by Daniel Hathaway
In place of today’s Diary, on the official observance of Independence Day let’s celebrate the return of live performances by The Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom in two photos that vividly tell a before-and-after story. No. 2 is part of a set that the Orchestra’s official photographer Roger Mastroianni posted to his Facebook page over the weekend.
by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND:
The Cleveland Orchestra returns to the stage this weekend at Blossom for identical Independence Day concerts on Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 pm. Led by Brett Mitchell, the all-American program features Michelle Cann in Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement, Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, Mary D. Watkins’ Soul of Remembrance, Adolphus Hailstork’s An American Fanfare, and Aaron Copland’s Suite from Appalachian Spring.
As one member of the wind section posted on Facebook yesterday, “After 477 days apart, it is an incredible honor to be making music with The Cleveland Orchestra again!” Read a preview article here, and an interview with Michelle Cann here.
Americana is also on the agenda for Sunday’s 4:30 pm Encore Chamber Music Institute concert in Gates Mills. Copland’s Appalachian Spring will be featured, along with a bluegrass set by Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper. Read a preview article here.
Also, check out special online events from the Oregon Bach Festival (“Phenomenal Women Part 1”), London’s Voces8 (“A wide-ranging recital connecting natural and spiritual regeneration, recognizing loss, beauty, love and joy”), and pianist Min Kwon (“who has commissioned more than 70 composers including Terry Riley, Tania León, Nico Muhly, George Lewis, and more to each write a variation on America the Beautiful”). Details in our Concert Listings.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
On July 3, 1854, Czech/Moravian composer Leoš Janáček was born in Hukvaldy. Now seems a good time to recall one of his most remarkable works, the Sinfonietta, which was performed by Franz Welser-Möst and The Cleveland Orchestra on January 10 of 2020. That was just weeks before the pandemic closed live Severance Hall concerts down and effectively banished wind players from the world’s concert halls.
I wrote about that evening in a review, and Roger Mastroianni captured the moment in a photo. Look at all those extra brass players!
by Daniel Hathaway
HAPPENING TODAY:
Live events today include a noontime Independence Day weekend carillon concert in University Circle by George Leggiero, and an Encore Chamber Music Institute Friday Classics concert, “Sparked by Albert” (Einstein) featuring violinist Jinjoo Cho and cellist Clive Greensmith.
Online, flutist and composer Hong-Da Chin (pictured) plays original works on Chinese instruments in a concert sponsored by No Exit, and Nicole Keller makes an appearance on the American Guild of Organists’ Organfest 2021, playing the new Muller/Aeolian-Skinner/Skinner instrument in Trinity Cathedral and the new Paul Fritts organ in First Lutheran, Lorain.
Details in our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEFS:
On the latest Crain’s Cleveland’s Business Landscape podcast, Cleveland Orchestra CEO André Gremillet talks with Dan Poletta about the return of The Cleveland Orchestra.
Dutch composer Louis Andriessen died in a care home in North Holland on Thursday, July 1 at the age of 82. In an NPR story, Tom Huizenga wrote, “Celebrated for his eclecticism, Andriessen devised his own bold brand of minimalist-influenced music. He embraced the pulsating repetitions of his contemporaries Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but also wove elements derived from Igor Stravinsky’s music, big band jazz, popular styles and the rigid tenets of serialism into his compositions.” [Read more…]
by Mike Telin
TODAY’S EVENTS:
Although our concert calendar is void of performances today, there are plenty taking place during the long Fourth of July weekend. Visit our Concert Listings page here.
IN THE NEWS:
Season tickets go on sale today for the four concerts in the Kent Blossom Music Festival Faculty Series, featuring Kulas Visiting Artists Paul and Helen Huang (pictured), Demarre McGill, and Rodolfo Leone, plus the Miami String Quartet and members of The Cleveland Orchestra. This season’s concerts are offered in a hybrid format: in-person in Ludwig Concert Hall (limited to 200 guests), and by live stream. Read a preview here.
