Today's Birthdays

François Devienne (1759-1803)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Caroline Miolan‑Carvalho (1827-1895)
James Huneker (1857–1921)
Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950)
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)
Nathan Milstein (1904-1992)
Benjamin Frankel (1906-1973)
Alan Lomax (1915-2002)
Jaap Schröder (1925-2020)
Odetta (1930-2008)
Philip Glass (1937)
Stephen Cleobury (1948)
Donna Summer (1948-2012)
George Benjamin (1960)
Jennifer Higdon (1962)

and

Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Zane Grey (1872-1939)
John O'Hara (1905-1970)
Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Review of Oregon Symphony concert with world premiere of Tüür's Third Violin Concerto

 

I've been doing a lot of scribbling lately. My review of the Oregon Symphony's concert with violinist Vadim Gluzman playing a new piece by Erkki-Sven Tüür was just posted in Classical Voice North Ameria here. 

Big preview of three upcoming Bach concerts in The Oregonian

 

My preview of the Bach Cello Suites with Alisa Weilerstein for Chamber Music Northwest and the Portland Baroque Orchestra plus a preview of the Bach Cantata Choir's Super Bach Sunday concert has been published in Oregonlive here.  It will appear in the print edition (A&E section) this Friday.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773)
Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935)
Walter Damrosch (1862-1950)
Mitch Leigh (1928-2014)
Lynn Harrell (1944-2020)
Silvia Marcovici (1952)
Gerald Finley (1960)

and

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989)
Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016)
Richard Brautigan (1935-1984)

Upcoming Musica Maestrale Concert: The History of the Mandolin

Hideki Yamaya, lutenist and Artistic Director for Musica Maestrale, is coming back to the Left Coast for a pair of concerts in early February:

The mandolin, a popular modern instrument very prominent in bluegrass and some genres of European folk music, has an interesting, if somewhat confusing, lineage. In this discussion/concert, historical mandolinist Hideki Yamaya will demonstrate three historical mandolins : the 'mandore', the Baroque 6-course mandolin, and the Lombard mandolin. The repertoire will cover music from France, Germany, Italy, and Scotland, from the 17th- through 19th-centuries. The show will be 1 hr. long without intermission.

Tickets
Advance: $18 adult; $8 student

At the door: $20 adult; $10 student (cash and check only)

Portland

Saturday, February 11; 7:30PM

‘The 2509’

2509 NE Clackamas St, Portland, OR

Tickets link:

https://musicamaestrale.ludus.com/200431934

Astoria

Sunday, February 12; 5:00PM

Grace Episcopal Church

1545 Franklin Ave, Astoria, OR

Tickets link:

https://musicamaestrale.ludus.com/200431935

Today's Birthdays

Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777)
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871)
Frederic Hymen Cowen (1852-1935)
Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Havergal Brian (1876-1972)
Blanche Selva (1884-1942)
Luigi Nono (1924-1990)
Myer Fredman (1932-2014)
Malcolm Binns (1936)
Cho-Liang Lin (1960)

and

W. C. Fields (1880-1946)
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1826 was the premiere of Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, "Death and the Maiden," as a unrehearsed reading at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, two amateur musicians. Schubert, who usually played viola on such occasions, could not perform since he was busy copying out the parts and making last-minute corrections.

and from The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1845 that Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” was published in the New York Evening Mirror. It was a huge sensation: Abraham Lincoln memorized it and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a fan letter to Poe. He was paid $9 for “The Raven,” and it was extensively reprinted without his permission, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had written an unsigned article for the Mirror before about copyright law saying, “Without an international copyright law, American authors may as well cut their throats,” but there was no such law until 1891. His income in 1844 was $424; in 1845, he made $549.

Today's Birthdays

Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (1757-1821)
Ferdinand Herold (1791-1833)
Alexander Mackenzie (1822-1892)
Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Vittorio Rieti (1898-1994)
Michael Head (1900-1976)
Ronnie Scott (1927-1996)
Acker Bilk (1929-2014)
Sir John Tavener (1944-2013)
Richard Danielpour (1956)

and

Colette (1873-1954)
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)
Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022)
David Lodge (1935)

