Today's Birthdays

Joseph Boismortier (1689-1755)
Ross Lee Finney (1906-1997)
Claudio Scimone (1934-2018)
Ross Edwards (1943)
Edita Gruberová (1946-2021)
Elise Kermani (1960)
Han-Na Chang (1982)

and

Harriet Monroe (1860-1936)
Norman Maclean (1902–1990)
Robert Bly (1926-2021)
Carol Ann Duffy (1955)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1989, Leonard Bernstein led the first of two public performances of Beethoven's Ninth at the Philharmonie in West Berlin, with an international orchestra assembled to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. The second performance occurred on December 25 at the Schauspielhaus in East Berlin

Today's Birthdays

Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787)
Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889)
Teresa Carreño (1853-1917)
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
Franz Schmidt (1874-1939)
Edgard Varèse(1883-1965)
Joseph Deems Taylor (1885-1966)
Alan Bush (1900-1995)
Andre Kostelanetz (1901-1980)
David Leisner (1953)
Jean Rigby (1954)
Zhou Tian (1981)

and

Jean Racine (1639-1699)
Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)
Donald Harrington (1935-2009)

Today's Birthdays

Zdeněk Fibich (1850-1900)
André Turp (1925-1991)
Frank Zappa (1940-1993)
Roger Lasher Nortman (1941)
Michael Tilson Thomas (1944)
András Schiff (1953)
Kim Cascone (1955)
Thomas Randle (1958)
Jonathan Cole (1970)

and

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Maud Gonne (1866-1953)
Edward Hoagland (1932)

Bach Cantata Choir sings Bach's Christmas Oratorio - Parts 1, 2, 5, 6

I'll be singing in this concert, which will be performed with orchestra.

Today's Birthdays

Henry Hadley (1871-1937)
Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996)
Gordon Getty (1933)
John Harbison (1938)
Roger Woodward (1942)
Mitsuko Uchida (1948)
Hobart Earler (1960)

and

Elizabeth Benedict (1954)
Sandra Cisneros (1954)
Nalo Hopkinson (1960)

Review: Vancouver Symphony ushers in the holidays with Columbia Dance, David Shifrin, and Farkhad Khudyev

Paul Quackenbush Photography

A festive spirit filled the air Sunday afternoon (December 15) at Skyview Concert Hall, which was packed to the gills for the Vancouver Symphony’s annual Holiday Concert. The orchestra treated concertgoers to an eclectic program of ballet music with dancing provided by Columbia Dance, music for clarinet and orchestra that featured David Shifrin, plus a mix of orchestral gems and seasonal favorites. Guest conductor Farkhad Khudyev led the music with panache. The sold-out concert buzzed with an energetic vibe could be felt before any note was played, and it acquired a heightened level after All Classical Radio CEO and President Suzanne Nance stepped on to the stage as the evening’s emcee. That’s because she announced that Rene Flemming would be appearing with the orchestra at the Vancouver Arts and Music Festival in the summer. Yes, America’s most popular diva will sing this summer with the hometown band!

After that bombshell announcement, Nance skillfully directed the audience attention to the program, which included a Suite from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” Students from Columbia Dance deftly pirouetted and executed an array of lovely movements across the extension at the front of the stage. Although limited by the area they could use, the dancers (ages 12-18) captivated the audience with style and grace. All of the dancers exhibited excellent technique, and the prima dancer, in the role of Odette, displayed supreme elegance – especially when she moved backwards while on the tips of her toes.

Director Becky Moore deserved kudos for getting sets of dancers (up to eight at a time) on and off the stage area without any mishaps. She also arranged several tableaus that beautifully set the end of a movement. The orchestra, under Khudyev, supported the dancers with great sensitivity.

The concert spotlighted Shifrin in three colorful pieces that showed why he is considered one of America’s greatest clarinetists. “Circus,” a new piece written by Khudyev’s older brother, Eldar Hudiyev, received it Northwest premiere with Shifrin transitioning from a gentle, ethereal melody to a boisterous, Klezmer-like romp that ended on a wild high note.

Next came “Viktor’s Tale,” which John Williams wrote for the 2004 movie “The Terminal.” In that film, Tom Hanks portrayed an Eastern European man who becomes stuck in an airline terminal, because of a military coup in his homeland. Shifrin dug into the quirky and slightly humorous twists and turns of the melody with verve, which elicited a sense of the predicament that Hanks’ character endured.

For the final number in Shifrin’s set, “Blues” from “An American in Paris” by Italian composer Michele Mangani, concertgoers erupted into applause after recognizing the big opening glissando imitated the first bars from “Rhapsody in Blue.” With a bluesy swagger, Shifrin then expressed several themes that the trumpet has in “American in Paris,” and ended the piece on a stratospheric high note that brought down the house.

Suzanne Nance kicked off the second half of the concert with a heartwarming rendition of “Adeste Fideles” (“O Come All Ye Faithful”) in an arrangement for soprano and orchestra by her husband Desmond Earley.

“Dances in the Canebrakes” by Florence Price (and orchestrated by William Grant Still) paid tribute to our nation’s African-American experience with gentle and pleasant themes. The “Light Cavalry Overture” by Franz von Suppé launched the concert with a famous, crowd-pleasing calls from the trumpets.

In a nod to the season, the orchestra played Leroy Anderson’s “A Christmas Festival,” which cycled through eight Christmas carols plus “Jingle Bells” and concluded by delightfully mashing together “Adeste Fideles” with “Joy to the World.” Another Anderson concoction, the ever popular “Sleigh Ride” received a spirited performance from the local band with Khudyev adding some humorous gestures from the podium.

The concert concluded with two fun bon mots from Vienna. The first was Johann Strauss Jr’s “Tristch-Tratsch Polka,” which allowed orchestra members to shout a “Whoo Hoo.” The second was Johann Strauss Sr’s “Radetzky March,” in which the audience enthusiastically clapped along with the music – as guided by Khudyev.

Khudyev has terrific musical instincts and communicated well with the orchestra and the audience. Sometimes he showed a silly playfulness that was just perfect for a particular passage. It would be great to see him return to the podium some day in the future.

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)
Christopher Robson (1953)
Olaf Bär (1957)
Steven Esserlis (1958)
Rebecca Saunders (1967)

and

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

and from The Writer's Almanac:

It’s the birthday of French chanteuse Édith Piaf (1915). Piaf was born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville, on the outskirts of Paris. Her mother was a café singer and a drug addict, and her father was a street performer who specialized in acrobatics and contortionism. Neither of them particularly cared for Piaf, so she mostly grew up with her grandmother, who ran a brothel. Piaf was looked after by prostitutes and later claimed that she was blind from the ages of three to seven because of keratitis, or malnutrition, though this was never proved.

Her father reclaimed her when she was nine and Piaf began singing with him on street corners until he abandoned her again. She lived in shoddy hotel rooms in the red-light district of Paris and sang in a seedy café called Lulu’s, making friends with pimps, hookers, lowlifes, and gamblers, until she was discovered by an older man named Louis Leplée.

Leplée ran a nightclub off the Champs-Élysées. He renamed Piaf La Môme Piaf, “The Little Sparrow,” dressed her entirely in black, and set her loose on the stage. Piaf was a hit, and recorded two albums in one year, becoming one of the most popular performers in France during World War II.

Édith Piaf died on the French Riviera at the age of 47. More than 40,000 people came to her funeral procession. Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina named a small planet after Piaf; it’s called 3772 Piaf. Her songs have been covered by Madonna, Grace Jones, and even Donna Summer.

Édith Piaf’s last words were, “Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for.”

Today's Birthdays

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Edward MacDowell (1860-1908)
Fletcher Henderson (1897-1952)
Rita Streich (1920-1987)
William Boughton (1948)
David Liptak (1949)
Christopher Theofanidis (1967)

and

Saki - H. H. Munro (1870-1916)
Paul Klee (1879-1940)
Christopher Fry (1907-2005)
Abe Burrows (1910-1985)

Today's Birthdays

Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Arthur Fiedler (1894-1979)
Ray Noble (1903-1975)
Art Neville (1937-2019)

and

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939)
William Safire (1929-2009)
John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969)

and from The Writer's Almanac:

It's the day that The Nutcracker ballet was performed for the first time in St. Petersburg, Russia (1892). Czar Alexander III, in the audience, loved the ballet, but the critics hated it. Tchaikovsky wrote that the opera that came before The Nutcracker "was evidently very well liked, the ballet not. ... The papers, as always, reviled me cruelly." Tchaikovsky died of less than a year later, before The Nutcracker became an international success.

