by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

At noon, Trinity Cathedral continues its “Brahms-Fest” on the Virtual Brownbag series, this time with two of the composer’s violin sonatas (Op. 78, No. 1 and Op. 108, No. 2) in the hands of Andrew Sords and pianist Elizabeth DeMio. That will remain available on-demand here.

Also at noon, and also featuring Brahms, is “Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra” on WCLV. The Tragic Overture is paired with Respighi’s La boutique fantasque (“The Fantastic Toyshop”).

Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC / PERSONAL AD / BK PARTY:

A little bit about me: I enjoy long walks on the beach at sunset, and quiet days in classical music history — the kind when you can easily zero in on one or two musicians and give them their proper respect in the daily almanac.

Here’s one way to put May 12 in perspective: if all the important composers who were born on this date decided to celebrate their birthdays at the local Burger King — as we all were once inclined to do — the playpen would be so full of collisions and tears that at some point, each musician would need to be lifted into the air by mom or dad, receive a gentle pat on the back, and be taken home early.

Before arriving at that sad conclusion to the day, the chaotic party would include Czech composer Johann Baptist Wanhal (born 1739), Italian violinist and composer Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755), French composers Jules Massenet (1842) and Gabriel Fauré (1845), American composers Scott Johnson (1952) and Frank J. Oteri (1964), and Chinese American composer and guzheng player Wu Fei (1977).

Amidst plastic balls being thrown point-blank, crashes occurring halfway down the slide, and partly digested Kids Meals making their way onto the carpet, perhaps there would also be the potential for fascinating musical discussions to unfold.

Wu Fei and Viotti might get along as they go back and forth with their virtuosic playing and their own brands of improvisation — the Nashville-based musician showing off her distinct musical language (listen here) that combines Western classical and Chinese traditions with more idiosyncratic sounds of the present day, and the Italian demonstrating his tuneful, Classical-era style and reminiscing about his improv sessions with the pianist Hélène de Montgeroult. In fact, speaking of duos, why not play together? The guzheng, a Chinese plucked zither, can make an intriguing pairing with the violin, as evidenced by several videos on YouTube — here’s one.

Of course, it can be nice in a party setting when a few people already know each other, serving as a nucleus around which everyone else can begin making connections. One such pairing here would be Fauré and Massenet, who were both members of the Société Nationale de Musique, which promoted new French music.

Nevertheless, it’s unclear whether they would make for jovial company together. After all, Fauré replaced Massenet as professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire — Massenet had resigned from the position after being passed over for the school’s directorship, having apparently insisted on being given a lifetime appointment. I’m not suggesting any mean-spirited feelings between them, but maybe an ounce of awkwardness. Plus, their mutual respect is questionable: one biographer has written that Fauré considered Massenet’s more popular style of writing (one famous example here) to be “based on a generally cynical view of art.”

Finally, Wanhal might just be mystified by the contemporary trio of Fei (see above), Oteri (whose interests have included minimalism and microtonality, like here), and Johnson (known for sampling recorded speech and merging classical and popular music — one example here). But give them a few rounds of burgers and shakes, and some time together in the ball pit, and who knows?

by Daniel Hathaway

SUMMER TICKETS ON SALE:

ChamberFest Cleveland, Stars in the Classics, The Cleveland Orchestra, and Apollo’s Fire, have announced that their box offices are now open for summer al fresco reservations.

ChamberFest’s performances at The Grove Amphitheatre in Mayfield (pictured) and a Cleveland Heights Yard Concert between June 9-25 will be free, but reservations are required. The Festival Finale on June 26 at St. Paschal Baylon will be a ticketed event. You’ll also need tickets for Apollo’s Fire’s May 30-31 and July 10, 13 & 14 shows, for STARS’ June 10 & 11 Garden Concerts, and for The Cleveland Orchestra’s dozen concerts at Blossom from July 3 through September 5.

Tickets for shows on Ohio Light Opera’s reduced schedule in Wooster from July 10-23 will be available when the box office opens on June 1.

IN THE NEWS:

CityMusic Cleveland has released a new podcast featuring composer Amanda Harberg, who joins Eric Kisch and Jim Mehrling to discuss her work Lucas’s Garden. Pianist Donna Lee and clarinetist Daniel Gilbert join the conversation to preview works by Libby Larsen, Beethoven and Schubert, all of which will be performed on programs at the Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus on May 14 & 15.