Today's Birthdays

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Juan Crisostomo Arriage (1806-1826)
Edouard Lalo (1823-1892)
Jerome Kern (1885-1945)
Jack Brymer (1915-2003)
Skitch Henderson (1918-2005)
Helmut Zacharias (1920-2002)
Fritz Spiegl (1926-2003)
John Ogdon (1937-1989)
Jean-Philippe Collard (1948)
Emanuel Pahud (1970)
James Ehnes (1976)

and

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
Dmitry Mandeleyev (1834-1907)
Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732-1795)
Maria Augusta von Trapp (1905-1987)
Stéphane Grappelli (1908-1997)
Jimmy Van Heusen (1913-1990)
Warren Benson (1924-2005)
Jacqueline du Pré (1945-1987)
Frédéric Lodéon (1952)
Mikel Rouse (1957)
Gustavo Dudamel (1981)

and

Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905)
Seán MacBride (1904-1988)
Jules Feiffer (1929)
Christopher Hampton (1946)
Ellen DeGeneres (1958)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1790, Mozart's opera, "Così fan tutte," was premiered in Vienna at the Burgtheater.

Young artists perform superbly with the Vancouver Symphony

It was refreshing to see and hear top-notch young talent perform at the Vancouver Symphony concert on Saturday (January 21) at Skyview Concert Hall. The event featured the gold medal winners of the orchestra’s 28th annual competition, which has a nationwide reach. Bassoonist Preston Atkins, violinist Jinan Laurentia Woo, and pianist Anwen Deng demonstrated tremendous technical prowess and emotional artistry, accompanied by the orchestra under its music director, Salvador Brotons.

A stellar panel of judges decided on the winners of the competition, which was held in October. The adjudicators consisted of former artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest and clarinetist David Shifrin, Grammy-award winning cellist Zuill Bailey, the artistic director of the Kaufman Music Center International Piano Competition and pianist Dr. Igal Kesselman, music director and conductor of Symphony Tacoma Sarah Ioannides, and VSO associate concertmaster Dr. Stephen Shepherd.

Preston Atkins, a 17-year-old from Iowa who is in his first year at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, launched the concert with an outstanding performance of the “Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra in F Major” by Carl Maria von Weber. With a calm command of his instrument, Atkins made Weber’s concerto sing with an elegant tone. He executed terrific runs with perfectly placed intonation and an extra bit of polish on the highest notes. His marvelous breath control him to deliver even the trickiest passages with great sensitivity, including an operatic cadenza in the second movement.

The next stunning soloist was Jinan Laurentia Woo, a 15-year-old phenom from New Jersey, who is studying in the pre-college division of the Juilliard School in New York City. Woo excelled with mesmerizing playing of the first movement of Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto. Showing impeccable technique and a superb ear, Woo fashioned a lovely melodic line from the outset and then turned on the afterburners to nail an assortment of very challenging passages, whether creating droplets of sound or soaring into the highest notes. She fearlessly dug into the cadenzas with panache and thrilled the audience with the wild, final measures

Closing out the first half of the concert was Anwen Deng, a 13-year-old pianist from Pennsylvania who is also enrolled at Julliard. Deng delivered a superb performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto. She excelled with all aspects of the piece, delivering graceful melodies with terrific dynamics. She could slow down the pace and lull listeners into a placid imaginary landscape and then suddenly spring into action and take concertgoers to an exciting destination. She generated the most florid passages flawlessly, shaped phrases with direction, and absolutely conveyed the beauty of Schumann’s music.

All three soloists drew enthusiastic cheers from the audience, and they came to center stage as a group to receive flowers and a standing ovation.

After intermission, the orchestra expressed Brahms Symphony No. 4 with full-throated zeal. Led by Brotons, who conducted the piece impressively from memory, the musicians expertly delved into the smooth yet thick textures of Brahms. The horns provided jolts of burnished sound. Graceful woodwinds danced with pizzicatos from the strings in the second movement. Phrase were exchanged with a bit of tugging between sections of the orchestra in the third movement. Principal flutist Rachel Rencher’s melancholic solo highlighted the fourth movement – along with the trio of trombones and the dramatic timing that led to a strong and satisfying ending.

There were some bobbled sounds here and there, but the musicians, urged on by Brotons emotive gestures, did not hold anything back, and that made the Brahms vivid and memorable. Kudos all around.

