by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

9:00 am & 2:00 pm — Cooper International Piano Competition. Semifinals: Day 1, Sessions 4 & 5. Contestants perform 40-minute recitals. Warner Concert Hall, Oberlin Conservatory. Announcement of the six who will advance to Tuesday’s Concerto Rounds follows at 6 pm.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Conductor Roger Norrington, 91

In an obituary published by The Guardian on Saturday, Tom Service writes, “Norrington (pictured) remains still the maverick presence that classical music needs. His mission wasn’t only to make us hear the repertoire we thought we knew through the prism of the techniques and playing styles of its time, rather than the ossifications of later traditions. He was also an irresistible firebrand in performance, whose energy wasn’t only about inspiring his performers to get closer to the music they were playing, it was also an invitation to his audiences that their listening should be involved too.” Andrew Clements recommends five essential Norrington recordings here.

Cleveland Chamber Choir has announced the four programs for its 11th season, including two performances at Trinity Cathedral, where the professional choir is in residence. Details here.

Les Délices has released details of its 2025-2026 season, “Metamorphosis.” Read a press release here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

by Jarrett Hoffman

One virtuoso and two inventions arrive on the shores of our almanac today. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

Ohio Light Opera has five of its six summer shows running at The College of Wooster, The Cleveland Orchestra welcomes conductor Petr Popelka and violinist Veronika Eberle to Blossom, Young violinists begin the semifinal rounds of the Cooper Competition at Oberlin, Piano Cleveland presents The 5 Browns in Playhouse Square, and Kent Blossom Music Festival schedules its annual Young Artist Concert Series.

Check our Concert Listings for details.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

July is a bit snoozy for anniversaries, but on this date in 1752, German-British composer and conductor John Christopher Pepusch died at the age of 85 in London. One of the founders of what eventually became the Academy of Ancient Music, Pepusch was active in London during the era of Handel. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

2:00 pm – Ohio Light Opera. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. Freedlander Theatre at the College of Wooster.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

We have two anniversaries to mark today. The first is that of Swiss American composer Ernest Bloch (pictured), who died on this date in 1959 in Portland, Oregon. Bloch served as founding director of the Cleveland Institute of Music from 1920-1925 before moving on to the San Francisco Conservatory. After a hiatus back in Switzerland, he helped found the Music Academy of the West, and taught in the summers at the University of California, Berkeley. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1789, Parisians stormed the infamous Bastille prison, liberating seven political prisoners as well as its cache of arms and munitions, creating what has become France’s Independence Day.

Six years later, the revolutionary song La Marseillaise was adopted as the French national anthem. Claude-Benigne Balbastre, a famous Parisian organist of the time, wrote a set of variations on the tune that might be considered the equivalent of Charles Ives’ playful Variations on ‘America’. 

Balbastre, who had served as organist of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Royal Chapel and taught keyboard lessons to Marie Antoinette, somehow kept his head on his shoulders during the political upheaval of the Revolution. Click here to enjoy his La Marche des Marseillois et l’air “Ça ira” performed by Michel Chapuis on the organ at the church of St-Roch, where Balbastre played to great popular acclaim.

As Charles Burney reported, Balbastre introduced into his improvisations “minuets, fugues, imitations, and every species of music, even to hunting pieces and jigs, without surprising or offending the congregation.”

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:

FRIDAY: Ohio Light Opera (2 pm, Brigadoon in Wooster)  | Stars in the Classics (6:30, A Summer Garden Concert in Orange | Piano Cleveland (6:30, Forte Fridays in Westlake | Chagrin Arts Blind Injustice (7:30 in Playhouse Square, sold out. Pictured: Brian Keith Johnson, Tim Culver & Marian Vogel).

SATURDAY: Athena String Quartet (12 Noon in Cain Park) | Ohio Light Opera (2 pm, Carousel in Wooster) | Cleveland Silent Film Festival (His People, 1925 with live score at Main Cleveland Public Library) | The Cleveland Opera (4 pm arias and duets at Darl Center in Cleveland) | The Cleveland Orchestra (7 pm Carmina Burana at Blossom) | Ohio Light Opera (7:30 Tip-toes in Wooster) | Chagrin Arts (7:30 Blind Injustice in Playhouse Square).

