Big voices – including new Italian tenor – anchor Portland Opera’s Big Night concert

Giordano Lucà

After a hiatus of three years, Portland Opera’s brought back its Big Night concert on Saturday (April 8), and it was a smashing success. The Keller Auditorium, a big barn of a hall, was fairly full from the orchestra floor to the third balcony despite the fact that the Oregon Symphony was preforming Mozart’s “Requiem” at the same time. The centerpiece of Portland Opera’s festive Big Night program was a trio of up and coming stars who delivered spectacular performances of a variety of arias and ensemble pieces from the operatic and musical repertoire. That included Italian tenor Giordano Lucà who made his American debut in this concert. They were augmented by exceptional performances by Portland Opera’s Resident Artists and solid work by the Portland Opera Orchestra under it Music Director George Manahan.

Lucà displayed a gorgeous, lyric voice that had power to spare. His singing of “È la solita storia del pastore” from Cilèa’s “L’Arlesiana” was imbued with an eloquent anguish. He let out all of the horses for a very long, and wonderfully sustained final note in “La donna è mobile” from Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” which brought down the house. He teamed up with soprano Vanessa Isiguen to create an effervescent “Libiamo ne’lieti calici” from “La Traviata” (Verdi again).

Vanessa Isiguen

Not to be outdone, Isiguen captivated the audience with silvery and evocative “Ebben? Ne andrò Lontana” from Catalani’s “La Wally” and returned later to implore the heavens with a passionate “Inneggiamo” from Mascagni’s “Cavaleria Rusticana.” She collaborated with Lucà and the company’s Resident Artists soprano Antonia Tamer and tenor Aaron Short for a lovely “Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso” from Puccini’s “La Rondine.”

Will Liverman

Baritone Will Liverman bowled the listeners over with irresistible rendition of “Largo al factotum” from “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” (Rossini) and delivered an infectious “A Woman is a Sometime Thing” from “Porgy and Bess” (Gershwin). He joined up with Isiguen for a medley of excerpts from “Carousel” (Rogers and Hammerstein), including “If I Loved You.”

Tamer, Farrar, Thorn, Short, Penn, and Guidi

Tamer and Short joined forces with their Resident Artists colleagues mezzo Kate Farrar and baritone Ryan Thorn plus alumna mezzo Hannah Penn and irrepressible bass-baritone Deac Guidi to whip up a delightful “Alla bella Despinetta” from “Così fan tutte” (Mozart). Short and Thorn elicited laughter from all corners of the hall with “Agony” from “Into the Woods” (Sondheim), and they joined tenor Joseph Muir to bet on the horses with a snappy “Fugue for Tinhorns” from “Guys and Dolls” (Loesser). Farrar and Tamer sang “A Boy Like That/I Have a Love” with absolute conviction from “West Side Story” (Bernstein).

The orchestra sounded excellent under the baton of Manahan, but its sound was too light-weight for “Ride of the Valkyries” (Wagner). The chorus, prepared by Nicholas Fox, sang with gusto but another dozen voices would have given it more heft. An extra treat was the company’s children’s chorus, which sang a selection from “Carmen” with the Opera Chorus.

Some folks tout the demise of classical music, especially standard repertoire, but judging the lively and large turnout at the Keller and the exceptional performances, Portland Opera’s gamble for a big night on the town was a pretty darn swell.

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 a historical tidbit from The 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.

Today's Birthdays

Johann David Heinichen (1683-1729)
Jan Václav Tomášek (1774-1850)
Artur Schnabel (1882-1951)
Maggie Teyte (1888-1976)
Harald Saeverud (1897-1992)
Gregor Piatigorsky (1903-1976)
Pamela Bowden (1925-2003)
James Last (1929-2015)
Anja Silja (1940)
Siegfried Jerusalem (1940)
Cristina Ortiz (1950)

and

Karen Blixen aka Isak Dinesen (1885-1962)
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)
Brendan Kennelly (1936)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1906 - on tour in San Francisco with the Metropolitan Opera touring company, the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso sings a performance of Bizet's "Carmen" the day before the Great San Francisco Earthquake.

Oregon Symphony and Portland Symphonic Choir deliver a fine Mozart Requiem

Stephen Zopfi

Monday night, April 10, saw the final OSO performance of the Mozart Requiem by a Stephen Zopfi-trained Portland Symphonic Choir, as he has announced his retirement from the PSC as of the end of this season. Guest conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni also led the group in An arrangement of Purcell's Chacony in G-minor, and Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements.

The Chacony, arranged by Joby Talbott, was a fascinating beginning. It was lovely and haunting, presaging the Mozart in its ominous glory. The copious use of bells, including bowed crotales, lent a  slightly cacophonous atmosphere to the piece, as dissonances held and then suddenly dissipated.

The first movement of the Stravinsky featured excellent, often subtle but important work for for the piano, following a sort of monstrous plodding opening. The OSO rendered this work as peripatetic and delightfully strange. Stravinsky must have loved the bassoon considering all the tasty arts he wrote for it over the years, and the OSO bassoonists did not disappoint.  Zeitouni guided the orchestra through difficult shoals in this piece, showing himself to be a capable leader.

As is Zopfi's wont, the PSC sang Mozart's iconic Requiem in D Minor using Germanicized Latin, different in many respects from the usual Church Latin, but the correct choice for this performance. There were balance problems with the choir and orchestra initially, with the sopranos and altos sublimated to the orchestra, but these issues were shortly remedied. Soprano soloist Katie Van Kooten set the standard early, scything through the thick orchestral texture without over-delivery.

By the Kyrie, the balance problems with choir and orchestra were largely resolved, and it was full and forceful.  The Dies Irae featured marvelous diction from the chorus (as did the whole work by and large).  Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke wowed during the Tuba Mirum, and the Rex Tremendae featured a delicious, knock-you-out of your seat 'Rex!' one of many features showing just how well the PSC knows this work.

The soloists, all fine singers individually, left something to be desired by way of ensemble performance. Van Kooten sometimes overpowered the other voices, but really left me wishing that the others could have stepped up to her level of sound production, as she was wonderful to hear. Nevertheless, balance and blend was sometimes lost.

The Confutatis and the Lacrimosa must surely be among the most satisfying choral movements ever, both in terms of performing them and listening to them, and the PSC thrived in this moment. The sopranos and altos execution of sighing, weeping motives, the bass and tenors thundering out the fearful dream of hellfire--the most anticipated moments of the evening lived up to their centuries-old hype and were everything a listener could wish for.

The Requiem shone as a collection of discrete movements, and because of the quality of the movements (obviously mostly because of Mozart but Levin's gold-standard completion should not be forgotten) this was not a bad thing to hear; quite the opposite.  Somehow, emotionally it didn't pull fully together as a cohesive whole; given the quality of sound from both choir and orchestra it felt as though Zeitouni did not quite get it done as he did the first half of the evening, and ensemble problems from the soloists did not help.

