Today's Birthdays

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
Rutland Boughton (1878-1960)
Django Reinhardt (1910-1953)
Milton Adolphus (1913-1988)
Eli Goren (1923-2000)
Chita Rivera (1933-2024) Cécile Ousset (1936)
Teresa Zylis-Gara (1936-2021)
John Luther Adams (1953)
Mason Bates (1977)

and

Stendhal (1783-1842)
Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Derek Walcott (1930-2017)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1894, Czech composer Antonin Dvorák presents a concert of African-American choral music at Madison Square Concert Hall in New York, using an all-black choir, comprised chiefly of members of the St. Philip's Colored Choir. On the program was the premiere performance of Dvorák's own arrangement of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home," which featured vocal soloists Sissierette Jones and Harry T. Burleigh.

Oregon Symphony concert with Kwak and Stenz in Oregon Arts Watch

 My review of a rewarding Oregon Symphony concert from last weekend has been published in OAW here.

Today's Birthdays

Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727-1799)
Charles Tournemire (1870-1939)
Hans Erich Apostel (1901-1972)
Robin Milford (1903-1959)
Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981)
Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013)
William Warfield (1920-2002)
Leslie Bassett (1923-2016)
James Louis ("J.J.") Johnson (1924-2001)
Aurèle Nicolet (1926-2016)
Uto Ughi (1944)
Myung-whun Chung (1953)

and

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948)
Howard Moss (1922-1987)
Joseph Wambaugh (1937-2025)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day, in 1907, the Metropolitan Opera production of Richard Strauss' opera "Salome," with soprano Olive Fremstad in the title role, creates a scandal. The opera is dropped after a single performance, and not staged at the Met again until the 1930s.

Review: Young Artists highlight Vancouver Symphony concert

It is very impressive to see accomplished, professionals solo with an orchestra, but when the featured artists are super-talented teenagers and even younger, it is pretty astounding. Such was the case at the Vancouver Symphony’s concert on January 18th at Skyview Concert Hall, when the three gold medalists from the orchestra’s Young Adult Competition took the stage. Violinist Hana Gottesman, saxophonist Jacob Peizner, and pianist Wilson Liu dazzled the audience with their artistry in performing difficult concertos with the orchestra under music director Salvador Brotons – all of which made a strong case for the arts in the education of our nation’s youth.

First in the program lineup was Gottesman, a 17-year-old violinist from Bellevue, Washington, who started violin lessons when she was just six. She played Maurice Ravel’s “Tzigane”, which opens with a long and treacherous cadenza, impeccably. She gave some notes a real zing, and collaborated deftly with the orchestra to convey the gypsy-inspired themes of the piece.

Next came Peizner, age 17, who is a senior at Oregon Episcopal School. He delivered a sparkling rendition of Jacques Ibert’s “Concertino da camera for alto saxophone and eleven instruments.” During the first part of the piece, he negotiated a seemingly endless series of runs with elan. He expressed the beginning of the second part with great sensitivity and conquered the cadenza to bring the piece to a joyful conclusion.

After intermission, Liu wowed concertgoers with a stellar performance of the first movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20. Although he is only eleven years old, Liu showed an artistic level way, way above his age, expressing the piece with perfectly calibrated dynamics and technical precision. He handled delicate passages with the utmost care, but he could also spring into a passionate section with unbridled gusto. He demonstrated an innate musicality that was flat-out jaw dropping, and the audience rewarded him with an enthusiastic standing ovation.

For the purely orchestral portion of the concert, Brotons led his forces in a rousing interpretation of Richard Strauss’s “Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.” Jeong Yoon Lee, who usually is the VSO’s principal second violinist, took over the concertmaster position and excelled with her solos. Principal hornist Daniel Partridge announced the prankster’s theme with panache, and Ricky Smith expertly handled all of the tricky passages for the E-flat clarinet, as if to channel the trickster directly.

