Today's Birthdays

Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725)
Jean‑Baptiste Barrière (1707-1747)
Ludwig August Lebrun (1752-1790)
Hans Christian Lumbye (1810-1874)
Carl Michael Ziehrer (1843-1922)
Lorenz Hart (1894-1943)
Alan Rawstorne (1905-1971)
Jean‑Marie Auberson (1920-2004)
Arnold Black (1923-2000)
Horst Stein (1928-2008)
Philippe Herreweghe (1947)
Valery Gergiev (1953)
Elliot Goldenthal (1954)

and

Jerome K Jerome (1859-1927)
Dr. Benjamin Spock (1904-1998)

Review: Lazarova and Oregon Symphony thrill with Lutosławski and Beethoven

Bulgarian conductor Delyana Lazarova has been a hot ticket in the musical world for the past few years, nabbing a couple of choice principal guest conducting positions with the Utah Symphony and the BBC Scottish Symphony. I have read some enthusiastic reviews of her work with other orchestras, and I looked at her schedule. Shes is travelling all over the place with conducting gigs in Spain, Germany, Bulgaria, England (BBC Proms), Brazil, and the U.S. (Aspen Festival) over the summer. So I was eager to witness her on the podium with the Oregon Symphony. That wish was fulfilled on April 25 at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall when she led the local band in works by Lutosławski, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven, and I am happy to say that Lazarova is the real deal.

It was the opening number, Lutosławski’s “Little Suite for Orchestra,” that stole the show. This relatively short (eleven minutes), four-movement piece received a magically fun performance from the orchestra. Zachariah Galatis’s piccolo sounded a delightfully carefree against a lovely harp-like underlayment from the strings. The orchestra wonderfully shifted to an unrelenting propulsive gear that was joyful. Karen Wagner’s oboe elicited a folk song quality, and Lazarova got the ensemble to build tension before releasing it. Overall, the piece sparkled like a polished gem.

Next came Simone Porter, the orchestra’s artist-in-residence, replacing saxophonist Steven Banks, who withdrew from the concert had been scheduled to play Billy Childs “Diaspora: Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra.” Banks’ cancellation occurred a few days after the pianist Daniel Trifonov cancelled his performance with the orchestra. A friend of mine wrote to me to ask if something weird was going on. I replied that I didn’t think anything unusual was happening, but it was truly odd. Over the many years that I have reviewed the orchestra, I have not seen two cancellations in a row until now.

Simone Porter took Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto at an extremely fast pace. She didn’t linger anywhere in the piece. She executed all of the quicksilver runs flawlessly, but it seemed that she would have been given a speeding ticket – especially for her quicksilver fingerwork in the last movement. It was amazing to behold, yet her lightening-fast agiltiy didn’t allow the music to breathe, and it all became somewhat dry and somewhat devoid of emotion.

Nevertheless, the audience gave Porter a standing ovation, and she responded with the third movement (“Sarabanda”) from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor. This time her playing had more gracefulness and a calming effect.

In the second half of the program, Lazarova and the orchestra delivered a thrilling interpretation of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4. It offered scintillating sforzandos, true pianissimos, and gentle flowing themes. In the fast-moving final movement, the strings created the effect of a flock of birds flying by and Principal Bassoonist Carin Miller equaled that by giving an effervescent and dance-like kick to a devilishly tricky passage.

Lazarova is an electrifying conductor who has a great future ahead of her. It would be wonderful to see her back on the podium at the Schnitz again in the near future.

P.S. One of the cool things about this concert was the introduction that reminds the audience to turn off their cell phones. This is usually a recording in English with Fred Child’s voice followed by violinist Inés Voglar Belgique giving the reminder in Spanish (she is a native of Venezuela). But this time around, we heard the voice of double-bassist Mariya-Andoniya Andonova, who is from Bulgaria. She spoke in Bulgarian, and there were audible gasps from a large contingent of Bulgarian visitors who were very surprised to hear their own language. That really helped to set the tone for the evening, and at the end of the concert, the Bulgarian contingent gave Lazarova a bouquet of flowers – something that you rarely see in Portland.

