Today's Birthdays

Marianne (Anna Katharina) von Martínez (1744-1812)
Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731)
Emil Nikolaus Von Reznicek (1860-1945)
Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960)
Tatiana Nikolayeva (1924-1993)
Roberta Peters (1930-2017)
Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018)
Marisa Robles (1937)
Enrique Batiz (1942)
Peter Ware (1951)

and

Horace Mann (1796-1859)
Frederick Church (1826-1900)
Graham Swift (1949)
David Guterson (1956)

Today's Birthdays

Alessandro Stradella (1639-1682)
Richard D'Oyly Carte (1844-1901)
Marcel Dupré (1886-1971)
Bing Crosby (1903-1977)
Sir William Glock (1908-2000)
Léopold Simoneau (1916-2006)
Pete Seeger (1919-2014)
John Lewis (1920-2001)
James Brown (1933-2006)
Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012)

and

Niccol Machiavelli (1469-1527)
Jacob Riis (1849-1914)
May Sarton (1912-1995)
William Inge (1913-1973)
Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000)

From the New Music Box:

On May 3, 1943, William Schumann received the very first Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Secular Cantata No. 2 - A Free Song, a work published by G. Schirmer and premiered by the Harvard Glee Club, the Radcliffe Choral Society, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky on March 26, 1943.
and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1971, debut broadcast of National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" was made with an electronic theme by composer Don Voegeli of the University of Wisconsin (In 1974, Voegeli composed a new electronic ATC theme, the now-familiar signature tune of the program).

Preview of Portland Columbian Symphony's Latin American concert in OAW

 

My preview of this weekend's PSCO concert is now posted on Oregon ArtsWatch here. I hope that you enjoy reading it.

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)

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)
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.

Inon Barnatan to give two recitals for Portland Piano International

From the press release:

Inon Barnatan, a multifaceted artist equally celebrated as

concert pianist, curator, and collaborator, returns to Portland for a pair of solo

recitals presented by Portland Piano International (PPI). For the final concerts

of PPI's 2023 / 2024 Main Recital Series, Barnatan will perform on May 5 at

Portland State University's Lincoln Performance Hall, followed by a recital at

the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton on May 7.

Acclaimed as a pianist of "breathtaking charisma" (Philadelphia Inquirer) and

"a true poet of the keyboard: refined, searching, unfailingly communicative"

(Evening Standard), the Israeli pianist has presented sold-out solo recitals in

many of classical music's leading venues, including London's Wigmore Hall

and New York's Carnegie Hall and The 92nd Street Y. As a concerto soloist, he's

shared the stage with the New York Philharmonic (including three seasons as

the ensemble's inaugural Artist-in-Association), BBC Symphony, LA Phil,

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of Chicago,

Cleveland, and Boston.

Equally at home as a curator and chamber musician, Barnatan is Music

Director of La Jolla Music Society Summerfest in California, one of leading

music festivals in the US. He regularly collaborates with world-class partners

such as Renée Fleming and Alisa Weilerstein, and performs with the Chamber

Music Society of Lincoln Center and at the major chamber music festivals of

Seattle, Santa Fe, and Spoleto USA.

Barnatan's extensive discography includes his latest album, Rachmaninoff

Reflections, as well as critically acclaimed albums of the complete Beethoven

piano concertos with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, Olivier Messiaen's

Des canyons aux étoiles ("From the Canyons to the Stars"), and Schubert's

late piano sonatas, which BBC Radio 3 hailed as one of the all-time best

recordings of the composer's A Major Sonata, D. 959.

Barnatan's programs for Portland Piano International are as follows.

SUNDAY, MAY 5, AT 4 PM

Lincoln Performance Hall, Portland State University

TUESDAY, MAY 7, AT 7:30 PM

The Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, Beaverton

"Rachmaninoff Reflections"

FRANZ SCHUBERT

Moments Musicaux, D. 780

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Moments Musicaux, Op. 16

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF / INON BARNATAN

Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

Tickets and more information

Tickets for Inon Barnatan's Portland and Beaverton recitals are available now

at portlandpiano.org, where other details may be found — including the

complete Main Recital Series season and program notes.

Today's Birthdays

John Jacob Niles (1892-1980)
Paul Sacher (1906-1999)
Margaret Vardell Sandresky (1921)
Zubin Mehta (1936)
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)