by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE & ON THE AIRWAVES TODAY:

Today’s local streaming events include

• the end result of a Baldwin Wallace Vocal Performance Class Capstone Project — a 30-minute version of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel performed in English, with interactive artwork by students pre-K through Grade 5

• Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra on WCLV

• and a CIM virtual concert featuring its New Music Ensemble in a performance of Keith Fitch’s Ruthless Voicings.

Tonight’s HD Archive stream from the MET Opera is a viewers’ choice: Puccini’s La Bohème from 1977 featuring Renata Scotto and Luciano Pavarotti. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

UPDATES FROM OBERLIN & APOLLO’S FIRE:

News is coming in about Oberlin’s summer programs. BPI, the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, will be held online from June 22-28, focusing on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and will offer three levels of access — one of them free. See details here. The Organ Academy, designed for students middle school and up, will also be held online from June 21-16 (go here for details). The Flute Academy, Hinton Bass Institute, Piano Festival, Sonic Arts Workshop, Trumpet Workshop, and Vocal Academy are cancelled. Credo Chamber Music, a guest event, will be held online (details here).

In its first announcement about the 2020-2021 subscription season, Apollo’s Fire is anticipating adjustments to future concerts due to the pandemic. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this day in 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the executive order that created the Works Progress Administration or WPA, which along with other federal programs, gave temporary assistance in the form of jobs to out-of-work Americans during the Great Depression.

Later that year, Nikolai Sokoloff, who had founded The Cleveland Orchestra along with Adella Prentiss Hugues and conducted the ensemble from 1918-1932, was put in charge of the Federal Music Project, which supported unemployed musicians, composers, opera projects, and orchestras in Cleveland and elsewhere. Sokoloff was soon criticized for favoring Eurocentric classical music — the focus of the project widened in 1936 when Charles Seeger was appointed assistant director. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO!

NOT HAPPENING TODAY, BUT…

The final event in this season’s Cleveland Chamber Music Society series would have taken place this evening at the Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center at Case Western Reserve University. Absent the music, it’s a good time to revisit the origins of the Maltz, originally completed in 1924 as the second home of The Temple-Tifereth Israel congregation. The Maltz staff has put together a “blast from the past” with photos of the original construction, followed by a second retrospective featuring images of the building’s recent transformation into a performing arts center.  [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On May 4, 1665, Italian harpsichord builder Bartolomeo Cristofori was born in Padua. During his career, he would invent the first practical pianoforte, launching a family of instruments whose strings were struck with hammers rather than plucked, earning them their “soft-loud” name. His first model, crafted in 1720 in Florence, is still on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art — and during the closure of the collection, can be viewed online here.

Oberlin Conservatory professors David Breitman and Peter Takács devised their course Time Travel for Pianists to introduce their students to the history of the piano, using historic and modern instruments from Oberlin’s rich collection. Watch a 2012 video where they explain what they had in mind and students offer their insights into what they learned from older instruments that inform their performances on modern Steinways. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE & ON THE AIRWAVES THIS WEEKEND:

Although the weather is becoming increasingly springlike, a lot of us will still be spending time indoors this weekend. Here’s a selection of scheduled online attractions, some of which will remind us of events that had to be cancelled.

Apollo’s Fire was to have concluded its season this weekend with “Virtuoso Fireworks.” In lieu of those life performances, Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra has posted the latest in its “Music For the Soul” series, featuring Bach’s Fourth and Fifth Brandenburg Concertos in a 2015 performance at the Tanglewood Festival, and arias from Handel’s Alcina and Giulio Cesare sung by coloratura soprano Amanda Forstythe at Cleveland concerts, also in 2015. Click here to follow links to the video and program notes. [Read more…]