by Jarrett Hoffman

CONCERTS THIS WEEKEND:

In the words of Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong, “Gone fishin’ — there’s a sign upon our door.” We’re taking a break from our Diary until Monday, so here are a few musical recommendations looking ahead to this weekend.

On Friday at 7, No Exit goes miniature in several ways. The concert will last about half the length of their normal performances, and will consist of solos and duos of five minutes or less by Iannis Xenakis, Kaija Saariaho, György Ligeti, Leo Ornstein, Betsy Jolas, and Charles Delaney. More info here.

Then on Sunday at 8 — live as part of the Silver Hall series — Daniel Shapiro continues his journey through the complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas with the Sonatina in G (Op. 79), Sonata No. 4 (Op. 7), the famous “Moonlight” Sonata, and its lesser-known bunkmate in Op. 27. Click here at start time.

Speaking of Beethoven cycles, we’ll have to wait until May 2021 for James Ehnes and Andrew Armstrong to finish up their three-part series covering the composer’s complete violin sonatas for the Cleveland Chamber Music Society. But, as an alternative, artistic director Eric Charnofsky caught up with the duo to find out what they’ve been up to since COVID struck, and to hear some music — movements from Beethoven sonatas, yes, but also works by Debussy and Rimsky-Korsakov. Listen here on the Society’s “Safe With Sound” series.

GRAMMY NOMINATIONS HAVE BEEN RELEASED…

…and Cleveland’s Azica Records is on the list. They’re represented by the Dover Quartet’s October 2019 album The Schumann Quartets in the category of Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. (Listen on Spotify or Apple Music, and see the complete list of nominations here.)

The album was produced by Alan Bise (right) and engineered by Azica’s founder Bruce Egre (left), who sadly passed away in September of this year. Bise wrote to us yesterday: “It’s very bittersweet not to be able to celebrate with Bruce — I’m really missing him today.” Read an obituary for Egre here from Brown-Forward Funeral Home.

Back in 2015, Bise and Egre spoke to ClevelandClassical.com’s Mike Telin about the fascinating and ever-evolving recording industry — streaming, physical CDs, and more. We also got a taste of their humble personalities:

Why did Bruce Egre start Azica Records? “Perhaps I was a little ignorant,” he answered with a laugh.

Read that interview here.

AS FOR THANKSGIVING DAY:

No history or musical recommendations this time, just our very best wishes for the holiday — and a reminder that Zoom is lifting its 40-minute limit for group calls starting at midnight on November 26, and lasting through 6 am ET on November 27. So enjoy your screen time with anyone who’s out of reach, and if needed, start planning ahead for a new excuse to hang up.

by Daniel Hathaway

CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA POWER OF MUSIC VIDEOS:

A series of videos to be released weekly over social media for the next 7-10 weeks finds Assistant Concertmaster Jessica Lee and her colleagues fanning out through the community to play in various businesses in Greater Cleveland, “to bring these places back into people’s lives while we are less able to visit and enjoy them.” The series is part of the Music Medicine Initiative: The Power of Music for Health and Well-Being, a community collaboration between The Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Clinic’s Art + Design Institute.

In the first video, released on Monday, Lee joins Yun-Ting Lee, Wesley Collins, and Dane Johansen at Luna Bakery in Cleveland Heights for the third movement of Debussy’s String Quartet.

BW ROCK OPERA FEATURED IN AMERICAN THEATRE:

Not one to be deterred by a mere pandemic, Baldwin Wallace Musical Theatre Director Victoria Bussert forged ahead with plans to produce Spring Awakening last week.

“What would a pandemic-era production look like, and how would people see it? How could you perform group numbers when unmasked group singing is verboten? What about kissing? And most importantly, how would you keep everyone safe?” Read the article here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On November 24, 1868, American composer and pianist Scott Joplin was born near Marshall, Texas. Most famous for single-handedly inventing ragtime — a syncopated American genre revived by William Bolcom and William Albright, who introduced the young musicologist Joshua Rifin to Joplin’s music in 1968, and further popularized in the movie The Sting — Joplin wrote two operas as well. The materials for A Guest of Honor have been lost, probably seized by a rooming house owner in lieu of rent during a tour in 1904, but Treemonisha enjoyed a full production by Houston Grand Opera in May, 1975. Watch a video (with subtitles in Portuguese!) here.