A quick reminder that tickets also go on sale today for Tuesday Musical’s performance by Chanticleer at E.J. Thomas Hall on July 27 at 7:30 pm. The celebrated 12-voice male chorus from San Francisco will present “Awakenings,” with music by Monteverdi, Byrd, Vicente Lusitano, Villa-Lobos, Augusta Read Thomas, Ulysses Kay, Steven Sametz, Burton Lane, and a newly commissioned work by Ayanna Woods. Click here for ticket information.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today marks the anniversaries of two births of note — German composer Hans Werner Henze in 1926 and American conductor Philip Brunelle in 1943.
We’ll begin with Henze whose extensive body of works incorporated neoclassicism, jazz, twelve-tone technique, serialism, as well as rock and some popular music. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
NEWS BRIEFS:
Akron’s Tuesday Musical Association has announced that tickets will go on sale tomorrow, Thursday, July 1, for the Chanticleer concert in E.J. Thomas Hall on July 27 at 7:30 pm, rescheduled from last season due to the pandemic. The celebrated 12-voice male chorus from San Francisco will present “Awakenings,” with music by Monteverdi, Byrd, Vicente Lusitano, Villa-Lobos, Augusta Read Thomas, Ulysses Kay, Steven Sametz, Burton Lane, and a newly commissioned work by Ayanna Woods. Click here.
Chagrin Arts will present the Callisto Quartet — Paul Aguilar and Rachel Stenzel, violins, Eva Kennedy, viola, and Hannah Moses, cello — in a free, outdoor performance on Friday, July 16 at 7:00 pm in Solon Bicentennial Park. Formed at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 2016, the ensemble won the 2018 Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition and took Second Prize at the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition. Currently serving as the Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the Shepherd School of Music at Houston’s Rice University, the Callisto have been appointed Fellowship Quartet in Residence at the Yale School of Music. Their concert on July 16 will include Haydn’s Quartet Op. 20, No. 1 & Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 59, No. 3. Details here. [Read more…]
by Daniel Hathaway
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Composer Hale Smith was born in Cleveland on this date in 1929. A precocious musician whose talents were recognized early on by Duke Ellington, after service in the U.S. Army, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1950 and 1952. Smith went on to enjoy a widely varied career in New York, where he moved easily between classical styles (including serial music), and jazz. He died in New York in 2009 at the age of 84.
As Dennis Dooley wrote when Smith won the Cleveland Arts Prize for Music in 1973,
His prolific output includes everything from TV advertising jingles to incidental music for stage productions of Lysistrata and Lorca’s Blood Wedding. His “Castle House Rag” was used in the documentary The Making of Citizen Kane. Smith has, nevertheless, always found time to lend his prodigious energies to such important undertakings as the Detroit Symphony’s annual Symposium on Black American Composers. He gladly served as an advisor to the Chicago-based Center for Black Music Research, but “bristled at the designation [Black composer],” The New York Times noted in its lengthy obituary, “He wanted his work, and that of his black peers, to appear on programs with that of Beethoven, Mozart and Copland” and to be judged simply as music.
A list of Hale Smith’s works (click the link to “Hale’s Music”) suggests that Cleveland should rediscover one of its hometown composers. Sample some of his music here,.
Among the better-served composers born on this date are Leroy Anderson (1908, beloved Boston creator of light classical music), Frank Loesser (1910, Broadway tunesmith), and Bernard Herrmann (1911, popularly known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, but a fine composer in his own right).
On June 29, 1934, radio station W2XR, a “noncommercial high fidelity experiment,” began broadcasting in New York City, soon to become WQXR when it was granted a commercial license in 1936. Always at the forefront of experimental broadcasting, in 1952, the station devised a way to broadcast in stereo, using two microphones placed six feet apart. Listeners could enjoy the stereo effect by similarly positioning two radios, one tuned to the station’s AM feed, the other to its FM feed.
And on this date in 1941, Polish piano virtuoso Ignacy Jan Paderewski died in New York at the age of 80. Also a diplomat and statesman, the pianist had served as the newly independent Poland’s prime minister and foreign minister in 1919 when he participated in the signing of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I.