Today's Birthdays

François Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834)
Augusta Holmès (1847-1903)
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
Turk Murphy (1915-1987)
Steve Allen (1921-2000)
Dame Thea King (1925-2007)
Alice Parker (1925-2023)
Kenneth Gilbert (1931-2020)
Rodion Shchedrin (1932)
Philip Langridge (1939-2010)
Trevor Pinnock (1946)
Isabelle van Keulen (1966)

and

Jane Austin (1775-1817)
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973)
Noël Coward (1899-1973)
V. S. Pritchett (1900-1997)

Today's Birthdays

Michel‑Richard Delalande (1657-1726)
Lotte Schöne (1891-1981)
Stan Kenton (1911-1979)
Ida Haendel (1924-2020)
Eddie Palmieri (1936)
Nigel Robson (1948)
Jan Latham-Koenig (1953)

and

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917)
Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959)
Freeman Dyson (1923-2020)
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000)
Edna O'Brien (1930-2024)

Today's Birthdays

Maria Agata Szymanowska (1789-1831)
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)
Georges Thill (1897-1984)
Spike Jones (1911-1965)
Rosalyn Tureck (1914-2003)
Dame Ruth Railton (1915-2001)
Ron Nelson (1929-2023)
Christopher Parkening (1947)
Thomas Albert (1948)
John Rawnsley (1949)

and

Shirley Jackson (1919-1965)
Amy Hempel (1951)

Today's Birthdays

Anna Milder-Hauptman (1785-1838)
Alexis de Castillon (1838-1873)
Josef Lhévinne (1874-1944)
Eleanor Robson Belmont (1879-1979)
Samuel Dushkin (1891-1976)
Victor Babin (1908-1972)
Alvin Curran (1938)

and

Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882)
Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)
James Wright (1927-1980)
Lester Bangs (1948-1982)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1836, at a musical soiree at Chopin's apartments in Paris, the female writer "George" Sand, determined to make a good impression with her host, arrives wearing white pantaloons and a scarlet sash (the colors of the Polish flag). Paris Opéra tenor Adolphe Nourit sings some Schubert songs, accompanied by Franz Liszt. Liszt and Chopin play Moschele's Sonata in Eb for piano four-hands.

John Vergin in Winter's Voice

Winter's Voice is an annual treat by John Vergin, one of Portland's favorite bass-baritones. This one-man show will take place this Friday, December 13th at 7:30 pm in Eliot Hall Chapel on the campus of Reed College. Admission is $5 - 10.

Today's Birthdays

Andrey Schulz‑Evler (1852-1905)
Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974)
Frank Sinatra (1915-1998)
Philip Ledger (1937-2012)
Margaret Tan (1945)
Donald Maxwell (1948)
Jaap van Zweden (1960)
David Horne (1970)
Evren Genis (1978)

and

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
John Osborne (1929-1994)

Today's Birthdays

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)
Mieczyslaw Karlowicz (1876-1909)
Leo Ornstein (1893-2002)
Elliott Carter (1908-2012)
David Ashley White (1944)
Neil Mackie (1946)

and

Grace Paley (1922-2007)
Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)
Grace Paley (1922-2007)
Jim Harrison (1937-2016)
Thomas McGuane (1939)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1918, Russian-born conductor Nikolai Sokoloff leads the first concert of the Cleveland Orchestra at Gray's Armory, presented as a benefit for St. Ann's Church. His program included Victor Herbert's "American Fantasy," Bizet's "Carmen" Suite, two movements of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, Liadov's "Enchanted Lake," and Liszt's "Les Préludes".

Today's Birthdays

César Franck (1822-1890)
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Morton Gould (1913-1996)
Sesto Bruscantini (1919-2003)
Nicholas Kynaston (1941)
Julianne Baird (1952)
Kathryn Stott (1958)
Sarah Chang (1980)

and

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Melvil Dewey (1851-1931)
Adolf Loos (1870-1933)

Preview of Vancouver Symphony's Holiday Concert

Columbia Dance - Swan Lake

It’s that cold and rainy time of the year, when we are seeking some warmth and the glow of optimism to cheer us up. Fortunately, the Vancouver Symphony’s annual Holiday Concert is the perfect antidote for anyone who may be under the weather. The upcoming concerts (November 14 and 15) at Skyview Concert Hall offer an excellent musical chestnuts and contemporary pieces that you can cozy up to.

Suite from “Swan Lake” with Columbia Dance

The VSO will collaborate with the Columbia Dance to present a suite from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” one of the greatest ballets ever written. This is a return engagement for Columbia Dance, which presented excerpts from "Swan Lake” in 2018 and from “The Nutcracker” in 2019.

“To accommodate the dancers, a stage extension will be built at the front of the stage, and it will extend about eight feet into the seating area,” said Becky Moore, Director of Columbia Dance, during a phone call. “Combined with the seven feet that we have on the regular stage, we will have 15 feet of actual stage to work with.”

“We are building the stage next Tuesday from 10 pm to 2 am,” added Moore. “That’s when time allows in the schedule. Then we will lay down the Marley Dance floor, and we will work on spacing at Thursday and Friday night dress rehearsals. The dancers will perform ‘The Nutcracker’ the following weekend (Nov. 20-22) at Skyview also.”

Moore has been leading Columbia Dance for the past five years and has an extensive professional dance portfolio with many companies, including The Cincinnati Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet, Ballet West, The Washington Ballet, and Marin Ballet. She has choreographed the excerpts from “Swan Lake.”

“We have 36 dancers - ages 11 to 18 - performing with the orchestra,” said Moore. “But they will not be on stage at the same time. It’s about 8 on stage at any given moment – with 16 during some entrances and exits. It’s pretty tight, but we have rehearsed it well. The performance will involve all of our Company dancers, which is our most advanced group – 28 of them. And then our Level 5 dancers – 8 of them.”

Because they will dance “The Nutcracker” the following weekend, Moore had to give the VSO concert a lot of thought before committing to it.

“At first when I was approached about the VSO performance, I thought ‘No!’ remarked Moore. “We still have three dancers with us from the 2019 experience with the VSO, and they recalled how the music just took over their whole bodies. It was just so powerful to have that wave of live sound right there instead of a recording. So we decided to be crazy and different and go for it! The opportunity to give these kids a real live orchestra is just so rare – that makes it all the more compelling and worthwhile. They will never forget it.”

Guest Conductor Farkhad Khudyev

Making his debut on the podium will be Farkhad Khudyev, who is the Music Director of the University of Texas Symphony Orchestra and the Assistant Professor of Music in Orchestral Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as the Music Director of the Orchestral Institute at the Hidden Valley Institute of the Arts in Carmel, California. He recently made his conducting debut with the Eugene Symphony, where he is one of the finalists vying to become its next music director.

Born in Turkmenistan to a family of non-musicians, Khudyev has a Masters in Orchestral Conducting from Yale University.

“My father was an economist and mother was a cardiologist,” said Khudvey via Zoom. My younger brother, Emil Khudyev, is associate principal clarinetist and has his Master’s degree from Yale where he studied with clarinetist David Shifrin. My older brother, Eldar Hudiyev, is a professional violinist and composer in Bellevue, Washington. He wrote “Circus,” which the Vancouver Symphony will play in the Holiday Concert. That will be its Pacific Northwest premiere.”

Khudyev’s family hosted Peace Corp volunteers from the U.S. He and Emil became the first music students from Turkmenistan to receive scholarships to attend Interlochen. Farkhad was there for three years as a violinist before matriculating to Oberlin Conservatory for his Bachelors and then to Yale for his Masters.

“The Holiday Concert program with the Vancouver Symphony is a bit eclectic but flows beautifully well together,” noted Khudyev. “I have conducted all of the pieces before. We will open with Suppé’s ‘Light Cavalry Overture,’ which I have done with the Seattle Symphony in a Family Concert series. It has a balance between the lyrical and fanfare. I’ve conducted Tchaikovsky’s ballet, and I love to collaborate with youth. Tchaikovsky wrote what we call eternal music. I suggested the Florence Price’s ‘Dances in the Canebrakes.’ It is just a phenomenal piece that she wrote towards the end of her life. It was orchestrated by William Grant Still. I have conducted it with my orchestra in Texas and with the Boston Symphony.”

Khudyev is looking forward to the three pieces with Shifrin as soloist.

“John Williams’ ‘Viktor's Tale’ from the movie ‘The Terminal is a wonderful number,” said Khudyev. “We will also do Michele Mangani‘s ‘Blues from American in Paris.’ It starts like ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ then goes into themes from American in Paris. Eldar’s ‘Circus’ is a metaphor for life. It’s a short piece that travels long distances. At the premiere in Austin I told the audience to buckle your ear bells because you will experience quite a bit in a short period. From divine places you appear in a bar with a piano – crude and raw music. We will follow that with some traditional favorites, Leroy Anderson’s ‘Christmas Festival’ and ‘Sleigh Ride’ and a couple of favorites from Johann Strauss Jr and Johann Strauss Sr. “

Guest Clarinetist David Shifrin

Legendary clarinetist Shifrin last appeared with the VSO in 2017, playing pieces by Carl Maria von Weber and Giachino Rossini. He is well-known for his long tenure as Artistic Director of Chamber Music Northwest, but his acclaim extends internationally through his extensive concertizing and discography, which includes multiple Grammy nominations.

On tap to perform the pieces by Williams, Hudiyev, and Mangani, Shifrin noted during a phone call that this will be his first time to perform these pieces.

“It keeps me going to play new things,” said Shifrin. “I have seen the movie, ‘The Terminal’ and I knew the clarinetist, Emily Bernstein, who played the score for the movie. I played in the studios in L. A. for a several years. ‘Circus’ is a real romp. It’s a new piece that I have not heard until Farkhad sent the score to me. His younger brother was my clarinet student, and now I’m doing the music of his older brother. At Yale, I coached Emil and Farkhad in the Brahms ‘Clarinet Quintet.’ Emil was the clarinetist and Farkhad played first violin.