Today's Birthdays

Marco da Gagliano (1582-1643)
William Lawes (1602-1645)
Sophia Dussek (1775-1831)
Hugo Alfvén (1872-1960)
Leo Sowerby (1895-1968)
Jón Leifs (1899-1968)
Walter Susskind (1913-1980)
Gary Bertini (1927-2005)
Judy Collins (1939)

and

Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955)
Joseph Heller (1923-1999)
Bobbie Ann Mason (1940)

Today's Birthdays

Franz Lehár (1870-1948)
Louise Homer (1871-1947)
Frank Merrick (1886-1981)
Robert Shaw (1916-1999)
Günter Raphael (1903-1960)
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (1939)
Garcia Navarro (1940-2002)
Vladimir Tarnopolsky (1955)

and

Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967)
John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974)
Winfield Townley Scott (1910-1968)
Annie Dillard (1945)
Josip Novakovich (1955)

And from the New Music Box:

On April 30, 1932, the very first Yaddo Festival of Contemporary Music began in Saratoga Springs, NY. Works programmed that year included Aaron Copland's Piano Variations as well as piano works by Roger Sessions, Henry Brant, Vivian Fine and Roy Harris, songs by Charles Ives and Paul Bowles, string quartets by Marc Blitzstein and Louis Gruenberg, and a suite for unaccompanied flute by Wallingford Riegger.

Today's Birthdays

Thomas Beecham (1879-1961)
Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961)
Sir Malcom Sargent (1895-1967)
Edward "Duke" Ellington (1899-1974
Harold Shapero (1920-2013)
Peter Sculthorpe (1929-2014)
Willie Nelson (1933)
Zubin Mehta (1936)
Klaus Voormann (1938)
Leslie Howard (1948)
Eero Hämeenniemi (1951)
Gino Quilico (1955)

and

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933)
William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951)
Robert Gottlieb (1931-2023)
Yusef Komunyakaa (1947)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1906, Victor Herbert conducts a benefit concert at the Hippodrome in New York City for victims of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Today's Birthdays

John Jacob Niles (1892-1980)
Paul Sacher (1906-1999)
Margaret Vardell Sandresky (1921)
Jeffrey Tate (1943)
Nicola LeFanu (1947)
Elise Ross (1947)
Michael Daugherty (1954)

and

James Monroe (1758-1831)
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Erich Salomon (1886-1944)
Robert Anderson (1917-2009)
Harper Lee (1926-2016)
Carolyn Forché (1950)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Adam Reinken (1623-1722)
Friedrich von Flotow (1812-1883)
Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995)
Guido Cantelli (1920-1956)
Igor Oistrakh (1931-2021)
Hamish Milne (1939-2020)
Jon Deak (1943)
Calvin Simmons (1950-1982)
Christian Zacharias (1950)

and

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
Samuel Morse (1791-1872)
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)
Ludwig Bemelmans(1898-1962)
C(ecil) Day Lewis (1904-1972)
Coretta Scott King (1927-2006)
August Wilson (1945-2005)

And from the former Writer's Almanac:

On this day in 1667, the poet John Milton sold the copyright for his masterpiece, Paradise Lost, for 10 pounds. Milton had championed the cause of Oliver Cromwell and the Parliament over the king during the English Civil War, and published a series of radical pamphlets in support of such things as Puritanism, freedom of the press, divorce on the basis of incompatibility, and the execution of King Charles I. With the overthrow of the monarchy and the creation of the Commonwealth, Milton was named Secretary of Foreign Tongues, and though he eventually lost his eyesight, he was able to carry out his duties with the help of aides like fellow poet Andrew Marvell.

When the monarchy was restored in 1660, Milton was imprisoned as a traitor and stripped of his property. He was soon released, but was now impoverished as well as completely blind, and he spent the rest of his life secluded in a cottage in Buckinghamshire. This is where he dictated Paradise Lost — an epic poem about the Fall of Man, with Satan as a kind of antihero — and its sequel, Paradise Regained, about the temptation of Christ.