Today's Birthdays

Jan Blockx (1851-1912)
Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954)
Julia Smith (1905-1989)
Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994)
Alfred Reed (1921-2005)
Etta James (1938-2012)
Russell Peck (1945-2009)

and

Robert Burns (1759-1796)
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Today's Birthdays

Farinelli (Carlo Maria Broschi) (1705-1782)
Frederick II the Great (1712-1786)
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822)
Evelyn Barbirolli (1911-2008)
Norman Dello Joio (1913-2008)
Gottfried von Einem (1918-1996)
Leon Kirchner (1919-2009)
Neil Diamond (1941)
Yuri Bashmet (1953)
Warren Zevon (1947-2003)

and

William Congreve (1670-1729)
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Desmond Morris (1928)

Today's Birthdays

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
Rutland Boughton (1878-1960)
Django Reinhardt (1910-1953)
Milton Adolphus (1913-1988)
Eli Goren (1923-2000)
Cécile Ousset (1936)
Teresa Zylis-Gara (1936)
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.

Stunning conducting debut by Deanna Tham with the Oregon Symphony

My review of the Oregon Symphony concert led by associate conductor Deanna Tham is published in Oregon ArtsWatch here. Tham was sensational!
 

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)

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.

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)

Preview of young artist competition winners in VSO concert - in The Columbian

 My preview of the upcoming Vancouver Symphony concert, featuring the winners of its national young artist competition is in The Columbian newspaper here.

Today's Birthdays

Louis‑Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749)
George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898)
Fritz Reiner (1885-1963)
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)
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)

Camerata PYP excels in varied and demanding concert

Photo by Beverly Standish

Camerata PYP, a string ensemble drawn from the Portland Youth Philharmonic, performed a top-notch concert at Rise Church in Tigard (January 6). The concert offered a wide variety of pieces by Efraín Amaya, Julius Chajes, Josef Suk, Polina Nazaykinskaya, Herbert Howells, Felix Mendelssohn, and Deena Grossman, whose “Songs of the River Po,” received its world premiere. The breath of music and technical veracity in the program aptly showed off the talents of the ensemble, which was founded in 2009 by PYP’s musical director, David Hattner, who conducted all of the pieces.

The concerts kicked off with “Angelica,” by Venezuelan-born composer Efraín Amaya. It had an energetic, forceful rhythm that Hattner easily elicited from the orchestra. A fugato section circulated enticingly from section to section with an underlying cha-cha-cha pattern that came to an extended pause with the cellos sustaining the last note until the entire ensemble rejoined. The piece returned to the initial theme with the violins overlaying a new melodic line before closing with panache

Next came Julius Chajes’ “Israeli Melodies,” a suite of six pieces that was inspired by the music of Palestine when the composer moved there in the 1930s from his native Poland because of the Nazis. Each piece, poetically called songs (e.g., “Song of the Well,” “Song of the Pioneers,” and “Song of the Night”) featured a poignant melodic line with some heavier with a slower tempo and others lighter with a slightly faster tempo. The “Song of Galilee” offered an intertwined texture of lovely tunes that wrapped up the piece nicely.

Joseph Suk’s “Meditation on the Old Czech Choral ‘St. Wenceslas’” received a solid performance by the ensemble. It featured tender and high passages that the violins deftly expressed. The final meditation became more agitated before subsiding with the violas leading their colleagues to soothing conclusion and the double-basses getting the last word.

Portland-based composer Deena Grossman lived for a couple of months in Turin, Italy before the pandemic hit. During that time, she enjoyed listening and absorbing the sounds and scenes along the Po River, which flows through the city. Inspired by her experience there, she wrote “Songs of the River Po,” which she divided into three movements. The first opened with a joyful march that gradually transitioned to sounds of flowing water with the upper strings soaring above the sensation of waves from the lower strings. The second movement featured wonderfully deep phrases from the cellos and a rich tapestry of melodic lines that were exchanged by the sections of the orchestra. The third movement offered beguiling lighter passages that evoked the image of birds enjoying the river, and it brought the piece to a satisfying close.

After intermission, ten violinists from Camerata PYP took center stage for “The Rising” by Russian-American composer Polina Nazaykinskaya. Much like Mendelssohn’s “Octet,” Nazaykinskaya’s piece offered an intricate and lively soundscape with harmonic lines that shimmered around a central melody. At first the shimmering sounds overpowered the main melodic line, but the ensemble quieted down and then we heard an intoxicating sequence of passages that climbed heavenward, creating a terrific ending.