“In 2019, we had a big clarinet celebration at Chamber Music Northwest,” added Shifrin. “Michele Mangani arranged a blues version of Gershwin's ‘An American in Paris’ but this will be my experience with the orchestral version. It has a couple of excerpts from ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and then a whole Blues exposition on ‘American in Paris.’”

I had to ask him how many clarinets he owns.

“I don’t know,” chuckled Shifrin. “I’ll have to take an inventory.”

“I’m playing on a clarinet that was made in Vancouver. B. C.,” he added, “A Backun clarinet.”

“What kind of reeds do you use?” I asked.

“Over the last several years, I have been using synthetic reeds made by Guy Légère,” answered Shifrin. “It is made of a special polymer that vibrates just line cane. You don’t have to scrape them. That has given me a lot of time back. I don’t have to be a carpenter.”

PS: Sunday’s performance of the Holiday Concert is Sold Out, and there are only a few tickets remaining for the concert on Saturday.

Today's Birthdays

Emile Waldteufel (1837-1915)
Joaquin Turina (1882-1949)
Conchita Supervia (1895-1936)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006)
Dennis Eberhard (1943-2005)
Donny Osmond (1957)
Joshua Bell (1967)

and

John Milton (1608-1674)
Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)
Léonie Adams (1899-1988)
Ödön von Horváth (1901-1938)

From the Writer's Almanac:

Milton coined more than 600 words, including the adjectives dreary, flowery, jubilant, satanic, saintly, terrific, ethereal, sublime, impassive, unprincipled, dismissive, and feverish; as well as the nouns fragrance, adventurer, anarchy, and many more.

Today's Birthdays

Claude Balbastre (1724-1799)
Frantisek Xaver Dussek (1731-1799)
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Manuel Ponce (1882-1948)
Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)
Gérard Souzay (1918-2004)
Moisei Vainberg (1919-1996)
James Galway (1939)

and

Horace (65-8 B.C.)
Diego Rivera (1886-1957)
James Thurber (1894-1961)
James Tate (1948-2015)
Mary Gordon (1949
Bill Bryson (1951)

Today's Birthdays

Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710)
Hermann Goetz (1840-1876)
Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945)
Ernst Toch (1887-1964)
Rudolf Friml (1879-1972)
Richard Franko Goldman (1910-1980)
Daniel Jones (1912-1993)
Helen Watts (1927-2009)
Harry Chapin (1942-1981)
Daniel Chorzempa (1944-2023)
Tom Waits (1949)
Kathleen Kuhlmann (1950)
Krystian Zimerman (1956)

and

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)
Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Joyce Cary (1888-1957)
Noam Chomsky (1928)
Susan Isaacs (1943)

Profile of multi-talented Nicole Buetti in Oregon ArtsWatch

 Nicole Buetti is a force of nature and a force for the arts - for kids and adults. My profile of this dynamic and prolific musician-artist-composer - you name it - has been published in Oregon ArtsWatch here.

Today's Birthdays

Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605)
Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703)
Ira Gershwin (1896-1983)
Dave Brubeck (1920-2012)
Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
Henryk Górecki (1933-2010)
Tomas Svoboda (1939-2022)
John Nelson (1941)
Daniel Adni (1951)
Bright Sheng (1955)
Matthew Taylor (1964)

and

Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529)
The Encyclopedia Brittanica (1768)
Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995)

Today's Birthdays

Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762)
Vitezslav Novák (1870-1949)
"Little" Richard Wayne Penniman (1935-2020)
José Carreras (1946)
Krystian Zimerman (1956)
Osvaldo Golijov (1960)

and

Christina (Georgina) Rossetti (1830-1894)
Joan Didion (1934-2021)
Calvin Trillin (1935)
John Berendt (1939)
Lydia Millet (1968)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1704, George Frideric Handel (age 19) refuses to turn over the harpsichord to Johann Mattheson (age 23) during a performance of Mattheson's opera "Cleopatra," leading to a sword duel between the two. It is said that during the swordplay, Handel was saved by a button on his coat that deflected Mattheson's mortally-directed blade. The two reconciled on December 30 that year, dining together and attending a rehearsal of Handel's opera "Almira," becoming, as Mattheson put it: "better friends than ever."

Today's Birthdays

André Campra (1660-1744)
Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (1667-1737)
Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1949)
Alex North (1910-1991)
Yvonne Minton (1938)
Lillian Watson (1947)
Andrew Penny (1952)

and

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1891)
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968)

Article about All Classical Radio move to downtown Portland in Oregonlive

My story about All Classical Radio's new digs at the KOIN Tower has been published in Oregonlive here. It will appear in the Sunday edition of The Oregonian.

Today's Birthdays

Nicolo Amati (1596-1684)
André Campra (1660-1744)
Antonio Soler (1729-1783)
Émile Waldteufel (1837-1915)
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Halsey Stevens (1908-1989)
Ivan Sollertinsky (1902-1944)
Machito - Fransico Grillo (1909-1984)
Nino Rota (1911-1979)
Irving Fine (1914-1962)
Charles Craig (1919-1997)
Paul Turok (1929-2012)
José Serebrier (1938)
Matt Haimovitz (1970)

and

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Anna Freud (1895-1982)
Zlata Filipović (1980)

Today's Birthdays

Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949)
Rudolf Friml (1879-1972)
Harriet Cohen (1895-1967)
Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970)
Robert Moevs (1920-2007)
Maria Callas (1923-1977)
Jörg Demus (1928-2019)
Galina Grigorjeva (1962)

and

Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891)
T. Coraghessan Boyle (1948)
George Saunders (1958)
Ann Patchertt (1963)

And from the Composers Datebook: On this day in 1717, J.S. Bach is allowed to leave the Duke’s Court at Weimar. He had been imprisoned since Nov. 6th by his former employer Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar for accepting a new post at Prince Leopold’s court at Cöthen without first asking permission.

Today's Birthdays

François‑Xavier Richter (1709-1789)
Ernest (Louis-Etienne-Ernest) Reyer (1832-1909)
Agathe Grøndahl (1847-1907)
Lou Rawls (1933-2006)
Gordon Crosse (1937-2021
Bette Midler (1945)
Rudolf Buchbinder (1946)
Leontina Vaduva (1960)

Today's Birthdays

Carl Loewe (1796-1869)
Charles Valentin Alkan (1813-1888)
Sergei Liapunov (1859-1924)
Ludwig Thuille (1861-1907)
Ture Rangström (1884-1947)
Ray Henderson (1896-1970)
Klaus Huber (1924-2017)
Günther Herbig (1931)
Walter Weller (1939-2015)
Radu Lupu (1945-2022)
Semyon Bychkov (1952)

and

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
L(ucy) M(aud) Montgomery (1874-1942)
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012)
David Mamet (1947)

Review: Oregon Symphony and Danzmayr deliver the goods with Shostakovich 5, Prokofiev's Violin Concerto - with Gluzman - and Shekhar

The Oregon Symphony under its Music Director, David Danzmayr, delivered a trenchantly powerful performance of Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 5 in D Minor” on November 25th at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. It was the highlight of an evening that included a superb rendition of Prokofiev’s “Violin Concerto No. 2 in G Minor” with guest artist Vadim Gluzman and a brilliant, relatively new piece by Indian American composer Nina Shekhar.

With the Presidential election behind us and an authoritarian leader in front of us, Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony has emotional content that has a prescient quality. That’s because Shostakovich wrote the piece in 1937 as a way to appease the Soviet authorities and Stalin, who had attacked the composer in official Communist Party newspaper, “Pravda” for writing music that was considered decadent and didn’t express the party’s artistic views. Shostakovich was so fearful that he would be arrested that he slept in the stairwell of his apartment building so that his family would be spared from seeing him led away.

But Shostakovich didn’t buckle all the way, and his Fifth Symphony contains defiance in spite of the situation. That’s what the Oregon Symphony expressed to the nth degree. You could practically feel the drama, for example in the first movement, when the horns created low, sinister tones followed by a trumpeted march – reinforced by the timpani – yet later contradicted by a lovely melody from the flute (Principal Alicia DiDonato Paulsen). The bassoon duet and the ensuing waltz in the second movement provide a bit of calm before the tension returns in the third (Largo), which built a sense of tragedy and despairing cries from various sections of the orchestra. At one point, Danzmayr and company created such a triple pianissimo that anyone in the audience could have coughed and shattered the moment, but no one did – everyone was listening so intently. The pace quickened in the final movement, and with all forces insistently wailing – the strings playing the same note for 250 bars and Principal Sergio Carreno crushing the timpani – the symphony came to an incredibly dynamic ending, which caused an eruption of vociferous applause from the audience, bringing Danzmayr back to the podium three times.

Israelí virtuoso Vadim Gluzman, a frequent guest soloist with the Oregon Symphony – his last appearance with the orchestra was in January of 2023 – gave a stellar interpretation of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto. Displaying flawless technique, including numerous runs that were absolutely immaculate and golden, Gluzman elicited silken melodies with rhapsodic elan. The piece ended with a slightly rustic style that also had a bit of fire.

In response to thunderous ovations from the audience, Gluzman offered a lovely encore, the Gavotte en rondeau from Bach's E major partita.