Today's Birthdays

Erland von Koch (1910-2009)
Pierre Pierlot (1921-2007)
Teddy Edwards (1924-2003)
Wilma Lipp (1925-2019)
Ewa Podleś (1952-2024)
Patrizia Kwella (1953)

and

David Hume (1711-1776)
John James Audubon (1785-1851)
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903)
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Anita Loos (1889-1981
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)
I. M. Pei (1917-2019)

Reference Recordings and Oregon Symphony to release new album with Andy Akiho works

Andy Akiho: Beneath Lighted Coffers; Concerto for Steel Pans & Orchestra

FR-764 SACD Release Date: June 5, 2026

Oregon Symphony

David Danzmayr, conductor

From the press release:

Reference Recordings® proudly presents our first collaboration with the Oregon Symphony, in a spectacular live recording featuring composer and steel pannist Andy Akiho. His works on this album are Beneath Lighted Coffers, recorded on April 29, 30 & May 1, 2023, and Concerto for Steel Pans & Orchestra, recorded on October 5, 6 & 7, 2024. This album was engineered by Mark Donahue and produced by Blanton Alspaugh, both multi-GRAMMY® winners from Soundmirror, Inc.

Andy Akiho, born in 1979 in Columbia, South Carolina, is a “trailblazing”(Los Angeles Times) Pulitzer Prize finalist and seven-time GRAMMY®-nominated composer whose bold works unravel intricate and unexpected patterns while surpassing preconceived boundaries of classical music. Called “increasingly in-demand” by The New York Times, Akiho has earned international acclaim for his large-scale works that emphasize the natural theatricality of live performance. He is the only composer to be nominated for a GRAMMY® in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

The multi- GRAMMY® Award nominated Oregon Symphony, led by Jean Vollum Music Director David Danzmayr, serves hundreds of thousands of people annually through concerts, education initiatives, and community programs. With a 129-year legacy, it is the sixth oldest orchestra in the United States, and oldest in the Western United States. Its home venue is the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in downtown Portland’s Cultural District, where this album was recorded.

Today's Birthdays

Ella Fitzgerald (1918-1998)
Astrid Varnay (1918-2006)
Siegfried Palm (1927-2005)
Digby Fairweather (1946)
Truls Mørk (1961)
Gottlieb Muffat (1690-1770)

and

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903)
Howard R. Garis (1873-1962)
Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937)
Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965)
David Shepherd (1931-2017)
Ted Kooser (1939)
Padgett Powell (1952)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1841, at a fund-raising concert in Paris for the Beethoven monument to be erected in Bonn, Franz Liszt performs Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto with Berlioz conducting. Richard Wagner reviews the concert for the Dresden Abendzeitung. The following day, Chopin gives one of his rare recitals at the Salle Pleyel, and Liszt writes a long and glowing review for the Parisian Gazette Musicale.

Today's Birthdays

Giovanni Martini (1706-1784)
Charles O'Connell (1900-1962)
Violet Archer (1913-2000)
John Williams (1941) - guitarist
Barbara Streisand (1942)
Norma Burrowes (1944)
Ole Edvard Antonsen (1962)
Augusta Read Thomas (1964)
Zuill Bailey (1972)
Catrin Finch (1980)

and

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
Willem De Kooning (1904-1997)
Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989)
Stanley Kauffmann (1916-2013)
Sue Grafton (1940-2017)
Clare Boylan (1948-2006)
Eric Bogosian (1953)
Judy Budnitz (1973)

From the former Writer's Almanac:

On this day in 1800, the Library of Congress was established. In a bill that provided for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, Congress included a provision for a reference library containing "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress — and for putting up a suitable apartment for containing them therein ..." The library was housed in the Capitol building, until British troops burned and pillaged it in 1814. Thomas Jefferson offered as a replacement his own personal library: nearly 6,500 books, the result of 50 years' worth of "putting by everything which related to America, and indeed whatever was rare and valuable in every science."

First opened to the public in 1897, the Library of Congress is now the largest library in the world. It houses more than 144 million items, including 33 million catalogued books in 460 languages; more than 63 million manuscripts; the largest rare book collection in North America; and the world's largest collection of films, legal materials, maps, sheet music, and sound recordings.