Harpist Yolanda Kondonassis has a new, long-term project in the works. For Five Minutes for Earth®, she has commissioned fifteen composers to create works or soundscapes for harp lasting five minutes or less “that express a powerful experience inspired by Earth in one of its many conditions or atmospheres. FIVE MINUTES is also a metaphor for the urgent and compressed timeframe that remains for our global community to find and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”

The results will be released by Cleveland’s Azica Records in March of next year and premiere performances will take place in April, 2022. Composers (who are contributing their works free of charge) include Chen Yi, Jocelyn Chambers, Michael Daugherty, Daniel Dorff, Reena Esmail, Keith Fitch, Patrick Harlin, Stephen Hartke, Nathaniel Heyder, Aaron Jay Kernis, Hannah Lash, Philip Maneval, Máximo Diego Pujol, Gary Schocker, and Zhou Long. More information here.

Composer Tyshawn Sorey, featured last month on the Donald P. Pipino Concert Series at Youngstown State University, has been commissioned by the Houston Dacamera and Rothko Chapel to create a 30-minute work celebrating the 50th anniversary of the fourteen dark-hued canvases Mark Rothko created for the octagonal chapel that opened in 1971. The piece, to be performed by the Houston Chamber Choir next February, will feature performers who debuted Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel in 1972 (Rothko missed both the opening and the Feldman piece, having died in 1970).

ONLINE TODAY:

Apollo’s Fire releases its video Virtuosity today, the Dallas Symphony features its collaboration with members of the locked-out Met Opera Orchestra, the Church of the Covenant presents organist Matthew Dion and oboist Anne Pinkerton in a concert honoring the 30th anniversary of the death of Jean Langlais, a National Sawdust broadcast considers the future of performance, and the Cleveland Chamber Music Society hosts the Junction Trio (Stefan Jackiw, violin, Jay Campbell, cello, and Conrad Tao, piano) for an in-person concert at St. Pascal Bayon in Highland Heights that you can also watch remotely. See our Concert Listings for details.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1849, German composer Otto Nicolai died of a stroke at the age of 38, Russian composer Anatoly Liadov was born in St. Petersburg in 1855, American songsmith Irving Berlin was born (as Israel Belin) in Russia in 1888, American choreographer Martha Graham was born in Pittsburgh in 1894, African American composer William Grant Still was born in Mississippi in 1895 (some sources say 1898), and German composer Max Reger died in Leipzig in 1916 (of a heart attack at the age of 43).

To pick just a few tributes, let’s start with Berlin, whose 101 years on earth (and on Tin Pan Alley) produced a flood of songs that document the popular cultural life of America in the 20th century. Carnegie Hall celebrated his 100th birthday in May of 1998 with an amazing tribute featuring such luminaries as Walter Cronkite, Michael Feinstein, Isaac Stern, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Jerome Robbins, Garrison Keillor, Frank Sinatra — the list goes on. Watch here.

Baldwin Wallace voice professor JR Fralick joined pianist Nicole Keller in a laid-back performance of Berlin’s Slap That Bass on a Trinity Cathedral Brownbag Concert in March of 2019.

Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, subtitled “Ballet for Martha (Graham)” was originally written for a chamber ensemble of 13 players, which many think more appropriate for the music than the composer’s later version for full orchestra.

Here are two performances: one by the New York Classical Players led by Dongmin Kim in 2017, and another performed without a conductor by students at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in Houston during a 2015 chamber music marathon.

The full extent of William Grant Still’s oeuvre is still being explored by conductors and performers, including his numerous operas. Still is interviewed here on Voice of America before the premiere of his 1949 work, Troubled Island.

Cleveland Orchestra musicians recently recorded two of Still’s works at Plymouth Church. Watch here as principal oboe Frank Rosenwein and pianist Carolyn Gadiel Warner play his Incantation and Dance, followed by his Danzas de Panama in the version for string quartet.

Conductor John McLaughlin Williams leads the CIM Orchestra in Still’s “rousing and amiable” Festive Overture, which won first prize among 39 anonymously submitted pieces in a 1944 competition sponsored by the Cincinnati Symphony.

To end, we should mention the first performance on this date in 2000 of Colin Matthews’ Pluto — the Renewer, written to update Gustav Holst’s original list of planets. Wrong-headed, since the composer had astrological signs rather than heavenly spheres in mind when he wrote The Planets (he also left Earth out). Even though Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status in 2006, Matthews’ add-on piece may still be worth a listen. Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY IN THE NEWS:

Two announcements arrived this morning. In a livestream, the Cleveland Institute of Music named Carlos Kalmar (left) as Director of Orchestral and Conducting Programs and Principal Conductor. The Uruguayan-born maestro recently stepped down from his 18-year tenure as music director of the Oregon Symphony. He has also served as artistic director and principal conductor of the Grant Park Music Festival since 2000. Read more from CIM here.

