Today's Birthdays

Rudolf Firkušný (1912-1994)
Sir Alexander Gibson (1926-1995)
Michel Sénéchal (1927-2018)
Cristopher Dearnley (1930-2000)
Jerome Lowenthal (1932)
Gene Vincent (1935-1971)
Edith Mathis (1938-2025)
Alberto Lysy (1935-2009)
Christine Cairns (1959)

and

Thomas Edison (1847-1931)
Elizabeth Bisland (1861-1929)
Philip Dunne (1908-1992)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1909-1993)
Pico Iyer (1957)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1841, was given the first documented American performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 at the New York's Broadway Tabernacle, by the German Society of New York, Uri Corelli Hill conducting.

Review: A Night of Light and Color: Oregon Symphony’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Bruch Violin Concerto, and Anna Clyne’s Color Field

Photo credit: Oregon Symphony

Guest review by Thomas Meinzen

Amid Portland’s winter light festival, it seemed fitting that the Oregon Symphony began their Pictures at an Exhibition program (February 7) with the bright hues Yellow, Red, and Orange in the three-movement Color Field by Anna Clyne.

Clyne’s work references Mark Rothko’s 1961 painting Orange, Red, Yellow, in which bright, blurred rectangles appear to float off the page, each distorting how the audience views the color above and below. Likewise, Clyne’s first movement, Yellow, seemed to float into the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, with open chords and quiet, subtly shifting strings. Silvered with high notes of bowed crotales, Yellow conjured the spacious, ethereal feeling of early morning light.

Building in richness and grandeur, the movement introduced a Serbian folk melody in the deep movement of the basses, conjuring images of something great and old emerging from shadow into light. Adopted by the higher strings and winds, this melody lent the piece increasing shape and structure, while still maintaining the meditative impression of a great, open vista. In many ways, the piece captured the qualities of light in a way that was more tender and transcendent than the festival’s displays. Sometimes the description outshines the real thing.

Following Yellow, Red was joltingly fast and furious, with rumbling timpani and bass drums, strings screaming down scales, and declarations of fiery brass. Stampeding advances alternated with moments of calm, crescendo-ing to a bold, sudden conclusion.

Yet it was Orange, the third and final movement, that proved most captivating. The resonance and reverb of percussionist Stephen Kehner’s work on the glockenspiel was the signature of this movement, bookending it with a mystical sense of space and color. An incremental layering of voices began with the oboe and swelled to include nearly every member of the orchestra, bringing the open feeling of Yellow into conversation with the bold intensity of Red. This rounded out an exquisite, contemplative composition.

While the opener left listeners in quiet reverie, the Oregon Symphony truly fulfilled its duty to dazzle with Gil Shaham’s marvelous performance of the Max Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor. The Bruch showcased the delicate touch and remarkable fluidity and energy of the GRAMMY award-winning violinist.

Shaham’s notes emerged tenderly from a backdrop of gently held chords, rising through the orchestra’s sound and flying across virtuosic passages with ease and elegance. As conductor Daniel Danzmayr deftly guided the orchestra from swells of melody to sudden restraint, the clear tones of Shaham’s 1699 “Countess Polignac” Stradivarius soared into the hall, a vector of energy which carried the orchestra to new heights. Shaham himself seemed caught up in the concerto’s vigor, stepping forward into cadenzas and even bouncing on the balls of his feet during the triumphant Finale. And the audience was right there with him, rising to a long standing-ovation after the Bruch and again after Shaham’s encore, the Tempo di Borea and Double from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 1 in B minor—a brilliant display of dexterity, precision, and passion.

Photo credit: Oregon Symphony

 And yet, the night’s titular event was still ahead: Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (arranged by Ravel). As Danzmayr shared, Mussorgsky wrote Pictures as a piano suite after attending an exhibition of the paintings of Viktor Hartmann in 1874, a fellow Russian artist and friend of Mussorgsky who had died the previous year. Never performed publicly in Mussorgsky’s life, Pictures was first published by Rimsky-Korsakov in 1886, and eventually arranged for orchestra by several musical luminaries, most enduringly by Ravel in 1922.

Although it abandons classical forms and was met with skepticism by Mussorgsky’s peers, Pictures at an Exhibition is renowned for good reason. With a bold brass entrance, its grand Promenade theme remains in the ear for days, an asymmetrical meter lending the theme a hook that belies its simplicity. And the whole ten-movement work tugs at the imagination, richly illustrating scenes ranging from the somber and pensive to the playful and strange.

The diverse voices and exposed moments of Pictures also provided a great opportunity for the orchestra to showcase each member’s individual talents and timbre. The haunting alto saxophone solo in The Old Castle was particularly evocative; the tight articulations of muted trumpets in Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle also revealed excellent control. Perhaps most impressive, however, was the performance of tubist JáTtik Clark: after a sensitive euphonium feature in Bydlo, he commanded incredible power in The Hut on Fowl’s Legs and the final expression of the Promenade. I kept looking for additional tubas, but those astounding decibels were all from Clark.

Beyond individual musicianship, however, it was the power of the symphony’s cohesion and collective might that brought down the house in the grand finale, The Great Gate of Kiev, which featured a massive bell from the Netherlands made especially for this concert and engraved for the Oregon Symphony. This final declamatory movement was towering and triumphant, concluding the night and garnering an immediate standing ovation. Under Danzmayr’s leadership, the Oregon Symphony continues to astonish and delight.