The concert opened with Nina Shekhar’s “Lumina,” a one-movement piece (10 minutes in length) that began quietly with a violin bow stroking the xylophone. That note was mimicked by Concertmaster Sarah Kwak except that she would make the tone dip. The orchestra gradually joined, make a collage of tones that coalesced and bloomed and shimmered before subsiding. The piece used a lot of microtones, and that created an intoxicating, sonic blur. The meditative atmosphere was very appealing, and it make me intrigued about Shekhar’s works. Perhaps we will hear another piece in the near future.

Gluzman, by the way, has a done a recording of the Prokofiev with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra under Neeme Järvi. He has also made a recording of works by Richard Rodney Bennett with OSO’s former MD James DePriest and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo on the Koch label.

Today's Birthdays

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967)
John Brecknock (1937-2017)
Chuck Mangione (1940)
Louise Winter (1959)

and

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

Review of Dover Quartet concert - Chamber Music Northwest - in Oregon ArtsWatch

The Dover Quartet rolled into town for a long-awaited return engagement sponsored by Chamber Music Northwest. You can read all about it in Oregon ArtsWatch here.

Today's Birthdays

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838)
Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894)
Pamela Harrison (1915-1990)
Berry Gordy Jr. (1929)
Randy Newman (1943)
Diedre Murray (1951)

and

John Bunyan (1628-1688)
William Blake (1757-1827)
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942)
Nancy Mitford (1904-1973)
Rita Mae Brown (1944)
Alan Lightman (1948)

Today's Birthdays

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-1678)
Anton Stamitz (1750-1798 or 1809)
Franz Krommer (1759-1831)
Sir Julian Benedict (1804-1885)
Viktor Ewald (1860-1935)
Charles Koechlin (1867-1950)
Leon Barzin (1900-1999)
Walter Klien (1928-1991)
Helmut Lachenmann (1935)
Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)
David Felder (1953)
Victoria Mullova (1959)
Hilary Hahn (1979)

and

Anders Celsius (1701-1744)
Charles Beard (1874–1948)
James Agee (1909-1955)
Marilyn Hacker (1942)
Bill Nye (1955)

Today's Birthdays

Earl Wild (1915-2010)
Eugene Istomin (1925-2003)
Alan Stout (1932-2018)
John Sanders (1933-2003)
Craig Sheppard (1947)
Vivian Tierney (1957)
Spencer Topel (1979)

and

Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994)
Charles Schulz (1922-2000)
Marilynne Robinson (1943)

Today's Birthdays

Franz Gruber (1785-1863)
Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991)
Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)
Paul Desmond (1924-1977)
Sir John Drummond (1934-2006)
Jean-Claude Malgoire (1940-2018)
Håkan Hagegård (1945)
Yvonne Kenny (1950)
Gilles Cachemaille (1951)

and

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
Helen Hooven Santmyer (1895-1986)
Lewis Thomas (1913-1993)
Murray Schisgal (1926-2020)
Shelagh Delaney (1938-2011)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1934, conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler's article "The Hindemith Case" defending Hindemith's music appears in several German newspapers. A response attacking both Hindemith and Furtwängler appears in the Nazi newspaper "Der Angriff" on November 28. Furtwängler resigns all his official German posts on December 4 and leaves Berlin for several months. On December 6 Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels denounces Hindemith as an "atonal noisemaker" during a speech at the Berlin Sport Palace.

Today's Birthays

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
Willie ("The Lion") Smith (1897-1973)
Norman Walker (1907-1963)
Erik Bergman (1911-2006)
Alfredo Kraus (1927-1999)
Emma Lou Diemer (1927-2024)
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)
Maria Chiara (1939)
Chinary Ung (1942)
Tod Machover (1953)
Jouni Kaipainen (1956)
Samuel Zygmuntowicz (1956)
Edgar Meyer (1960)
Angelika Kirchschlager (1965)

and

Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677)
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Margaret Anderson (1886-1973)
Dorothy Butler Gilliam (1936)
Nuruddin Farah (1945)
Arundhati Roy (1961)

Today's Birthdays

Pierre Du Mage (1674-1751)
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)
André Caplet (1878-1925)
Guy Reginald Bolton (1884-1979)
Jerry Bock (1928-2010)
Vigen Derderian (1929-2003)
Krzysztof Penderecki (1933-2020)
Ludovico Einaudi (1955)
Thomas Zehetmair (1961)
Nicolas Bacri (1961)
Ed Harsh (1962)

and

Harpo Marx (1888-1964)
Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897-1999)
Paul Celan (1920-1950)
Jennifer Michael Hecht (1965)

and from the Writer's Almanac:

On this day in 1889, the first jukebox was unveiled in a saloon in San Francisco. It was invented by Louis Glass, who had earlier worked as a telegraph operator for Western Union and then co-founded the Pacific Phonographic Company. He was fascinated by the phonograph technology and saw a market for charging people to listen to them, since phonographs were still too expensive to buy for your own home. He installed the machine in the Palais Royal saloon simply because he knew the owner and it was close to his house, so he didn’t have to carry the machine very far.

The word “jukebox” wasn’t invented until the 1920s. Glass called his machine the “nickel-in-the-slot phonograph,” since you had to pay a nickel to hear a song play. In today’s money, a nickel was about $1.27 at the time. The first machine had four different stethoscopes attached to it that functioned as headphones. Each pair of headphones had to be activated by putting in a nickel, and then several people could listen to the same song at once. There were towels left by each listening device so people could wipe them off after using. As part of his agreement with the saloonkeepers, at the end of each song, the machine told the listener to “go over to the bar and buy a drink.”

His phonograph was a huge hit and, at a conference in Chicago, Glass told his competitors that his first 15 machines brought in over $4,000 in six months. This led to other manufacturers making their own machines. Shortly after, Thomas Edison designed a phonograph people could buy for their homes, which also cut into the market. Glass’s invention eventually made the player piano obsolete, and competitors updated the jukebox with new technologies from record players to CDs. Now there is such a thing as a digital jukebox, but they never really caught on, since they come with the size and expense of a regular jukebox, without any of the charm of flipping through the records and watching the moving parts of the machine.

Today's Birthdays

Frantisek Benda (1709-1786)
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784)
Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849)
Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)
Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981)
Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-1999)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Gunther Schuller (1925-2015)
Jimmy Knepper (1927-2003)
Hans Zender (1936-2019)
Kent Nagano (1951)
Stephen Hough (1961)
Sumi Jo (1962)
Edward Gardner (1974)

and

George Eliot (1819-1880)
André Gide (1869-1951)
Winfred Rembert (1945-2021)

And from The Writer's Almanac:

It’s the feast day of Saint Cecilia, who was the patron saint of musicians because she sang to God as she died a martyr’s death. She was born to a noble family in Rome near the end of the second century A.D.

It held a large musical festival to honor her, and the trend made its way to England in the next century. Henry Purcell composed celebratory odes to honor her, and the painter Raphael created a piece called “The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia.” Chaucer wrote about her in the Second Nonnes Tale, and Handel composed a score for a famous ode to her that John Dryden had written.

Today, Saint Cecilia is often commemorated in paintings and on stained glass windows as sitting at an organ.

Today's Birthdays

Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909)
Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
Coleman Hawkins (1904-1969)
Bernard Lagacé (1930)
Malcolm Williamson (1931-2003)
James DePreist (1936-2013)
Idil Biret (1941)
Vinson Cole (1950)
Kyle Gann (1955)
Stewart Wallace (1960)
Björk (1965)

and

Voltare (1694-1778)
Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944)
Mary Johnston (1870-1936)
René Magritte (1898-1967)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991)
Marilyn French (1929-2009)
Tina Howe (1937-2023)

Today's Birthdays

Edmond Dédé (1827-1903)
Daniel Gregory Mason (1873-1953)
Maya Plisetskaya (1925-2015)
René Kolo (1937)
Gary Karr (1941)
Meredith Monk (1942)
Phillip Kent Bimstein (1947)
Barbara Hendricks (1948)

and

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014)
Maya Plisetskaya (1925-2015)
R.W. Apple Jr. (1934-2006)
Don DeLillo (1936)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1805, Beethoven's opera "Fidelio" (1st version, with the "Leonore" Overture No. 2) was premiered in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien.

Review of Portland Opera's "The Juliet Letters" posted on Classical Voice North America

My review of this unique operatic production - blending pop and classical styles - is now published in Classical Voice North America here.

Today's Birthdays

Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663-1712)
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935)
Jean‑Yves Daniel‑Lesur (1908-2002)
Géza Anda (1921-1976)
Maralin Niska (1926-2010)
David Lloyd-Jones (1934-2022)
Agnes Baltsa (1944)
Ross Bauer (1951)

and

Allen Tate (1899-1979)
Sharon Olds (1942)

and from The Writer's Almanac:

On this date in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was four and a half months after the devastating battle, and it was a foggy, cold morning. Lincoln arrived about 10 a.m. Around noon, the sun came out as the crowds gathered on a hill overlooking the battlefield. A military band played, a local preacher offered a long prayer, and the headlining orator, Edward Everett, spoke for more than two hours. Everett described the Battle of Gettysburg in great detail, and he brought the audience to tears more than once. When Everett finished, Lincoln spoke.

Now considered one of the greatest speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address ran for just over two minutes, fewer than 300 words, and only 10 sentences. It was so brief, in fact, that many of the 15,000 people that attended the ceremony didn't even realize that the president had spoken, because a photographer setting up his camera had momentarily distracted them. The next day, Everett told Lincoln, "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."