Another piece of news that arrived was the creation of a new nonprofit arts alliance in Greater Cleveland, Assembly for the Arts. Set to launch in mid-June under the leadership of Jeremy V. Johnson (middle) — a Cleveland native who recently served as Executive Director of New Arts in New Jersey — the organization’s aim is to provide a unified voice, set regional goals, and represent shared priorities for the creative economy in Northeast Ohio. Read the press release here for details.

On a more somber note, last week brought news of the passing of Cleveland-based visual artist Michelangelo Lovelace (right), who died on April 26 at age 60 at his home in Cudell after battling pancreatic cancer.

It’s worth checking out his Q&A and video interview from MOCA Cleveland to get a sense of his personality, as well as obituaries from Cleveland.com and The New York Times to read about his life, struggles, and accomplishments — including a 2015 Mid-Career Prize from the Cleveland Arts Prize, and a 2018 showing of his work at the Fort Gansevoort gallery in Manhattan. Plus, both of those articles show a selection of his works, from his visually and emotionally complex depictions of low-income Black neighborhoods in Cleveland, to his intimate drawings of elderly patients he cared for as a nursing aide.

TODAY ON THE WEB:

CIM will share student performances of the Percussion Ensemble and three woodwind ensembles tonight at 7, 8, and 9:00. And at 7:30, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will present a “Composers in Focus” concert that centers around Joan Tower, featuring performances by violist Paul Neubauer, bassoonist Peter Kolkay, and the Calidore Quartet. Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

English tenor Richard Lewis was born on this date in 1914 in Manchester, followed exactly two years later by the birth of American composer Milton Babbitt in Philadelphia.

Though Lewis was particularly noted for his interpretations of the music of Handel — see Daniel Hathaway’s Diary entry last year — he also helped contemporary opera enter into the world through several premieres, including William Walton’s Troilus and Cressida, in which he sang the role of Troilus. Listen to a recording of Scenes from Troilus and Cressida here, where Lewis (who enters at the 4:30 mark) is joined by another very famous voice: that of soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf.

Babbitt may have been a contemporary of Walton, but their styles of composition are quite contrasting — though perhaps both composers are painted with too broad a brush. By the middle of Walton’s career, his music was considered conservative and Romantic (though he would come into fashion again late in his life), while Babbitt is best known for writing with intense, complex logic and structure.

On the other hand, as Allan Kozinn wrote in The New York Times following Babbitt’s passing in 2011, listeners “who simply sat back and listened, rather than trying to understand his harmonies and structural processes…often discovered works of great expressive variety.”

One subtle but powerful work of Babbitt’s is the 1976 Solo Requiem for soprano and two pianists. As the critic John Rockwell wrote in a review of its premiere, its texts “express the incomprehensibility and protestations of the living faced with the bereavement of death,” and its music “is appropriately fragmented and chill.” Listen to a recording by the musicians who gave that premiere — soprano Bethany Beardslee and pianists Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs — divided into parts one, two, and three.

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

WCLV’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra reliably offers the music of Johannes Brahms on weekdays at noon, and on his birthday today, the playlist includes an overture and selections from A German Requiem, his First Piano Concerto, and his Second Symphony.

Locally, at 7 pm tonight, the Baldwin Wallace Symphony Orchestra plays a pre-recorded concert including a Bach harpsichord concerto with Nicole Keller, and Oberlin’s Sacred Heart Concert series presents a live, in-person concert by violist Chris Gokelman with pianist Immanuel Mykyta-Chomsky (you can also watch online).

And follow the tendrils of the worldwide web to keep in touch with some of Cleveland’s favorite soloists and ensembles: So Percussion from the University of Washington, violinist Francesca dePasquale from Philadelphia, the Pavel Haas Quartet from Duke University, and Alisa Weilerstein from Washington Performing Arts. Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Ohio Light Opera has announced an abbreviated season in Wooster this summer. Because of the pandemic, audiences aren’t permitted in Freedlander Theatre, so performances of The Fantasticks and Trial by Jury will be presented in outdoor venues, and The Daring of Diane and Rare and Well Done will be streamed from the company’s empty theater. Click here to read more and here to view the complete schedule.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach met the Prussian king Frederick II in Potsdam while visiting his son, Carl Phillip Emanuel, and accepted the flute-playing monarch’s challenge of improvising a three-voice Ricercar on a theme that Frederick supplied. Back home in Leipzig, Bach the father turned that royal theme into A Musical Offering, a suite that included Ricercare for three and six voices, twelve canons — a number of them expressed as musical puzzles to be solved — and a trio sonata featuring Frederick’s instrument, the flute.