Thomas Meinzen is a composer, pianist, writer, and ecologist. Thomas studied music composition and orchestration with John David Earnest and Eric Funk. He has worked across the U.S. and Costa Rica as an avian field biologist and currently teaches natural history, ecology, arboriculture, and music through several local nonprofits, in addition to coordinating Portland tree-planting efforts with Friends of Trees. An avid bicyclist, birder, and public transit advocate, you can find his writing at greenbirder.substack.com and music at thomasmeinzen.bandcamp.com.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Melchior Molter (1696-1765)
Adelina Patti (1843-1919)
Jean Coulthard (1908-2000)
Joyce Grenfell (1914-2001)
Cesare Siepi (1923-2010)
Leontyne Price (1927)
Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004)
Roberta Flack (1937-2025)
Barbara Kolb (1939-2024)
Yuja Wang (1987)

and

Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
Boris Pasternak (1890-1960)
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
Åsne Seierstad (1970)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1921, Charles Ives hears Igor Stravinsky's "The Firebird" Ballet Suite at an all-Russian program by the New York Symphony at Carnegie Hall. Also on the program were works of Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninoff (with Rachmaninoff as piano soloist). Walter Damrosch conducted.

Review of Tines-Ruckus concert published in Classical Voice North America

My review of this unique concert is available in CVNA here.

Today's Birthdays

Ferdinando Carulli (1770-1841)
Franz Xaver Witt (1834-1888)
Alban Berg (1885-1935)
Harald Genzmer (1909-2007)
Hildegard Behrens (1937-2009)
Ryland Davies (1943-2023)
Paul Hillier (1949)
Jay Reise (1950)
Marilyn Hill Smith (1952)
Amanda Roocroft (1966)

and

Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
James Stephens (1882-1950)
Brendan Behan (1923-1964)
J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee (1940)
Alice Walker (1944)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1893, Verdi's opera, "Falstaff," was first performed in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala. This was Verdi's last opera.

Today's Birthdays

Jacob Praetorius (1586-1651)
André Grétry (1741-1813)
Osian Ellis (1928-2021)
John Williams (1932)
Elly Ameling (1933)
Margaret Brouwer (1940)
Stephen Roberts (1948)
Irvine Arditti (1953)

and

Jules Verne (1828-1905)
Kate Chopin (1850-1904)
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
Neal Cassady (1926-1968)
John Grisham (1955)

and from the Composers Datebook:

1880 - German opera composer Richard Wagner writes a letter to his American dentist, Dr. Newell Still Jenkins, stating "I do no regard it as impossible that I decide to emigrate forever to America with my latest work ["Parsifal"] and my entire family" if the Americans would subsidize him to the tune of one million dollars.

Today's Birthdays

Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871-1927)
Ossip Gabrilovich (1878-1936)
Eubie Blake (1883-1983)
Claudia Muzio (1889-1936)
Quincy Porter (1897-1966)
Edmond De Luca (1909-2004)
Lord Harewood (1923-2011)
Maruis Constant (1925-2004)
Stuart Burrows (1933-2025)
Wolfgang van Schweintz (1953)
Andy Akiho (1979)

and

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957)
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Gay Talese (1932)

Today's Birthdays

Henry Litolff (1818-1891)
Karl Weigl (1881-1949)
Andre Marchal (1894-1980)
Claudio Arrau (1903-1991)
Stephen Albert (1941-1992)
Bob Marley (1945-1981)
Bruce J. Taub (1948)
Matthew Best (1957)
Sean Hickey (1970)

and

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Eric Partridge (1894-1979)
George Herman "Babe" Ruth (1895-1948)
Mary Douglas Leakey (1913-1996)
Deborah Digges (1950-2009)
Michael Pollan (1955)

Today's Birthdays

 Ole Bull (1810-1880)

Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748-1798)
Ricardo Viñes (1875-1943)
Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969)
Jussi Björling (1911-1960)
Sir John Pritchard (1921-1989)
Luc Ferrari (1929-2005)
John Poole (1934-2020)
Ivan Tcherepnin (1943-1998)
Josef Protschka (1944)
Phylis Bryn-Julson (1945)

and

Martin Marty (1928-2025)
Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron (1934-2021)
John Guare (1938)
William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)
Christopher Guest (1948)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1887, Verd's: opera "Otello" premiered in Milan at the Teatro all Scala, with the composer conducting (and cellist Arturo Toscanini in the orchestra).

Review in CVNA of Oregon Symphony concert and last-minute rescue by pianist Ying Li

Pianist Ying Li flew in from New York City at the last minute to rescue Oregon Symphony's concert that featured Grieg's Piano Concerto. You can read all about it in my review, which has been published in Classical Voice North America here.

Today's Birthdays

Eustache du Caurroy (1549-1609)
Carl Michael Bellman (1740-1795)
Aristide Cavaillé‑Coll (1811-1899)
Yrjo Kilpinen (1892-1952)
Bernard Rogers (1893-1968)
Erich Leinsdorf (1912-1993)
Jutta Hipp (1925-2003)
Martti Talvela (1935-1989)
François Dumeaux (1978)

and also

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)
Gavin Ewart (1916-1995)
Betty Friedan (1921-2006)
Robert Coover (1932-2024)

Today's Birthdays

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594)
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847)
Sidney Lanier (1842-1881)
Priaulx Rainier (1903-1986)
Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975)
Blas Galindo Dimas (1910-1993)
Jehan Alain (1911-1940)
Helga Dernesch (1939)

and

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Georg Trakl (1887-1914)
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Alvar Aalto (1898-1978)
James Michener (1907-1997)
Simone Weil (1909-1943)
Richard Yates (1926-1992)
Paul Auster (1947)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1844, Berlioz's "Roman Carnival" Overture, in Paris was premiered at the Salle Herz, with the composer conducting.