As a final note, Stephen Zopfi's contribution to Portland's choral community, and arts community as a whole, cannot be underestimated. The PSC has more performances of their own this season, but too often the work of a choral conductor is overlooked when the baton is handed to an orchestral conductor who will be leading the group in concert. Having sung under Stephen for a number of years in the PSC, I can say unreservedly that Portland audiences will miss the work of this brilliant, hard-working and extremely knowledgeable musician in the years to come. Adieu, maestro.

Today's Birthdays

Federico Mompou (1893-1987)
Mischa Mischakov (1895-1981)
Henry Mancini (1924-1994)
Herbie Mann (1930-2003)
Dusty Springfield (1939-1999)
Stephen Pruslin (1940)
Leo Nucci (1942)
Richard Bradshaw (1944-2007)
Dennis Russell Davis (1944)
Peteris Vasks (1946)

and

John Millington Synge (1871-1909)
Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
Merce Cunningham (1919-2009)
Sir Kingsley Amis (1922-1995)
Carol Bly (1930-2007)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688-1758)
Karl Alwin (1891-1945)
Bessie Smith (1894-1937)
Sir Neville Marriner (1924-2016)
John Wilbraham (1944-1998)
Michael Kamen (1948-2003)
Lara St. John (1971)

and

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Henry James (1843-1916)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1931, Copland's "A Dance Symphony," was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. This work incorporates material from Copland's 1923 ballet"Grohg," which had not been produced. The symphony was one the winners of the 1929 Victor Talking Machine Company Competition Prize. The judges of the competition decided that none of the submitted works deserved the full $25,000 prize, so they awarded $5000 each to four composers, including Copland, Ernest Bloch, and Louis Gruenberg, and gave $10,000 to Robert Russell Bennett (who had submitted two works).

Today's Birthdays

Jean Fournet (1913-2008)
Paavo Berglund (1929-2012)
Morton Subotnick (1933)
Loretta Lynn (1935)
Claude Vivier (1948-1983)
John Wallace (1949)
Julian Lloyd Webber (1951)
Barbara Bonney (1956)
Mikhail Pletnev (1957)
Jason Lai (1974)

and

Christian Huygens (1629-1695)
Arnold Toynbee (1853-1882)
Anton Wildgans (1881-1932)
Tina Rosenberg (1960)

From the Writer's Almanac:

It's the legal birthday of the modern printing press, which William Bullock patented on this day in 1863 in Baltimore. His invention was the first rotary printing press to self-feed the paper, print on both sides, and count its own progress — meaning that newspapers, which had until then relied on an operator manually feeding individual sheets of paper into a press, could suddenly increase their publication exponentially.

The Cincinnati Times was likely the very first to use a Bullock press, with the New York Sun installing one soon after. Bullock was installing a press for The Philadelphia Press when he kicked at a mechanism; his foot got caught, his leg was crushed, and he died a few days later during surgery to amputate. His press went on to revolutionize the newspaper business.

Today's Birthdays

Felicien David (1810-1876)
William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875)
Milos Sadlo (1912-2003)
George Barati (1913-1996)
Frederic Rzewski (1938)
Margaret Price (1941-2011)
Della Jones (1946)
Al Green (1946)
Mary Ellen Childs (1959)

and

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)
Eudora Welty (1909-2001)
Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1958, American pianist Van Cliburn wins the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the first American to do so.

Tolday's Birthdays

Pietro Nardini (1722-1793)
Joseph Lanner (1801-1843)
Johnny Dodds (1892-1940)
Lily Pons (1898-1976)
Imogen Holst (1907-1984)
Thomas Hemsley (1927-2013)
Herbert Khaury (aka Tiny Tim) (1932-1996)
Henri Lazarof (1932-2013)
Montserrat Caballé (1933)
Herbie Hancock (1940)
Ernst Kovacic (1943)
Stefan Minde (1936-2015)
Christophe Rousset (1961)

and

Beverly Cleary (1916)
Alan Ayckbourn (1939)
Tom Clancy (1947-2013)
Gary Soto (1952)
Jon Krakauer (1954)

Today's Birthdays

Jean-Joseph Mouret (1682-1738)
Charles Hallé (1819-1895)
Karel Ančerl (1908-1973)
Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983)
Gervase de Peyer (1926-2017)
Kurt Moll (1938)
Arthur Davies (1941)

and

Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549)
Christopher Smart (1722-1771)
Mark Strand (1934)
Ellen Goodman (1941)
Dorothy Allison (1949)

From the New Music Box:
On April 11, 1941, Austrian-born composer Arnold Schönberg became an American citizen and officially changed the spelling of his last name to Schoenberg. He would remain in the United States until his death in 1951. Some of his most important compositions, including the Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto, and the Fourth String Quartet, were composed during his American years.

Today's Birthdays

Michel Corrette (1707-1795)
Eugen d'Albert (1864-1932)
Victor de Sabata (1892-1967)
Fiddlin' Arthur Smith (1891-1971)
Harry Mortimer (1902-1992)
Luigi Alva (1927)
Claude Bolling (1930)
Jorge Mester (1935)
Sarah Leonard (1953)
Lesley Garrett (1955)
Yefim Bronfman (1958)

and

William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911)
David Halberstam (1934-2007)
Paul Theroux (1941)
Norman Dubie (1945)
Anne Lamott (1954)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1868, Brahms's "A German Requiem," was premiered at a Good Friday concert at Bremen Cathedral conducted by the composer.

The Tallis Scholars mesmerize audience with sublime concert

The Tallis Scholars showed off their superb musicianship on Tuesday evening (April 4) at St. Mary’s Cathedral, singing a concert of early polyphonic gems and newer works similarly inspired. Consisting of an ensemble of ten singers conducted by Peter Phillips, The Tallis Scholars produced an astonishing clarity of sound with excellent diction, pinpoint pitch control, outstanding dynamic range, no vibrato, and a warmth of resonance and color. The group’s sound was astounding to experience.

As far as I can figure out, Phillips has used his uncanny ears to assemble singers with matching tonal qualities. He has four sopranos whose voices are so equal that in polychoral formations – and in the resonant acoustic of St. Mary’s, it was very difficult to figure out who is singing what. The same goes for the pair of altos (one woman and one countertenor), two tenors, and two basses. In pieces that had an exposed line for one voice, say a tenor, that singer could finish a phrase and the other tenor simply picked it with a match tone. Even in recitatives involving two singers, such in the first piece of the evening, the “Magnificat IV” of Hieronymus Praetorius, the two basses sang the text as if they were one person.

So with its perfectly matched voices, the ensemble sang each piece in the program impeccably with the only fault being that the sopranos were too loud in the “Magnificat” of Orland Gibbons. But from that point onward, the group’s sound was balanced with no sagging in tone or pace. Each entry was pristine and the final notes of each piece were never overdrawn – that is, extended for effect.

