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.

Review: Oregon Symphony pairs Stephen Hough with Mozart

Ranked among the greatest pianists of our generation, it is always a treat when Sir Stephen Hough comes to Portland. This time around, Hough demonstrated his compositional talent and his keyboard prowess with his piano concerto, “the world of yesterday,” which he performed (April 5) with the Oregon Symphony at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. It was sandwiched by two Mozart symphonies – an appropriate choice since Mozart was a brilliant pianist and composer – for a delicious full course meal served up by the orchestra under Music Director David Danzmayr.

Described accurately as a polymath, Hough has an impeccable resume that has been built on 70 recordings, multiple awards, Grammy nominations, a memoir, a collection of essays, a novel, and numerous compositions, and a strenuous performance schedule that takes him all over the world. I am not sure when or even if he sleeps.

While the stage was reset in order to bring the piano to the foreground, Hough talked with Danzmayr to introduce his concerto. It turns out that during the pandemic a cinematographer asked Hough to write a film score. But then the film fell through, and Hough decided to make the most of it, expanding the piece into a full-fledged concerto, which became “the world of yesterday.”

With such a title, I expected “the world of yesterday” to be a throwback to Rachmaninoff or another Romantic composer. To be sure, Hough’s concerto did have some splashy stuff, but it veered all over the place. Consisting of three movements – Prelude and Cadenza, Waltz Variations, and Tarantella Appassionata – the concerto opened as if in slow motion with rising tones that formed a broad statement from the orchestra with the piano mingling in. Then came a huge cadenza in which Hough served up an enticing mixture of dissonant and harmonic lines that finally settled on that latter side. The orchestra reentered with a waltz theme, which was accompanied by humorous darting and dashing passages that reminded of a bit of Saint-Saëns. In the last movement, Hough created a panoply of sparkling sounds, riffing all over the keyboard at breakneck speed to create a sonic blitz that was etched at times with the flute, piccolo, and percussion. The snare drum accompanied Hough into the final bars with gusto.

The audience reacted with long, sustained applause, which drew Hough back to the keyboard. He completely changed the mood with a lovely and soothing arrangement of “Feed the Birds” from “Mary Poppins.” No one in the audience sang along, but I’m sure that some did in their minds.

The orchestra played Mozart’s Symphony No. 1 in E-flat Major and his Symphony No. 41 in C Major, “Jupiter.” Only 24 years separate the two works – with Mozart writing his first symphony at age 8 and his final one at age 32 – and both sounded absolutely fresh and invigorating.

Crisp tempos and finely honed dynamics made Mozart’s First Symphony delightful. I really enjoyed the accented notes that punctuated some phrases, and how the lower strings added a bit of gravitas with slowly climbing lines in the second movement. Of course, Mozart wrapped it up with a joyful final movement.

The “Jupiter Symphony” received superb treatment by the orchestra, which played with great intensity and commitment. The tempos were excellent, and superb dynamic contrasts enhanced the music. The third movement suggested a kind of orchestral taffy pull when themes were exchanged between string sections, and the fourth concluded the work with the melodies lining up and an emphatic gallop.

Final thought: There may be a special connection between Danzmayr and Mozart since Salzburg is their hometown. It would be fun to hear what he might do with a Mozart opera.

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.

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)
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: Vancouver Symphony plays harp concerto - Scheherazade - and new work to a full house

Skyview Concert Hall was completely sold out for the Vancouver Symphony concert on April 13th that featured a rare harp concerto, a brief brand-new work, and the ever-popular “Scheherazade.” The big audience was a real plus for guest artist, Cristina Montes Mateo, who deftly played Xavier Montsalvatge’s “Concerto Capriccio for Harp and Orchestra.” The crowd enthusiastically received Daniel Kim’s “Dongchimi” and enjoyed every moment of Rimsky-Korsakov’s colorful depictions of the tales from “The Thousand and One Nights.”

In his in prefatory remarks to the harp concerto, Brotons mentioned that Montsalvatge was one of his composition teachers. Like Brotons, Montsalvatge was born in Catalonia, Spain, and, according to Wikipedia, in addition to his composing, he was a noted music critic.

Completed in 1975, “Concerto Capriccio for Harp and Orchestra” is a three-movement work that presents a lot of challenges for the harpist. Mateo, an internationally acclaimed harpist from Seville, Spain, who now resides in Los Angeles, elevated the piece with her virtuosic talent.

The orchestra kicked things off with percussive sounds, including short glissando-like sweeps from the strings. With Mateo caressing the harp, she threaded dissonant and harmonic passages and during her cadenza would pop a note here and there to make it stand out. That movement accelerated to lighter – almost squirrely – segment and a snappy ending that elicited spontaneous applause.

In the second movement, Mateo created an ethereal landscape that was joined by the woodwinds and then by the strings. At one point, it seemed that she used the pedals to fashion a wavey sound, and later she complimented a phrase by rapping on the harp’s wood frame. The wah-wah sound from a muted trumpet accompanied her as she closed out that movement.

Mateo’s harp surged ahead in the final movement with lots of rhythmic complexity and humor that underscored the “capriciousness” of the piece, which, as a whole, seemed to shift, restlessly from one style to another and from one tune to another.

The appreciative audience responded with enthusiasm that Mateo back to center stage. She responded with a delightful encore, the first movement from Brotons’ “Harp Sonata,” which he wrote for her. She impressively played at the extreme ends of the harp and fashioned all sorts of intoxicating sounds that made me want to hear the rest of the piece

Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade: Symphonic Suite” received a solid and exiting performance by the orchestra. Urged on by the baton of Brotons, who conducted from memory, the orchestra painted the exotic scenes from “The Thousand and One Nights” with gusto. Concertmaster Eva Richey masterfully conveyed the lovely and seductive character of the main storyteller. Polished volleys from the horns brought the sea and Sinbad’s ship to the forefront. Evocative contributions by Principal Clarinetist Igor Shakhman and the woodwinds added wonderfully to the sonic canvas. The brass propelled the ship into the storm, and its destruction on the rocks drifted serenely into the horizon.

To open the concert, the Vancouver Symphony performed Daniel Kim’s “Dongchimi.” The background for this piece is very interesting. Kim, who is a Vancouver-based dentist and inventor, found a broken ukulele in his home that one of sons had abandoned. That melody, which Kim had written down, caught the attention of Brotons while he was visiting Daniel and his wife, “Stella” Hooja Kim.

Flexing his considerable compositional talent, Brotons took the melody that Kim wrote and orchestrated it into a lush, cinematic work. He made sure that the main theme was shared throughout the orchestra, and he inserted a pause so that the melody could be heard a second time but slightly differently. A thunderous bass drum and timpani combined to bring the piece to a triumphant end.

Kim came to the podium and gave Brotons a huge hug and thanked him for creating the orchestration. Afterwards, Brotons, with a smile, challenged Kim to write another melody since there’s no reason to stop with just one.

Speaking of challenges, the Vancouver Symphony has been making strong inroads to the youth in Clark County that the orchestra. So Hal Abrams, the orchestra’s Director of Development announced that the VSO Youth Orchestra has been formed and will make its debut this summer at the Vancouver Arts and Music Festival. That’s great news!

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)
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.