Today's Birthdays

Louis Marchand (1669-1732)
Leo Fall (1873-1925)
Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987)
Stan Getz (1927-1991)
Skip Battin (1934-2003)
Martina Arroyo (1937)
Sir Andrew Davis (1944)
Ursula Oppens (1944)
Eliane Aberdam (1964)

And

James Joyce (1882-1941)
James Dickey (1923-1997)
Tom Smothers (1937-2023)

Today's Birthdays

Francesco Stradivari (1671-1743)
Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768)
Johan Joachim Agrell (1701-1765)
Victor Herbert (1859-1924)
Julius Conus (1869-1942)
Clara Butt (1872-1936)
Sándor Veress (1907-1999)
Mozart Camargo Guarnieri (1907-1993)
Renata Tebaldi (1922-2004)
Ursula Mamlok (1928-2016)
Michael G. Shapiro (1951)

and

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
S. J. Perelman (1904-1979)
Muriel Spark (1918- 2006)
Galway Kinnell (1927-2014)

Today's Birthdays

François Devienne (1759-1803)
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Caroline Miolan‑Carvalho (1827-1895)
James Huneker (1857-1921)
Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950)
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)
Nathan Milstein (1904-1992)
Benjamin Frankel (1906-1973)
Alan Lomax (1915-2002)
Jaap Schröder (1925-2020)
Odetta (1930-2008)
Philip Glass (1937)
Stephen Cleobury (1948)
Donna Summer (1948-2012)
George Benjamin (1960)
Jennifer Higdon (1962)

and

Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Zane Grey (1872-1939)
John O'Hara (1905-1970)
Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Today's Birtdays

Johann Joachim Quantz (1697-1773)
Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935)
Walter Damrosch (1862-1950)
Mitch Leigh (1928-2014)
Lynn Harrell (1944-2020)
Silvia Marcovici (1952)
Gerald Finley (1960)

and

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
Barbara Tuchman (1912-1989)
Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016)
Richard Brautigan (1935-1984)

Today's Birthdays

Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777)
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871)
Frederic Hymen Cowen (1852-1935)
Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Havergal Brian (1876-1972)
Blanche Selva (1884-1942)
Luigi Nono (1924-1990)
Myer Fredman (1932-2014)
Malcolm Binns (1936)
Cho-Liang Lin (1960)
Matthias Pintscher (1971)

and

W. C. Fields (1880-1946
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1826 was the premiere of Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, "Death and the Maiden," as a unrehearsed reading at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, two amateur musicians. Schubert, who usually played viola on such occasions, could not perform since he was busy copying out the parts and making last-minute corrections.
and from The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1845 that Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” was published in the New York Evening Mirror. It was a huge sensation: Abraham Lincoln memorized it and Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a fan letter to Poe. He was paid $9 for “The Raven,” and it was extensively reprinted without his permission, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had written an unsigned article for the Mirror before about copyright law saying, “Without an international copyright law, American authors may as well cut their throats,” but there was no such law until 1891. His income in 1844 was $424; in 1845, he made $549.

Today's Birthdays

Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (1757-1821)
Ferdinand Herold (1791-1833)
Alexander Mackenzie (1822-1892)
Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
Vittorio Rieti (1898-1994)
Michael Head (1900-1976)
Ronnie Scott (1927-1996)
Acker Bilk (1929-2014)
Sir John Tavener (1944-2013)
Richard Danielpour (1956)

and

Colette (1873-1954)
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956)
Claes Oldenburg (1929-2022)
David Lodge (1935-2025)

Today's Birthdays

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Juan Crisostomo Arriage (1806-1826)
Edouard Lalo (1823-1892)
Jerome Kern (1885-1945)
Jack Brymer (1915-2003)
Skitch Henderson (1918-2005)
Helmut Zacharias (1920-2002)
Fritz Spiegl (1926-2003)
John Ogdon (1937-1989)
Jean-Philippe Collard (1948)
Emanuel Pahud (1970)
James Ehnes (1976)

and

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
Dmitry Mandeleyev (1834-1907)
Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1732-1795)
Maria Augusta von Trapp (1905-1987)
Stéphane Grappelli (1908-1997)
Jimmy Van Heusen (1913-1990)
Warren Benson (1924-2005)
Jacqueline du Pré (1945-1987)
Frédéric Lodéon (1952)
Mikel Rouse (1957)
Ēriks Ešenvalds (1977)
Gustavo Dudamel (1981)

and

Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905)
Seán MacBride (1904-1988)
Jules Feiffer (1929-2025)
Christopher Hampton (1946)
Ellen DeGeneres (1958)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1790, Mozart's opera, "Così fan tutte," was premiered in Vienna at the Burgtheater.