Next, the Camerata PYP performed Herbert Howells “Elegy for Viola, String Quartet and String Orchestra” with Elijah Zacharia, who was the runner-up in the PYP Concerto Competition, as the featured soloist. Zacharia played with great sensitivity to give the piece a plaintive and soulful character. He was expertly augmented by violinists Claire Youn and Timothy Lee, violist Luke d’Silva, and cellist Sarah Lee.

Photo by Rachel Hadiashar

Things kicked up a couple of notches with the “Sinfonia No. 10” by Mendelssohn, who wrote the piece when he was fourteen years old. The orchestra excelled with their crescendos and decrescendos – at one point deftly fashioning ascending phrases that whispered along – before turning on the afterburners to finish the piece with gusto.

Photo by Rachel Hadiashar

As an encore, the orchestra had a blast playing Leroy Andersons’ “Plink, Plank, Plunk!” In fact, the bass section, led by Margaret Carter, made some of the loudest snapping sounds I’ve ever heard.

Hattner and the Camerata PYP deserve high marks for polishing off a varied and demanding program that included a world premiere. It makes me wonder what they will do next time to top that!

David Hattner and Deena Grossman | Photo by Rachel Hadiashar

Today's Birthdays

Niccoló Piccinni (1728-1800)
Henri Büsser (1872-1973)
Daisy Kennedy (1893-1981)
Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989) Roger Wagner (1914-1992)
Ernesto Bonino (1922-2008)
Pilar Lorengar (1928-1996)
Marilyn Horne (1934)
Richard Wernick (1934)
Gavin Bryars (1943)
Brian Ferneyhough (1943)
Katia Ricciarelli (1946)

and

Robert Service (1874-1958)
Anthony Hecht (1923-2004)
William Kennedy (1928)
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
Mary Karr (1955)
Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980)

Preview of Portland Piano International concert in The Oregonian

 

My preview of the upcoming PPI concert, featuring Kenny Broberg is in today's Oregonian here.

Today's Birthdays

Ivor Novello (1893-1951)
Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991)
Malcolm Frager (1935-1991)
Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet (1941-2010)
Aaron Jay Kernis (1960)

and

Molière (1622-1673)
Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872)
Andreas William Heinesen (1900-1991)
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
Frank Conroy (1936-2005)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1941 Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" was premiered at Stalag VIII-A, a German prisoner of war camp in Görlitz (Silesia), with the composer at the piano and fellow-prisoners Jean Le Boulaure (violin), Henri Akoka (clarinet), and Etienne Pasquier (cello).

Review of Fear No Music's Locally Sourced Sounds concert

My review of Fear No Music's latest concert that emphasized the inter-generational aspect of its Young Composers Project has been published in Oregon ArtsWatch here.

Today's Birthdays

Ludwig von Köchel (1800-1877)
Jean de Reszke (1850-1925)
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
Louis Quilico (1925-2000)
Zuzana Ruzickova (1927-2017)
Siegmund Nimsgern (1940)
Mariss Jansons (1943)
Kees Bakels (1945)
Nicholas McGegan (1950)
Ben Heppner (1956)
Andrew Manze (1965)

and

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)
Emily Hahn (1905-1997)
John Oliver Killens (1916-1987)
Maureen Dowd (1952)

Today's Birthdays

Christoph Graupner (1683-1760)
Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690-1749)
Vassili Kalinnikov (1866-1901)
Richard Addinsell (1904-1977)
Daniil Shafran (1923-1997)
Renato Bruson (1936)
Paavo Heininen (1938)
William Duckworth (1943-2012)
Richard Blackford (1954)
Wayne Marshall (1961)
Juan Diego Flórez (1973)

and

Horatio Alger (1832-1899)
Lorrie Moore (1957)

Today's Birthdays

Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739)
Jacques Duphly (1715-1789)
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948)
Pierre Bernac (1899-1979)
William Pleeth (1916-1999)
Leo Smit (1921-1999)
Morton Feldman (1926-1987)
Salvatore Martirano (1927-1995)
Anne Howells (1941)
Viktoria Postnikova (1944)
Lori Laitman (1955)

and

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
Jack London (1876-1916)
Haruki Murakami (1949)

Today's Birthdays

Christian Sinding (1856-1941)
Reihold Glière (1875-1956)
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)
Mark DeVoto (1940)
York Höller (1944)
Drew Minter (1955)
Alex Shapiro (1962)

and

William James (1842-1910)
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948)
Alan Paton (1903-1988)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1925, Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra was premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York City by the New York Symphony conducted by Walter Damrosch, with Nadia Boulanger the soloist.