There are several versions of the speech, and five different manuscript copies; they're all slightly different, so there's some argument about which is the "authentic" version. Lincoln gave copies to both of his private secretaries, and the other three versions were re-written by the president some time after he made the speech. The Bliss Copy, named for Colonel Alexander Bliss, is the only copy that was signed and dated by Lincoln, and it's generally accepted as the official version for that reason.

Today's Birthdays

Jean‑Baptiste Loeillet (1680-1730)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911)
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941)
Amelita Galli‑Curci (1882-1963)
Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985)
Lillian Fuchs (1901-1995)
Compay Segundo (1907-2003)
Johnny Mercer (1909-1976)
Don Cherry (1936-1995)
Heinrich Schiff (1951)
Bernard d'Ascoli (1958)

and

Louis Daguerre (1787-1851)
Asa Gray (1810-1888)
George Gallup (1901-1984)
Margaret Atwood (1939)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1741, Handel arrives in Dublin for an extended stay, involving a number of concerts in the Irish capital, including the premiere of his latest oratorio "Messiah" the following Spring (Gregorian date: Nov. 29).

On this day in 1928, Mickey Mouse debuts in "Steamboat Willie," in New York. This was the first animated cartoon with synchronized pre-recorded sound effects and music -- the latter provided by organist and composer Carl Stalling of Kansas City. Stalling would later provide memorable music for many classic Warner Brothers cartoons.

Today's Birthdays

Ernest Lough (1911-2000)
Hershy Kay (1919-1981)
Leonid Kogan (1924-1982)
Sir Charles Mackerras (1925-2010)
David Amram (1930)
Gene Clark (1941-1991)
Philip Picket (1950)
Philip Grange (1956)

and

Shelby Foote (1916-2006)

Today's Birthdays

Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831)
Alfred Hill (1869-1960)
W. C. Handy (1873-1958)
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
Burnet Tuthill (1888-1982)
Lawrence Tibbett (1896-1960)
David Wilson-Johnson (1950)
Donald Runnicles (1954)
John Butt (1960)

and

George S. Kaufman (1889-1961)
José Saramago (1922-2010)
Chinua Achebe (1930-2013)
Andrea Barrett (1954)

Today's Birthdays

Sir William Herschel (1738-1822)
Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (1905-1980)
Petula Clark (1932)
Peter Dickinson (1934)
Daniel Barenboim (1942-2023)
Pierre Jalbert (1967)

and

Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946)
Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960)
Georgia O'Keefe (1887-1986)
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1926, the first broadcast of a music program took place on the NBC radio network, featuring the New York Symphony conducted by Walter Damrosch, the New York Oratorio Society, and the Goldman Band, with vocal soloists Mary Garden and Tito Ruffo, and pianist Harold Bauer.

Review of Metropolitan Youth Symphony season opener

 

My review of the MYS concert on Sunday night has been published in Oregon ArtsWatch here.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837)
Fanny Hensel (1805-1847)
Rev. John Curwen (1816-1880)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Leonie Rysanek (1926-1998)
Jorge Bolet (1914-1990)
Narciso Yepes (1927-1997)
Robert Lurtsema (1931-2000)
Peter Katin (1930-2015)
Ellis Marsalis (1934-2020)
William Averitt (1948)

and

Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002)
William Steig (1907-2003)

Review of Portland Youth Philharmonic season opener

 My review of PYP's season opening concert is now available in Oregon ArtsWatch here.

Today's Birthdays

Jan Zach (1699-1773)
Louis Lefébure-Wély (1817-1870)
Brinley Richards (1817-1885)
George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931)
Marguerite Long (1874-1966)
Joonas Kokkoken (1921-1996)
Lothar Zagrosek (1942)
Martin Bresnick (1946)

and

St. Augustine (354-430)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
George V. Higgins (1939-1999)
Eamon Grennan (1941)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1937, the first "official" radio broadcast by the NBC Symphony Orchestra took place with Pierre Monteux conducting. Arthur Rodzinski had conducted a "dress rehearsal" broadcast on Nov. 2, 1937. Arturo Toscanini's debut broadcast with the NBC Symphony would occur on Christmas Day, 1937.

Eighty Years Of Music with violinist Leslie Hirsch and composer John Vergin

Leslie Hirsch, Portland-based string player, is celebrating her 80th birthday with a concert of music composed by John Vergin. Over the course of many years, Hirsch has commissioned works from John Vergin. They will be performed, along with other pieces by Vergin. Several of the pieces will receive their first performance.

Hirsch is a violist and violinist, performer and teacher, and currently plays in Portland's Bach Cantata Choir orchestra.

Vergin has been active for many years in the Portland-metro-area as a singer, pianist and organist, composer, actor, and teacher. He teaches voice at Reed College.

Time/Location - Sunday, Nov. 17, 7:30 P.M. in the Reed College chapel in Eliot Hall.

Admission - By donation, proceeds going to Reed's scholarship fund for music students.

Today's Birthdays

Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
Jean Papineau-Couture (1916-2000)
Michael Langdon (1920-1991)
Lucia Popp (1939-1993)
Neil Young (1945)

and

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Michael Ende (1929-1995)
Tracy Kidder (1945)
Katherine Weber (1955)

From the New Music Box:

On November 12, 1925, cornetist Louis Armstrong made the first recordings with a group under his own name for Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois. The group, called Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, recorded his original compositions, "Gut Bucket Blues" and "Yes! I'm In The Barrel" (Okeh 8261) as well as "My Heart" composed by his wife Lil Hardin who was the pianist in the band. (The flipside of the 78 rpm record on which the latter was issued, Okeh 8320, was "Armstrong's composition "Cornet Chop Suey" recorded three months later on February 26, 1926.) Armstrong's Hot Five and subsequent Hot Seven recordings are widely considered to be the earliest masterpieces of recorded jazz.

Today's Birthdays

Bernhard Romberg (1767-1841)
Frederick Stock (1872-1942)
Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969)
Jan Simons (1925-2006)
Arthur Cunningham (1928-1997)
Vernon Handley (1930-2008)
Harry Bramma (1936)
Jennifer Bate (1944-2020)
Fang Man (1977)

and

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012)
Mary Gaitskill (1955)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1898, shortly after it was finished, the painting “Nevermore” by Gaugin is purchased by the English composer Frederick Delius. The painting was inspired by Poe’s famous poem and is now in the collection of London’s Cortland Gallery.

Today's Birthdays

Martin Luther (1483-1546)
François Couperin (1668-1733)
John Phillips Marquand (1873-1949)
Carl Stalling (1891-1972)
Ennio Morricone (1928-2020)
Graham Clark (1941-2023)
Sir Tim Rice (1944)
Andreas Scholl (1967)

and

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774)
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)
Vachel Lindsey (1879-1931)
John Phillips Marquand (1893-1960)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1900, Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch makes his Carnegie Hall debut in New York City during his first American tour. In 1909 he married contralto Clara Clemens, the daughter of the American writer Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain.

Review: Oregon Symphony with Glover and Pratt polish Bach and Montgomery to perfection

From OSO's Facebook page

The Oregon Symphony dialed it back a couple hundred years and a few score more to deliver outstanding performances of works by Bach, Handel, and Haydn at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (November 4). Baroque specialist Dame Jane Glover, in her debut with the orchestra, made sure that the sound was fresh and gem-like. Guest soloist Awadagin Pratt excelled at the keyboard with the Bach and then topped that with an entrancing rendition of Jessie Montgomery’s “Rounds,” a contemporary number that perfectly complemented the old masters.

It was a genuine rarity to hear the local band play Bach’s “Concerto No. 4 in A Major for Clavier and Strings.” According to the program notes, the last time that the orchestra touched that piece was in January of 1997 under James DePreist with – guess who – Awadagin Pratt. I can’t even recall the last time I heard any Bach played by the orchestra. So I combed through my reviews and found that in October of 2015, Matthew Halls conducted the “Ricercare” from Bach’s “Musical Offering” in Webern’s arrangement.

Perhaps part of the reason that there has been so little Bach programmed at OSO concerts was due to the acoustics of the hall. Fortunately, OSO’s installation of the Meyer Sound System in 2021 has really improved the sonic qualities. At Monday night’s concert, Pratt, Glover, and the orchestra – in a cozy string chamber formation – fashioned an elegant statement with Bach’s “Concerto No. 4 in A Major for Clavier and Strings” (not to be confused with the Brandenburg Concerto No 4). The opening movement danced with bright colors and a joyful ambiance. The second movement offered delicate exchanges of phrases between Pratt and members of the orchestra – especially Principal Bassoon Carin Miller. The third movement capped things off with wonderful dynamic contrasts, including one that swelled up to double forte and subsided to a double pianissimo.

Montgomery’s “Rounds,” which, by the way, won the 2024 Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, created a gentle, mystical soundscape that alternated between busy, constantly rolling patterns from the piano and chords that asymmetrically leapt about. At one point the piano part climbed higher and higher while the orchestra held things steady, which created another ethereal moment. An expansive cadenza allowed Pratt to show some amazing improvisational talent, and that became a highlight of the evening.

The music more than won over the audience, which erupted in rapturous applause. After returning to center stage a couple of times, Pratt played an encore, François Couperin’s “Les Barricades Mystérieuses” (The Mysterious Barricades), which extended the magical atmosphere of the Bach and Montgomery pieces.