Review of Project Chamber Music: Willamette Valley concert in Oregon Arts Watch

Last Friday I attended a concert by Project Chamber Music on the topic of love. The trio of soprano Katharine Dain, violist Caitlin Lynch, and pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute created and exceptional performance. You can read all about it in OAW here.

Today's Birthdays

Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521)
Andrea Luchesi (1741-1801)
Ruggiero Leoncavallo (1857-1919)
Arthur Farwell (1872-1952)
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986)
Artie Shaw (1910-2004)
Jean Françaix (1912-1997)
Alicia de Larrocha (1923-2009)
Robert Moog (1934-2005)
Roy Orbison (1936-1988)
Joel Feigin (1951)

and

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
James Patrick (J. P.) Donleavy (1926-2017)
Coleman Barks (1937-2026)
Barry Hannah (1942-2010)
Jane Kenyon (1947-1995)
Andrey Kurkov (1961)

From the former Writer's Almanac:

Today is the birthday of Roy Orbison (1936), born in Vernon, Texas. One day, during a songwriting session with his partner Bill Dees, Orbison asked his wife, Claudette Frady Orbison, if she needed any money for her upcoming trip to Nashville. Dees remarked, “Pretty woman never needs any money.” Forty minutes later, Orbison’s most famous hit, “Oh, Pretty Woman,” had been written. And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1993, Morten Lauridsen's "Les Chanson des Roses"(five French poems by Rilke) for mixed chorus and piano was premiered by the Choral Cross-Ties ensemble of Portland, Oregon, Bruce Browne conducting.

Review: Marvelous organ concert given by James O'Donnell at Holy Rosary Church

An exceptional concert of organ music was given by James O’Donnell at Holy Rosary Church on January 26th. O’Donnell’s performance celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the dedication of the organ, which was built by Bond Organ Builders in order to replace a previous organ that was destroyed because of a fire at the church. The program featured works by J. S. Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, William Byrd, Maurice Druflé, Cesar Franck, and Olivier Messiaen – all of which received superb interpretations by O’Donnell.

O’Donnell has an impeccable resume which includes a 23-year tenure as Organist and Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey and numerous appearances and recordings with eminent ensembles, such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He now is Professor in the Practice of Organ at Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music in New Haven, Connecticut.

Boasting 34 stops and 37 ranks, the Bond Organ at Holy Rosary was an ideal instrument for O’Donnell. He conveyed the full panoply of sound with his skill and artistry at the keyboard. The first three pieces had a Germanic flair - based on Bach. Bach’s Sinfonia from Cantata 29 (“Wir danken dir, Gott”) – arranged by Marcel Dupré launched the performance with gusto. Bach’s arrangement of Vivaldi’s Concerto in A minor (BWV 593) followed with an equal amount of elan. Next came Bach’s Prelude and Fuge in C (BWV 547), which danced delightfully in the first section and built to a power climax in the second.

The English repertoire was represented by Byrd, whose “Ut re mi fa sol la” offerred an eloquent reflection that was built around a six-note scale pattern (hexachord).

The French had the final three numbers. I didn’t get the hang of Duruflé’s “Prelude et Fugue sur le nom d’ Alain,” which he wrote in tribute of Jehan Alain, an organist and composer who died in WWII. Duruflé used a five-note motif ADAAF and quotations from Alain’s work in the piece. I will have to hear it again some day. Easier to grasp was Franck’s “Prélude, fugue et variation” with its overarching lyrical melody. The concert ended grandly with “Dieu parmi nous” (from “La Nativite due Seigneur) by Messiaen in which three inspired themes are interwoven into a marevlous finale.

The audience gave O’Donnell at thunderous standing ovation, and Cliff Fairley, who retired from Bond Organ Builders a few years ago and is a veteran attendee of many organ concerts, felt that O’Donnell’s performance was the best he had ever heard.

P.S. Apologies for the lateness of this review - life got in the way!