Click here to hear the entire collection conducted by Jordi Savall, with harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï, and here to listen to the Trio Sonata played by Cleveland Orchestra principal flute Joshua Smith, violinist Allison Edberg, gambist Ann Marie Morgan, and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour.

A version of the polyphonically dense six-voice Ricercar arranged by Anton Webern has been recorded by Christoph von Dohnányi and The Cleveland Orchestra, and Arseniy Gusuv tackled the piece on his semifinal round of Piano Cleveland’s Virtu(al)oso competition earlier this year. Watch that here.

Also on May 7, Italian composer Antonio Salieri died in Vienna in 1825. Highly regarded in his day, he counted Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Nepomuk Hummel among his students, and wrote many popular operas.

Though not perhaps the brightest musical light in 18th-century Vienna, Salieri has been the victim of a disinformation campaign begun by Russian author Alexander Pushkin with his 1831 “little tragedy,” Mozart and Salieri. Written to illustrate the sin of envy, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov made the story into an opera in which Mozart is poisoned by his mentor, and Peter Shaffer gave extra mileage to the tale in his 1979 play Amadeus. (Peter Schickele lampooned it in 1982 in P.D.Q. Bach’s Little Nightmare Music — excerpt here).

The music of Johannes Brahms, born on this date in 1833, is ubiquitous, but some pieces more than others. For his birthday today, let’s consider him in the same light as J.S. Bach — as a master contrapuntalist. His Geistliches Lied, Opus 30, is written as a double canon at the 9th — sopranos and tenors and altos and basses are paired and sing the same material one bar and nine pitches apart — yet the resulting music is unmistakably Brahmsian. Click here to hear the piece in its original form for chorus and organ, and here to compare it to Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s orchestration. In both cases, the composer has written one of the most striking “Amens” in Romantic music.

The music of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, born on May 7, 1840, also scarcely needs a plug, but we’ll celebrate with two significant recordings by The Cleveland Orchestra. His 1812 Overture, soon to appear (inexplicably) on July 4th concerts, was featured on the first commercial recording by The Cleveland Orchestra, captured in New York on January 23, 1924 under Nikolai Sokoloff. And his Serenade for Strings (composed at the same time as the 1812) was the first piece that members of the Orchestra recorded during an experimental return to Severance Hall on July 15, 2020.

Finally, just a tip of the hat to Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge, who died on this date in 2002, with two of his works. His 1953 Concierto Breve was recorded by Alicia de Larrocha with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid in 1999, and his opera El Gato con Botas (Puss in Boots), previewed at Cleveland’s Ohi in 2010 for a New York production, can be enjoyed here.

Montsalvastge’s Fantasia for Harp and Guitar is featured on Yolanda Kondonassis and Jason Vieaiux’s 2015 Azica recording Together. Their CIM students Grace Roepke and Maryam Hajialigol recorded the first movement in Mixon Hall in November, 2017.

by Mike Telin

STREAMED CONCERTS:

At 7:00 pm, The Cleveland Orchestra premieres In Focus Episode 10, “Style and Craft.” Vinay Parameswaran will lead Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge and principal oboe Frank Rosenwein and pianist Carolyn Gadiel Warner (pictured) are featured in Ravel’s Sonatine. Digital streaming premiere filmed April 8-10 at Severance Hall. Click here for details.

There’s plenty happening in other parts of the country — check our Concert Listings page for details.

NEWS: 

Earlier this week Juan Perez Floristan (Spain) was announced the winner of the 2021 Rubinstein Piano Competition. Second place went to Shiori Kuwahara from Japan, with third place going to Cunmo Yin from China.

As the first place winner, Floristan received a gold medal with a portrait of Rubinstein illustrated by Picasso, and a cash prize of $40,000. The pianist was also awarded Best Performance of an Israeli Piece ($3,000), Best Performance of a Beethoven Concerto ($ 5,000, awarded to mark the occasion of Beethoven’s 250th birthday), Best Chamber Music Performance ($6,000), and Audience Favourite ($3,000).