Back to ragtime: Joplin made seven pianola rolls in 1916 including his most famous piece, the Maple Leaf Rag. In 1970, Rifkin’s Nonesuch recording of Joplin piano rags was the label’s first to sell a million copies.

Also born on November 24 (in 1934), Russian composer Alfred Schnittke adopted what he called his polystylistic technique in works like his remarkable Concerto Grosso No. 1, performed live in Moscow in 2004 by Gidon Kremer, Tatiana Grindenko and Kremerata Baltica.

On November 24, 1940, American jazz composer Wendell Logan was born in Thompson, Georgia. He joined the Oberlin Conservatory Faculty and founded the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble in 1973, later developing a jazz curriculum for the school, which adopted admission standards for jazz students in 1991. Watch a shaky cell phone video of Logan speaking at the dedication of the Kohl Jazz Studies Building in 2010 (he died later that year).

And listen to a February, 1991 recording of Logan’s Roots, Branches, Shapes and Shades (of Green), commissioned by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, composed for pianist Neal Creque, and first performed under the direction of Edwin London in February, 1991.

Finally, multi-genre double bass phenomenon and composer Edgar Meyer was born on this date in 1960. ChamferFest Cleveland violinist David Bowlin and bassist Nathan Farrington performed the third movement of his Concerto Duo at The Wine Spot in June, 2014. Watch here.

by Jarrett Hoffman

LOCAL 4 & ASO: BRIDGETOWER & “KREUTZER”

Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata has recently cropped up in a couple places in the area. First, violinist Emily Cornelius (above, left) played it during last week’s recital sponsored by the Local 4 Music Fund. She also shared some of its complicated and frankly strange history.

That includes how Beethoven finished it so late that violinist George Bridgetower (center) had to sight-read the premiere — which turned out to be very well received. Soon afterwards, the two had a falling out, and the violinist’s name was withdrawn from the work’s dedication. (That story involves some alcohol, and an off-color remark about a woman Beethoven admired.)

Details aside, the fact is that as a result of that argument, history has largely lost sight of an important Black violinist. Instead, the name that lives on in the piece is that of Rodolphe Kreutzer — one of the great virtuosos of his era, to be sure, but who never actually played the sonata, and who even looked down upon it.

The fraught relationship between Bridgetower and Beethoven is the backdrop for the first several entries in the Akron Symphony’s new podcast, Unorchestrated, co-hosted by music director Christopher Wilkins and director of marketing Thomas Moore.

Joining them in the opening 14-part series is Akron-born poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove (above, right). They discuss her book of poems Sonata Mulattica, which uses fact and fiction to tell the story of Bridgetower and to explore the nature of fame and of public memory. Three episodes have been released so far — click here to find out where you can listen, and here to watch last week’s Local 4 concert.

ONLINE TODAY:

Locally, tonight brings two live-streamed performances from area music schools: check out the CIM Orchestra or the Kent State Percussion Ensemble, both at 7. And if you’re curious about any streamed events further afield, check out the weekly guide from Musical America.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

It doesn’t often take long to be drawn into the flavorful and expressive, yet stylistically very different, music of Spanish composer Manuel de Falla and Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, who were both born on this date in history — in 1876 and 1933, respectively. That’s certainly the case in the two works with which we’ll commemorate them today, which don’t waste any time ramping up their energy.

Listen to Penderecki’s Duo Concertante in a performance by violinist Amy Schwartz Moretti and bassist Nathan Farrington from ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2018 season. And as for de Falla, here’s a unique arrangement of selections from his El amor brujo, thanks to the Davin-Levin Duo (CIM faculty guitarist Colin Davin and Dallas Symphony principal harp Emily Levin).