Today's Birthdays

Jean Martinon (1910-1976)
Sidney Griller (1911-1993)
Dean Dixon (1915-1976)
Milton Babbitt (1916-2011)
Max Roach (1924-2007)
Sherrill Milnes (1935)
Rod Stewart (1945)
James Morris (1947)
Mischa Maisky (1948)
Rockwell Blake (1951)
Charles Norman Mason (1955)
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (1961)

and

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
Philip Levine (1928-2015)
Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002)

Today's Birthdays

John Knowles Paine (1839-1906)
Rudolf Bing (1902-1997)
Herva Nelli (1909-1994)
Henriette Puig‑Roget (1910-1992)
Pierre Pierlot (1921-2007)
Joan Baez (1941)
Scott Walker (1944)
Jimmy Page (1944)
Waltraud Meier (1956)
Hillevi Martinpelto (1958)
Nicholas Daniel (1962)

and

Karel Čapek (1890-1938)
Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935)
Richard Halliburton (1901-1939)
Brian Friel (1929-2015)
Michiko Kakutani (1955)

Today's Birthdays

Jean Gilles (1668-1705)
Lowell Mason (1792-1872)
Sigismond Thalberg (1812-1871)
Hans von Bülow (1830-1894)
Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967)
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988)
Giorgio Tozzi (1923-2011)
Robert Starer (1924-2001)
Benjamin Lees (1924-2010)
Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
Zdeněk Mácal (1936)
Robert Moran (1937)
Evgeny Nesterenko (1938)
Elijah Moshinsky (1946)
Paul Dresher (1951)
Vladimir Feltsman (1952)

and

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972)
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1923, the first broadcast in England of an opera direct from a concert hall took place, Mozart's "The Magic Flute" via the BBC from London.

Today's Birthdays

Clara Haskil (1895-1960)
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
John Brownlee (1900-1969)
Nicanor Zabaleta (1907-1993)
Günter Wand (1912-2002)
Ulysses Kay (1917-1995)
John Lanigan (1921-1996)
Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922-2000)
Tommy Johnson (1935-2006)
Iona Brown (1941-2004)
Richard Armstrong (1943)

and

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
Hugh Kenner (1923-2003)
Nicholson Baker (1957)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1955, Marian Anderson made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Ulrica in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Mascera" (A Masked Ball). She was the first African-American singer to perform as an opera soloist on the Met stage. Subsequent distinguished African-American singers who performed as members of the Met company included Robert McFerrin, Sr. (Bobby McFerrin Jr.’s father), Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Kahtleen Battle and Jessye Norman.

Preview of upcoming Oregon Symphony concerts and Open Music event with Vijay Iyer in The Oregonian

My preview of Vijay Iyer's new piece that will be performed by the Oregon Symphony and also the Open Music event with Iyer has been published in The Oregonian here.

Preview of Fear No Music concert in The Oregonian

My preview of the upcoming FNM concert is in today's Oregonian here.

Today's Birthdays

Max Bruch (1838-1920)
Georges Martin Witkowski (1867-1943)
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915
Karl Straube (1873-1950)
Earl Kim (1920-1998)
Alexander Baillie (1956)

and

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
E.L. Doctorow (1931)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1733, this notice appears in the Leipzig newspaper Nachtricht auch Frag u. Anzeiger: "Tonight at 8 o'clock there will be a Bach Concert at the Zimmermann Coffeehouse on Catharine Street". This presumably featured secular vocal works, chamber music and concertos performed by the Leipzig Collegium, an ensemble directed by J.S. Bach.

PYP orchestral family puts a bow on Christmastime concert

The consortium of ensembles under the Portland Youth Philharmonic umbrella delivered sterling performances at its annual Concert-At-Christmas at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The event (December 26) with the theme Up in the Air was a wonderful showcase for all of the participants, including the conductors, and it was terrific to see youth having fun on stage making music.

The concert usually starts an orchestra of alumni of the Portland Youth Philharmonic. After their performance, ensembles of the youngest musicians take the stage, and the program gradually progresses to ensembles of older musicians until we finally hear the Portland Youth Philharmonic, which is basically a pre-conservatory orchestra.