Applications for 2022 Cuyahoga Arts and Culture grants are being accepted.

The first step in the application process, the Eligibility Check, must be completed by Thursday, June 3, 2021 by 4:30 pm ET. All organizations seeking funding in 2022 must complete the Eligibility Check to be considered for funding. Click here for more information.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today we celebrate the births of three Americans who made their debuts on May 6:  pianist/composer Alfred Humphreys Pease in Cleveland, Ohio in 1838, composer George Perle in Bayonne, New Jersey in 1915, and composer/conductor Victoria Bond in Los Angeles, California in 1945.

Although Alfred Humphreys Pease showed an aptitude for music and drawing at an early age, his parents had other career goals in mind for their son, and encouraged him to focus on classics. At the age of sixteen Pease entered Kenyon College where his paintings and drawings caught the attention of a young German artist who convinced Pease’s parents to allow him to move to Berlin where, in addition to languages, he studied piano with Theodor Kullak, composition with Richard Wüerst and orchestration with Wilhen Wieprecht and later with Hans von Bülow.

After returning to the United States, Pease toured the country as a pianist and was praised for his brilliant technique, quality of tone and musical expression. As a composer, Pease wrote nearly 100 songs as well as orchestral works and a piano concerto. Sadly, Pease died of alcoholism in 1882 in St. Louis.

After graduating from DePaul University, George Perle served in the United States Army during World War II and later earned his doctorate at New York University in 1956. As a composer, Perle employed his own technique that he called “twelve-tone tonality” —  which is somewhat related to the  technique used by composers of the Second Viennese School. In 1968, along with Igor Stravinsky and Hans F. Redlich, Perle co-founded the Alban Berg Society. His work on that composer’s music included documenting the third act of Lulu.

After retiring from Queens College Perle  became a professor emeritus at the Aaron Copland School of Music and in 1986 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Fourth Wind Quintet as well as a MacArthur Fellowship. Perle also served a three-year appointment as composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Symphony, and authored several books including The Listening Composer. Click here to listen to the Dorian Wind Quintet’s performance of the fourth Wind Quintet, and pianist/composer Michael Brown performs Perle’s Toccata here.

Born into a musical family, Victoria Bond has long been a leading voice in classical music as a composer, conductor, lecturer, and artistic director of Cutting Edge Concerts. The first woman awarded a doctorate in orchestral conducting from the Juilliard School, her teachers included Ingolf Dahl and Roger Sessions (composition); William Vennard (voice); Jean Morel, James Conlon, Sixteen Ehrling, Leonard Slatkin, and Herbert Blomstedt (conducting).

In 1978 Bond became the  Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony and in 1986 was invited to conduct the Houston Symphony for the premiere of her work Ringing. She has served as artistic director of the Bel Canto Opera Company in New York, music director and conductor of the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and artistic director of the Southwest Virginia Opera, the Harrisburg Opera and the New Amsterdam Symphony. Her opera Mrs. President was premiered in 2012 in Anchorage, Alaska. Click here to visit her website and here to listen to Bond discuss her life in music.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

Trinity Cathedral’s Virtual Brownbag Concert today at noon is a “Brahms-Fest,” and also an organ-fest. Working from the Flentrop and Aeolian-Skinner instruments, Todd Wilson and Nicole Keller will present that composer’s eleven Chorale Preludes, Op. 122, via stream.

Oberlin Conservatory faculty violinist Francesca dePasquale will be featured at 6:00 in a concert from the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. The program begins with Mozart’s K. 360 Six Variations for violin and piano, then adds electronics to that combination with On the Blue Shore of Silence by Gity Razaz, Gloria Justen, and Sayo Kosugi. That piece, receiving its Philadelphia premiere, also includes visual art by Johanna Andruchovici.

Later this evening, at 7:30 pm, flutist Brandon Patrick George — a member of the Imani Winds and an Oberlin graduate — joins pianist Bryan Wagorn in a recital presented by 92nd St Y. The program includes music by Schubert, Carl Reinecke, Lili Boulanger, William Grant Still, and Valerie Coleman (who is also George’s predecessor in the flute seat of the Imani).

Also at 7:30, Piano Cleveland ramps up to this summer’s Cleveland International Piano Competition with a listening guide called Prelude to Piano, intended to “help enthusiasts of all levels not only understand classical music better, but learn what to listen for during the CIPC competition this summer.”