Paderewski’s dual career led to a curious situation after his demise in a New York hotel room while on a concert tour. Because of his diplomatic service and the exigencies of the Second World War, President Roosevelt granted permission for his body to be temporarily laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. But there it stayed in the vault of the U.S.S. Maine Mast Memorial until the fall of communism in 1992 when his remains were transferred to Warsaw Cathedral. With the exception of his heart, which is preserved in a bronze sculpture in the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Read about that strange saga in detail here.
by Daniel Hathaway
LIVE AND IN-PERSON THIS WEEKEND:
On Saturday evening, ChamberFest Cleveland ends its season with a Festival Finale at St. Pascal Baylon Church in Highland Heights. The ticketed event includes a champagne toast. On Sunday, organist Karel Paukert plays Music from Prague at St. Paul’s in Cleveland Heights, and members of the Akron Symphony perform at the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship.
ONLINE EVENTS:
On Saturday and Sunday, Local 4 Music Fund continues its three-part series “She Scores,” and on Saturday, Burning River Baroque presents a one-time only, climate-based program, “Elements Worth Fighting For.” Details in our Concert Listings.
NEWS BRIEF:
Earlier this week, fire destroyed the Dobson Pipe Organ Builders Ltd. workshop in Lake City, Iowa, including an instrument being built for an Anglican Church in Australia. The firm, founded by Lynn A. Dobson, has built distinguished instruments for such venues as Verizon Hall in Philadelphia, and St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York. Read a New York Times story here.
INTERESTING READ:
This week, British oboist Nicholas Daniel will premiere one of the late John Tavener’s last works, eight years after the composer’s death. He explains the delay in a Guardian article, and writes about the complex web that frustrates musical creativity in the U.K.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC
On June 26, we note the birth of American pianist and conductor Antonia Brico in 1902 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the death of Dutch composer Henk Badings in Maarheeze, a well as the birth of Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg in Helsinki in 1958.
On June 27 in music history, French composer and claveciniste Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre died in Paris in 1729, and several 20th century composers were born: George T. Walker (1922, in Washington D.C.), Jack Gallagher (1947, in New York), Daniel Asia (1953, in Seattle), and Magnus Lindberg (1958 in Helsinki).
We wrote in some detail about Jacquet de la Guerre, Walker, Gallagher, and Asia in the Diary for June 27, 2020, so today we’ll throw a bit of light on the more obscure composers.
Born to a Dutch single mother, Brico emigrated to California with her foster parents in 1908, where she studied at Berkeley and worked as assistant to the director of San Francisco Opera. She returned to Europe for conducting studies in Berlin and made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1930. Back in the States, she was the first woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic, and after settling in Denver, became conductor of what was eventually named the Denver Philharmonic.
Brico’s life and career are dramatized in the Shooting Star Filmcompany’s The Conductor. Watch a trailer here (the R-rated full-length film can be rented on YouTube). There are also some poor-quality documentaries about the conductor, but you can listen here to her interview with Northwest Public Radio.
Like a number of his fellow Netherlanders, Henk Badings was born in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period, but was orphaned early on and returned to the Netherlands to study mining and palaeontology in Delft and worked as a mining engineer before turning to a career in music. His fifteen numbered symphonies and other orchestral works were championed by such conductors as van Beinum and Mengelberg, and his catalogue of 1,000 works includes various experimental pieces.
For a taste of Badings’ music, listen to his 1954 symphony Louisville, dedicated to the Louisville Orchestra and performed by the Janacek Philharmonic under David Porcelijn.
Not that Magnus Lindberg is all that obscure, having served as composer in residence with the New York Philharmonic at the invitation of incoming music director Alan Gilbert, and having commissioned works performed by The Cleveland Orchestra, but his larger works haven’t been heard locally for several years now. The composer has passed through various stylistic episodes, with side excursions into Japanese drumming and German punk rock. One of his works that has gained popularity is his Clarinet Concerto, performed here by Emil Jonason at Concertgebouw Brugge.
by Daniel Hathaway
ONLINE TODAY
National Sawdust considers the legacy of James Baldwin in a conversation with Imani Winds oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz, and DaCapo Chamber Players explore sounds of Native American history merged with African American history in Valerie Coleman’s Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes. Details in our Concert Listings.