So, here is my report of the evening’s performances.

Normally, the Alumni Orchestra gets at least one rehearsal before they perform, but this year things didn’t go as planned because of snow, which caused flight-delays, resulting in some empty chairs especially in the strings. The bad weather meant that the Alumni Orchestra didn’t any practice time for its one piece, the Mars, the Bringer of War movement from Gustav Holst’s “The Planets.” Still, the veterans, under the baton of PYP music director David Hattner, knocked the piece out of the park, especially the trumpet battery, which I think might have curled the ears of timpanist, who was positioned directly in front of them.

Next came the Portland Youth String Ensemble, which led by Inés Voglar Belgique, created a rich, unified sound in James Curnow’s “Chinese Folk Fantasy.” The students also excelled with Larry Moore’s arrangement of music from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Encanto,” and smiles erupted from all corners of the house when the cellos twirled their instruments twice and didn’t miss a beat.

The Portland Youth Wind Ensemble, conducted by Giancarlo Castro D’Addona, opened its program with a spirited rendition of “Flourish for Wind Band” by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Robert Sheldon’s gentile “Applachaian Morning” received a polished performance, including some fine clarinet playing. The ensemble snapped their fingers, clapped their hands, and created a peppy upswing with the “Byzantine Dances” of Carol Brittin Chambers – which also included a fine saxophone solo. The PYWE wrapped up their segment of the program with a snappy “The Free Lance” march by John Philip Souse.

After intermission, the Portland Youth Conservatory Orchestra, under Lawrence Johnson, elicited the noble and grand sentiment of Jean Sibelius’ “Finlandia.” The musicians really got into John Williams’ “Raiders March” from the film “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and expertly contrasted the two main themes in the piece.

Finally, the Portland Youth Philharmonic with Hattner took the stage and made a robust statement with the Overture to Rossini’s “La gazza ladra” (The thieving magpie). The strings impressively stayed together even after the tempo went into the final brisk pace. The orchestra also gave the world premiere of “she flies with her own wings” by Kenji Bunch. (BTW, the title is also the Oregon State motto.) The piece attained liftoff with a brassy fanfare, a big melodic theme, a brief jazzy trumpet, an extended percussion solo with tom toms going wild, a passage with leaping strings, a solid segment with two tubas going full out, and a sudden ending. Each section of the orchestra got a moment in the spotlight, and the musicians enthusiastically joined the audience in applause when Bunch came to center stage to take a bow.

The PYP capped off the concert with an outstanding performance of Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” including an impeccable piccolo solo by Diego Fernandez. Hattner wisely had the orchestra play the piece a second time so that the crowd could clap along, and that was embraced with ebullient enthusiasm throughout the hall, making a terrific ending for the concert.

PYP’s Concert-At-Christmas gave me a renewed feeling of hope and the sense that the world can become a better place. It’s an uplifting tradition that makes the City of Roses special.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755)
Constanza Mozart (1762-1842)
Peter Wolle (1792-1871)
Frederick Converse (1871-1940)
Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951)
Nicolai Roslavets (1881-1944)
Reginald Smith-Brindle (1917-2003)
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995)
Laszlo Heltay (1930-2019)
Alfred Brendel (1931)
Maurizio Pollini (1942)

and

Stella Gibbons(1902-1989)
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990)
W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009
) Umberto Eco (1932-2016
Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938)
Charlie Rose (1942)

Posting some new folk song lyrics in honor of today's events in Washington D.C.

I wrote this one. We just need a guitarist to find a tune for it.

Is there a Speaker in the House?
God help us just to find one.
The crazies got 'em on the run.
Gone out the door with tails
a-draggin' on the floor.
Now we're back where we were before!
With Dems a laughin' more and more -
You'd think that we were Mickey Mouse
Cause there's no Speaker in the House.

Today's Birthdays

Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736)
Johann Friedrich Agricola (1720-1774)
Josef Suk (1874-1935)
Frank Wess (1922-2013)
Grace Bumbry (1937)
Joseph Turrin (1947)
Margaret Marshall (1949)
Ronald Corp (1951)
Peter Seiffert (1954)
Boris Berezovsky (1969)

and

Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)
Jacob Grimm (1785-1863)
Louis Braille (1809-1852)
Augustus John (1878-1961)
Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1950, RCA announces it will produce long play records as Columbia did two years earlier (RCA had unsuccessfully attempted to compete with Columbia's new 33.3-rpm LPs by issuing some of their classical catalog as multiple disc 45-rpm sets).