Finally, to help mark the festivities on the calendar today, the Celebrity Series of Boston presents the “Verónica Robles Cinco de Mayo Celebration” at 7:30 pm. Robles and her all-female mariachi band celebrate Mexico’s national holiday commemorating the country’s victory over the French at Puebla in 1862.

Watch that last one here, and find all the other links in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On May 5 of last year, we celebrated the anniversary of the opening of Carnegie Hall, which held a gala concert featuring a pretty decent musician as guest conductor: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

This time around the sun, we’ll focus on a couple of lesser-known but interesting figures born on this date in history.

First, when’s the last time you heard music for guitar ensemble? How about a 36-piece guitar ensemble? (That’s assuming I correctly counted all the little heads in a YouTube video to be unveiled in just a moment.) Well, that genre — as well as guitar solos, duos, and concertos — has inspired a great deal of productivity from Tokyo-born composer Reiko Arima, who turns 88 today.

And here’s the video I so tantalizingly hinted at earlier: a performance of Arima’s Rainy Blue by Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University Guitar Ensemble. Not only was the work written for them, but it served as a required piece for the Japan Guitar Association’s National Guitar Ensemble Competition in 2012.

If you haven’t heard much music before from a guitar ensemble of this size — I certainly haven’t — when the melody comes in, you’ll enjoy the surprise of how intense the timbre can be from a collective of what is generally a fairly gentle solo instrument.

Slightly more well-known on these shores but still underrecognized is composer and Madison, Wisconsin native Bunita Marcus, who turns 69 today. She was widely performed a few decades ago, writing commissions for such groups as the Bang On A Can All-Stars and the Kronos Quartet, and receiving awards from the National Endowment of the Arts and other organizations. She’s also famous for her close collaboration with Morton Feldman.

In an extensive interview with Frank J. Oteri for NewMusicBox, she opens up about being derailed from her career around 1989 or 1990, when she began to have flashbacks to sexual abuse, only to then struggle with an abusive psychiatrist when she sought treatment.

“In the course of trying to recover memories from my childhood, this man also tried to take over my life,” she told Oteri. “…And he refused to let me compose…I could not write music for 15 years. And I was at my prime. I was 40 years old.”

What saved her, she said, was John Cage. When she went to him and explained the flashbacks and her difficulty concentrating, he suggested writing short pieces:

He said, “What’s that they give horses to get them to do tricks?” I said, “Sugar cubes.” He said, “Yeah, give the composer in you some sugar cubes.” So I totally took this literally. I went out, bought a box of sugar cubes, and put them on a nice little plate on the piano. And I said, “O.K., simple: Cage. C-A-G-E. These are the only notes I’m going to use in this piece, and it’s all going to be quarter notes. It can’t be simpler.”

Naturally, the piece is full of counterpoint, something she loves. And though it took her years to finish — in part due to her emotions around Cage’s passing shortly after that meeting — one day during the Jewish High Holidays, she decided to finish it.

I started writing counterpoint that started breaking the rules…leaping to and from dissonance, leaping to perfect intervals, leaping to imperfect intervals, crossing voices, I mean everything you could do wrong, I was doing. It just got worse and worse and worse, until the piece ended. But for some reason, it ends beautifully. I guess I knew the rules well enough; I knew which ones to break. That’s all I can say.

Listen to the three-minute Sugar Cubes here in a performance by Marc Tritschler.

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

May 4 in classical music history marks some important beginnings that ultimately led to the modern grand piano, the phonograph record, and the international orchestral tour.

Italian craftsman Bartolomeo Cristofori, born in Padua on May 4, 1665, was responsible for inventing the first practical pianoforte, an instrument that looks just like a harpsichord until you raise the hood. Inside, instead of quills that pluck strings, a hammer mechanism strikes them and then retreats, allowing the performer to play soft, loud, or at any dynamic level in between. Thus Cristofori named his invention the “gravicembalo col piano e forte.”

Cristofori’s pianoforte mechanism was so sophisticated that no major improvements were made for the next 75 years, and the basic concept has persisted to today. You can see the 1720 model he built in Florence in the musical instrument collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum, read about it here, and listen to Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in d played on it here by Dongsok Shin.

A number of late 19th century inventors were involved in creating machines that would reproduce sound, but on May 4, 1887, Emile Berliner was the first to file a patent application (U.S. patent 372,786) for a device he called the gramophone. His machine “recorded a lateral pattern on lamp-blacked paper wrapped on a cylinder, similar to the phonautograph of Leon Scott, but with an oil applied to the surface mixed with lampblack to make a fatty ink better able to be engraved with a cutting stylus.” Read about it in The Early Gramophone.