Today's Birthdays

Jan Blockx (1851-1912)
Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954)
Julia Smith (1905-1989)
Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994)
Alfred Reed (1921-2005)
Etta James (1938-2012)
Russell Peck (1945-2009)

and

Robert Burns (1759-1796)
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Today's Birthdays

Farinelli (Carlo Maria Broschi) (1705-1782)
Frederick II the Great (1712-1786)
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822)
Evelyn Barbirolli (1911-2008)
Norman Dello Joio (1913-2008)
Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915-1940)
Gottfried von Einem (1918-1996)
Leon Kirchner (1919-2009)
Neil Diamond (1941)
Yuri Bashmet (1953)
Warren Zevon (1947-2003)

and

William Congreve (1670-1729)
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
Desmond Morris (1928)

Danzmayr concert with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra cancelled because of bad weather

The harsh winter storm has put the kibosh on David Danzmayr's appearance wtih the Atlanta Symphony tonight. Brrr! Hopefully, he can catch a flight back to Portland to lead the Oregon Symphony later this week.

Today's Birthdays

Muzio Clementi (1752-1832)
Rutland Boughton (1878-1960)
Django Reinhardt (1910-1953)
Milton Adolphus (1913-1988)
Eli Goren (1923-2000)
Chita Rivera (1933-2024) Cécile Ousset (1936)
Teresa Zylis-Gara (1936-2021)
John Luther Adams (1953)
Mason Bates (1977)

and

Stendhal (1783-1842)
Edouard Manet (1832-1883)
Derek Walcott (1930-2017)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1894, Czech composer Antonin Dvorák presents a concert of African-American choral music at Madison Square Concert Hall in New York, using an all-black choir, comprised chiefly of members of the St. Philip's Colored Choir. On the program was the premiere performance of Dvorák's own arrangement of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home," which featured vocal soloists Sissierette Jones and Harry T. Burleigh.

Oregon Symphony concert with Kwak and Stenz in Oregon Arts Watch

 My review of a rewarding Oregon Symphony concert from last weekend has been published in OAW here.

Today's Birthdays

Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727-1799)
Charles Tournemire (1870-1939)
Hans Erich Apostel (1901-1972)
Robin Milford (1903-1959)
Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981)
Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013)
William Warfield (1920-2002)
Leslie Bassett (1923-2016)
James Louis ("J.J.") Johnson (1924-2001)
Aurèle Nicolet (1926-2016)
Uto Ughi (1944)
Myung-whun Chung (1953)

and

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781)
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948)
Howard Moss (1922-1987)
Joseph Wambaugh (1937-2025)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day, in 1907, the Metropolitan Opera production of Richard Strauss' opera "Salome," with soprano Olive Fremstad in the title role, creates a scandal. The opera is dropped after a single performance, and not staged at the Met again until the 1930s.

Review: Young Artists highlight Vancouver Symphony concert

It is very impressive to see accomplished, professionals solo with an orchestra, but when the featured artists are super-talented teenagers and even younger, it is pretty astounding. Such was the case at the Vancouver Symphony’s concert on January 18th at Skyview Concert Hall, when the three gold medalists from the orchestra’s Young Adult Competition took the stage. Violinist Hana Gottesman, saxophonist Jacob Peizner, and pianist Wilson Liu dazzled the audience with their artistry in performing difficult concertos with the orchestra under music director Salvador Brotons – all of which made a strong case for the arts in the education of our nation’s youth.

First in the program lineup was Gottesman, a 17-year-old violinist from Bellevue, Washington, who started violin lessons when she was just six. She played Maurice Ravel’s “Tzigane”, which opens with a long and treacherous cadenza, impeccably. She gave some notes a real zing, and collaborated deftly with the orchestra to convey the gypsy-inspired themes of the piece.

Next came Peizner, age 17, who is a senior at Oregon Episcopal School. He delivered a sparkling rendition of Jacques Ibert’s “Concertino da camera for alto saxophone and eleven instruments.” During the first part of the piece, he negotiated a seemingly endless series of runs with elan. He expressed the beginning of the second part with great sensitivity and conquered the cadenza to bring the piece to a joyful conclusion.

After intermission, Liu wowed concertgoers with a stellar performance of the first movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20. Although he is only eleven years old, Liu showed an artistic level way, way above his age, expressing the piece with perfectly calibrated dynamics and technical precision. He handled delicate passages with the utmost care, but he could also spring into a passionate section with unbridled gusto. He demonstrated an innate musicality that was flat-out jaw dropping, and the audience rewarded him with an enthusiastic standing ovation.

For the purely orchestral portion of the concert, Brotons led his forces in a rousing interpretation of Richard Strauss’s “Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.” Jeong Yoon Lee, who usually is the VSO’s principal second violinist, took over the concertmaster position and excelled with her solos. Principal hornist Daniel Partridge announced the prankster’s theme with panache, and Ricky Smith expertly handled all of the tricky passages for the E-flat clarinet, as if to channel the trickster directly.

Since the piece relates to several escapades, it would have been nice to have had some projected text to accompany the music. That would help American audiences, who don’t know the stories, understand the music more.

Brotons gave a very humorous introduction to the Suite from the from Richard Strauss’s opera “Der Rosenkavalier.” The horns sounded glorious as they launched the first volleys. Principal oboist Alan Juza contributed substantially with his playing. The performance – highlighted by its wistful waltz tune – had just the right sentiment to evoke scenes from the opera.

The concert began on a much different note – with the orchestra eliciting space travel in “Mothership” by Mason Bates. This piece blends electronic and acoustical sounds in a very effective way. A heavy, pulsating beat establishes a rhythmic drive that permeates much of the time, but there is a section – given over to the cellos – that was briefly soothing. The orchestra then gathers its forces to create a sound of a spaceship taking off and whirling into the sky.

Judging from the smiles that I saw, it seemed that the orchestra really enjoyed cutting loose on the piece. The audience applauded the piece with vigor, and I think that I noticed Brotons smiling. Since Brotons is a composer, himself, I will have to find out if he has tried to write an orchestral piece that uses electronics. You never know…

Today's Birthdays

Henri Duparc (1848-1933)
Alexander Tcherepnin (1899-1977)
Webster Booth (1902-1984)
Placido Domingo (1941)
Richie Havens (1941-2013)
Edwin Starr (1942-2003)
Suzanne Mentzer (1957)
Frank Ticheli (1958)

and

Louis Menand (1952)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630)
Ernest Chausson (1855-1899)
Julius Conus (1869-1942)
Józef Hofmann (1876-1957)
Huddie William Ledbetter (Lead Belly) (1889-1949)
Walter Piston (1894-1976)
Eva Jessye (1895-1992)
Yvonne Loriod (1924-2010)
David Tudor (1926-1996)
Antonio de Almeida (1928-1997)
Iván Fischer (1951)

and

George Burns (1896-1996)
Alexandra Danilova (1903-1997)
Federico Fellini (1920-1993)
Edward Hirsch (1950)
Tami Hoag (1959)

Today's Birthdays

Louis‑Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749)
George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898)
Fritz Reiner (1888-1963)
Paul Dessau (1894-1979)
Edith Piaf (1915-1963)
Dalton Baldwin (1931-2019)
Phil Ochs (1940-1976)
William Christie (1944)
Marianne Faithfull (1946)
Olaf Bär (1957)
Steven Esserlis (1958)
Rebecca Saunders (1967)

and

Italo Svevo (1861-1928)
Constance Garnett (1861-1946)

Today's Birthdays

César Cui (1835-1918)
Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)
John Laurence Seymour (1893-1986)
Berthold Goldschmidt (1903-1996)
Anthony Galla-Rini (1904-2006)
John O'Conor (1947)
Anthony Pople (1955-2003)
Christoph Prégardien (1956)

and

Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869)
Rubén Darío (1867-1916)
A. A. Milne (1882-1956)
Oliver Hardy (1892-1957)

FYI: Roget's "Thesaurus" has never been out of print since it was first published in 1852.

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1958, "What Does Music Mean?", broadcast, the first of a series of televised New York Philharmonic "Young People's Concerts" on CBS-TV hosted by Leonard Bernstein. The series continued until 1972, with 53 different programs hosted by Bernstein.

Today's Birthdays

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
John Stanley (1712-1786)
Johann Gottfried Müthel (1728-1788)
François‑Joseph Gossec (1734-1829)
Henk Badings (1907-1987)
Oscar Morawetz (1917-2007)
Annie Delorie (1925-2009)
Donald Erb (1927-2008)
Jean Barraqué (1928-1973)
Sydney Hodkinson (1934-2021)
Dame Gillian Weir (1941)
Anne Queffélec (1948)
Augustin Dumay (1949)
Nancy Argenta (1957)
Gérard Pesson (1958)

and

Anne Brontë (1820-1849)
William Stafford (1914-1993)
Luis López Nieves (1950)
Sebastian Junger (1962)

Classical Voice North America - looking back on 2025

I wrote a short but sweet missive that looks back on the articles and authors who contributed to Classical Voice North America and have helped to boost it as a national magazine for classical music. The article provides a lot of links to all sorts of concerts and events that we covered. You can read all about it right here.

Today's Birthdays

Niccoló Piccinni (1728-1800)
Henri Büsser (1872-1973)
Daisy Kennedy (1893-1981)
Ernesto Halffter (1905-1989)
Ethel Merman (1908-1984)
Roger Wagner (1914-1992)
Ernesto Bonino (1922-2008)
Pilar Lorengar (1928-1996)
Marilyn Horne (1934)
Richard Wernick (1934-2015)
Gavin Bryars (1943)
Brian Ferneyhough (1943)
Katia Ricciarelli (1946)

and

Robert Service (1874-1958)
Anthony Hecht (1923-2004)
William Kennedy (1928)
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1969)
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
Mary Karr (1955)
Lin-Manuel Miranda (1980)

Preview: Vancouver Symphony to present Young Artists Showcase

One of the most awesome concerts of the Vancouver Symphony’s season will take place this upcoming weekend (January 17 and 18) when three of the nation’s top young talents will perform with the orchestra. This is the 31st Young Artist Showcase, featuring the winners of VSO’s annual competition, which was held in October at First Presbyterian Church. An esteemed panel of judges (Zuill Bailey, Dr. Julia Hwakyu Lee, Philippe Quint, Dr. Ken Selden, and Dr. Igor Shakhman) determined the winners in the piano, brass/woodwind, and strings categories. The gold medalists were pianist Wilson Liu, violinist Hana Gottesman, and , alto saxophonist Jacob Peizner. Each of them received $5,000 and the opportunity to perform with the VSO.

To find out more about these extremely talented young musicians, I contacted each one by phone, starting with Wilson Liu. Although Liu is only eleven years old, he is already a veteran winner of competitions, including the 2025 International Young Artist Concerto Competition At age seven, Liu entered The Juilliard School Pre-College Division where he won the Bachauer Prize with full scholarship and Concerto Competition. He studies with Hung-Kuan Chen and Tema Blackstone.

When he was four and a half years old, Liu started playing on a small electric piano and moved to an upright a year later. Although Wilson’s parents are not musical, he was encouraged by them.

“I don’t sing well, so I stayed with the piano, and that’s been a good choice,” said Liu. “I love the vast range of possibilities that I can get from the keyboard. If you experiment with color, every different way that you play a note comes out differently.”

During the weekdays Liu practices two to three hours, but over the weekend he dedicates more time. He will play the first movement from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 with the VSO.

“One of the things that I find fascinating about this concerto,” said Liu, “is that it is one of the two concertos that he wrote in a minor key. The first one was in C minor, and this one is in D minor. So it has a sense of darkness that is a bit unusual for Mozart’s concertos. I always wonder if the people who heard it for the first time were scared by the music. It also has a four-note motif – a quick upward motion – that is so cool that Beethoven, Schubert and other composers stole the idea and used it in their music. For example, Beethoven’s Sonata No. 111 uses the same thing.”

Gold medalist Hana Gottesman is a 17-year-old violinist from Bellevue, Washington, who has won top prizes at Royal Maas International, UK International, Coeur d’Alene National Young Artist, MTNA National, and Seattle Young Artist Music Festival competitions. She has appeared as a soloist with the Northwest Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Northwest, and SEEN Orchestra of Chicago.

Gottesman started when she was about six. She grew up in a musical household.

“My mom plays the piano and my dad is a violist,” said Gottesman. “I love classical music and the violin in particular. That has kept me focused.”

Gottesman, who attends schools in Bellevue, has studied violin with Jan Coleman and currently works with Simon James. With the Vancouver Symphony, she will play Ravel’s “Tzigane.”

“’Tzigane’ opens with an improvisational feeling – like gypsy fiddling – which relates to the title, which means gypsy,” said Gottesman. “It’s a piece that constantly shifts in mood and character, and that is fun to share with the audience. It opens with a long, challenging cadenza. The first page is all on the G string. I like to give the high G a lot of vibrato so that it sounds intense. I really enjoy the incredible variety of colors that this piece offers.”

“When the orchestra comes in,” said Gottesman, “and the main theme of the piece is finally exposed, it is fun to listen to how that that is repeated through the rest of the piece – with all of the variations. The music evolves into something else at the end.”

Jacob Peizner, age 17, is a senior at Oregon Episcopal School and a student of Phil Baldino and Kenneth Radnofsky. Peizner was one of ten saxophonists internationally selected for the 2024 Boston University’s Tanglewood Saxophone Workshop and was co-principal saxophone for the 2025 Tanglewood Young Artists Orchestra and Wind-Ensemble. He is the principal saxophonist in the Portland Youth Philharmonic and has soloed with the PYP Camerata ensemble.

Peizner started playing saxophone when he was a sixth grader.

“I chose it because I like jazz and saxophone is cool, said Peizner. “I grew up in a musical family. My mom plays flute, and my grandmother plays piano. I play clarinet and piano, also.”

With the VSO, he will play Jacques Ibert’s “Concertino da camera for alto saxophone and eleven instruments.”

“It was composed for Sigurd Raschèr, one of the pioneers of classical saxophone,” said Peizner. “He could play four octaves on the saxophone, which was very rare. Ibert’s composition has some really high notes that are very challenging to play. I am going to take them, using what we call ‘extended technique.’ It’s a very tricky piece. There’s a lot of fast passages with tricky keys. The piece is literally a ‘little chamber concerto.’ I like to keep that in mind. It shouldn’t be played heavily or taken to seriously. It has jazzy elements.”

In addition to the soloes by the gold medalists, the VSO, under Music Director Salvador Brotons, will play Mason Bates' "Mothership," and the Suite from the from Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” as well as his symphonic poem “Till Eulenspeigel’s Merry Pranks.”

Today's Birthdays

Ivor Novello (1893-1951)
Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991)
Malcolm Frager (1935-1991)
Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet (1941-2010)
Aaron Jay Kernis (1960)

and

Molière (1622-1673)
Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872)
Andreas William Heinesen (1900-1991)
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
Frank Conroy (1936-2005)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1941 Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" was premiered at Stalag VIII-A, a German prisoner of war camp in Görlitz (Silesia), with the composer at the piano and fellow-prisoners Jean Le Boulaure (violin), Henri Akoka (clarinet), and Etienne Pasquier (cello).

Today's Birthdays

Ludwig von Köchel (1800-1877)
Jean de Reszke (1850-1925)
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
Louis Quilico (1925-2000)
Zuzana Ruzickova (1927-2017)
Siegmund Nimsgern (1940)
Mariss Jansons (1943-2019)
Kees Bakels (1945)
Nicholas McGegan (1950)
Ben Heppner (1956)
Andrew Manze (1965)

and

John Dos Passos (1896-1970)
Emily Hahn (1905-1997)
John Oliver Killens (1916-1987)
Maureen Dowd (1952)

Review of Christine Goerke singing Wagner with the Oregon Symphony

 My review of last Saturday's concert of Wagner hits with Christine Goerke and the Oregon Symphony has been posted on Classical Voice North America here.

Today's Birthdays

Christoph Graupner (1683-1760)
Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690-1749)
Vassili Kalinnikov (1866-1901)
Richard Addinsell (1904-1977)
Daniil Shafran (1923-1997)
Renato Bruson (1936)
Paavo Heininen (1938-2022)
William Duckworth (1943-2012)
Richard Blackford (1954)
Wayne Marshall (1961)
Juan Diego Flórez (1973)

and

Horatio Alger (1832-1899)
Lorrie Moore (1957)

Today's Birthdays

Reinhard Keiser (1674-1739)
Jacques Duphly (1715-1789)
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876-1948)
Pierre Bernac (1899-1979)
William Pleeth (1916-1999)
Leo Smit (1921-1999)
Morton Feldman (1926-1987)
Salvatore Martirano (1927-1995)
Anne Howells (1941)
Viktoria Postnikova (1944)
Lori Laitman (1955)

and

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
Jack London (1876-1916)
Haruki Murakami (1949)

Today's Birthdays

Christian Sinding (1856-1941)
Reihold Glière (1875-1956)
Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986)
Mark DeVoto (1940)
York Höller (1944)
Drew Minter (1955)
Alex Shapiro (1962)

and

William James (1842-1910)
Aldo Leopold (1887-1948)
Alan Paton (1903-1988)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1925, Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra was premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York City by the New York Symphony conducted by Walter Damrosch, with Nadia Boulanger the soloist.

Today's Birthdays

Jean Martinon (1910-1976)
Sidney Griller (1911-1993)
Dean Dixon (1915-1976)
Milton Babbitt (1916-2011)
Max Roach (1924-2007)
Sherrill Milnes (1935)
Rod Stewart (1945)
James Morris (1947)
Mischa Maisky (1948)
Rockwell Blake (1951)
Charles Norman Mason (1955)
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (1961)

and

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
Philip Levine (1928-2015)
Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002)

Today's Birthdays

John Knowles Paine (1839-1906)
Rudolf Bing (1902-1997)
Herva Nelli (1909-1994)
Henriette Puig‑Roget (1910-1992)
Pierre Pierlot (1921-2007)
Joan Baez (1941)
Scott Walker (1944)
Jimmy Page (1944)
Waltraud Meier (1956)
Hillevi Martinpelto (1958)
Nicholas Daniel (1962)

and

Karel Čapek (1890-1938
Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935)
Richard Halliburton (1901-1939)
Brian Friel (1929-2015)
Michiko Kakutani (1955)

Today's Birthdays

Jean Gilles (1668-1705)
Lowell Mason (1792-1872)
Sigismond Thalberg (1812-1871)
Hans von Bülow (1830-1894)
Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967)
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988)
Giorgio Tozzi (1923-2011)
Robert Starer (1924-2001)
Benjamin Lees (1924-2010)
Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
Zdeněk Mácal (1936-2023)
Robert Moran (1937)
Evgeny Nesterenko (1938-2021)
Elijah Moshinsky (1946)
Paul Dresher (1951)
Vladimir Feltsman (1952)

and

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972)
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1923, the first broadcast in England of an opera direct from a concert hall took place, Mozart's "The Magic Flute" via the BBC from London.

Today's Birthdays

Clara Haskil (1895-1960)
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
John Brownlee (1900-1969)
Nicanor Zabaleta (1907-1993)
Günter Wand (1912-2002)
Ulysses Kay (1917-1995)
John Lanigan (1921-1996)
Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922-2000)
Tommy Johnson (1935-2006)
Iona Brown (1941-2004)
Richard Armstrong (1943)
Janine Jansen (1978)

and

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)
Hugh Kenner (1923-2003)
Nicholson Baker (1957)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1955, Marian Anderson made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Ulrica in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Mascera" (A Masked Ball). She was the first African-American singer to perform as an opera soloist on the Met stage. Subsequent distinguished African-American singers who performed as members of the Met company included Robert McFerrin, Sr. (Bobby McFerrin Jr.’s father), Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Kahtleen Battle and Jessye Norman.

Article about chamber music in Hong Kong published in The Strad

I was in Hong Kong a few weeks ago for some concerts by the Musicus Society. I learned a lot about the group and how it started fifteen years ago after interviewing Artistic Director and cellist, Trey Lee and President Chui-Inn Lee. I think that you'll enjoy reading my article which has been published in The Strad here.  

Today's Birthdays

Max Bruch (1838-1920)
Georges Martin Witkowski (1867-1943)
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
Karl Straube (1873-1950)
Earl Kim (1920-1998)
Alexander Baillie (1956)

and

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
E.L. Doctorow (1931-2015)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1733, this notice appears in the Leipzig newspaper Nachtricht auch Frag u. Anzeiger: "Tonight at 8 o'clock there will be a Bach Concert at the Zimmermann Coffeehouse on Catharine Street". This presumably featured secular vocal works, chamber music and concertos performed by the Leipzig Collegium, an ensemble directed by J.S. Bach.