The program feature various settings of the ”Magnificat” (also known as the “Song of Mary”), the “Pater Noster” (“Lord’s Prayer”), the “Ave Maria” (“Hail Mary”), and the “Nunc Dimittis” (“Song of Simeon”) with a segue to Johannes Eccard's “Maria wallt zum Heiligtum” (“Mary made a pilgrimage to the temple”) as a setup for the “Nunc Dimittis.”

Most impressive in these sets were three pieces by Arvo Pãrt. His “Magnificat,” “Ave Maria,” and “Nunc Dimittis” had unusual harmonics and dissonances that added depth to the text. Some notes in his “Nunc Dimittis” were so ear-bendingly close together that they were almost disturbing. Yet, it would have been fantastic to hear each of those pieces a second time.

Sung in Savonic, Igor Stravinsky’s “Our Father” (“Pater Noster”) seemed to harken to a Russian liturgical style and was quite lovely. His “Ave Maria” was unfortunately very short. John Tavener’s “Our Father” had a thicket of gently flowing lines for the inner voices that were wonderfully set against long, static phrases for the outer voices. John Sheppard’s “Our Father” had a multi-channeled sounded, and the version by Jacobus Gallus ended with an intricate and gorgeous Amen

The “Ave Maria” of Jean Mouton had a mellow and somber effect while the “Nunc dimittis” of Andres de Torrentes soared with beautiful high notes from the sopranos. Gustav Holst’s “Nunc dimittis” rounded out the program joyously, causing the audience to erupt with applause. The ensemble responded with lilting encore of Claudio Monteverdi’s “Cantate Domino.”

Another unique ability of the Tallis Scholars singers is their uncanny ability to read the idiosyncratic conducting of Peter Phillips. He uses a lot of very small and contained gestures that seem tricky to decipher. Yet his singers understand him perfectly and are able to deliver a sound that is positively stunning.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Kaspar Kerll (1627-1693)
Georg Matthias Monn (1717-1750)
François Giroust (1737-1799)
Supply Belcher (1751-1836)
Theodor Boehm (1794-1881)
Paolo Tosti (1846-1916)
Florence Beatrice Smith Price (1888-1953)
Sol Hurok (1888-1974)
Efrem Zimbalist Sr. (1889-1985)
Julius Patzak (1898-1974)
Paul Robeson (1898-1976)
Antal Doráti (1906-1988)
Tom Lehrer (1928)
Aulis Sallinen (1935)
Jerzy Maksymiuk (1936)
Neil Jenkins (1945)

and

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867)
Gregory Goodwin Pincus (1903-1967)
J. William Fullbright (1905-1995)
Jørn Utzon (1918-2008)

From the Writer's Almanac:
On this day in 1860, the oldest known recording of the human voice was made — someone was singing Au Clair de la Lune. French inventor Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville captured sound waves on glass plates using a funnel, two membranes, and a stylus. He made the recording 17 years before Edison made his, but he didn't invent anything to play the recording back.

When researchers discovered these recordings three years ago, they assumed the voice singing was a woman's, so they played it at that speed. But then they re-checked the inventor's notes, and they realized that the inventor himself had sung the song, very slowly, carefully enunciating, as if to capture the beautiful totality of the human voice.

You can hear the astonishing recording at both speeds at firstsounds.org.

Today's Birthdays

Claudio Merulo (1533-1604)
Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770)
Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983)
E. Y. (Yip) Harburg (1896-1981)
Josef Krips (1902-1974)
Franco Corelli (1921-2003)
Walter Berry (1929-2000)
Lawrence Leighton Smith (1936-2013)
Meriel Dickinson (1940)
Dame Felicity Lott (1947)
Diana Montague (1953)
Anthony Michaels-Moore (1957)

and

Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857)
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)
Harvey Cushing (1869-1939)
Robert Giroux (1914-2008)
Seymour Hersh (1937)
Barbara Kingsolver (1955)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1865, American premiere of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertate in Eb, K. 364(320d) for Violin, Viola, and Orchestra took place in New York, with violinist Theodore Thomas and violist Georg Matzka (A review of this concert in the New York Times said: "On the whole we would prefer death to a repetition of this production. The wearisome scale passages on the little fiddle repeated ad nausea on the bigger one were simply maddening.”).

Today's Birthdays

Charles Burney (1726-1814)
Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846)
Robert Casadesus (1899-1972)
Billie Holiday (1915-1959)
Ravi Shankar (1920-2012)
Ikuma Dan (1924-2001)

and

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Marjory Stoneman Douglas (1890-1998)
Donald Barthelme (1931-1989)
Daniel Ellsberg (1931)
Francis Ford Coppola (1939)

and from the Composers Datebook: (br>
On this day in 1918, the German conductor of the Boston Symphony, Karl Muck, is arrested and interned as an enemy alien after American enters World War I.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Kuhnau (1660-1772)
André‑Cardinal Destouches (1672-1749)
Friedrich Robert Volkman (1815-1883)
Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961)
Andrew Imbrie (1921-2007)
Edison Denisov (1929-1996)
André Previn (1929)
Merle Haggard (1937-2016)
Felicity Palmer (1944)
Pascal Rogé (1951)
Pascal Devoyon (1953)
Julian Anderson (1967)

and

Raphael (Rafaello Sanzio da Urbino) (1483-1520)
Joseph Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936)

From the New Music Box:
On April 6, 1897, the U.S. government granted Thaddeus Cahill a patent for his Telharmonium, or Dynamophone, the earliest electronic musical instrument. Cahill built a total of three such instruments, which utilized a 36-tone scale and used telephone receivers as amplifiers. The first one, completed in 1906 in Holyoke, Massachussetts was 60 feet long and weighed 200 tons. It was housed in "Telharmonic Hall" on 39th Street and Broadway New York City for 20 years.

Today's Birthdays

Louis Spohr (1784-1859)
Albert Roussel (1869-1937)
Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989)
Goddard Lieberson (1911-1977)
Richard Yardumian (1917-1985)
Evan Parker (1944)
Julius Drake (1959)

and

Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679)
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909)
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
Arthur Hailey (1920-2004)

Shaham gives transcendent performance of Korngold’s Violin Concerto

Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto received an incisive and transcendent performance by Gil Shaham in a special one-time only concert with the Oregon Symphony on Sunday afternoon (April 2) at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Shaham, one of the world’s preeminent violinists, expertly conveyed the lush and lyrical landscape of Korngold’s concerto, demonstrating a rich tone that often was a smooth as a silk handkerchief. His flawless technique and mastery of the dynamics made the piece sing, yet it all worked so well because of extremely sensitive playing by the orchestra under the direction of Carlos Kalmar. Perhaps the most memorable moment of the piece came at the end of the second movement, “Romance,” when his final note was matched perfectly by vibraphone as played by Niel DePonte. That was heavenly. A thunderous standing ovation brought Shaham back to the stage several times, and he responded with an immaculately played encore, the “Gavotte en rondeau” by Bach.