The concert opened with a peppy and dance-like rendition the Suite No. 2 in D Major from Handel’s “Water Music.” Urged on by Glover, the chamber ensemble made the passages grow and glow. The ornamentation from the horns sparked, and it was wonderful to hear the harpsichord (another advantage of the acoustical enhancement of the hall). It was top notch Handel from beginning to end.

Haydn’s “Symphony No. 103 in E-flat Major (aka “Drumroll”} also receive a superb performance from Glover and forces. Listeners perked up right away, because Assistant Principal Timpani, Sergio Carreno, pounced on the kettle drums like a cat on bowl of tuna. The slow and stately passage from the low strings and bassoons that followed seemed to rise from the stage flow. It broke into a light-hearted dance from the entire ensemble that was just pure pleasure to hear. Concertmaster Sarah Kwak’s lovely solo and the bird-like sound of the flutes enhanced the second movement. The third (Minuet) delightfully kept the odd balance between graceful and heavy-handed dance steps. With horns blazing the final movement swept everyone into a spirted and grand finale. That caused concertgoers to erupt with applause, and after Glover returned to the podium a third time, Kwak and the orchestra delayed standing so that the conductor could enjoy the applause – a real tribute to Glover’s artistry.

Today's Birthdays

Burrill Phillips (1907-1988)
Pierrette Alarie (1921-2011)
Piero Cappuccilli (1929-2005)
Ivan Moravec (1930-2015)
William Thomas McKinley (1938-2015)
Thomas Quasthoff (1959)
Bryn Terfel (1965)

and

Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)
Hugh Leonard (1926-2009)
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Today's Birthdays

Friedrich Witt (1770-1836)
Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953
Lamberto Gardelli (1915-1938)
Jerome Hines (1921-2003)
Richard Stoker (1938-2021)
Simon Standage (1941)
Judith Zaimont (1945)
Tadaaki Otaka (1947)
Elizabeth Gale (1948)
Bonnie Raitt (1949)
Ana Vidović (1980)

and

Dorothy Day (1897-1980)
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)
Raja Rao (1908-2006)
Kazuo Ishiguro (1954)

Review: Rachel Barton Pine makes Mendelssohn shine - the VSO excels with Shostakovich 10

Opposites attract – or so the saying goes – and that concept – taken broadly – can even apply to music programming. Take, for example, last weekend’s Vancouver Symphony concert, which featured Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. Guest soloist Rachel Barton Pine coaxed a delicious blend of sweet and soaring sounds from the Mendelssohn, and Music Director Salvador Brotons marshalled his forces to deliver the agitated and caustic sentiment of the Shostakovich. Put together, the two pieces made a satisfying musical sandwich for listeners on November 2nd at Skyview Concert Hall.

The concert marked a return engagement for Pine with the Vancouver Symphony. She last soloed with the local band in May of 2022, delivering an impressive performance of Korngold’s Violin Concerto. So, this time around, it was not surprising when she wheeled to center stage on a motorized scooter and transferred to a chair on a slightly raised platform.

The award-winning violinist wasted no time establishing a strong and rich tone in the opening statement of the Mendelssohn. Riveting high notes enhanced the lyrical melodic line, and her exchange of phrases with the orchestra sounded terrific. In the lovely second movement, Pine created a slight sense of melancholy that was supported as if by a gentle breeze. The third movement was all brightness and light – with a lightening quick final section in which Pine’s fingers seemed to dance.

Speaking of dance, Pine followed the immediate standing ovation with a medley of Scottish fiddling tunes. The flowed in a sequence of dances known as March-Strathspey-Reel or MSR. Each one had delightfully tricky rhythms, but the last one, the Reel, really showed off fleet fingerwork by Pine.

Shostakovich finished his Tenth Symphony right after the death of Josef Stalin in 1953. Since the Stalin and his party had heavily criticized Shostakovich’s music, including the censure, in 1948, of his Ninth Symphony, he had pretty much stopped composing symphonies. So with Stalin’s passing, the composer felt liberated, and unloaded a lot of thoughts and emotions into Symphony No. 10.

The piece has been characterized by some as “pessimistic optimism,” and the orchestra, guided by Brotons, expressed that transition extremely well, starting cellos and double basses delving into the moody, dark, and haunting passage at the very beginning of the first movement (Moderato). Other sections of the orchestra jointly built a quiet tension that just erupted into a tremendous crescendo before dying away to a lone piccolo. The violent slashes of sound in the second movement (Allegro), did suggest – as Brotons noted in his introductory remarks – Stalin punching about. The third (Allegretto) contained an awkward waltz – as if people were trying to loosen up and remember how to have fun. The fourth (Andante – Allegro) carried Shostakovich’s musical monogram, DSCH, in an insistently repetitive pattern – Brotons likened it to the words “this is myself” – that transitioned into the fast, triumphant, and joyful finale.

The orchestra rose to the many challenging elements of the Tenth Symphony to successfully convey its emotional weight. Among the many highlights were the glowing sound of the horns, led by principal Dan Partridge, the evocative playing of bassoonist Kahayla Rapolla and assistant principal oboist Nicholas Thompson, the subtle sound of principal clarinetist Igor Shakhman, the flutists – principal Rachel Rencher, Corrie Cook, and Darren Cook (also on piccolo), and the unified sound of the strings, led by concertmaster Eva Richey, with extra kudos for excelling in the fast passages. Outstanding conducting by Brotons brought out the best.

Before the concert began, Hal Abrams, Director of Development, told the audience that in just a few weeks (from the time of the previous concert in late September) more than enough money had been raised to match a $200,000 challenge from a small group of donors. That kind of fundraising really boosts the outreach programs of the orchestra. I did see more young people in the audience, which is an excellent sign that the orchestra’s efforts to work with schools is having a positive effect. So things are looking positive in many ways for the VSO.

Today's Birthdays

Ferenc (Franz) Erkel (1810-1893)
Efrem Kurtz (1900-1995)
William Alwyn (1905-1985)
Al Hirt (1922-1999)
Dame Joan Sutherland (1926-2010)
Dame Gwyneth Jones (1937)
Joni Mitchell (1943)
Judith Forst (1943)
Christina Viola Oorebeek (1944)

and

Marie Curie (1867-1934)
Lise Meitner (1878-1968)
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
Benny Andersen (1929-2018)
Stephen Greenblatt (1943)

Review: Exemplar recital by Roderick Williams for Chamber Music Northwest

Wow! Roderick Williams and Myra Huang delivered a super duper recital of Schubert's art songs last week. My review of the concert is published here in Oregon ArtsWatch. I hope that you enjoy reading it.

Today's Birthdays

Adolphe Sax (1814-1894)>
John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
Don Lusher (1923-2006)
James Bowman (1941)
Arturo Sandoval (1949)
Daniele Gatti (1961)

and

Robert Musil (1880-1942)
Harold Ross (1892-1951)
Ann Porter (1911-2011)
James Jones (1921-1977)
Michael Cunningham (1952)

From The Writer's Almanac:

It’s the birthday of the March King, John Philip Sousa, born in Washington, D.C. (1854). His father was a U.S. Marine Band trombonist, and he signed John up as an apprentice to the band after the boy tried to run away from home to join the circus. By the time he was 13 years old, Sousa could play violin, piano, flute, cornet, baritone, trombone, and was a pretty good singer too. At 26, he was leading the Marine Band and writing the first of his 136 marches, including “Semper Fidelis,” which became the official march of the Corps, and “The Washington Post March.” In addition to those marches, he wrote nearly a dozen light operas, and as many waltzes too; and he wrote three novels. But he’s best known for “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Today's Birthdays

Hans Sachs (1494-1576)
Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961)
Walter Gieselking (1895-1956)
Claus Adam (1917-1983)
György Cziffra (1921-1994)
Nicholas Maw (1935-2009)
Anthony Rolfe Johnson (1940-2010)
Art Garfunkel (1941)
Gram Parsons (1946-1973)
Orli Shaham (1975)

and

Ida M. Tarbell (1867-1944)
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918)
Thomas Flanagan (1923-2002)

Sam Shephard (1943-2017)
Vandana Shiva (1952)
Diana Abu-Jabar (1960)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1955, Karl Böhm conducts a performance of Beethoven's "Fidelio" at the gala re-opening of Vienna Opera House (damaged by Allied bombs on March 12, 1945). During the rebuilding of the Opera House, performances had continued in two nearby Viennese halls: the Theatre and der Wien and the Volksoper.

