by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

On this date in 1842, composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan was born in London. As the musical half of the Gilbert & Sullivan team, he joined librettist William Schwenk Gilbert in skewering many elements of British society in fourteen comic operas produced by Sir Richard D’Oyly Carte — many of them at London’s Savoy Theater. As a good Victorian, he also wrote oratorios and church music (most of that forgettable, including the triumphalist hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” and the hyper-sentimental The Lost Chord).

Gilbert and Sullivan got skewered themselves by British comedienne Anna Russell in her sketch, “How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera,” captured along with other famous parodies during her live performance at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1984. Watch here, or listen just to that individual sketch here.

Also on today’s date in 1949, British conductor and composer Jane Glover was born in Helmsley, England. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Celebrate the birthday of French composer Gabriel Fauré, born on this date in 1845, with his Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano in d, Op. 120. Click here to watch ChamberFest Cleveland players Franklin Cohen, clarinet, Oliver Herbert, cello, and Andrius Žlabys, piano in a performance at Harkness Chapel at CWRU in June, 2017.

The Cleveland Orchestra shares its “Mindful Music Moments” with over 20,000 students in more than 50 schools in Northeast Ohio, providing a way to “start each day with calm and focus.” Here’s such a moment, an excerpt from Má Vlast by Bohemian composer Bedřich Smetana, who died on this date in 1884. And click here to listen to a 1970 performance of the entire “Moldau” movement by the Orchestra under George Szell. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ON THE WEB AND THE AIRWAVES TODAY:

WCLV’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra features hornist Richard King, an episode of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s Mahler Festival from Amsterdam presents the Fourth Symphony led by Iván Fischer, a piano trio from CIM’s archives plays Shostakovich, pianist Jeremy Denk talks about “How to Think Like Bach” from The Greene Space, and the nightly episode from the MET Opera will be Massenet’s Werther. Details in the Concert Listings.

TODAY’S FEATURED VIDEOS:

In lieu of this year’s cancelled Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival, director Armin Kelly is offering nine videos featuring Czech classical guitarist Petra Poláčková, “a particularly popular regular at our Festival who was scheduled to join us once again this June. [Read more…]

by Daniel Hathaway

ON THE WEB AND THE AIRWAVES THIS WEEKEND:

Reaching into recent and earlier archives, WCLV’s Cleveland Orchestra on the Radio features Bruckner’s 7th Symphony under Franz Welser-Möst on Saturday, and Weber, Mozart, and Beethoven led by George Szell on Sunday. The MET Opera changes things up on Saturday with The Opera House, a 2017 feature-length documentary about the 1966 creation of the New Met in Lincoln Center, then returns to opera on Sunday with “Cav and Pag.” Also on Sunday, violinist Edwin Huizinga and guitarist William Coulter, who perform together as Fire and Grace, offer folk and Baroque for Mother’s Day, and in the latest episode of Oberlin Stage Left, the Oberlin Orchestra plays Berlioz’ Roman Carnival Overture and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in Finney Chapel in advance of its 2016 appearance at Chicago’s Symphony Center. And, just announced for Sunday, Puccini’s Turandot featuring soprano Othalie Graham is the subject of the Detroit Symphony’s latest watch party. See our Concert Listings for details.htt

[Read more…]

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…]