The Korngold concerto was the centerpiece of a program that danced around the music of fin de siècle Vienna. That included two pieces that received their initial performances by the orchestra: the Overture to Richard Heuberger’s “The Opera Ball” and the Overture to Johan Strauss, Jr.’s “Indigo and the Forty Thieves.” Both were played with exuberance by Kalmar and company with lots of attention to details such as slowing the pace and then speeding up. “The Opera Ball” featured melodic lines that glided effortlessly about that hall and delightful phrases that cascaded quickly down a staircase. The 12 strikes of a bell signaled midnight solemnly but then everything broke loose with a dance tune swirling about. The Strauss, Jr. Overture was also totally delightful with swelling melodic passages, a light brigade of brass, and scintillating march.

After intermission came Franz von Suppé’s “Poet and Peasant” Overture followed by Josef Strauss’s “Dynamite Waltzes.” Nancy Ives superbly delivered the intimate and almost sentimental cello solo passages, which were a terrific set up for the bombastic and furious second part of the piece (associated forever in many American minds with some cartoon characters). That extroverted piece contrasted well with the “Dynamite Waltzes,” which despite its title (well, the real title was “Mysterious Powers of Magnetism”) was more sedate and refined.

As Kalmar mentioned in his introduction, the “Dynamite Waltzes” contained a couple of lines that Richard Strauss stole and modified for his opera “Der Rosenkavalier.” The orchestra played the Suite from that opera with gusto, excelling in sudden shifts in the dynamics and a brilliantly polished sound. Principal oboist Martin Hébert stole the spotlight with his exceptional playing, but Concertmaster Sarah Kwak and Principal Horn John Cox also set the bar high with their fine contributions.

In his introductory remarks before the concert, Scott Showalter, the orchestra’s President and CEO, announced that its annual gala raised over a million dollars. That is excellent news and should go a long way to help bring Shaham back to Portland some day in the near future. A gap of 24 years has flown by since Shaham last appeared here with the Oregon Symphony… which is too long of a dry spell.

Today's Birthdays

Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655-1731)
Bettina Brentano von Arnim (1785-1859)
Hans Richter (1843-1916)
Pierre Monteux (1875-1964)
Joe Venuti (1898-1978)
Eugène Bozza (1905-1991)
Muddy Waters (1915-1983)
Elmer Bernstein (1922-2004)
Sergei Leiferkus (1946)
Chen Yi (1953)
Thomas Trotter (1957)
Jane Eaglen (1960)
Vladimir Jurowski (1972)

and

Robert E. Sherwood (1896-1955)
Marguerite Duras (1914-1996)
Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Classical music on the cheap

The online portion of the Oregonian has published my article about classical music concerts that cost almost nothing. In my research for this article, I found lots of concerts opportunities that are gratis. Portlanders are very fortunate to live in a city that has so many free and inexpensive concerts. I think that the article will appear in print -- probably this weekend.

Today's Birthdays

Jean‑Baptiste‑Antoine Forqueray (1699-1782)
Edward Elzear "Zez" Confrey (1895-1971)
Sir Neville Cardus (1888-1975)
Grigoras Dinicu (1889-1949)
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968)
Louis Appelbaum (1918-2000)
Sixten Ehrling (1918-2005)
Kerstin Meyer (1928)
Garrick Ohlsson (1948)
Mikhail Rudy (1953)

and

Washington Irving (1783-1894)
John Burroughs (1837-1921)
Herb Caen (1933-1997)
Dr. Jane Goodall (1934)

Today's Birthdays

Franz Lachner (1803-1890)
Kurt Adler (1905-1988)
April Cantelo (1928)
Marvin Gaye (1939-1984)
Raymond Gubbay (1946)

and

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)
Émile Zola (1840-1902)
Max Ernst (1891-1976)
Camille Paglia (1947)

Today's Birthdays

Jean‑Henri d'Anglebert (1629-1691)
Ferrucco Busoni (1866-1924)
F Melius Christiansen (1871-1955)
Serge Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Dinu Lipatti (1921-1950)
William Bergsma (1921-1994)

and

Edmond Rostand (1868-1918)
Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011)
Milan Kundera (1929)
Francine Prose (1947)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1888, the eccentric Parisian composer and piano virtuoso Alkan is buried in the Montmatre Cemetary. Isidore Philipp, one of only four mourners who attend Alkan's internment, claimed to have been present when the composer's body was found in his apartment and said the elderly Alkan was pulled from under a heavy bookcase, which apparently fell on him while Alkan was trying to reach for a copy of the Talmud on its top shelf. This story has been discounted by some Alkan scholars.

Andrew Brownell to appear on PSU Steinway Piano Series

From the press release:

The PSU Steinway Piano Series events during the weekend of April 21-23 will feature guest pianist Andrew Brownell.  A native of Portland currently residing in London as a performer and teacher, Mr. Brownell was the 2nd Prize Winner of the 2006 Leeds International Piano Competition and received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the prestigious Guildhall School of Music in London.  He will perform a recital of works by Bach, Chopin, Liszt and Ravel on Saturday evening, April 22, at 7:30 pm in Lincoln Recital Hall (Rm. 75).  Tickets are $25 for general admission. $10 for PSU faculty and staff, students, and seniors with ID.

In this weekend of events, Mr. Brownell will also give a masterclass for PSU students and an outstanding student from the community the evening prior to his recital, on Friday, April 21, at 7 pm at Portland Piano Company.  Susan Chan will give a masterclass for several fine OMTA students on Sunday, April 23, at 2 pm in Lincoln Recital Hall.

Today's Birthdays

Francesco Durante (1684-1755)
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Serge Diaghliev (1872-1929)
Clemens Krauss (1893-1954)
John Mitchinson (1932)
Herb Alpert (1935)
Nelly Miricioiu (1952)
Robert Gambill (1955)
Jake Heggie (1961)


and

René Descartes (1596-1650)
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)
Octavio Paz (1914-1998)
Cesar Chavez (1927-1993)
Marge Piercy (1936)

From the Writer's Almanac:

Oklahoma! opened on Broadway on this date in 1943. It was based on a play called Green Grow the Lilacs (1930), by Lynn Riggs. Though the play, which was about settlers in the Oklahoma Territory, featured some old folk songs, it wasn’t a musical of the Broadway variety. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were both admirers of the play, and they had both independently tried to adapt it to the musical format, but their respective songwriting partners — Lorenz Hart and Jerome Kern — weren’t interested. So Rodgers approached Hammerstein about it. Usually musicals were made up of fairly thin and joke-riddled plotlines that only served to string together the most important element: the songs. But Rodgers and Hammerstein were both committed to making the songs fit the story, rather than the other way around. One of Broadway’s most beloved musicals, as well as one of its most successful partnerships, was born of their collaboration.