Photo of Rita Dove by Fred Viebahn

by Daniel Hathaway

STREAMING HIGHLIGHTS THIS WEEKEND:

Locally-sponsored events you can enjoy from the comfort of your domicile include a choral concert from the University of Akron, an International Series recital by Raphael Feuillatre from the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society (read Jarrett Hoffman’s preview interview here), the first collaboration between BlueWater Chamber Orchestra and Verb Ballets (read my conversation with BlueWater Artistic Director Daniel Meyer here), an Oberlin Stage Left concert by the Oberlin Orchestra, Sinfonietta, and Contemporary Music Ensemble, and a concert by the Lunaris, the University of Akron’s graduate woodwind quintet. See the Concert Listings for details

Moving to the southern end of the state, on Saturday evening at 8:00 pm, the Cincinnati Symphony will stream a free digital concert featuring New York Philharmonic principal Anthony McGill in the premiere of You Have the Right to Remain Silent, a new clarinet concerto by Anthony Davis, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in music for his opera The Central Park Five. (Rehearsal photo above.) It’s part of a program led by Louis Langree that also includes Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 and Julia Perry’s Homunculus C.F. In a preview article in WVXU News, Julie Coppens writes

Seasoned as he is, “You Have the Right to Remain Silent” handed McGill some new challenges: it’s his first major performance on the super-sized (and much deeper-voiced) contra-alto clarinet; his first time improvising a solo against a Kurzweil synthesizer, which lends some otherworldly effects; and a rare musical exploration of racism in the American criminal justice system. He’s certainly never been Mirandized on stage before—but this weekend’s free “Live From Music Hall” streaming concert will take viewers deep into all those experiences and more, combining the gritty intimacy of a TV police drama with the transcendence of symphonic creation and collaboration.

MORE COVID-19 UPDATES:

Following the announcement of a new, statewide public health advisory, Apollo’s Fire has announced that its December performances, originally planned to be hybrids offering patrons the choice of in-person attendance or high-quality videos to be available the week after the live concerts, will now go entirely digital.

And the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is closed to the public beginning on November 20 for an indefinite period of time. For information about online programs and other services, visit the museum’s website.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

November 22 marks the feast day of Cecilia, a Roman Empire-era virgin martyr who has somehow become the patron saint of musicians, and in whose name celebratory odes have been penned by poets and composers over the last few centuries.

Both Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten — England’s most celebrated composers — had the honor of being born on St. Cecilia’s Day, as did Arthur Seymour Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte Opera fame.

Purcell straddled the old era of viols and the new age of violins at the British royal court, steeping himself in the long tradition of viol consort music before continuing his career as a church and theater composer who wholeheartedly embraced the new instrumental tastes imported from the French court, and managed to jam as much music into his brief lifespan as Mozart did — both died in their mid-30s.

Before her recent retirement, Oberlin viola da gamba and cello professor Catharina Meints gathered a consort of guests to present an entire concert devoted to Purcell’s Fantasias for viols on September 13, 2019. Read about it here, and watch the concert on the June 18, 2020 episode of Oberlin Stage Left here. (The viols segment begins at 20:48.)

Purcell served as organist of Westminster Abbey, where he wrote and performed such modern works as his verse-anthem Rejoice in the Lord Alway, sung here with organ accompaniment in Cleveland’s Trinity Cathedral on October 5, 2015 on the program “The Remarkable Mr. Henry Purcell.” David Acres conducts Contrapunctus Cleveland.

Benjamin Britten wrote his Hymn to St. Cecilia in 1942 on the high seas while returning from a sojourn in America, setting a striking poem by W.H. Auden. Listen to a performance by Britain’s Voces 8 here.

Previously unreleased works by Britten have regularly shown up since his death in 1976, among them his Gerard Manley Hopkins settings in A.M.D.G. (“Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam”, the motto of the Jesuit order to which Hopkins belonged). One of the most beguiling movements is “Rosa Mystica,” sung here by Cleveland Chamber Choir under the direction of Scott MacPherson in March, 2019.

And for listeners who only know the theater music of Arthur Sullivan, here are two little gems to enjoy (we’ll spare you The Lost Chord!)

His solo song, Orpheus With His Lute, from a suite of Shakespeare settings, celebrates another patron saint of music, the god who could make mountaintops and trees “bow their heads when he did sing.” Dame Janet Baker sings it here with Gerald Moore at the piano.