Today's Birthdays

Carl Tausig (1841-1871)
Arnold Cooke (1906-2005)
Miriam Solovieff (1921-2004)
Elgar Howarth (1935)
Joan Rodgers (1956)
Elena Kats-Chernin (1957)
Daron Hagen (1961)

and

Will Rogers (1879-1935)
C. K. Williams (1936-2015)
Charles Frazier (1950)

Today's Birthdays

Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654)
Vincenzio Bellini (1801-1835)
Vladimir Ussachevsky (1911-1990)

and

Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571)
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901)
Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879-1962)
Walker Evans (1903-1975)
Terrence McNally (1939-2020)
Martin Cruz Smith (1942)
Joe Queenan (1950)

Today's Birthdays

Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692-1766)
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799)
Count Andrey Razumovsky (1752-1836)
John Foulds (1880-1939)
Luchino Visconti (1906-1976)
Douglas Lilburn (1915-2001)
Harold Farberman (1929-2018)
Guiseppe Sinopoli (1946-2001)
Jeremy Menuhin (1951)
Marie McLaughlin (1954)
Paul Moravec (1957)

and

George Boole (1815-1864)
C.K. Williams (1936-2015)
Thomas Mallon (1951)

Today's Birthdays

Roger Quilter (1877-1953)
Eugen Jochum (1902-1987
Bruno Bjelinski (1909-1992)
Victoria de Los Angeles (1923-2005)
William Mathias (1934-1992)
Lyle Lovett (1957)

and

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
Grantland Rice (1880-1954)
A. R. Gurney (1930-2017)
Edward Said (1935-2003)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1830, Chopin’s friends in Warsaw throw a festival “bon voyage” dinner for the composer-pianist on the eve of his departure for Paris. As it turned out, he would never return to his native land.

Today's Birthdays

Ditta Pásztory-Bartók (1903-1982)
Louise Talma (1906-1996)
August Everding (1928-1999)
Colin Tilney (1933)
Odaline de la Martinez (1949)
Naji Hakim (1955)

and

Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)
John Keats (1795-1821)
Susan Orlean (1955)

from The New Music Box

On October 31, 1896, the Boston Symphony premiered the Gaelic" Symphony in E Minor by Mrs. H.H.A. Beach (Amy Marcy Cheney Beach), the first symphony by an American woman ever publicly performed.
and from the Composers Datebook:

On this date in 1933, Arnold Schoenberg, accompanied by his wife, baby daughter, and family pet terrier "Witz," arrives in New York on the liner Isle de France.

Review: Totentanz gets spine-tingling treatment from Joyce Yang and the Oregon Symphony

Joyce Yang with Asher Fisch and the Oregon Symphony - Photo from OSO Facebook page

It’s that spooky time of the year – with Halloween coming up in a few days – so the programming of Liszt’s “Totentanz” (Dance of the Dead) for the Oregon Symphony concert (October 26) was a perfect fit, and wow, pianist Joyce Yang delivered a bone-rattling, chilling, and thrilling performance. Her prowess on the keyboard lit up everyone in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in a program that included the Wagner’s Overture to “Der fliegende Holländer” (The Flying Dutchman) and Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”) with guest conductor Asher Fisch. Both Yang and Fisch made their debuts with the orchestra in this concert.

Ever since she won the silver medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2005, Yang has been busy with an international career. Accolades for Yang have continued to roll, including an Avery Fisher Career Grant 2010 and a Grammy nomination in 2018 for her recording with violinist Augustin Hadelich.

Offering six variations on the Dies Irae theme from the Latin Requiem Mass, Liszt’s “Totentanz” opened with a bombastic statement from low brass before being forcefully taken over by Yang. Playing with fierce intensity and impeccable technique, she captivated listeners with over-the-top virtuosity in each variation. Some of the variations created images of skeletons rattling about. Other variations were more lush and Romantic, and one of them conjured a style similar to Bach’s but on drugs. In every variation, Yang shaped compelling storylines that gripped the entire hall, and took listeners on a memorable journey. I mention that because most concertgoers, I think, are familiar with Rachmaninov’s “Variations on a Theme by Paganini,” but most didn’t know all of the variations in the “Totentanz.”

Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” in an arrangement by Earl Wild. It was smothered in lush ornateness but still relaxing to the ears, providing a wonderful contrast to the spine-tingling Liszt number.

Asher Fisch is well-known for his Wagner interpretations. I’ve heard him conduct Seattle Opera performances and have been impressed. So his directing of Overture to “Der fliegende Holländer” went very well. The tempos were well chosen and all of the themes came through clearly, and it was especially impressive when the violins executed a blitzing, ascending passage with a unified sound near the end of the piece.

But Fisch’s conducting of Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony was mystifyingly vague at times. Eschewing a score, Fisch got things off to a good start, but he often slipped into poetic gestures that were not particularly on the beat – as if he were trying to paint a canvas of color. Often, he didn’t help the musicians with cues and a clear beat, and he used some very wild gestures when the music became fast and furious.

It was a good thing that the orchestra knows the Dvořák so well. They plowed ahead and delivered the goods, but some entrances were a bit tentative and just not as crisp as they could have been. Also in the fourth movement, there was a big squeak in the woodwinds – which was very, very unusual – and I wonder if it was caused by some nervousness. I can’t even remember when I had heard that before at an Oregon Symphony concert.

Still, there were highlights, which included the lovely sound of Principal Flutist Alicia DiDonato Paulsen and the poignant English Horn playing of Jason Sudduth. At the end of the second movement, the brief brass chorale glowed before the passage was finished off by the bass violins. Sensitive playing by timpanist Ian Kerr added terrifically to music-making. The audience loved the performance and responded with robust applause and cheers, but I think that they might have heard a much better performance if Fisch had not conducted from memory.

Today's Birthdays

Peter Warlock (Philip Arnold Heseltine) (1894-1930)
Stanley Sadie (1930-2005)
Frans Brüggen (1934-2014)
Grace Slick (1939)
René Jacobs (1946)
James Judd (1949)
Shlomo Mintz (1957)

and

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
André Chénier (1762-1794)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Robert Caro (1935)

Today's Birthdays

Harold Darke (1888-1976)
Vivian Ellis (1904-1996)
Václav Neumann (1920-1995)
Jon Vickers (1926-2015)
James Dillon (1950)
Lee Actor (1952)
James Primosch (1956)

and

James Boswell (1740-1795)
Harriet Powers (1837-1910)
Henry Green (1905-1973)
David Remnick (1958)

Preview of Vancouver Symphony Concert with Rachel Barton Pine (Mendelssohn) - plus Salvador Brotons (Shostakovich)

Photo credit Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

Virtuoso violinist Rachel Barton Pine will to play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with the Vancouver Symphony this upcoming weekend (November 2nd and 3rd) at Skyview Concerto Hall. This is a return engagement for Pine, who dazzled the audience the last time she was in town (May 2022) with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto. This time around should be just as amazing,

A native of Chicago (where she still lives), Barton’s artistry has garnered a shelf of accolades, including being the first American and youngest person to win the J.S. Bach International Violin Competition. She has soloed with orchestras around the world and is featured in 34 recordings. On top of that, she started the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation to promote classical music education, including string music by African-American composers.

Mendelssohn’s concerto is one of the most famous concertos that has ever been written for the violin, and Pine has perfomred it many, many times.

“I learned the Mendelssohn when I was nine years old and played it for the first time with orchestra when I was 10 and 11, said Pine. “One of the most memorable of those concerts happened when I was 11 years old. I played the last movement with an orchestra for a Wild-West-themed family concert. If you think about it the theme in the last movement of the Mendelssohn has a similarity with famous theme from the William Tell Overture. At that concert I got to wear a blue-jeaned skirt and cowboy boots, braids, big belt buckle. To this day, when we get to the last movement of the Mendelssohn with that famous trumpet call, I think yee-haw!”

Since Pine has done the Mendelssohn countless times, I had to ask her if she ever gets tired of playing it.

“I’ve always vowed that if I ever go to a point in my life where something didn’t inspire me any more, I wouldn’t do a gig just to do a gig,” replied Pine. “I would only play a piece if I still felt excited to play it. Thus far, I haven’t gotten sick of anything, even the ones I play most often. One of the hallmarks of a great masterpiece is that you can do it over and over again, and you can always hear different nuances and search of different colors each time you play it. Every time I play with a different orchestra and a different conductor. The flutiest might do something differently, or the cello section might bring out a sound that I’ve not heard before. That makes a piece feel fresh each time.”

Pine’s love for the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto has never diminished.

“There’s a famous quote from the great violinist Joseph Joachim, who was Brahms’ best friend and collaborator. Joachim was the teacher of the teacher of my teacher. Joachim said ‘The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's.’”

“I think that’s a true assessment,” added Pine. “The Mendelssohn is so intimate a touching. The Bruch and the Mendelssohn are the two violin concerts that are studied by young children. The technical demands are not as over the top in terms of strength and stamina and the pyrotechnical tricks as in the other Romantic concertos. That, however, doesn’t mean that they are simpler or easier. It’s just that physically, younger people can handle them. It’s the work of a lifetime to tease out the meaning of every single phrase and make every note special.”

Pine pointed out that Mendelssohn broke with the Classical tradition in the way that he handled the cadenzas for the soloist.

“In the Classical period,” explained Pine, “the orchestra would come to a big fermata and then the cadenza for the soloist would take over and often improvise. Towards the end of the cadenza, the soloist would do a trill and the orchestra would come back in. In the Mendelssohn the soloist’s cadenza flows right out of the orchestra and carries on, and after a set of arpeggios the orchestra enters right in the middle of them. So there is an elision both in and out of the cadenza. It’s an integrated event and not the kind of cadenza that Classical music had offered. I play the cadenza that Mendelssohn wrote. I don’t take the liberty of improvising whatever I want. That would be like deleting Mendelssohn’s music, and I can’t do that.”

“In the Mendelssohn, the soloist starts playing right away,” noted Pine. “That was a bit radical. So you don’t have a long orchestral introduction, which had been the norm. All of the main themes of the movement are stated in the opening tutti section. So it is like the overture to an opera or a musical where your ear is introduced to the primary material and then the soloist comes in and does their thing to it.”