Nobody expected the show to do very well, but Oklahoma! was an immediate smash hit, and the first big Broadway blockbuster. It ran for over 2,200 performances. One of its stars, Celeste Holm, was not surprised at its success. A gypsy fortuneteller had told her that someone with the initials “R.R.” would change her life. “She said, ‘I see you surrounded by dancing cowboys,’” Holm later recalled. “It was the silliest thing I ever heard. I didn’t think a thing about it — until opening night, when I looked around and realized, Oh my God, there are the dancing cowboys!”

Today's Birthdays

Tommaso Traetta (1727-1779)
Ted Heath (1900-1969)
Sandor Szokolay (1931-2013)
John Eaton (1935-2015)
Gordon Muma (1935) Eric Clapton (1945)
Maggie Cole (1952)
Margaret Fingerhut (1955)
Sabine Meyer (1959)

and

Francisco Jose de Goya (1746-1828)
Anna Sewell (1820-1878)
Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Sean O'Casey (1880-1964)

Today's Birthdays

Henri Lutz (1864-1928)
Rosina Lhévinne (1880-1976)
Sir William Walton (1902-1983)
E Power Biggs (1906-1977)
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (1936-2012)
Guher Pekinel (1953)
Suher Pekinel (1953)

and

Ronald Stuart Thomas (1913-2000) 
Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005)
Judith Guest (1936)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1871, Royal Albert Hall is formally opened in London by Queen Victoria.

Financial crisis causes Eugene Opera and general director to split

According to this report by OPB, a debt of $200,000 has caused General Director Mark Beudert to leave Eugene Opera - effective at the end of June.

Today's Birthdays

Joseph Weigl (1766-1846)
Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951)
Paul Whiteman (1890-1967)
Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991)
Jacob Avshalomov (1919-2013)
Robert Ashley (1930-2014)
Martin Neary (1940)
Samuel Ramey (1942)
Richard Stilgoe (1942)

and

Raphael (1483-1520)
Nelson Algren (1909-1981)
Mario Vargas Llosa (1936)
Russell Banks (1940)
Iris Chang (1968-2004)
Lauren Weisberger (1977)

And from the Composers Datebook:
On this day in 1842, the Vienna Philharmonic plays its first concert (as the "Vienna Court Orchestra") in the Redoutensaale under the director of composer Otto Nicolai, the director of the Vienna Court Opera. The program included Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, his concert aria "Ah, Perfido," and the "Leonore" No. 3 and "Consercration of the House" Overtures, along with other vocal selections by Mozart and Cherubini.

Today's Birthdays

Vincent d'Indy (1851-1931)
Patty Smith Hill (1868-1946)
Ferde Grofé (1892-1972)
Anne Ziegler (1910-2003)
Sarah Vaughn (1924-1990)
Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007)
Paul Ruders (1949)
Maria Ewing (1950)
Bernard Labadie (1963)

and

Henri Murger (1822-1861)
Heinrich Mann (1871-1950)
Edward Steichen (1879-1973)
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)
Budd Schulberg (1914-2009)
Louis Simpson (1923-2012)
Julia Alvarez (1950)
John O'Farrell (1962)


And from the Composers Datebook:
On this date in 1808, Franz Joseph Haydn makes his last public appearance at a performance of his oratorio "The Creation" in Vienna in honor of the composer's approaching 76th birthday. Beethoven and Salieri attend the performance and greet Haydn.

From the New Music Box:
On On March 27, 1914, 20 year-old Leo Ornstein shocked audiences and critics at his Steinway Hall recital in London during which he performed his revolutionary Three Moods for solo piano and Danse Sauvage. The critic for the London Daily Mail described the event as a "wild outbreak," while another reviewer wrote, "We have never suffered from such insufferable hideousness, expressed in terms of so-called music." However, based on the attention that concert received, Schott published some of Ornstein's music for the first time. Famous as a wunderkind, Ornstein would compose into his 90s and live until 2002 to become the oldest composer in American music history.

From The Writer's Almanac:
It's the birthday of the woman who wrote "Happy Birthday to You," Patty Smith Hill, born in Anchorage, Kentucky (1868). Most of her life was spent as a kindergarten teacher. She began teaching in Louisville, Kentucky, and it was there, in 1893, that Hill first wrote the lyrics to the song. But it was originally meant as a welcome to start the school day and was first called "Good Morning to All." Hill's sister Mildred, an accomplished musician, provided the melody. Hill was only 25 when she wrote the lyrics to the famous song.

It became popularized with the invention of radio and sound films. The song appeared in the Broadway musical "The Band Wagon" (1931), and was used for Western Union's first singing telegram in 1933. A third sister, Jessica Hill, noticed the similarities between "Happy Birthday to You" and the song her sisters wrote, and she was able to prove it in a court of law. The song was copyrighted in 1935 and remains under copyright to this day. According to Forbes magazine, the song produces about $2 million in licensing revenue each year. "Happy Birthday to You" is still one of the most popular songs in the English language, along with "Auld Lang Syne" and "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."

Today's Birthdays

Josef Slavík (1806-1833)
Wilhelm Backhaus (1884-1969)
André Cluytens (1905-1967)
Harry Rabinowitz (1916-2016)
Pierre Boulez (1925-2016)
Kyung Wha Chung (1948)

and

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898)
A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Joseph Campbell (1904–1987)
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983)
Gregory Corso (1930-2001)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Adolph Hasse (1699-1783)
Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957)
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Haydn Wood (1882-1959)
Magda Olivero (1910-2014)
Cecil Taylor (1929)
Sir Elton John (1947)

and

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)
Gloria Steinem (1934)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1949, Shostakovich (accompanied by KGB "handlers") arrives in New York for his first visit to America, for the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. His anti-Western statements and criticism of Igor Stravinsky embarrassed his American sponsors, including Aaron Copland, and later provided political fodder for the notorious Red-hunter, Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Recommended classical concerts for springtime in today's Oregonian

Today's Oregonian published a list of classical music concerts in its spring guide. I hope that it has a few events that will capture your fancy. The paper published the same article a few days ago online here. I wrote the article and would liked to have included more performances, but the paper has its space requirements.

Today's Birthdays

John Antes (1740-1811)
Maria Malibran (1808-1836)
Fanny Crosby (1820-1915)
Christiane Eda-Pierre (1932)
Benjamin Luxon (1937)

and

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)
Dwight Macdonald (1906-1982)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919)
Dario Fo (1926-2016)
Ian Hamilton (1938-2001)
Martin Walser (1927)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1721, J.S. Bach dedicates his six "Brandenburg" Concertos to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg, whose orchestra apparently never performed them.

Oregon Symphony announces recording of Haydn symphonies

From the press release:

The Oregon Symphony today announced that its upcoming CD – the fourth under the musical direction of Carlos Kalmar – is set for a local release today and an official international release on April 7.

                                                                                                                  

This latest CD, entitled Haydn Symphonies, follows Spirit of the American Range (2015) which was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance; This England (2012); and Music for a Time of War (2011), which garnered two Grammy Award nominations for Best Orchestral Performance and Best Engineered album. This latest CD, like its three predecessors, was recorded in hybrid multichannel Super Audio CD format for Pentatone. This recording brings the total number of recordings by the Oregon Symphony to 20.

 

The new CD features three symphonies by Franz Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 53 (The Imperial), Symphony No. 64 (Tempora Mutantur), and Symphony No. 96 (The Miracle). It was recorded live at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in 2013 (Symphony No. 64) and 2016 (Symphonies Nos. 53 and 96) by Sound Mirror recording engineers John Newton and Blanton Alspaugh, both of whom engineered the three previous CDs.           

 

Music Director Carlos Kalmar said, “It is my great pleasure to share our newest recording with classical music lovers all over the world. I believe our orchestra is consistently proving it has something important to say musically. We appreciate our relationship with Pentatone and their partners at Sound Mirror who do such a great job of recording us live. We are already at work on our next recording.”

 

“We are very excited about this new release,” Pentatone’s Vice-President for Artist and Repertoire Renaud Loranger said. “It further documents the relationship between the Oregon Symphony and its music director, Carlos Kalmar, in performances beaming with vitality and stylistic acumen, and will no doubt become another milestone of our collaboration.”

Haydn Symphonies will receive its first radio broadcast on Portland’s own 24/7 classical music station, All Classical Portland (89.9 FM and streaming internationally at allclassical.org), at 7 pm today, March 23.

 

The recording was made possible in part through a generous gift from Cliff and Karen Deveney and by the James DePreist Fund for Broadcast and Recording.

 

Following its local release today, Haydn Symphonies will be available for purchase at the Symphony Ticket Office (909 SW Washington) or at the Pentatone website (pentatonemusic.com) until its official international release on April 7, 2017, when it will become available at most music outlets.

 

HAYDN SYMPHONIES

Haydn: Symphony No. 53 in D Major (The Imperial)

Haydn: Symphony No. 64 in A Major (Tempora Mutantur)

Haydn: Symphony No. 96 in D Major (The Miracle)

Today's Birthdays

Léon Minkus (1826-1917)
Eugène Gigout (1844-1925)
Franz Schreker (1878-1934)
Josef Locke (1917-1999)
Norman Bailey (1933)
Boris Tishchenko (1939-2010)
Michael Nyman (1944)
David Grisman (1945)

and

Roger Martin du Gard (1881-1958)
Louis Adamic (1898-1951) 
Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) 
Gary Joseph Whitehead (1965)

Today's Birthdays

Carl Rosa (1842-1889)
Hamisch MacCunn (1868-1916)
Joseph Samson (1888-1957)
Martha Mödl (1912-2001)
Fanny Waterman (1920)
Arthur Grumiaux (1921-1986)
Stephen Sondheim (1930)
Joseph Schwantner (1943)
George Benson (1943)
Alan Opie (1945)
Rivka Golani (1946)
Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948)
Edmund Barham (1950-2008)

and

Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641)
Louis L'Amour (1908-1988)
Edith Grossman (1936)
James Patterson (1940)
Billy Collins (1941)
James McManus (1951)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1687, Italian-born French composer Jean Baptiste Lully, age 54, in Paris, following an inadvertent self-inflicted injury to his foot (by a staff with which he would beat time for his musicians) which developed gangrene.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Modeste Moussorgsky (1839-1881)
Eddie James "Son" House (1902-1988)
Nikos Skalkottas (1904-1949)
Paul Tortelier (1914-1990)
Nigel Rogers (1935)
Owain Arwel Hughes (1942)
Elena Firsova (1950)
Ann MacKay (1956)

and


Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978)
Nizar Qabbani (1923-1998) 
Ved Mehta (1934)

From the New Music Box:
On March 21, 1771, the Massachusetts Gazette published an announcement for a musical program including "select pieces on the forte piano and guitar." It is the earliest known reference to the piano in America.

Today's Birthdays

Beniamino Gigli (1890-1957)
Lauritz Melchoir (1890-1973)
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997)
Dame Vera Lynn (1917)
Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970)
Marian McPartland (1918)
Henry Mollicone (1946)

and

Ovid (43 BC - AD 17)
Ned Buntline (1823-1886)
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

Today's Birthdays

Max Reger (1873-1916)
Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994)
Nancy Evans (1915-2000)
Dinu Lipatti (1917-1950)
Robert Muczynski (1929-2010)
Ornette Coleman (1930-2015)
Myung-Wha Chung (1944)
Carolyn Watkinson (1949)
Mathew Rosenblum (1954)

and

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)
Nikolay Gogol (1809-1852)
Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890)
Philip Roth (1933)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Christoph Vogel (1756-1788)
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)
Paul Le Flem (1881-1984)
Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973)
Willem van Hoogstraten (1884-1964)
Nobuko Imai (1943)
James Conlon (1950)
Jan-Hendrik Rootering (1950)
Courtney Pine (1964)

and

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898)
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
Manly Hall (1901-1990)
George Plimpton (1927-2003)
Christa Wolf (1929-2011)
John Updike (1932-2009) 
Franz Wright (1953-2015)

Arts funding in jeopardy

From the Cultural Advocacy Coalition

It is time for us to rise to the challenge yet again. Today's announcement is just the beginning of the many next steps of the federal budget process. Our Oregon Congressional delegation has voiced bipartisan support for the NEA, both in the past two years of funding proposals, and in public statements made recently. Join me and hundreds of other Oregonians in calling on them today and urging them to fight for arts and culture in our state and nation.

Here's how you can take action right now to respond to President Trump's Budget Outline:

• Contact your House and Senate delegations. Urge them to oppose the President's request and provide full funding for the NEA, NEH, CPB and IMLS. Senator Jeff Merkley serves on the Senate Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. Outreach to Senator Merkley is critical at this time. And, if you are a constituent of Representative Walden's please reach out to him immediately.

Here's what you need to know about the impact of NEA funding in Oregon:

• In its fiscal year 2016, the NEA provided $727,700 in Partnership Agreement funds to the Oregon Arts Commission. These critical funds are used in conjunction with state legislative dollars to support grants and services across the entire state of Oregon.
• NEA and state funds enabled the Oregon Arts Commission to not only award 267 grants totaling $2,121,428 in its fiscal year 2015 but also provide non-grant services to arts organizations, community groups, schools and artists. These grants and services supported access to the arts, employment, arts education, community well-being and the cultural heritage of the entire state.
• Also affected by NEA budget cuts would be direct grants to arts organizations in each state. In its fiscal year 2016, the NEA made 32 direct grants totaling $795,000 in Oregon.

On top of the potential loss of $727,700 in NEA funding, the Oregon Arts Commission (OAC), is proposing cuts to operating support grants for the next biennium of 30% in response to potential budget cuts at the state level of $530,000. That's 30% less art, music, theater, dance, poetry, and more for Oregonians. This is a very real scenario on the table for the OAC in the current budget and the impact of these cuts would be substantial. It's time for us as artists, arts patrons, cultural advocates and Oregonians to take a stand for art and culture in our state and our nation's capitol.