Then there’s Sullivan’s The Long Day Closes, a quintessentially Victorian meditation on death composed in 1868 that was often sung at funerals for members of the D’Oyly Carte Company. The King’s Singers perform it here on the BBC Proms in 2008.

by Daniel Hathaway

TWO CHEERS FOR A.I.:

Viewers who hopped onto the Cleveland Musicians Local 4  “Tuning In” performance by violinist Emily Cornelius and Pianist Eric Charnofsky last night witnessed a jarring interruption when the Facebook Live stream was shut down — more than once. It seems that the FB bots that spread out over the network to nab copyright infringements mistook the live performance for a commercial recording. Local 4 Music Fund Executive Director Amber Rogers writes, “If you want to hear the performance SO GOOD that Facebook shut it down TWICE, it’s here, for you.”

MUSEUM TO CLOSE TEMPORARILY:

The Cleveland Museum of Art is responding to the new surge in COVID-19 cases by closing its doors for the second time. The current interruption is planned to last from today through December 16. In the meanwhile, the Museum notes that “the CMA will continue to offer dynamic, online art experiences. Remember: Home Is Where the Art Is offers visitors a chance to explore the wealth of digital resources that the CMA has to offer.”

HAPPENING ONLINE TODAY:

Streamed concerts by students in the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Advanced Trio Program and CWRU’s Symphonic Winds are available today. See the Concert Listings for details.

And while staying home in accordance with the most recent state guidelines, have a look at the wealth of online performances listed in Musical America’s Guide (follow the link at the top of our Concert Listings). Among today’s highlights, pianist Lang Lang plays J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations from Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, where the composer is buried.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

November 20 obits include the passing of Renaissance composer Pierre de la Rue in Courtrai, Belgium in 1518 and Russian composer Anton Rubenstein in Peterhof in 1894, as well as that of English musician John Shore in 1752, who had invented the tuning fork in 1711 and presented one to Handel.

On the other end of the life cycle, American multimedia composer and innovative singer Meredith Monk was born in Lima, Peru on this date in 1942. Alan Pierson, Artistic Director of Alarm Will Sound talks to her about her piece Anthem in a recent interview. Watch 21 remote performers play the piece here in real time thanks to a platform Alarm Will Sound has developed during the pandemic.

Finally, on this date in 1820, an 80-ton sperm whale attacked and sank the Nantucket whaling ship Essex 2,000 miles off the west coast of South America. That event inspired Herman Melville’s 1851 more-than-a-novel, Moby-Dick, and in turn, moved American composer Jake Heggie to write his opera of the same name on commission from Dallas Opera, San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, State Opera of South Australia and Calgary Opera. I saw the premiere in Dallas in April, 2010 along with colleagues from the Music Critics Association of North America.

Heggie talked about the process of composing the work in a University of California TV interview in 2012. No time like the present to crack open Melville’s magnum opus, which may be one of those classics we’ve never gotten around to reading. (The author’s Billy Budd also inspired the eponymous opera by Benjamin Britten.)

by Daniel Hathaway

THE VIRUS THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS:

Early on Wednesday afternoon, The Cleveland Orchestra announced that its entire series of Christmas Concerts — already scaled down to eliminate choral music — will be cancelled “due to the recent and continued rise of positive cases of Covid-19 across the state in order to maintain the health and safety of audiences, musicians, staff and volunteers.”

Ticket holders for the fifteen performances scheduled from December 10-23 have the option of donating their tickets back to the Orchestra and receiving a tax receipt, exchanging their tickets for a gift certificate, or receiving a refund. Orchestra President and CEO André Gremillet explains the decision in a video.

ONLINE TODAY — LOCALLY AND NATIONALLY:

Check our Concert Listings for details about today’s Intensive Duo Recital from CIM, a program of chamber music by the Case Western Baroque Chamber Ensembles, Local 4’s latest “Tuning In” performance by violinist Emily Cornelius and Pianist Eric Charnofsky, an Oberlin master class with Lawrence Brownlee, and Baldwin Wallace’s rock opera, A Spring Awakening.