NEWS
The Knight Foundation has announced its 2021 Arts Challenge, an open call for artists and arts organizations in Akron, Detroit and Miami to submit their best ideas for creating works that connect people to their communities and to each other. Answer this question in 150 words or less: “What is your best idea for the arts in either Akron, Detroit, or Miami?” The winners, to be announced in the fall, will share up to $5 million across the three cities. More information here.
Cleveland Chamber Choir has won the top prize at the World Youth and Children Choral Artists’ Association World Choir Festival. The “Choir of the World Award” was presented to the top performing group in an online festival that included almost 200 international choirs and was judged by 50 international jury members. The ensemble’s performance of Andrew Rindfleisch’s I Sing To Use The Waiting and Linda Kachelmeier’s O Vos Omnes also earned the award for “Most Musically Moving Performance,” and Artistic Director Scott MacPherson was designated as an “Outstanding Conductor.”
Jeanne Lamon, founder and longtime artistic director of Tafelmusik, the Toronto Baroque orchestra, has died at the age of 71. Read a Toronto Star article here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Today’s debuts on the world stage include English tenor Sir Peter Pears (born in Farnham in 1910), and Cleveland composer Jeffrey Mumford (born in Washington, D.C. in 1955), and finales on this date in history include French composer Darius Milhaud (who died in Geneva in 1974). Now that it’s summer, I’ll trim my suggested listening list to one item for each honoree.
Pears was the life partner of composer Benjamin Britten, and their musical collaborations included Pears’ wonderful choices of texts set brilliantly by Britten and often performed by the two with Britten at the piano. One of Britten’s most superb song cycles is the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, performed here by Pears, hornist Dennis Brain (playing natural horn in the Prologue and Epilogue), and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by John Hollingsworth. The playlist with start times:
Prologue 0:00 Pastoral – The Evening Quatrains (Charles Cotton) 1:19 Nocturne – Blow, bugle, blow (Alfred Tennyson) 5:16 Elegy – The Sick Rose (William Blake) 8:51 Dirge – Lyke-Wake Dirge (Anonymous) 13:45 Hymn – Hymn to Diana (Ben Jonson) 17:42 Sonnet – To Sleep (John Keats) 19:42 Epilogue 23:37.
Mumford (pictured at top) is a prolific composer with a predilection for colorful titles like an expanding distance of multiple voices. Here’s a performance of his 2015 work becoming… at the Cleveland Institute of Music with Shuai Wang, piano, Ethan Ramaly, flute, Susannah Greenslit, horn, James Thompson, violin, Julian Maddox, violin, Tess Krope, viola, Daniel Blumhard, cello, Tristen Jarvis, double bass, Grace Cross, harp, Matt Moore, vibraphone, and Charles Renneker, marimba. Dean Buck conducts.
Milhaud was also prolific, and some will remember attending summertime performances of his operas at the Central City Opera House in Colorado with the composer in attendance. Here’s a strange little “Visit With Darius Milhaud” documentary, much of it in French, that “shows him with former student Dave Brubeck in an informal jazz session at his home and watches Milhaud compose a sonatina for violin and cello.” There are also some highlights of his sonatinas and operas.
And now that people are contemplating travel again, if Philadelphia is on your road trip itinerary, you might consider visiting the Grand Court of the former John Wanamaker department store (now Macy’s) in City Center, where the world’s largest operational pipe organ was first played on this date in 1911. Its curious story is woven into this guided tour (there’s a second part, too!)