Lost in a funhouse with Gary Noland’s latest CD

Gary Noland’s latest CD, “Quotidian Diversions from the Moment of Reckoning,” offers an unrelenting array of impish, experimental, random-like sounds – as if lost in a funhouse. Over the 70-minute span of this recording, you’ll hear an occasional sprinkling of piano or organ-synthesizer and a lot of unusual percussive instruments that are usually considered a novelty, like the flexatone and sirens, to create springing, whirling, popping, slamming, crunching, whistling, and a myriad of other sounds, including the gasp of human voices here and there.

Noland and his five anagrammatic alter egos (e.g., Darnold Olly Yang, DollyGray Landon, and Orland Doy Glandly) command a dizzy platter of humorously named instruments, such as the pandahormonium, the double-crossilators, underarmonica, stench horn, smackbutt, nose fiddle, and killjoy buzzer. The titles of each piece are also witty, oddball, concoctions, such as Turpentine Marzipan, Aristobombastic Little Beasties Watchdogging Their Stanky, Piffulous Little Fiefdoms, and Distemperaneous Genericana.

So, if you are looking for an album of disconcertingly relaxing sounds “Quotidian Diversions from the Moment of Reckoning” might be what you are looking for. Then again, it might not.

It is available on soundcloud.com and will soon be on bandcamp.com.

Today's Birthdays

Victor Borge (1909-2000)
Ronald Smith (1922-2004)
Sir George Martin (1926-2016)
H. K. Gruber (1943)
David Atherton (1944)

and

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

and from the Composers Datebook

On this date in the year 1843 in Paris, the comic opera “Don Pasquale” by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti received its first performance.

also:

On this day in 1925, German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler made his American debut, conducting the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall.

Violinist Cotik brings out the best in Telemann's 12 Fantasies

Earlier this year Tomás Cotik released a CD of 12 Fantasies for Solo Violin by Georg Philipp Telemann on the Centaur label. The album captures brilliant performances by Cotik of Telemann’s work, which was published in 1735 but mostly ignored for the next 200 years. With this CD, Cotik makes a strong case for resurrecting the continued interest in these forgotten gems.

Most of the 12 Fantasies are four to five minutes in length – with a few extending up to eight minutes. Each one offers an enticing dalliance between slow and fast sections and were written in a style that is somewhat similar to Arcangelo Corelli.

All twelve are impeccably played by Cotik, who mines each one for color and pace that sounds inventive and spontaneous. This is due, in part to his use of a Baroque bow and synthetic strings, allowing a greater freedom of expression. Some phrases are darker, others brighter. Some have more resonance and linger a bit while others are light as a feather.

Cotik, an Associate Professor of Violin at Portland State University, has performed in seventeen CD recordings for Naxos and Centaur Records. This recording of Telemann would make an excellent addition to those who are want to listen to superb solo violin.

Today's Birthdays

Frantisek Xaver Brixi (1732-1771)
Mily Balakirev (1837-1910)
Michael Tippett (1905-1998)
Barbara Pentland (1912-2000)
Gardner Read (1913-2005)
Irina Arkhipova (1925-2010)
Alberto Zedda (1928-2017)
Peter Eötvös (1944)
Janet Hilton (1945)
Vladimir Ovchinnikov (1958)
Tzimon Barto (1963)
Robert Fertitta (1970)
Eric Whitacre (1970)

and

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Christopher Durang (1949)
Lynda Barry (1956)

Today's Birthdays - Happy New Year!

Charles Racquet (1598-1664)
Frederick William Gaisberg (1873-1951)
Edwin Franko Goldman (1878-1956)
Artur Rodzinski (1892-1958)
Erich Schmid (1907-2001)
Trude Rittmann (1908-2005)
Milt Jackson (1923-1999)
Richard Verreau (1926-2005)
Maurice Béjart (1927-2007)
Bernard Greenhouse (1916-2011)
Alberto Portugheis (1941)

and

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1585, composer Giovanni Gabrieli became the second organist at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. His uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli, was the first organist.

On this day in 1908, Gustav Mahler made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a performance of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde."