by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
On Friday at Noon, CIM Museum Melodies, brings one-hour programs featuring pianists from the Cleveland Institute of Music to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Tonight at 7:30, the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble makes its first appearance this season under conductor Timothy Weiss in Warner Concert Hall. Same day and time, the temporarily venueless Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra visits John Hay High School Auditorium with guest conductor Anthony Parnther.
On Saturday at 7, led by Domenico Boyagian, the Suburban Symphony joins the Cleveland Chorale at First Baptist Church, and at 7:30 in E.J. Thomas Hall, the Akron Symphony will host pianist Gabriela Martinez. Same day and hour, conductor and Oberlin alum James Feddeck leads the Oberlin Orchestra in Finney Chapel. And Saturday at half past 7, The Cleveland Jazz Orchestra inaugurates its “Pops” series with “Sinatra at the Coliseum: Celebrating 50 Years.”
On Sunday at 3, Osmo Vänskä (pictured) and The Cleveland Orchestra repeat last Thursday’s program at Severance Music Center, and the rescheduled “Evening With John Legend” — interrupted by storms in August — will try again at Blossom (but without The Cleveland Orchestra).
Visit our Concert Listings for details of upcoming performances.
HEADLINES IN THE NEWS:
San Francisco Symphony Facing Its Biggest Crisis Ever
“The symphony believes one way to attract audiences is to showcase what few cities have, a one-of-a-kind performing arts scene, which also includes the ballet, the opera, the SF Jazz Center, and the Conservatory.” — ABC7 via Artsjournal
The Great Bells Of Notre Dame Cathedral Return To Paris
“A convoy of trucks bearing eight restored bells — the heaviest of which weighs more than 4 tons — pulled into the huge worksite Thursday. … They are being blessed in a special ceremony … before being hoisted to hang in its twin towers for the Dec. 8 reopening (following the catastrophic 2019 fire).” — Associated Press via Artsjournal
WEEKEND ALMANAC:
September 20 — by Jarrett Hoffman
While Sibelius casts an imposing shadow as his country’s greatest composer, Uuno Klami (born on this date in 1900 in Virolahti) has carved out a legacy as one of the most significant Finnish composers of the generation following Sibelius.
In fact, Maurice Ravel may have been the composer who most influenced Klami, but the culture of his home country was clearly a driving force, given how frequently he drew inspiration from the Kalevala, a 19th-century collection of epic poetry from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology.
Among those works is the five-movement Kalevala Suite — which, to make our discussion more complicated, also took a cue from Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Listen to a live performance from 2017 by the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Leif Segerstam.
September 21:
British composer Gustav Holst was born on September 21, 1874 in Cheltenham. Prolific and inspired by such diverse influences as Hindu music and English folksong, he left a large catalogue of music, much of which has been overshadowed by works like The Planets that made his name famous.
Holst’s daughter Imogen recalls her father in a charming documentary, and the first acoustic recording with the London Symphony led by the composer, made between 1922 and 1923 at Petty France Studios, provides an insight into his intentions.
Explore some of Holst’s less familiar choral works with these recordings: His Two Psalms, sung by the Estudio Coral de Buenos Aires in 1981, his Hymn to Jesus, based on the Apocryphal Gospels and performed by the University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra and Grand Chorus in 2012, and — continuing the metaphor of sacred dance — his folklike but sophisticated setting of the old Cornysh carol, This have I done for my true love, performed by the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford with scrolling score.
Or take a taste of his settings of hymns from the Rig Veda, with the Hymn of the Travellers, sung by the children’s choir and youth ensemble of the Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris with harp accompaniment.
September 22:
On September 22, 1989, Russian-American composer Irving Berlin died at the age of 101 in New York City, having contributed some 1,500 songs to the mythical Great American Songbook over his 60-year career. One of the most celebrated was “God Bless America,” indelibly linked to the singer Kate Smith, but sung by Berlin himself on the Ed Sullivan Show on May 5, 1968.
Polish-American violinist Isaac Stern died in New York City on this date in 2001 at the age of 81. In addition to his distinguished career as a soloist, Stern organized a campaign to save New York’s Carnegie Hall from developers in the 1960s. The main auditorium is named in his honor.
Stern interviewed Christoph von Dohnányi in 2000 when The Cleveland Orchestra was invited to open the 110th season of the hall. And conductor Michael Stern reflected here on his father’s life in music as part of the centenary celebrations of the violinist’s birth.
Before coming to Cleveland, I taught at Groton School in Massachusetts, where Isaac Stern was a favorite of the second headmaster and his wife. The story goes that they tried on several occasions to arrange a concert for the students, but Stern’s management always turned them down. The solution: a rumor would be circulated that Mr. Stern would be “practicing” at a certain hour in the auditorium, and the entire school just happened to drop by to listen.