In playing this great concerto, the technical prowess required is stunning, but it is not the main part of what Pine is trying to do.

“We are not there to be athletes, we are there to be artists,” remarked Pine. “The most important thing is to tell a story and take the audience on an emotional journey. If the takeaway for the audience is that a violinist played all those arpeggios cleanly and nailed those high notes, then you know that you didn’t do a good job, because what you are expressing should be so compelling that the audience doesn’t even notice the technique, then you know that you have succeeded.”

The Mendelssohn is also part of Pine's discography.

“I’ve recorded the Mendelssohn concerto on the Cedille label,” said Pine, “and I wrote the liner notes. Some people think that because Mendelssohn was raised in a family that was well-off, and he didn’t have to go through personal crises, that his music is less profound than others, because he didn’t have to go through struggles. But that opinion has always bothered me. Why do we have to elevate negativity? I think that great joy is just as profound as great sadness. Mendelssohn was so in touch with beauty that his music in this concerto can touch your heart.”

The second half of the concert will feature Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony. It was last performed by the VSO under Music Director Salvador Brotons in 2009.

“I did the Shostakovich first with the Montevideo Orchestra in Uruguay and later with The Balearic Symphony in Mallorca,” wrote Brotons in an email message. “It is a phenomenal symphony, and one of Shostakovich’s best. It is a very biographical work, because Shostakovich wrote it just after Stalin’s death. He hated the dictator. The first movement describes the painful feelings of Russian society versus the unhuman power. The second movement, which is very fast and difficult, depicts Stalin’s brutality.. In last two movements, Shostakovich’s name is coded into the music with the letters DSCH (Re Mib Do Si) - himself versus the power. It is amazing how the composer faces the society. His theme appears almost incessantly.”

“It is a very intense and deeply felt piece of music,” concluded Brotons. “I am looking forward to conducting it in Vancouver. I hope the audience will understand the message.”

Today's Birthdays

Giuditta Pasta (1797-1865)
Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
Dame Cleo Laine (1927)
Carl Davis (1936-2023)
Howard Blake (1938)
Kenneth Montgomery (1943)
Naida Cole (1974)

and

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
John Harold Hewitt (1907-1987)
Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
John Hollander (1929-2013)
Anne Perry (1938-2023)

Today's Birthday

Maxim Berezovsky (1745-1777)
Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)
Helmut Walcha (1907-1991)
Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997)
Dominick Argento (1927-2019)
Elliot Del Borgo (1938-2013)
Julius Eastman (1940-1990)
Håkan Hardenberger (1961)
Vanessa-Mae (1978)

and

Lee Krasner (1908-1994)
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Today's Birthdays

Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612)
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)
Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758)
Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972)
György Pauk (1936)
Christine Brewer (1955)
Natalie Merchant (1963)
Sakari Oramo (1965)
Vijay Iyer (1971)

and

Andrei Bely (1880-1934)
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)
John Arden (1930-2012)
Andrew Motion (1952)

Review of Project Chamber Music Willamette Valley concert

 

My review of the Project Chamber music concert, featuring Caitlin Lynch and colleagues in a couple of piano quartets has been published in Oregon ArtsWatch here.

Profile of Caitlin Lynch and Project Chamber Music Willamette Valley

Caitlin Lynch is an amazing person and violist who founded and now directs an outstanding program that benefits young music students. You can read all about it in an article that I wrote for Oregon ArtsWatch here.

Today's Birthdays

Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623)
Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Don Banks (1923-1980)
Galina Vishnevskaya (1926-2012)
Peter Lieberson (1946-2011)
Diana Burrell (1948)
Colin Carr (1957)
Midori (1971)

and

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
John Berryman (1914-1972)
Anne Tyler (1941) Zadie Smith (1975)

Today's Birthdays

Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885)
Imre [Emmerich] Kálman (1882-1953)
Conrad Leonard (1898-2003)
Paul Csonka (1905-1995)
Tito Gobbi (1913-1984)
Luciano Berio (1925-2003)
George Crumb (1929-2022)
Sofia Gubaidulina (1931)
Malcolm Bilson (1935)
Bill Wyman (1936)
George Tsontakis (1951)
Cheryl Studer (1955)

and

Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879)
Moss Hart (1904-1961)
Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
Norman Rush (1933)

Today's Birthdays

Albert Lortzing (1801-1851)
Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)
Miriam Gideon (1906-1996)
Denise Duval (1921-2016)
Ned Rorem (1923-2022)
Lawrence Foster (1941)
Toshio Hosokawa (1955)
"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959)
Brett Dean (1961)

and

Robert Bridges (1844-1930)
Johnny Carson (1925-2005)
Nick Tosches (1949)
Laurie Halse Anderson (1961)

Today's Birthdays

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Sir Donald McIntyre (1934)
Elizabeth Connell (1946-2012)

and

John Reed (1887-1920)
John Gould (1908-2003)
Doris Lessing (1919-2013)

In 1883, the grand opening of the original Metropolitan Opera House in New York City with performance of Gounod's "Faust" with Auguste Vianesi, conducting.

Today's Birthdays

Joseph Canteloube (1879-1957)
Egon Wellesz (1885-1974)
Howard Ferguson (1908-1999)
Alexander Schneider (1908-1993)
Sir Georg Solti (1912-1997)
Dizzy (John Birks) Gillespie (1917-1993)
Sir Malcom Arnold (1921-2006)
Marga Richter (1926-2020)
Shulamit Ran (1949)
Hugh Wolff (1953)

and

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896)
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)

Today's Birthdays

Charles Ives (1874-1954)
Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941)
Adelaide Hall (1901-1993)
Alfredo Campoli (1906-1991)
Adelaide Hall (1909-1993)
Robert Craft (1923-2015)
Jacques Loussier (1934)
William Albright (1944-1998)
Ivo Pogorelich (1958)
Leila Josefowicz (1977)

and

Christopher Wren (1632-1723)
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
John Dewey(1859-1952)
Robert Pinsky (1940)
Elfriede Jelinek (1946)

Today's Birthdays

Sidonie Goossens (1899-2004)
Vittorio Giannini (1903-1966)
Karl-Birger Blomdahl (1916-1968)
Emil Gilels (1916-1985)
Robin Holloway (1943)
Robert Morris (1943)

and

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
Auguste Lumière (1862-1954)
Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899-1974)
Jack Anderson (1922-2005)
John le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell) (1931-2020)
Philip Pullman (1946)
Tracy Chevalier (1962)

Today's Birthdays

Luca Marenzio (1553-1599)
Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785)
Lotte Lenya (1898-1981)
Alexander Young (1920-2000)
Egil Hovland (1924-2013)
Chuck Berry (1926-2017)
Wynton Marsalis (1961)

and

Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811)
Henri Bergson (1859-1941)
A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)
Ntozake Shange (1948)
Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006)
Rick Moody (1961)

Today's Birthdays

Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998)
Rolando Panerai (1924-2019)
Reiner Goldberg (1939-2023)
Stephen Kovacevich (1940)

and

Georg Büchner (1813-1837)
Nathanael West (1903-1940)
Arthur Miller (1915-2005)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1978, President Jimmy Carter presents the Congressional Medal of Honor to singer Marian Anderson.

and from The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1933 that Albert Einstein officially moved to the United States to teach at Princeton University. He had been in California working as a visiting professor when Hitler took over as chancellor of Germany. Einstein’s apartment in Berlin and his summer cottage in the country were raided, his papers confiscated, and his bank accounts closed. He returned to Europe and handed in his German passport, renouncing his citizenship. He considered offers from all over the world, including Paris, Turkey, and Oxford. Einstein eventually decided on Princeton, which offered him an attractive package teaching at its Institute for Advanced Study — but he had his hesitations about the university. For one thing, it had a clandestine quota system in place that only allowed a small percentage of the incoming class to be Jewish. The Institute’s director, Abraham Flexner, was worried that Einstein would be too directly involved in Jewish refugee causes, so he micromanaged Einstein’s public appearances, keeping him out of the public eye when possible. He even declined an invitation for Einstein to see President Roosevelt at the White House without telling the scientist. When Einstein found out, he personally called Eleanor Roosevelt and arranged for a visit anyway, and then complained about the incident in a letter to a rabbi friend of his, giving the return address as “Concentration Camp, Princeton.” In 1938, incoming freshmen at Princeton ranked Einstein as the second-greatest living person; first place went to Adolf Hitler.

Today's Birthdays

Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745)
Franz [Ferenc] Doppler (1821-1883)
James Lockhart (1930)
Derek Bourgeois (1941-2017)
Marin Alsop (1956)
Erkki-Sven Tüür (1959)
Dmitri Hvorostovsky (1962-2017)

and

Noah Webster (1758-1843)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)
Günter Grass (1927-2015)
Thomas Lynch (1948)

And from the Writer's Almanac:

In 1882, during a tour across the US, Oscar Wilde lectured to coal miners in Leadville, Colorado, where he saw a sign on a saloon that said, "Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best," and called it "the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across."

Preview of Israeli-Palestinian piano duo in Portland Piano International concert

 My preview of the upcoming Portland Piano International recital, featuring Duo Amal is now published in Oregonlive here. It will be in the print edition of The Oregonian this coming Friday.