SUNDAY: Ohio Light Opera (2 pm, Brigadoon in Wooster) | Chagrin Arts (3 pm, Blind Injustice in Playhouse Square) | The Cleveland Opera (4 pm arias and duets at St Cyprian in Perry) | Stars in the Classics (4 pm, A Summer Garden Concert in Orange | Music at Bath (5 pm Hunter Skeens and the Forerunners. Original Bluegrass at The Bath Church).

For details visit our Concert Listings.

WEEKEND ALMANAC:

By Jarrett Hoffman

A 1,088-page book published a few years back is a timely — if time-intensive — way to celebrate lyricist, librettist, and musical theater icon Oscar Hammerstein II, who was born on July 13, 1895 in New York City. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

2:00 pm – Ohio Light Opera. George and Ira Gershwin’s Tip-Toes. Freedlander Theatre at The College of Wooster.

6:30 pm – Canton Symphony Summer Serenades presents a Brass Quintet at Foltz Community Center, East Canton.

7:00 pm – The Cleveland Orchestra: Summers at Severance. Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture and Violin Concerto No. 3 with Marie Jacquot, conductor, and Randall Goosby, violin (pictured), and Richard Strauss’s Symphony in F minor (Cleveland Orchestra premiere). Mandel Concert Hall at Severance Music Center.

9:00 pm — Live Music at The Happy Dog. Neal Todten, a New Orleans-based composer & keyboardist, will perform his organ score for the film House of Direction, Jacob Kirkwood and Buck McDaniel will present co-composed electroacoustic works, and Andrew Elaban will open the evening with an ambient electronic set.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On July 10, 1835, Polish violin virtuoso and composer Henryk Wieniawski was born in Lubin, Poland. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

2:00 pm – Ohio Light Opera. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. Freedlander Theatre, College of Wooster.

7:00 pm – Kent Blossom Music Festival. Santiago Cañón-Valencia, cello (pictured), and Jee-Won Oh, piano. Ludwig Recital Hall, Kent State University.

7:30 pm – City Stages. Yeison Landero, accordion, at Transformer Station.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was born on this date in 1879 in Bologna. A master orchestrator who insisted that song should be the “original and immortal element” in Italian music, he’s best known for his Roman tone poems. Watch a documentary, A Dream of Italy here, and listen to his infrequently-performed suite Vetrate di Chiesa (“Church Windows”) here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPENING TODAY:

At 2 pm, Ohio Light Opera continues its run of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience, with Thomas Valenti singing the role of the fleshly poet Reginald Bunthorne, and Spencer Reese the role of the idyllic poet Archibald Grosvenor. Maggie Lanthorne and her cello star in a show-stopping performance of Silver is the Raven Hair, and Valenti and Reese deliver a warp-speed version of the patter song “When I go out of door.”

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On July 8, 1939, Spanish composer Fernando Sor died in Paris. Classical guitarist Ana Vidovic performed his Introduction and Variations on a Theme of Mozart on the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society series in October, 2015, and revisited the series in the fall of 2018. Click here to watch her performance of the Mozart Variations in Germany in 2019. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

There’s nothing scheduled in the concert calendar today, but plenty of comings and goings in classical music history to memorialize.

Composer and conductor Gustav Mahler (caricatured) was born on this date in Kalischt, Bohemia. Instead of remembering him with one of his enormous works, why not watch cellist Oliver Herbert and pianist Teddy Abrams play Abrams’ lovely arrangement of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 at WQXR New York’s Greene Space on June 3, 2019.

Conductor, composer, and double bass virtuoso Giovanni Bottesini left the world on this date in 1889. He took up the instrument that made him famous in order to win a scholarship to the Milan Conservatory, later endearing himself to opera patrons by playing fantasies on opera tunes from the stage at intermission of shows he conducted. [Read more…]

The Daily Diary will resume on Monday.