by Daniel Hathaway
IN THIS EDITION:
. A checklist of weekend events (and a cancellation)
. Les Délices and Cleveland Pops announce seasons, news briefs from Chicago, Atlanta, and the opera-loving English countryside, and unearthing Ukraine’s cultural heritage
. Almanac: George Antheil enters the world
THIS WEEKEND’S EVENTS:
On Friday at 12:15 pm McGaffin carillonneur George Leggiero will strike the University Circle bells with music by Peter Paul Olejar celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of such American outdoor attractions as New York’s Central Park and the Wade Lagoon at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Music by Handel and a pair of 20th-century sarabandes too. Can’t make it in person? There’s also a live stream.
ENCORE: Music & Ideas Festival concludes on Friday, July 8 with “Tales of Pursuit & Obsession: Intimate Letters,” beginning with a 6:00 pm conversation with Andrew Rindfleisch who will talk about his journey to becoming a celebrated composer. The 7:00 pm concert will include the world premiere of Rindfleisch’s Phantasmagoria along with works by Janáček and Schubert. Dodero Center at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills. Purchase in-person and live stream tickets here. That’s it for 2022 — Sunday’s finale has been postponed due to visa woes and positive COVID tests.
Ohio Light Opera: Hello, Dolly! returns to Yonkers at 2pm on July 8 and 10 and there are two shows on July 9: The Student Prince at 2pm and Cinderella at 7:30. All performances are at Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre. Purchase tickets here.
There’s more opera to enjoy this weekend at the Barlow Community Center in Hudson. At 7pm on Saturday and 3pm on Sunday, Nightingale Opera Young Artists Program will present Jake Heggie’s If I Were You, a modern telling of the Faust story. Purchase tickets here.
Moving to the great outdoors at Blossom, on Saturday at 7pm, Elim Chan will lead the Cleveland Orchestra in Rimsky-Korsakov’s beloved Scheherazade, Weber’s Overture to Der Freischütz, and Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 starring British keyboard phenom Benjamin Grosvenor (pictured, photo by Andrej Grilc). Aside: Happy birthday wishes are in order for Grosvenor, who was born on July 8, 1992 in Westcliff-on-Sea, Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
And on Sunday at 7pm Jeff Tyzik will lead the Orchestra in the Paul Simon Songbook, featuring vocalists Paul Loren, Daniel Berryman, and Emily Drennan. Purchase tickets for all Blossom events here.
More concerts can be found on the Clevelandclassical.com Concert Listings page.
CONCERT UPDATES:
Due to the ongoing challenges posed by COVID-19 — delays with artist visas as well as key artists testing positive, ENCORE Chamber Music Institute is postponing the Sunday, July 10 event, TALES OF THE BODY: ‘Body-Go-Round: Round 1’ by collective A. More details here.
Cleveland’s French Baroque ensemble Les Délices has announced its 2022-23 season. Click here for more information.
And Cleveland Pops Orchestra has shared its plans for next season Click here for more information.
NEWS BRIEFS:
In respect for the victims of the Independence Day shootings in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, the Ravinia Festival, just down the road, has canceled all scheduled events through July 10.
Before that tragic occurrence, the Chicago Symphony gave Lina González-Granados, its conducting apprentice, a traditional Big Break when she stepped in for Riccardo Muti on June 16, who tested positive for COVID shortly before the performance.
ArtsAtlanta reports that the Atlanta Symphony has reached a new three-year labor agreement with its musicians, giving the orchestra a fresh start after a difficult decade.
And on the other side of “The Pond,” opera in England’s country estates has a new player with the opening of Grange Park Opera.
INTERESTING READ:
A recent concert in Berkeley, California of Ukrainian choral music from the 12th to 19th centuries, including 18th-century works by Dmytro Bortniansky and Maksym Berezovsky, has inspired an article in San Francisco Classical Voice by Molly Colin.
“The performance likely introduced the audience to music that has existed for centuries despite efforts, experts said, by various empires to suppress or ban it. Its very existence, according to musicologists, defies Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denial after the February invasion that Ukraine has a culture of its own.” Read After an Invasion, Ukraine’s Cultural Legacy Comes to Light here.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
July 8 marks the world debut of American avant-garde composer and inventor George Antheil in 1900 in Trenton, New Jersey. The young George began learning piano at the age of six. In 1916, he began studying composition with Constantine von Sternberg in Philadelphia. It was there that he was exposed to conceptual art, including Dadaism. Anthiel would later become a pupil of Ernest Bloch. Although Bloch was initially skeptical of Antheil’s talents, calling his compositions “empty” and “pretentious,” his teacher was eventually won over by the young composer’s enthusiasm and energy.
During his lifetime, Antheil composed symphonies, chamber works, film music, and operas. In addition to music, his interests included endocrinology, criminal justice, and military history, and he was co-holder (with actress Hedy Lamarr) of a patent for what today is known as “spread-spectrum technology.”
An excellent writer, at the age of sixteen, Antheil wrote an essay for the Trenton High School Spector titled “A Madman’s Narrative,” which begins “I am not mad. They are all maniacs here; all but me. I, alone am sane; a great composer, yet they tell me I am also mad. Surely, sir, you will not make that mistake. See how calm I am, how measured I talk.” Click here to continue reading. He would pen many articles during his life including his autobiography, Bad Boy of Music.
Although Antheil composed over 300 works, his Ballet mécanique is the most famous. Written in 1924 the work is scored for 16 player pianos playing four separate parts, four bass drums, three xylophones, a tam-tam, seven electric bells, a siren, and three different-sized airplane propellers (high wood, low wood, and metal), as well as two human-played pianos. Click here to read more about that notorious composition and here for a performance by Ensemble Modern, led by Peter Rundel.