Farther afield, ChamberFest Cleveland wants to tip you off to a performance by pianist Roman Rabinovich on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series. And fans of Cleveland guest performers and composers may want to catch a program of music by George Walker at the Baruch College Performing Arts Center, and a 92nd St. Y recital by the Emerson String Quartet with Yefim Bronfman. And then there’s a Live at Carnegie Hall program remembering the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. See the Musica America guide linked at the top of our Concert Listings page for more information.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Two eminent composers left this life on November 19, due in both cases to microbes: German Johann Hermann Schein (of the plague) in 1630 in Leipzig, and Franz Peter Schubert (of typhus) in 1828 in Vienna.

Schein, a friend of Heinrich Schütz who was likewise influenced by early Italian Baroque music, preceded J.S. Bach at Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, and wrote equal quantities of vocal and instrumental music. His instrumental suites, collected in the 1617 publication Banchetto musicale, were meant to be played during dinner, as the title suggests.

Visit the special sound world of Schein’s era with Intrada 21, played on the wonderful, buzzy instruments of the curtal and rackett family by the Unholy Rackett ensemble.

Schein’s sacred music is replete with madrigalesque word painting, as you can hear in his 1623 cycle Israelis Brünnlein, performed by Gli Angeli Genève at the Geertekerk in Utrecht in 2011. Zero in on one of the movements, the motet Die mit Tränen säen (“Those who sow with tears”), with Philip Herreweghe and the Ensemble Vocal Européen in this follow-along-with-the-score performance. 

Schubert is so ubiquitous in the concert hall that we’ll just give a tip of the hat to his wonderful cello quintet, performed here (first movement only) on a ChamberFest Cleveland concert in Harkness Chapel in 2015, before we move on to less-familiar repertoire.

Those works would include Schubert’s songs for male chorus, which imbibe the spirit of Austro-German Romanticism (quite literally — many of them are drinking songs). Robert Shaw recorded ten of them in 1992 with an ensemble drawn from the Robert Shaw Chorale. Listen here.

The spirit of the forest is invoked both musically and instrumentally in Schubert’s Nachtgesang im Walde for male voices and four valve horns, performed here by members of the Vienna State Opera Chorus and Vienna Symphony.

Even more emblematic of Schubert’s philosophical world are his three settings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Gesang der Geister über den Wassern (“The soul of mankind is like water”). One is for unaccompanied male chorus, an entirely different setting that the composer left unfinished adds piano, and the remarkable third version — again completely different — adds an ensemble of low strings. Listen to No. 3 as performed in 2011 by the Norwegian Soloist Choir and the Oslo Camerata, directed by Grete Pedersen.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ONLINE:

Trinity Cathedral’s Virtual Brownbag Concert starts off the day at noon with violinists Andrew Sords and Mari Sato as two “Dueling Divas,” joined by pianist Elizabeth DeMio in music by Beethoven, Moszkowski, and Sarasate. A CIM brass quintet takes the baton at 7 for selections from Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess. And the Oberlin Guitar Ensemble closes out the evening at 7:30 with music by J.S. Bach, Mertz, and Ponce. Links and details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

The Rachel Barton Pine Foundation’s “Music by Black Composers” project has released a free online directory of solo violin music (both with orchestra and unaccompanied) written by Black composers. Their website also links to a couple of other such directories — solo piano and classical guitar — with more to come.

And The New York Times profiles one man (Alexander Neef) who has stepped into a prestigious new job (director of the Paris Opera) at what might be considered a difficult time (“amid a pandemic, labor strikes and internal unrest”). Read here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

This date in music history brought composer Carl Maria von Weber (1786), conductor Eugene Ormandy (1899), and violist/composer Lillian Fuchs (1901) into the world, and composer Ruth Crawford Seeger (1953) out of it.

A few local connections to explore there:

In 2015, after 39 seasons as principal clarinet, Franklin Cohen bid farewell to The Cleveland Orchestra by soloing in Carl Maria von Weber’s Second Concerto. In an interview with ClevleandClassical.com’s Mike Telin, Cohen described the piece as not only operatic and outgoing (Weber was most famous as an opera composer), but also “a little more edgy than the Mozart concerto,” making it a perfect fit for the outdoor stage of Blossom. Too bad we can’t get our hands on that recording.

Part of a musical family, Lillian Fuchs’ two brothers Joseph and Harry both played in The Cleveland Orchestra, Joseph as concertmaster and Harry as a cellist. But bringing the focus back to the violist of the family — who in fact didn’t mind being left out of the spotlight, even by her own parents (“I was delighted to be left alone,” she told The Strad in 1986) — Lillian was a celebrated soloist, chamber musician, and pedagogue who taught for 29 years at the Manhattan School of Music, 26 at the Aspen Music Festival and School, and 22 at the Juilliard School. Her playing inspired works by Bohuslav Martinů, among others.

Her own compositions are less well-known, but violist Marina Thibeault brought Fuchs’ Sonata Pastorale to the LCCC Signature Series in 2019, and recorded it on her album ELLES, dedicated to women composers — listen to the first movement here, and read Thibeault’s interview with Daniel Hathaway here.

And Ruth Crawford Seeger was actually born in East Liverpool, Ohio. She lived for a short time in Akron and around the Midwest before growing up in Jacksonville, Florida. Her career was impressive and unusual — an important American modernist who influenced Elliott Carter, and later became a folk music specialist. She was also the first woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Listen to her String Quartet 1931 in a performance by the Denver-based Playground Ensemble here, and read more about the composer and that work in an article from The New York Times. (“…she wrote this piece that’s so ahead of its time,” JACK Quartet violinist Austin Wulliman said.)

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

Fans of organist Paul Jacobs — who is featured in the recently-released Cleveland Orchestra recording of the world premiere of Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Okeanos — can hop digitally across the upper Midwest tonight and catch his recital from Overture Hall in Madison, Wisconsin. He’s playing Baroque transcriptions on the Klais organ, including four Handel Concertos, and J.S. Bach’s Air on the G String and Arioso. The stream is free, but you’ll need to register.

As the Cleveland Institute of Music approaches the end of the semester, its chamber music groups are showing their wares online. Tonight’s broadcast features a woodwind quintet coached by Cleveland Orchestra bassoonist Barrick Stees, countering the gales of November with sunny Caribbean-inspired music: Paquito D’Rivera’s Aires Tropicales.

Another popular Cleveland Orchestra soloist, pianist Aaron Diehl, appears on New York’s 92nd St. Y Series with music by African American composers from William Grant Still to Duke Ellington. Check out that event and many others in the weekly Musical America guide to (mostly) free live streams. You’ll find the link at the top of our Concert Listings page.

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

Fans of the Heinz Poll-era Ohio Ballet will be sad to learn of the death of its music director and pianist David Fisher on November 6. Read an obituary here.

Composer Margi Griebling-Haigh writes that her one-act opera, The White Trout, is now available for viewing on YouTube. The 20+ minute work, which she saw “as a way to do something not only productive, but FUN, during this general moratorium on live musical activities,” is based on an Irish folk tale, and features Gabrielle Haigh (soprano), Brian Keith Johnson (baritone), Jessica Sindell (piccolo), Scott Haigh (double bass), Parker Ramsay (harp), and Randall Fusco (piano), “all tied together with very fun narration by Ty Alan Emerson.”

Mignarda, the voice and lute duo of Donna Stewart and Ron Andrico & Donna Stewart, have also put their time to good use during the cessation of live performances by releasing three new recordings, described below in their own words:

• Heart-Songs, a new recording of our folk music alter-ego (normally kept well-concealed from Mignarda fans, but you just knew something funny was up with us). Released on November 4.
• Mater Dolorosa, a recording of live ensemble tracks from our annual concert of sacred historical music. Released on November 11.
• Unquiet Thoughts, our much-anticipated recording of English lute songs. To be released on November 30.

Visit Mignarda’s website for more information.

Itching for even some virtual foreign travel these days? Before the borders closed, Oberlin grad Wesley Hall spent a year studying in Lübeck, Germany — Dietrich Buxtehude’s turf — and has made a 48-minute video about the organs and churches of that Hanseatic League town, which also figures in Thomas Mann’s novel, Buddenbrooks. “Such amazing instruments, such amazing people,” he writes. Watch Lübeck: Queen of the Hanse here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Only one birth and one death to memorialize today.

American composer and arranger Hershey Kay was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1919. He studied at the Curtis Institute, where he was a classmate of Leonard Bernstein, who entrusted the scores of On the Town, Peter Pan, and Candide to Kay for orchestration (only rarely do composers take that task on themselves).

