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)

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.

Review: Oregon Symphony and Simone Lamsma burnish Bruch's Violin Concerto

From Lamsma's Facebook page

Sounding bolder and louder, the Oregon Symphony unleashed a triple whammy of a concert with superb performances of works by Bruch, Bartok, and Perry at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall (April 20). Music Director David Danzmayr seems to be finding his groove with the orchestra, forging a distinct sonic style that is creating exhilarating results – especially when sharing the stage with a virtuosic guest artist like Simone Lamsma.

Lamsma, the phenomenal Dutch violinist who completed her third year and final year as an Artist-in-Residence with the orchestra, delivered a sublime performance of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1. Her impeccable technique elicited a lovely, rich tone throughout the piece. You could hear it right away, when the orchestra opened with deliciously murky fog of chords, and Lamsma’s violin emerged from it with a strong, silken voice. She expressed tender and sweet melodies with great sensitivity yet never overly sentimental, and her articulation in the fleetest of passages was stunningly immaculate. Wrapping it all up with the sweeping crescendo in the finale, the beauty of Lamsma’s playing brought the audience to its feet with loud and sustained applause.

To top everything off, Lamsma gave a jaw-dropping rendition of the last movement of Hindemith’s Sonata for solo violin, op. 11 No. 6. Besides being a devilishly tricky piece, if you were to pay her one dollar for every note that she played, it would empty most people’s bank accounts. Lamsma fearlessly tore into the piece and brought down the house a second time.

Danzmayr’s animated and passionate conducting ignited an outstanding performance of Bartók’s “Concerto for Orchestra.” The orchestra responded to his gestures with an impressive dynamic range, expressing each phrase with uncanny articulation. The jokey melodic line that passed through pairs of woodwinds and ended with menacing, muted trumpets while the violins and harps shimmered and swirled highlighted the second movement. The lush string sound in the fourth alternated deliciously with the circus-like passages, and the fifth movement sparkled with the strings generating a perpetual motion, the brass issuing a folksy, barn-dance-like motif, and the brief fugues in which phrases were exchanged.

Each section of the orchestra had multiple moments in the spotlight, and they made the most of it. Danzmayr got so caught up in the music-making that he voiced a couple of really odd groans while urging a couple of the huge crescendos. Nevertheless, this performance of the “Concerto for Orchestra” was a thrilling ride from beginning to end, and capped off the evening in a dramatic fashion.

The concert began with Julia Perry’s “A Short Piece for Orchestra,” which offered a lot of sonic delights in the space of a few minutes. After opening with a fanfare, the piece settled into a sequence of isolated, forlorn sounds that transitioned into an agitated, strident passage before subsiding to quieter mood. From a throbbing line in the double basses, a phrase was passed through the strings and to other sections of the orchestra, gathering steam along the way, until the entire ensemble was going full-blast into a quick finale. That piqued my interest to hear more of Perry’s works in the near future.

After talking with some friends, we all agreed that the orchestra under Danzmayr is playing with more volume. That, in turn, creates more opportunities for larger dynamic contrasts. Ergo, in my opinion, the OSO concerts are becoming even more exciting to hear…

Today's Birthdays

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

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.