Please join us for Advocacy Day 2017 in Salem on Monday, April 24 to meet and speak with our legislators about the importance of arts and culture to our state and nation.

I know from experience, emails and letters do not have the same effect as speaking with your legislator in person. That's why we love our art LIVE! There's no substitute for face-to-face advocacy for preserving the OAC's budget and its impact on arts and culture throughout our state.

Register today for Advocacy Day 2017 and we will see you in Salem on April 24th!

Today's Birthdays

Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729)
Manuel García II (1805-1906)
Joseph Rheinberger (1839-1901)
Giuseppe Borgatti (1871-1950)
Brian Boydell (1917-2000)
Nat "King" Cole (1917-1965)
John LaMontaine (1920-2013)
Stephen Dodgson (1924-2013)
Betty Allen (1927-2009)
John Lill (1944)
Michael Finnissy (1946)
Patrick Burgan (1960)

and

Edmund Kean (1787-1833)
Frank B. Gilbreth (1911-2001)
Penelope Lively (1933)

Seattle Opera cuts some jobs and closes scene shop in Renton

Today's issue of the Seattle Times reports that Seattle Opera has had to reduce its staff and close a scene shop in order to meet its budget. Apparently, the company's expenses have been $2 to $3 million more than its income for quite a while.

- Thanks to opera critic Mark Mandel for pointing this out

Today's Birthdays

Enrico Tamberlik (1820-1889)
Henny Youngman (1906-1998)
Christa Ludwig (1928)
Sir Roger Norrington (1934)
Teresa Berganza (1935)
David Del Tredici (1937)
Claus Peter Flor (1953)

and

James Madison (1751-1836)
Maxim Gorky (1868-1936)
César Vallejo (1892-1938)
Sid Fleischman (1920-2010)
Alice Hoffman (1952)

Bunch's new work perks up the ears and scores big time with Oregon Symphony audience

It is a rare event in the classical music world when a brand new work can upstage one of the great works in the cello repertoire and one of the best concertos for orchestra, but that’s what happened on Saturday (March 11) when the Oregon Symphony gave the world premiere of Kenji Bunch’s “Aspects of an Elephant.” Bunch’s new piece, a concerto for orchestra, immediately connected with the audience in such a way that it stole the spotlight from fine performances of Dvořák’s Cello Concert and Barber’s “Souveniers.” After the concert, audience members at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall were still talking about Bunch’s new concoction, a real tribute to Bunch and the musicians who played superbly under the direction of Carlos Kalmar.

Commissioned by the Oregon Symphony to celebrate its 120th anniversary, “Aspects of an Elephant” painted the parable of the six men who are in a very dark room with an elephant. After each man touches a part of the elephant, he proclaims what the elephant is like. They get into an argument and the finale, the elephant is revealed.

Bunch reached into every section of the orchestra to create an intriguing mixture of sonic colors. A suspenseful introduction (“Into Darkness”) featured sharp taps from the percussion. The first episode (“The Elephant is a Whip”) accented a plethora of nimble sounds with a slapstick. The next episode used humorous grunting sounds from the brass and light, swishy strings. Mellifluous flutes got into the mix to suggest the elephant’s ear as a silk cloth. With a ground round from the bass violins and rising tones from the trumpets, it was easy to imagine a tree. Streaky, wiggling sounds from the violins created the movement of a snake, and expanding lines from the brass assembled a throne. Sporadic blurts from all sides of the orchestra evoked the men arguing with each other until they are overtaken in the finale with the grandiosity of the elephant in all its glory.

In many ways “Aspects of an Elephant” reminded me of Bernstein’s Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium”) in which the orchestra assumes the role of different philosophers in their discussion about love. But Bunch’s piece incorporated a larger orchestral palette to paint an equally vivid picture. The audience responded to the music with unbridled enthusiasm, which brought Bunch back to the stage a couple of times.

The concert opened with a radiant performance of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto that featured Harriet Krijgh, a rising star from Holland, as the soloist. Krijgh expressed the beauty of the music with great feeling, creating a beautiful tone from beginning to end. With her long arms, she caressed the cello and excelled in all facets – except that she needed to play even louder when the orchestra heightened its crescendos. That’s a problem that many solo cellists have with the Schnitz. It is not the best hall for instruments or singers in the lower ranges.

The program concluded with Barber’s “Souvenirs,” an orchestral survey of popular dances that were a staple of the grand hotels of New York City in the early Twentieth Century. The violins exuded elegance when they tapered off the ends of their phrases in the “Waltz” movement. The slightly languorous sentiment of the “Pas de deux” was nicely set up by the harp, flute, oboe, and bass violin. The muted, yet sprightly trumpets and trombones mingled delightfully with the piccolo in the “Two-step,” while the English horn, brushes and cymbals slid back and forth seductively with the clarinets, cello, and violas during the “Hesitation-Tango.” Everything swirled and sped up for the “Galop” before ending snappily.

It should be noted that Bunch, who has been playing in the viola section for the past couple of years, took a seat with his colleagues in order play the Barber, and when he came out on stage, he was greeted with another volley of applause. That response from the audience seemed to summarize the good vibes of the evening. People actually did leave the hall with a smile and in good spirits.

Today's Birthdays

Eduard Strauss (1835-1916)
Johan Halvorsen (1864-1935)
Colin McPhee (1900-1964)
Lightnin' Hopkins (1912-1982)
Ben Johnston (1926)
Nicolas Flagello (1928-1994)
Cecil Taylor (1929)
Jean Rudolphe Kars (1947)
Isabel Buchanan (1954)

and

Richard Ellmann (1918-1987)
Ben Okri (1959)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1985, Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, age 22, makes his operatic debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples, singing the lead tenor role in Domenico Morelli's comic opera "L'Amico Francesco."

Today's Birthdays

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756)
Pierre-Louis Couperin (1755-1789)
Johann Strauss Sr. (1804-1849)
Lawrance Collingwood (1887-1982)
Witold Rudziński (1913-2004)
Quincy Jones (1933)
Phillip Joll (1954)

and

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Sylvia Beach (1887-1962)
Max Shulman (1919-1988)
Diane Arbus (1923-1871)

Today's Birthdays

Michael Blavet (1700-1768)
Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)
Alec Rowley (1892-1958)
Irène Joachim (1913-2001)
Jane Rhodes (1929-2011)
Alberto Ponce (1935)
Lionel Friend (1945)
Julia Migenes (1949
Wolfgang Rihm (1952)
Anthony Powers (1953)
Moses Hogan (1957-2003)
Terence Blanchard (1962)

and

Janet Flanner (1892-1978)
George Seferis (1900-1971)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1845, Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in e, Op. 64, was premiered by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Niels Gade, with Ferdinand David the soloist.

