 3:00 pm performance led by Vinay Parameswaren (pictured), and David Gilson guest conducts Choral Arts Cleveland in a 3:30 pm concert at Forest Hills Church.
Details in our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
In an extraordinary exit ahead of the arrival of the Taliban, faculty and students of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music and their families have fled to Qatar enroute to Portugal. Read the New York Times article 1,200 Miles From Kabul, a Celebrated Music School Reunites here.
Kathie Stewart has been named Curator of Historical Keyboards at Indiana University beginning in January. Stewart, who plays Baroque flute with Apollo’s Fire, has served as curator of harpsichords at Oberlin (read our Baroque Performance Institute interview here), and most recently as a keyboard technician at CIM.
Akron pianist and organist Daniel Colaner, 16, the winner of the Euclid Symphony’s 2021-2022 Tom Baker Young Artists Competition, will play Saint-Saëns’ Second Piano Concerto with Matthew Salvaggio and the orchestra on April 24. A piano student of Sean Schultze at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Colander also studies organ with David Higgs at Eastman. He’ll share the April program with saxophonist Samuel Dishon, winner of the 2020 competition, who will solo in Glazunov’s Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Strings.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On November 20, pianist Ruth Laredo made her life debut in Detroit in 1937 as Ruth Meckler, and American composer Orianna Webb was born in Akron in 1974.
Laredo’s musical future was established at the age of eight when her mother took her to hear Horowitz play Scriabin in Detroit. That began a lifelong interest in Scriabin and his contemporary, Rachmaninoff, and eventually to her recordings of the complete Scriabin cycle. Click here for her performance of the Sonata No. 9, “Black Mass.” She toured with violinist Jaime Laredo during their marriage (1960-1974), but made an auspicious solo debut with Pierre Boulez and the N.Y. Philharmonic in Ravel’s G-Major Concerto in 1974. She taught at Kent State University from 1968-1971.
Listen to an episode in David Dubal’s radio series “For the Love of Music” broadcast in April, 1980 featuring a conversation with Ruth Laredo (due to copyright issues, the musical selections have been removed!)
Orianna Webb’s collaboration with guitarist Daniel Lippel was broadcast on the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Virtual Festival on May 28, 2021. Her bio on the festival website makes for an interesting read, as does her works list.
Henry Purcell neatly timed his all-too-early demise — he was 36 — for the eve of the Patron Saint of Music’s feast day on November 21, 1695. That makes this an appropriate time to listen to one of the composer’s Odes written in her honor. Here’s a performance of Hail, Bright Cecelia by the Dunedin Consort led by John Butt.