If it were all in working order, you could hear the largest pipe organ in the world not far away in Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. It’s being gradually restored and is worth a visit. Here’s a performance by John Wanamaker organist Peter Richard Conte, who knows his way around such outrageous instruments. The seven-manual console alone is a daunting prospect (pictured here on a recent visit by Organ Clearing House CEO John Bishop, left, and curator Nathan Bryson).
by Daniel Hathaway
LIVE THIS WEEKEND:
On Friday, ENCORE Chamber Music presents The Evelyn Wright Jazz Quartet at the Dodero Center at Gilmour Academy, and ChamberFest Cleveland presents pianist Roman Rabinovitz (pictured) in Bach’s Goldberg Variations — moved indoors at St. Paschal Baylon due to rain.
Saturday’s in-person lineup on the new official national holiday, Juneteeth, includes ChamberFest’s “Nature Emerging” at The Grove Ampitheater, the Akron Symphony Strings and Symphonic Winds at Lock 3, and Cleveland Opera Theater in Medina’s Uptown Park.
On Sunday — Father’s Day — ChamberFest tells the tale of Ferdinand the Bull at The Grove, organist Karel Paukert plays music from Paris at St. Paul’s, Cleveland Heights, and the Cavani String Quartet plays a Sunday Discovery Concert on the ENCORE series in Gates Mills.
ONLINE THIS WEEKEND:
On Friday, Carnegie Hall replays Leonard Bernstein’s performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony in Ely Cathedral, and the final round of the James Stroud Classical Guitar Youth Competition features four young guitarists.
On Saturday, Saratoga Opera observes Juneteenth, as do the Harlem Chamber Players with Adolphus Hailstork’s Pity These Ashes: Tulsa 1921-2021,
And on Sunday, Renovare Music presents a virtual benefit concert on World Refugee Day.
Check details on our Concert Listings page.
CIPC BOX OFFICE OPENS:
Tickets are now on sale for Piano Cleveland’s 2021 Cleveland International Piano Competition (July 8—August 11), including both in-person and virtual options. Click here for details.
THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:
On June 18, 1818, French composer Charles Gounod was born in Paris. Instead of linking to one of his popular operas or symphonic masses, here’s his Petit symphonie pour vents in honor of all the wind players who have been watching the game from the bench for the last 14 months. The Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France performs it in January, 2018 at the Maison de la Radio in Paris.
On June 18, 1942, Paul McCartney (Sir Paul since 1965 when The Beatles were inducted into the Order of the British Empire) was born in Liverpool, England. In addition to his career with the groundbreaking Liverpudlian band (who memorably played Cleveland in 1964 and 1966), he made a foray into classical music with his Liverpool Oratorio, featuring Kiri Te Kanawa. But while searching for that video link, I ran across a Wired Autocomplete Interview where Sir Paul answers “the internet’s most searched questions about himself.” Too charming to pass up. Watch here.
On June 19, 1819, Rhenish-Jewish conductor, cellist, and composer Jacques Offenbach was born in Köln (Cologne). To celebrate his lesser-known side as a cellist, here’s his Grand Concerto for Cello in G, nicknamed “Concerto militaire,” written in 1848. Mark Minkowski leads Les Musicians du Louvre with soloist Jérôme Pernoo.
by Mike Telin
TODAY’S EVENTS:
At 7:00 pm The Cleveland Orchestra debuts In Focus Episode 13, “Dance & Drama.” Franz Welser-Möst leads Edvard Grieg’s Holberg’s Time: Suite in Olden Style and Erich Korngold’s Symphonic Serenade. Free to subscribers and patrons who donate $300 or more to the Orchestra, premium subscriptions available. View here and on-demand. There’re plenty of concerts happening in the area the weekend — check our concert listings page for details.
The Crafting Change symposium continues today at 3:00 pm with “How to Teach in a Pandemic: A Case Study” Chicago-based new media artist Chris Collins is fascinated by digital technologies as a cultural force…which means he probably learned more from his COVID year than the rest of us did. He’ll discuss the ways he re-envisioned the spring 2021 class he taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: what worked, what didn’t, and what we all might take away from the experience. The fascinating series continues through June 18. Click here for details.
IN THE NEWS:
The Cleveland International Piano Competition has announced that tickets for both in-person and virtual options are now on sale. Click here for details.