Today's Birthdays

Giuseppe Torelli (1658-1709)
Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944)
Eric Fenby (1906-1997)
Kathleen Ferrier (1912-1953)
Yehudi Menuhin (1916-1999)
Charles Mingus 1922-1979)
Michael Colgrass (1932-2019)
Jaroslav Krcek (1939)
Joshua Rifkin (1944)
Peter Frampton (1950)
Jukka-Pekka Saraste (1956)

and

Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
Louise Glück (1943-2023)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this date in 2001, the Philharmonic Hungarica gives its final concert in Düsseldorf. The orchestra was founded by Hungarian musicians who fled to West Germany after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. For London/Decca Records the Philharmonic Hungarica made the first complete set of all of Haydn's symphonies under the baton of its honorary president, the Hungarian-American conductor Antal Dorati.

Today's Birthdays

Randall Thompson (1899-1984)
Leonard Warren (1911-1960)
Bruno Maderna (1920-1973)
Locksley Wellington 'Slide' Hampton (1932-2021)
Easley Blackwood (1933-2023)
Lionel Rogg (1936)
John McCabe (1939-2015)
Iggy Pop (1947)
Richard Bernas (1950)
Melissa Hui (1966)

and

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)
John Muir (1838-1914)
Sanora Babb (1907-2005)
Elaine May (1932)
Nell Freudenberger (1975)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1937, Copland's play-opera for high school "The Second Hurricane," was premiered at the Grand Street Playhouse in New York City, with soloists from the Professional Children's School, members of the Henry Street Settlement adult chorus, and the Seward High School student chorus, with Lehman Engle conducting and Orson Welles directing the staged production. One professional adult actor, Joseph Cotten, also participated (He was paid $10).

Today's Birthdays

Nikolai Miaskovsky (1881-1950)
Lionel Hampton (1908-2002)
Christopher Robinson (1936)
John Eliot Gardiner (1943)
Robert Kyr (1952)

and

Pietro Aretino (1492-1556)
Harold Lloyd (1893-1971)
Joan Miró (1893-1983)
Sebastian Faulks (1953)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1928, in Paris, the first public demonstration of an electronic instrument invented by Maurice Martenot called the "Ondes musicales" took place. The instrument later came to be called the "Ondes Martenot," and was included in scores by Milhaud, Messiaen, Jolivet, Ibert, Honegger, Florent Schmitt and other 20th century composers.

Today's Birthdays

Alexandre Pierre François Boëly (1785-1858)
Max von Schillings (1868-1933)
Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)
Ruben Gonzalez (1919-2003)
Dudley Moore (1935-2002)
Bernhard Klee (1936-2025)
Kenneth Riegel (1938-2023)
Jonathan Tunick (1938)
David Fanshawe (1942-2010)
Murray Perahia (1947)
Yan-Pascal Tortelier (1947)
Natalie Dessay (1965)

and

Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727)
Etheridge Knight (1931-1991)
Sharon Pollock (1936-2021)
Stanley Fish (1938)

and from the New Music Box:

On April 19, 1775, William Billings and Supply Belcher, two of the earliest American composers who at the time were serving as Minutemen (militia members in the American Revolutionary War who had undertaken to turn out for service at a minute's notice), marched to Cambridge immediately after receiving an alarm from Lexington about an impending armed engagement with the British.

Preview of summer festivals in Chamber Music magazine

My article about three summertime chamber music festivals has been published in the spring edition of Chamber Music magazine.  You can read about summer offerings at the Music Academy of the West, the Steans Institute at the Ravinia Festival, and the Bowdoin International Music Festival. 
 

Today's Birthdays

Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674)
Franz von Suppé (1819-1895)
Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977)
Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995)
Sylvia Fisher (1910-1996)
Penelope Thwaites (1944)
Catherine Maltfitano (1948)

and

Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
Bob Kaufman (1925-1986)
Susan Faludi (1959)

Also this historical tidbit from (the former) Writer's Almanac:

On this day in 1906 an earthquake struck San Francisco. The earthquake began at 5:12 a.m. and lasted for a little over a minute. The world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso had performed at San Francisco's Grand Opera House the night before, and he woke up in his bed as the Palace Hotel was falling down around him. He stumbled out into the street, and because he was terrified that that shock might have ruined his voice, he began singing. Nearly 3,000 people died.