Among Kay’s other products was the reconstruction and orchestration of Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s Grande Tarantelle, choreographed by George Balanchine and famously performed by New York City Ballet’s Patricia McBride and Edward Villela. Watch them dance the score here.

And on November 17, 1959, Brazilian composer, pianist, and conductor Heitor Villa-Lobos died in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 72. Among his most celebrated works are the nine Bachianas Brasileiras suites. Written between 1930 and 1945 for various instrumental ensembles, they meld Baroque compositional forms and techniques with Brazilian folk and popular music.

Suite No. 5 for soprano and eight cellos, is among the most-performed. Watch Mark Kosower’s Cleveland Institute of Music cello studio play the two-movement work here with soprano Natasha Simmons in a concert from February 29, 2016.

French guitarist Raphaël Feuillâtre will include music by Villa-Lobos on his Cleveland Classical Guitar Society recital on November 21, streamed from his home in France. During her visit to the CCGS in 2017, Sharon Isbin gave a master class on Villa-Lobos’ Prelude No. 1. 

And perhaps local guitarists will recall this performance in Harkness Chapel on May 18, 2017 of his Etude No. 7 by Chaconne Klaverenga, a student of Jason Vieaux at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ONLINE:

First up: a Cleveland native and three Cleveland-based composers. Earth and Air: String Orchestra shares a two-part program in which cellist David Ellis plays works by Jeffrey Mumford, Ryan Charles Ramer, and Margi Griebling-Haigh. It’s available beginning at noon on YouTube and “for a limited time afterwards.”

Part One, “Thankfulness in Solitude,” was filmed at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. The more informal Part Two, “Thankfulness in Solitude: Music for Home,” covers chamber music for one or two cellos. Also included are links to interviews with the three composers.

Ellis writes: “This performance…is my way of giving back to the composers and community who have inspired me over the years as director of Earth and Air: String Orchestra.” The program is performed in memory of his father, Lloyd H. (Sandy) Ellis, Jr., who passed away a year ago tomorrow.

And this evening brings two local offerings. In a live stream at 7, the CIM Percussion Ensemble plays works by Mark Applebaum, Larry Baker, Tawnie Olson, Adam Silverman, Tōru Takemitsu, and Russell Peck (click here to watch).

At 7:30, Les Délices continues its SalonEra series with “Folk Influences,” featuring violinists Gail Hernández Rosa, Edwin Huizinga, and David McCormick. Performances and discussions include Celtic tunes, traditional music from Spain, and research focused on Black musicians at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (click here at start time).

LOCAL GROUPS ADJUSTING TO THE PANDEMIC:

Over the weekend, the Cleveland Chamber Choir reflected on their path since the arts world changed in March, from virtual-only performances that mix together individual voices, to more recently following a collection of best practices for choral rehearsal and performance that were put together by a coalition of 125 arts organizations. But due to the resurgence of COVID-19, they’re now returning to the virtual route for a concert in December — a month that will also bring their first album. Read more on their website.

And as the holidays arrive at a time when “the numbers,” as they say, are getting much worse, Opus 216, is preparing to offer “Pay-What-You-Can Zoom concerts and recordings for families and loved ones separated by the pandemic.” More info to come soon on their Facebook.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Paul Hindemith — that celebrated composer of the first half of the 20th century who was also a violist, conductor, and important music theorist and compositional pedagogue — was born on this date in 1895 in Hanau, Germany. His greatest works include the opera Mathis der Maler and the Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber, but going just slightly off the beaten path, wind players owe him a debt of gratitude for several major works of chamber music.

Oberlin Conservatory faculty members surveyed five of his sonatas on the 2018 album Convergent Winds: Music of Paul Hindemith (read Jeremy Reynolds’ review here).

And for a different and compelling take on standard repertoire — in this case Hindemith’s wind quintet — one can turn as usual to the Carion Quintet, that Danish-Latvian ensemble known for performing with choreography, and without chairs and stands. In this video of the first movement, they add even more theatricality: their performance is paralleled by a silent film that presents the music as a metaphor for disagreement — and maybe reconciliation — among the players. (Below: a horn solo as frustration.)