That a lot remained to be done before Sony could develop a single disc capable of reproducing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is suggested in the first news story about Berliner’s invention. A two-page article in Electrical World dated November 12, 1887 described a device driven by a weight box and controlled by a paddle-wheeled governor that recorded four minutes of sound on an 11-inch glass disc at 30 rpm.”

And on May 4, 1920, The Symphony Society of New York — which eventually became the New York Philharmonic — played the opening concert of its debut European Tour at the Paris Opera, making it the first American ensemble to perform overseas.

The Symphony Society Bulletin of March 18, 1920 noted that the European Tour was being undertaken “by official invitation from the governments of France, Italy, Belgium and a committee of England’s foremost musicians.” The Orchestra embarked on the transatlantic crossing aboard the Rochambeau on April 22, beginning “a tour which is unprecedented and indicates in a remarkable manner the new position of America in the world of music.”

The May 4 performance, led by Walter Damrosch, included Berlioz’ Overture to Benvenuto Cellini, Beethoven’s Third Symphony, d’Indy’s Istar: variations symphonique, and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloe, “Fragment Symphonique.” The Orchestra’s European adventure lasted nearly two months, culminating in a June 20 matinee at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Like the Middle Eastern tour The Cleveland Orchestra was forced to cancel at the beginning of the pandemic, orchestral touring will eventually resume, however slowly. On this May 4th, it’s good to look back and recall that cultural exchanges have until recently been important tools of international diplomacy, and not merely expensive expressions of musical vanity.

NEWS BRIEFS:

Todd Wilson adds the title of Visiting Professor of Organ at the University of Michigan to his positions as Music Director at Trinity Cathedral and Head of the Organ Department at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Heights Arts invites its patrons to host a Random Acts of Art LIVE! event this summer at their home, businesses or community spaces. Born during the pandemic, “Random Acts of Art LIVE! (RAAL) brings local music talent directly to you in private yard concerts, music for patrons at your business, and in partnership with local community organizations. From classical and folk, to world music and jazz this series has something for everyone.” Contact Arleigh Savage at Heights Arts for more information on available ensembles and how to book your event.

HAPPENING TODAY:

The music publishers Boosey & Hawkes present a Zoom webinar about how opera is being reimagined as film. “When the pandemic hit, creators and producers learned to pivot from a traditionally live medium to visually dynamic, made-for-film productions of stage works with sets, soundtrack recording sessions, and directors.”

The Oberlin Guitar Ensemble presents a late afternoon virtual concert of music by Ponce, Britten, Giuliani and Coste.

And Tuesday Musical returns to Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall for an in-person concert by New York Philharmonic principal clarinet Anthony McGill and the Pacifica Quartet. You won’t find this one online.

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY ON THE WEB:

Les Délices finishes off the spring series for SalonEra tonight at 7:30 pm with “La Folia.” That’s something to celebrate, so fittingly, this will be a “party episode” featuring soprano soprano Sherezade Panthaki, countertenor Reginald Mobley, and lutenist Arash Noori, as well as a host of guests and contributing artists in music by Monteverdi, Corelli, Purcell, Marais, Boismortier, and others. Click here at start time. It’s free but a $10 donation is suggested.

ASIAN/PACIFIC AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH:

The history around this month’s celebrations is complicated, thanks in part to Congress.

In the late 1970s, several joint resolutions were introduced calling for an official weeklong recognition of the contributions of Asian and Pacific Americans to American society. What was agreed upon was that two historic dates would anchor the celebration in the fifth month of the year: May 7, 1843 brought the arrival of the first known Japanese immigrant to America, and May 10, 1869 marked the completion of North America’s first transcontinental railroad, built largely by Chinese immigrants.

Here’s where things get complicated: a few of those resolutions had the Heritage Week celebration lasting for ten days. One simply called for it to happen in early May. Another directed President Jimmy Carter to proclaim the week beginning on May 4, 1979 as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week.

The last one passed, and beginning that year and continuing for the next decade, Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Bush (H.W.) continued the tradition. It wasn’t until 1990 that the observance was extended throughout the full month of May, thanks to a proclamation by Bush. Two years later, it was made permanent: going forward, May would be Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.

What still shifts is the name. That’s because of something quite remarkable and, in a way, challenging inherent to this celebration: the vast diversity of cultures and histories represented by the term Asian American, let alone Pacific American. In 2009, President Obama named May as Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. And just a few days ago, President Biden proclaimed this month as Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month.