Today's Birthdays

Thomas Arne (1710-1778)
Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911)
Hans Knappertsbusch (1888-1965)
Ralph Shapey (1921-2002)
Norbert Brainin (1923-2005)
Philip Jones (1928-2000)
Helga Pilarczyk (1935-2011)
Liza Minnelli (1946)
James Taylor (1948)

and

George Berkeley (1685-1753)
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916)
Vaslav Nijinsky (1889-1950)
Edward Albee (1928)
Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)
Virginia Hamilton (1934-2002)
Naomi Shihab Nye (1952)
Carl Hiaasen (1953)
David Eggers (1970)

Today's Birthdays

Carl Ruggles (1876-1971)
Henry Cowell (1897-1965)
Xavier Montsalvage (1912-2002)
Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992)
Sarah Walker (1943)
Tristan Murail (1947)
Bobby McFerrin (1950)
Katia Labèque (1950)

and

Torquato Tasso (1544-1495)
Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983)
Douglas Adams (1952-2001)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1829, Mendelssohn conducts a revival performance of J.S. Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" in Berlin.

Today's Birthdays

Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838)
Dudley Buck (1839-1909)
Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908)
Arthur Honnegger (1892-1955)
Dame Eva Turner (1892-1990)
Bix Biederbecke (1903-1931)
Sir Charles Groves (1915-1992)
William Blezard (1921-2003)
Andrew Parrott (1947)
Stephen Oliver (1950-1992)

and

Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933)
Zelda Fitzgerald (1900-1948)
Heywood Hale Broun (1918-2001)
David Rabe (1940)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this date in 1915, the Moscow Synodal Choir gave the premiere performance of a new choral work by Sergei Rachmaninoff. In Russian, the work was titled Vsenoshchnoe bdeniye, which translates as "All-Night Vigil Service" or more commonly as "Vespers.

Today's Birthdays

Josef Mysliveczek (1737-1781)
Archie Camden (1888-1979)
Dame Isobel Baillie (1895-1983)
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Ornette Coleman (1930-2015)
David Matthews (1943)
Kalevi Aho (1949)
Howard Shelley (1950)

and

Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512)
Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962)
Mickey Spillane (1918-2006)
David Pogue (1963)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1831, Italian violin virtuoso Nicolo Paganini makes his Parisian debut a the Opéra. Composers in the audience include Meyerbeer, Cherubini, Halvéy. and Franz Liszt (who transcribes Pagnini's showpiece "La Campanella" for piano). Also in attendance are the many famous novelists and poets, including George Sand, Victor Hugo, Alfred de Mussset and Heinrich Heine.

In Mulieribus weaves splendid tapestry of madrigals

In Mulieribus, the Portland-based female vocal ensemble, celebrated its 10th anniversary with a superb concert of madrigals at The Old Church on Saturday evening (March 4). The singers’ pitch-perfect precision, tonal balance, emotional intensity, and clear diction conveyed piece outstandingly. Some pieces were sung as solos, some as duets, trios, quartets, whatever. It didn’t matter. The high artistry of the group wove a fantastic tapestry of sound that made the concert one of the best so far this year.

Led by artistic director Anna Song, who directed some of the selections and sang in others, the program sampled madrigals primarily from the Italian and English repertoire plus a brand new piece that the group commissioned from Craig Kingsbury. The other sirens in the ensemble were sopranos Kari Ferguson, Arwen Myers, Catherine van der Salm, Ann Wetherell, mezzo soprano Hannah Penn, and altos Sue Hale and Jo Routh. They were accompanied on some of the pieces by theorboist Hideki Yamaya and on two selections by Blake Applegate, Aaron Cain, and Brian Tierney.

The concert sparkled from the get go with a quartet singing “Su, su, su pastorelli vezzosi” (“Arise, up, charming shepherd lads”) from Book 8 of Claudio Monteverdi’s Madrigals. The overlapping lines were well-balanced throughout and the light quality was totally inviting. “Ah, Robin, gentle Robin” by William Corynish acquired a plaintive, searching tone that took the audience in a more melancholic direction. Later in the program John Wilbye’s “Weep, O mine eyes,” sung by a sextet, also created a wonderfully mournful mood.

The matching of vowels and consonants were wonderfully demonstrated throughout the concert, but the trio (Myers, van der Salm, and Ferguson) singing of Luzzasco Luzzaschi’s “T’amo mia vita” (“I love you, my life”) sounded as if they were just one person with three voices. In much the same way, Wetherell and Hale singing of Strozzi’s “Begli occhi” (“Beautiful eyes”) by Barbara Strozzi was perfectly matched in every which-way by. The crunchy suspensions of Alesandro Scarlatti’s “Cor meo deh non languire” (“My heart, do not languish”) received an impeccable interpretation by a quintet.

Van der Salm gave such a breathtakingly exquisite performance of Alessandro Grandi’s “O quam tu pulchra es” (“O how beautiful you are”) that the audience responded with applause even though they should have waited until the end of the following piece. Jan Sweelinck’s “Lascia filli, mi acara” (“Leave,my sweet girl”) achieved a gem-like polish with a trio (Myers, Hale, and Routh).

Equally effective were Myers and Penn in their solos. Myers delivered a stunningly beautiful interpretation of Monteverdi’s “Lamento della Ninfa” (“The Nymph’s Lament”), augmented by the male trio. Hannah Penn’s haunting plea in Barbara Strozzi’s “Chesi può fare” (“What can one do”) penetrated all corners of the room with heart-felt emotion

Even though most of the madrigals in the program were written over 400 years ago, it was refreshing to hear a new take on the form. Based on a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca, Kingsbury’s “Canción de las siete doncellas” (“Song of the seven maidens”) received a splendid world premiere at this concert. The music had lots of close-cut dissonance –coupled with multilayered phrases and flat-out beautiful harmonics.

“Sole e pensoso” (“Alone and thoughtful”) by Luca Marenzio featured alto Routh, soprano van der Salm and the male ensemble. The final number “Sanita e allegrezza” (“Health and joy”) by Orazio Vecchi sent the audience out into the night in good cheer.

Today's Birthdays

Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613)
Carl Philip Emanuel Bach (1714-1788)
Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000)
Dick Hyman (1927)
Christian Wolff (1934)
Robert Tear (1939-2011)
Barthold Kuijken (1949)
Simon Halsey (1958)

and

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935)
Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932)
Leslie Fiedler (1917-2003)
Neil Postman (1931-2003)
John McPhee (1933)
Leslie A. Fiedler (1948)
Jeffrey Eugenides (1960)

Today's Birthdays

John Wilbye (1574-1638)
Tomaso Antonio Vitali (1663-1745)
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Heino Eller (1887-1970)
Christopher Seaman (1942)
Uri Segal (1944)
Townes Van Zandt (1944-1997)
Nicholas Kraemer (1945)
Clive Gillinson (1946)
Okko Kamu (1946)
Montserrat Figueras (1948-2011)
Michael Chance (1955)

and

William York Tindall (1903-1981)
William Boyd (1952)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1897, Johannes Brahms attends his last concerts and hears his Symphony No. 4 conducted by Hans Richter.