APOLLO’S FIRE ANNOUNCES NEW SEASON:
Cleveland’s Baroque orchestra will present seven local programs in 2021-2022, including a Messiah cycle led by guest conductor Nicholas McGegan, and a May performance at Severance Hall celebrating the ensemble’s 30th anniversary season. View the announcement here.
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
On this day in 1882 Igor Stravinsky (pictured at top) made his world debut in Oranienbaum, Russia. One year ago, Daniel Hathaway celebrated the composer’s birth by recounting the composer’s debut as guest conductor with The Cleveland Orchestra in February of 1925 conducting his Fireworks, Chant du Rossignol and Firebird Suite.
Hathaway reported that conductor Nikolai Sokoloff found Stravinsky to be “something of a showman and not entirely endearing,” adding, “He was, in short, a pain in the neck.” (Rosenberg, The Cleveland Orchestra Story, p. 87). Stravinsky was more complimentary about his experience: “I have never seen an orchestra in which there was finer discipline and a greater responsiveness than right here in your Cleveland Orchestra.” Here’s a live performance of Le chant du rossignol by Pierre Boulez and The Cleveland Orchestra from November, 1970.
Today we should revisit the controversy that surrounded the premiere of Le Sacre du printemps.
In his book, First Nights, Harvard professor Thomas Forrest Kelly begins his description of the premiere of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps on May 29, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris with reflections by its ballet master and a famous composer who happened to be in the audience.
I think the whole thing has been done by four idiots: First, M. Stravinsky who wrote the music. Second, M. Roerich who designed the scenery and costumes. Third, Mr. Nijinsky who composed the dances. Fourth, M. Diaghilev who wasted money on it. —Enrico Cecchetti
The choreography is ridiculous, the music sheer cacophony. There is some originality, however, and a certain amount of talent. But taken together, it might be the work of a madman. —Giacomo Puccini
Stravinsky’s score for Sacre was revolutionary in 1913 and still sounds fresh and inventive today. Similarly, Nijinsky’s choreography represented a complete disconnect with classical ballet when it was first unveiled a hundred years ago — and may have been largely responsible for the rowdiness of its first night audience. In an article for Dance Research Journal, Millicent Hodson traced the origins of Nijinsky’s concept from visual images of pre-Christian Russian idols. She quotes from an essay by Jacques Rivière written several months after the premiere. The body, he says,
...moves only as a whole, it forms a totality and its manner of speaking is to leap suddenly with arms and legs outspread, or to move to the side with knees bent and the head on the shoulder…If one can, for once, stop confusing grace with symmetry and the arabesque, he will find it on every page of Le Sacre du printemps, in the sight of profiles of faces posed upon full-front shoulders, in the elbows glued to the body, in the horizontal forearms, the rigid and open hands, in the trembling which descends like a wave from the head of the dancers to their feet, in the obscure, sparse, and preoccupied march of the adolescents in the second act.
Prior to Joffrey Ballet’s August 2013 Blossom Festival performance of Robert Joffrey and Millicent Hodson’s 1987 recreation of Nijinski’s original choreography, artistic director Ashley Wheater told ClevelandClassical.com that he agrees about that first night reaction. “I don’t think it was the music that caused the stir, I think it was more the ballet,” he said in a phone conversation from Chicago. “And to be honest, I think a lot of people did not think it was a particularly good piece of choreography. I think also the shock of it was that the Ballet Russe had become so famous for producing beautiful works from Russia — so when people went to see the ballet Russe they were expecting to see a classical ballet company.
“What upset or angered people was that they were offered something that just turned them upside down. I think people said, I don’t like this and I don’t want to see this. But it was a breakthrough in many ways. Looking back on it, would dance and music be different today if Stravinsky hadn’t written Sacre? It’s hard to say, because to me the music has always been brilliant.”
Click here to watch Joffrey Ballet’s 1987 performance of the work with the Orchestra of the National Theater of Prague conducted by Allan Lewis.
