by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
Two orchestras are hard at work this weekend.
On Friday at 7:30, Saturday at 8, and Sunday at 3 at Severance Music Center, guest conductor David Robertson will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in a program of Americana for Thanksgiving weekend featuring Pianist Marc-André Hamelin (pictured). Read our interview with Robertson here.
And on Sunday at 2 and 7 in Connor Palace Theatre in Playhouse Square, Carl Topilow will preside over A Jolly Holiday with Cleveland POPS Orchestra & Chorus featuring dancing Santas and adoptable puppies and kittens.
For details of these and other upcoming events, visit our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
Ideastream Public Media reports that “The Cleveland Orchestra’s second century has so far been financially sound. The 2023-24 annual report released Monday showed a sixth consecutive year of balanced books. In its 106th season, which ended in June, the orchestra reported a small surplus of $6,000. It also increased its endowment by nearly 11% to $296 million. ‘It feels like things are on their way up after a difficult pandemic,’ said André Gremillet, orchestra CEO.” Read the story here.
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
by Jarrett Hoffman
November 29:
This date in music history includes anniversaries for a trio of Italian composers. Gaetano Donizetti was born on November 29, 1797, while Claudio Monteverdi and Giacomo Puccini died on this date in 1643 and 1924, respectively.
In other words, time for some opera.
As far as joyful music befitting a birthday, Donizetti would surely appreciate his “Ah! mes amis” (from La fille du régiment), a celebration of love — and of high notes. Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez (above) is a master of that aria and its series of sky-high C’s. When he sang it at La Scala in 2007, it only seemed right on that occasion to break a 70-year-old rule forbidding encores. Click here to watch him perform it at the Royal Opera House.
As for the opposite of a birthday — and the opposite of high notes — the scene of Seneca’s death from The Coronation of Poppaea is an appropriate choice for Monteverdi. Finnish bass Matti Kalervo Salminen sings the role of the philosopher Seneca in this excerpt from Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s film version of the opera, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Be sure to listen for the low D at the very end — the Marianas Trench in musical form.
Whereas Seneca accepts death in a way that rids it of any sense of tragedy, there are few tearjerkers quite like Pucinni’s “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca, from the scene where Cavaradossi sits in prison awaiting his death and longing for his love. Watch Jonas Kaufmann sing the aria here in another beautiful video from the Royal Opera House. You can admire in this performance both the high drama of the ending, and the dazed expressiveness of the opening, where “sweet kisses” never felt so far away.
November 30:
From the passage of the first German beer purity law (1487 — it had to be just water, malt, and hops), to the only known instance of someone being struck by a meteorite (1954 — it left Ann Hodges with a big bruise, some legal complications, and a bit of celebrity), this date in history certainly has its oddness.
It also brings celebrity. Big names in all sorts of fields have come and gone on November 30: James Baldwin, Oscar Wilde, Evel Knievel, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Jonathan Swift, Dick Clark, George H.W. Bush.
There’s not quite as much star power on the classical music side, but here’s one important figure to note: English composer and organist Thomas Weelkes, who died on November 30, 1623. Here I’ll pass the mic to Daniel Hathaway, who shared a strong list of listening and watching recommendations on the anniversary of that musician’s birth:
And Weelkes, one of the greatest madrigalists and church music composers of the Elizabethan period was also one its most colorful personalities. Listen here to his Hark, all ye lovely saints above, in a performance by the Sidonia-Ensemble, and here to his Gloria in excelsis Deo as sung by King’s College Choir in 2000. For insights into the craft of the English madrigalists, watch Texting With Madrigals, an Early Music America lecture by retired Oberlin English professor (and ClevelandClassical.com board member) Nicholas Jones.
December 1:
Today we’ll touch on one entrance and one exit from the world — two performers for whom Brahms was or continues to be an important part of their career.
By the time German conductor (and composer) Max Fiedler died on this date in 1939, he had achieved a reputation as an important interpreter of Brahms — one critic went as far as to say he was “the greatest Brahms conductor of the present day.” The composer himself doesn’t seem to have complained much about his symphonies in the hands of Fiedler — which, coming from Brahms, is the equivalent of a kiss on the cheek.
As for Fiedler’s current legacy, he is praised by some for his flexibility of tempo, while others feel he goes overboard in individualizing his approach. Listen for yourself here to the first movement of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony in a 1930 recording by Fiedler and the Staatskapelle Berlin.
Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder, born on this date in 1946 in Litoměřice, Czechoslovakia, is still with us. Fifth-prize winner at the 1966 Van Cliburn Competition (it’s interesting to read about what the winners that year have been up to in the years since), he is renowned for his interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, and Brahms, including the complete concertos of those composers, and a vast discography in general.
Listen to an interview with the New York Philharmonic in which Buchbinder briefly describes studying a copy of the original manuscript of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. And hear him perform that work with Zubin Mehta and the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein in a live recording from 2015.
