by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

On Thursday, The Cleveland Orchestra sent out a video message from President and CEO André Gremillet updating patrons on its plans for the summer and beyond (much is still up in the air), and announced “Cleveland Orchestra Classics,” a new summer series of full-length concert rebroadcasts. The Orchestra also noted the release of the latest podcast in its “On a Personal Note” Series. In “Resolution,” second clarinet Robert Woolfrey talks about finding peace in Brahms’s German Requiem and its power to connect the past with the present.

The Vienna Philharmonic is resuming public concerts with limited audiences present in the Musikverein. Read an article here.

ON THE WEB TODAY:

If you tuned in to the Stockholm Symphony’s live stream on Wednesday (with no audience present), you may be interested in hearing what the orchestra’s CEO and artistic director, Stefan Forsberg, has to say about the Swedish ensemble’s policies during the pandemic. He speaks with Susan Elliot on Musical America’s “One to One: Keeping the orchestra playing”. Listen here.

Today’s scheduled streams of local interest include Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra (Bruckner, Mozart, and Brahms with Julia Fischer), a house concert with pianist Spencer Myer ($), an encore screening of the MET Opera’s recent At-Home Gala featuring 40 artists around the world, and an episode in the Ohio Light Opera’s Virtual Summer Festival where OLO veterans and current company members trade messages and songs. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1864, composer Richard Strauss was born in Munich. One of his last works was the Oboe Concerto, inspired by Pittsburgh Symphony principal oboe John de Lancie (later principal in Philadelphia), who met the composer at the end of World War II in Garimsch-Partenkirchen while serving in the U.S. Army.

Principal Frank Rosenwein played the work with Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra in September 2012, and again with CityMusic Cleveland in December, 2018. Watch a video here of the latter performance at St. Noel Church in Willoughby, conducted by Stefan Willich, and read a preview article by Jarrett Hoffman here.

Today would have marked the beginning of ChamberFest Cleveland’s 2020 series, now postponed until 2021. Since that coincides with Strauss’s birthday, it seems appropriate to suggest watching a video of his Metamorphosen for strings from ChamberFest’s June 27, 2016 concert at Chagrin Falls Methodist Church. The musicians are Noah Bendix-Balgley and Itamar Zorman, violins, Yura Lee and Teng Li, violas, Julie Albers and Timotheos Petrin, cellos, and Nathan Farrington, bass. (You can also hear the performance on July 26 as part of the nine archived ChamberFest concerts to be broadcast this summer by WCLV, 104.9 Ideastream. See the complete schedule here). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

English composer Frederick Delius died on this date in 1934 in Grez-sur-Loing, near Paris, blind and paralyzed by syphilis. His music, a London Times critic wrote, “belongs to no school, follows no tradition and is like no other composer in the form, content or style of his music,” although other commentators have noted the influence of Debussy, Wagner and African American music — which Delius heard in England by the touring Fisk Jubilee Singers and on Florida plantations where he was sent by his father to manage a citrus grove.

Cleveland hasn’t heard much of Delius’ music live, though British conductors like Bramwell Tovey and Andrew Davis have brought his music along to their Cleveland Orchestra appearances, and a smattering of his smaller pieces have been played by university and avocational orchestras. Here’s a tiny piece, the “Serenade” from Delius’ incidental music to the play Hassan with violinist Rafel Druian and the Cleveland Sinfonietta, led by Louis Lane. And here’s a seasonally appropriate work, Song for Summer, performed by the London Symphony under Sir John Barbirolli (you can follow along with the score).

And on June 10, 1911, harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick was born in Leominster, Massachusetts. One of the early champions of the instrument, he gave his first recital while studying art history at Harvard in 1930, and went on to work with Nadia Boulanger and Wanda Landowska in Paris. While serving as a professor at Yale from 1940-1976, he wrote a biography of Domenico Scarlatti and devised a chronology of his harpsichord works, which are identified by their “K” numbers. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY ON THE WEB:

The new daily Wigmore Hall live streams from London continue with a lunchtime recital by violinist Hyeyoon Park and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor (no audience present, and available on-demand), Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra features a Mozart piano concerto with Leif Ove Andsnes, a live feed from Carnegie Hall is hosted by pianist Emanuel Ax, a conversation from the Kennedy Center is emceed by soprano Renée Fleming, and the MET Opera’s nightly HD re-broadcast is a double bill of Tchaikovsky and Bartók. Details in the Concert Listings.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Danish composer Carl Nielsen was born on this date in 1865 in Norre-Lyndelse. The BBC “Workshop” Series chronicled his life and career in the 1970s in Espansiva: a Portrait, leading one viewer to write, “The BBC used to do this kind of thing very well back in the day, and since there weren’t many channels to choose from, many people had to learn new things despite themselves.”

Watch that documentary here, and enjoy a memorized and choreographed performance of his woodwind quintet by the Denmark-based Carion Quintet (who played on the Latvian Concert Association series in Cleveland in February). And here’s a video of his Flute Concerto from a CIM Master’s Degree recital in November, 2018. Moisés López-Ruiz is the soloist, and Yohan Kwon conducts the CIM Orchestra. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

NEWS BRIEFS:

ChamberFest Cleveland and WCLV are collaborating on a series of broadcasts featuring performances from ChamberFest’s 2012-2019 seasons, including three Wednesday programs on WCLV’s Ovations Series (June 24, August 5 and August 12), and a series of Sunday evening programs of highlights from concerts, many being broadcast for the first time. See tomorrow’s edition for a detailed schedule.