Still, many have stuck with the original name from the ‘90s, including the official government website. There you can find virtual exhibits — one honors veterans’ history, while another reflects on a Japanese-American internment camp through the lens of Ansel Adams’ photography — as well as classroom materials, and resources relevant to the fight against the rising tide of anti-Asian hate and violence.

Local events include a virtual edition of the Cleveland Asian Festival, which will go live on Saturday, May 22 at 10:30 am on YouTube, highlighting a diversity of foods, performances, and other elements of culture and tradition.

And Case Western Reserve University will celebrate Asian, Pacific Islander, Desi, and Asian American heritage with a series of events in the cultural realm (film, literature, poetry), as well as discussions on issues related to community, human rights, and bystander intervention in harassment.

by Daniel Hathaway

IT’S MAYDAY: 

A variety of traditions, both religious and secular, are associated with the first day of May in most cultures that have slogged through months of winter and are more than ready to celebrate the return of balmy breezes and the reflowering of the earth.

One tradition that’s persisted for over 500 years in England is the May Day morning singing of hymns and madrigals by the Magdalen College Choir from its iconic tower in Oxford (pictured here in a painting by William Homan Hunt).

A brief video puts the celebration in context among appearances by May Day Morris Men and a pagan band, and the Choir’s own video from 2016 documents the event from the perspective of the singers. COVID-19 forced the ceremony to go virtual in 2020, but  this news item from the College tells how the Choir found an ingenious solution for May 1, 2021.

Mayday trivia:

In a delayed response to the adoption in 1899 of May 1 as International Workers Day by the socialists and communists of the Second International, the Vatican created a second religious holiday in 1955 in honor of St. Joseph the Worker.

And how did “Mayday” become an international distress call? Frederick Mockford, a radio officer at London’s Croydon Airport introduced the idea in 1923 because it sounded like the French phrase m’aider (help me).

HAPPENING TODAY:

Out-of-doors events on Saturday include the YSU Wind Ensemble and Horn Choir on Harrison Commons in Youngstown. On Sunday, enjoy al fresco performances by the Oberlin Gospel Ensemble, and the Oberlin Chamber Singers.

One local in-person performance is on the docket: Sunday’s concert by the Dana Ensemble at the DeYor PAC in Youngstown, featuring orchestral reductions by the Schoenberg circle and the premiere of a new work by Jamie Wilding.

Everything else remains online. On Saturday, organist Jan Kraybill in Akron, the Dana Piano Trio, Oberlin Large Ensembles (including a premiere by student composer Natsumi Osborne), CWRU jazz ensembles, and broadcasts from the Detroit Symphony, 92nd Street Y, Friends of Ringwood Chamber Music (Jasper and Jupiter Quartet, and Tulsa Opera (commemorating the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre. On Sunday, tune in for the Callisto Quartet from Caramoor, low instruments from the Louisiana Philharmonic, BW Men’s Chorus, Russian Duo from Music from the Western Reserve, and an all-Scriabin piano recital from Oberlin by Jiaqing Luo.

Details in our Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

In the interest of highlighting some lesser-known figures whose anniversaries pop up on this weekend’s calendar, we’ll acknowledge in passing the demise of Antonín Dvořák on May 1, 1904 (for whom a national day of mourning was declared), Giacomo Meyerbeer (who died with his boots on during rehearsals for his opera, L’Africane on May 2, 1864), and Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (who died in Moscow on May 1, 1978), the latter with a performance he led in 1972 of his Piano Concerto in D-flat with Nikolai Petrov at the keyboard — a piece that we’d like to hear programmed more frequently).

We’ll also light candles for the birthdays of English composer Alan Rawsthorne and Austrian-American opera director Kurt Adler, both on May 2, 1905, as well as for Belgian conductor Philippe Herreweghe in 1947, and Russian conductor Valery Gergiev in 1953.

In more detail, let’s toast the birth anniversaries of two composers best known for their church compositions — an important but often overlooked stream in the great ocean of music.

Leo Sowerby, born on May 1, 1895 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, figured prominently in the musical life of Chicago, where his works appeared regularly on Chicago Symphony programs, but is remembered today mostly for the music he wrote for St. James’ Church (later Cathedral) where he served as organist and choirmaster from  1927. In 1962, he retired and became founding director of the College of Church Musicians at Washington Cathedral, a position he held until 1968, when he died at Port Clinton, Ohio, enroute to Camp Wa-Li-Ro in Put-in-Bay, the summer choir camp where he had taught for many years.

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