Since the piece relates to several escapades, it would have been nice to have had some projected text to accompany the music. That would help American audiences, who don’t know the stories, understand the music more.

Brotons gave a very humorous introduction to the Suite from the from Richard Strauss’s opera “Der Rosenkavalier.” The horns sounded glorious as they launched the first volleys. Principal oboist Alan Juza contributed substantially with his playing. The performance – highlighted by its wistful waltz tune – had just the right sentiment to evoke scenes from the opera.

The concert began on a much different note – with the orchestra eliciting space travel in “Mothership” by Mason Bates. This piece blends electronic and acoustical sounds in a very effective way. A heavy, pulsating beat establishes a rhythmic drive that permeates much of the time, but there is a section – given over to the cellos – that was briefly soothing. The orchestra then gathers its forces to create a sound of a spaceship taking off and whirling into the sky.

Judging from the smiles that I saw, it seemed that the orchestra really enjoyed cutting loose on the piece. The audience applauded the piece with vigor, and I think that I noticed Brotons smiling. Since Brotons is a composer, himself, I will have to find out if he has tried to write an orchestral piece that uses electronics. You never know…

Today's Birthdays

Henri Duparc (1848-1933)
Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977)
Webster Booth (1902-1984)
Placido Domingo (1941)
Richie Havens (1941-2013)
Edwin Starr (1942-2003)
Suzanne Mentzer (1957)
Frank Ticheli (1958)

and

Louis Menand (1952)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630)
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Julius Conus (1869-1942)
Józef Hofmann (1876-1957)
Huddie William Ledbetter (Lead Belly) (1889-1949)
Walter Piston (1894-1976)
Eva Jessye (1895-1992)
Yvonne Loriod (1924-2010)
David Tudor (1926-1996)
Antonio de Almeida (1928-1997)
Iván Fischer (1951)

and

George Burns (1896-1996)
Alexandra Danilova (1903-1997)
Federico Fellini (1920-1993)
Edward Hirsch (1950)
Tami Hoag (1959)

Today's Birthdays

Louis‑Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749)
George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898)
Fritz Reiner (1888-1963)
Paul Dessau (1894-1979)
Edith Piaf (1915-1963)
Dalton Baldwin (1931-2019)
Phil Ochs (1940-1976)
William Christie (1944)
Marianne Faithfull (1946)
Olaf Bär (1957)
Steven Esserlis (1958)
Rebecca Saunders (1967)

and

Italo Svevo (1861-1928)
Constance Garnett (1861-1946)

Today's Birthdays

César Cui (1835-1918)
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)
John Laurence Seymour (1893-1986)
Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996)
Anthony Galla-Rini (1904-2006)
John O'Conor (1947)
Anthony Pople (1955-2003)
Christoph Prégardien (1956)

and

Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869)
Rubén Darío (1867-1916)
A. A. Milne (1882-1956)
Oliver Hardy (1892-1957)

FYI: Roget's "Thesaurus" has never been out of print since it was first published in 1852.

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1958, "What Does Music Mean?", broadcast, the first of a series of televised New York Philharmonic "Young People's Concerts" on CBS-TV hosted by Leonard Bernstein. The series continued until 1972, with 53 different programs hosted by Bernstein.

Today's Birthdays

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
John Stanley (1712-1786)
Johann Gottfried Müthel (1728-1788)
François‑Joseph Gossec (1734-1829)
Henk Badings (1907-1987)
Oscar Morawetz (1917-2007)
Annie Delorie (1925-2009)
Donald Erb (1927-2008)
Jean Barraqué (1928-1973)
Sydney Hodkinson (1934-2021)
Dame Gillian Weir (1941)
Anne Queffélec (1948)
Augustin Dumay (1949)
Nancy Argenta (1957)
Gérard Pesson (1958)

and

Anne Brontë (1820-1849)
William Stafford (1914-1993)
Luis López Nieves (1950)
Sebastian Junger (1962)