Oberlin Conservatory has announced a virtual memorial service for the late David Boe, Professor of Organ and former Dean of the Conservatory. The event on June 14 at 4:00 pm will be live streamed from Fairchild Chapel. Details here.

Today is the deadline for registration for the online Oberlin Summer Organ Academy 2020, which includes Zoom lessons, organ demos, harpsichord and clavichord demos, classes on organ design and constructions, organ literature, sacred music, and a live-streamed faculty concert. The Academy is accepting all levels of instruction, ages middle school and up (adults too). Information here.

In response to recent events, on New Music Box, Will Robin asks the question, “How can Artists Respond to Injustice?” and collects thoughts from seven musicians. Read the article here.

[Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE TODAY:

Who were those masked men? Classical guitarists Jason Vieaux and Colin Davin rehearse a duet they’ll play at the end of their live-streamed concert, which starts at 2:00 pm on Saturday. This would have been the weekend of the Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival on which Vieaux and Davin are normally featured performers. Click here to purchase $10 tickets and follow the link to their real-time performances in the showroom of Guitars International.

Festival artistic director Armin Kelly has also posted a series of videos of performances by Czech classical guitarist Petra Poláčková, “a particularly popular regular at our Festival who was scheduled to join us once again this June. These videos were shot within the last fourteen months at various times and underwritten by my company, Guitars International.” Watch the performances here.

Check our Concert Listings for today’s events: a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic Octet, the MET’s HD rebroadcast of Verdi’s Otello, and The Cleveland Orchestra’s rebroadcast of Haydn and Shostakovich from January 2005. On Sunday, highlights include the Florida Grand Opera’s Nabucco, a George Szell birthday performance of Beethoven’s  Missa Solemnis, Sitdown with tenor Lawrence Brownlee, and the MET Opera’s Thaïs. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE TODAY:

Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra will live stream a performance today at 2:15 pm EDT from its customary venue, but the Concertgebouw has reconfigured its floor area so the musicians can perform with the recommended physical distancing — and without an audience present. Watch a clip from a rehearsal of Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 under Gustavo Gimeno here, and click here at concert time for the life stream. [Note: the information we received from another listing was incorrect. This concert actually takes place on Friday, June 5 at 2:15. We regret the error.]

Today at 1:00 pm on IDAGIOLive, baritone Thomas Hampson hosts a conversation with clarinetist Anthony McGill, and soprano Julia Bullock, “The Arts + Artists Answer Racial Unrest: Enough is Enough.” Hampson says “We will talk about race relations in the US and beyond, and what we in the arts world can do to inspire meaningful change. Click here at start time.

Tonight at 7:30 pm, the latest episode of Oberlin Stage Left features the Oberlin Conservatory’s TIMARA Program (Technology in Music and Related Arts), which is marking its 50th anniversary. Professors Peter Swendsen, Tom Lopez, and Aurie Hsu will do a show-and-tell about the program and talk about combining electroacoustic composition with dance. Watch here. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

REMEMBERING FLORENCE PRICE:

On this date in 1953, African American composer Florence Price died in Chicago at the age of 69, leaving behind a legacy of some 300 works. Dozens of her scores escaped destruction when they were discovered in 2009 in an abandoned house in St. Anne, IL.

Born in 1887, Price grew up as Florence Beatrice Smith in the integrated city of Little Rock, Arkansas, just a few houses away from William Grant Still. She attended the New England Conservatory in Boston, originally enrolling as a piano and organ major, but she later convinced conservatory director George Whitefield Chadwick to take her on as a composition student.

Returning to Little Rock, she married attorney Thomas J. Price in 1912, and after racial tensions flared up in her hometown, moved to Chicago with her husband and two daughters in 1927. There, she won the Wanamaker Competition for her first symphony, which was debuted by Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony in 1933 on a concert of music by black composers during the World’s Fair.

Price’s life and career have been captured in The Caged Bird, a 57-minute documentary produced in 2015 by the University of Arkansas. “Price’s remarkable achievements during the racist ‘Jim Crow’ era were a testament to her gifts. This is the inspiring story of one woman’s triumph over prejudice and preconceptions.” Watch a 15-minute excerpt here (a DVD is available for purchase). [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

AFTER A WEEKEND OF VIOLENCE — PART TWO:

Continuing yesterday’s theme, and mindful of the challenge to the music industry by the organizers of Blackout Tuesday to set aside normal work today “for an honest, reflective, and productive conversation about what actions we need to collectively take to support the Black, community,” we can think of no more eloquent words to recommend than those of Wynton Marsalis in his long Facebook post from May 30.

“This is my response to injustice in our country and the world across the last forty years,” he writes at the end, sharing album covers of his compositions that draw on African American music and stories. Listen here to his 1997 oratorio Blood on the Fields, that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

We will resume posting and send our weekly newsletter on Wednesday.