by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. Resident ensembles step up for Thanksgiving weekend
. A tangle of headlines to sort through
. Almanac: anniversary of a richly textured Bach cantata, revisiting piano works of Earl Wild
THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:
Cleveland’s major resident ensembles are holding down the fort on Thanksgiving weekend with the help of some distinguished guests.
Thomas Søndergård, recently named Osmo Vanska’s successor as music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, will join The Cleveland Orchestra and violinist Stefan Jackiw for Benjamin Britten’ s Violin Concerto No. 1 & Igor Stravinsky’s complete Firebird ballet on Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoon at Severance Music Center.
And the Christmas season will be more or less officially sung and played in on Saturday at 2 by the Cleveland POPS in Playhouse Square and on Sunday at 7:30 by the Soweto Gospel Choir at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall. The Choir is a three-time Grammy-winning choir drawn from churches throughout South Africa. Singers, dancers and drummers will share their country’s freedom songs as well as music by Billie Holiday, James Brown, and Otis Redding combined with traditional African gospel music and spirituals. Their appearance in Northeast Ohio was delayed by visa matters.
NEWS LINKS:
Lots of headlines to pursue, tattled here from ArtsJournal.com:
Orchestras beginning to tour again (in San Francisco Classical Voice), The Remarkable Sphinx Organization Turns 25 (NY Times), Singing and Playing Wind Instruments May Spread COVID Less Than Speaking Does (Smithsonian), Esperanza Spalding Quits Harvard Faculty Over Curriculum Proposal (The Crimson), and Detroit Opera Names its First Music Director Since The Company’s F/ounder Stepped Down (CBS Detroit). Follow the link and read and enjoy!
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
On November 25, 1731, J.S. Bach’s cantata Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme was first performed in Leipzig on the 27th Sunday after Trinity as part of a series of chorale-based cantatas. A near-perfect marriage of text and music, the work draws on the parable of the Wise Virgins, the characterization of Christ as the Bridegroom coming to meet his bride, and the work’s title chorale by Otto Nicolai. There are numerous performances, but I’ve always been drawn to one on an old 1964 Nonesuch recording by the Chamber Orchestra of the Sarre, Karl Ristenpart, conductor, with the Chorus of the Conservatory of Sarrebruck Herbert Schmolzi, director. It’s worth a search for the complete recording. (1964).
And on this date in 1915, American pianist Earl Wild was born in Pittsburgh, becoming famous for his command performances for American presidents, along with a few other fun facts — among them, he lived long enough to become the first pianist to stream a performance over the Internet at the age of 91. He had studied Xaver Schwarwenka’s first piano concerto under his teacher Selmar Janson, who had learned the work with the composer himself. Wild liked to say that when Erich Leinsdorf called to ask Wild to record the concerto, he could tell the conductor that he’d been waiting by the phone for forty years for someone to ask him to perform the work.
Wild’s contributions to the interpretation of the works of Franz Liszt were showcased in a Carnegie Hall recital on February 19, 1986.