Today's Birthdays

Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755)
Constanza Mozart (1762-1842)
Peter Wolle (1792-1871)
Frederick Converse (1871-1940)
Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951)
Nicolai Roslavets (1881-1944)
Reginald Smith-Brindle (1917-2003)
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995)
Laszlo Heltay (1930-2019)
Alfred Brendel (1931-2025)
Maurizio Pollini (1942-2024)

and

Stella Gibbons(1902-1989)
Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990)
W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009)
Umberto Eco (1932-2016)
Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938)
Charlie Rose (1942)

Today's Birthdays

Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736)
Johann Friedrich Agricola (1720-1774)
Josef Suk (1874-1935)
Frank Wess (1922-2013)
Grace Bumbry (1937-2023)
Joseph Turrin (1947)
Margaret Marshall (1949)
Ronald Corp (1951)
Peter Seiffert (1954)
Boris Berezovsky (1969)

and

Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)
Jacob Grimm (1785-1863)
Louis Braille (1809-1852)
Augustus John (1878-1961)
Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1950, RCA announces it will produce long play records as Columbia did two years earlier (RCA had unsuccessfully attempted to compete with Columbia's new 33.3-rpm LPs by issuing some of their classical catalog as multiple disc 45-rpm sets).

Today's Birthdays

Victor Borge (1909-2000)
Ronald Smith (1922-2004)
Sir George Martin (1926-2016)
H. K. Gruber (1943)
David Atherton (1944)

and

J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

and from the Composers Datebook

On this date in the year 1843 in Paris, the comic opera “Don Pasquale” by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti received its first performance.
also:

On this day in 1925, German conductor and composer Wilhelm Furtwängler made his American debut, conducting the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall.

Today's Birthdays

Frantisek Xaver Brixi (1732-1771)
Mily Balakirev (1837-1910)
Michael Tippett (1905-1998)
Barbara Pentland (1912-2000)
Gardner Read (1913-2005)
Irina Arkhipova (1925-2010)
Alberto Zedda (1928-2017)
Peter Eötvös (1944)
Janet Hilton (1945)
Vladimir Ovchinnikov (1958)
Tzimon Barto (1963)
Robert Fertitta (1970)
Eric Whitacre (1970)

and

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Christopher Durang (1949)
Lynda Barry (1956)

Today's Birthdays - Happy New Year!

Charles Racquet (1598-1664)
Frederick William Gaisberg (1873-1951)
Edwin Franko Goldman (1878-1956)
Artur Rodzinski (1892-1958)
Erich Schmid (1907-2001)
Trude Rittmann (1908-2005)
Milt Jackson (1923-1999)
Richard Verreau (1926-2005)
Maurice Béjart (1927-2007)
Bernard Greenhouse (1916-2011)
Alberto Portugheis (1941)

And

Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673)
J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1585, composer Giovanni Gabrieli became the second organist at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. His uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli, was the first organist.

On this day in 1908, Gustav Mahler made his conducting debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, leading a performance of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde."

Today's Birthdays

Caroline Miolan‑Carvalho (1827-1895)
Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950)
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)
Nathan Milstein (1904-1992)
Jule Styne (1925-1994)
Jaap Schröder (1925-2020)
Odetta (1930-2008)
Gordon Wright (1934-2007)
Calvin Hampton (1938-1984)
Stephen Cleobury (1948)
Donna Summer (1948-2012)
Jennifer Higdon (1962)

and

Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Nicholas Sparks (1965)
Junot Díaz (1968)

Today's Birthdays

William Croft (1678-1727)
André Messager (1853-1929)
Joseph Bohuslav Foerster (1859-1951)
Alfred Einstein (1880-1952)
Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987)
Paul Bowles (1910-1999)
Sir David Willcocks (1919-2015)
Bo Diddley (1928-2008)
Bruno Canino (1935)
June Anderson (1950)
Stephen Jaffe (1954)
Antonio Pappano (1959)

and

Theodor Fontane (1819-1898)
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Sara Lidman (1923-2004)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1879 was the premiere of Gilbert & Sullivan's operetta "The Pirates of Penzance," in Paignton at the Royal Bijou (partial preview to insure British copyright). The first full performance of the new work occurred at the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York City the following day, with Sullivan conducting and Gilbert in attendance. The New York premiere was arranged to register American copyright of the new work and pre-empt unauthorized "pirate" productions in the U.S.

Today's Birthdays

Tomás Bretón (1850-1923)
Pablo Casals (1876-1973)
Lionel Tertis (1876-1975)
Yves Nat (1890-1956)
Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990)
Billy Tipton (1914-1989)

and

William Gaddis (1922-1998)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1903 took place the first concert by the Seattle Symphony at Christensen's Hall in Seattle under the baton of violinist Harry F. West. The program includes music of Massenet, Bruch, Schubert and Rossini.

Today's Birthdays

Christian Cannabich (1731-1798)
Julius Rietz (1812-1877)
Benjamin Johnson Lang (1837-1909)
Francesco Tamagno (1850-1905)
Roger Sessions (1896-1985)
Earl "Fatha" Hines (1905-1983)
Johnny Otis (1921-2012)
Nigel Kennedy (1956)
Michel Petrucciani (1962-1999)

and

Charles Portis (1933-2020)

Today's Birthdays

Sir John Goss (1800-1880)
Tito Schipa (1888-1965)
Marlene Dietrich (1904-1992)
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

and

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
Charles Olson (1910-1970)
Wilfrid Sheed (1930-2011)
Chris Abani (1966)
Sarah Vowell (1969)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1841, Franz Liszt performs at the Singakademie in Berlin. Women swooned and the general audience reacts with such uncontrolled enthusiasm that Heinrich Heine coins the term "Lisztomania" to describe their fanatical devotion to the performer, which soon swept through most of Europe.

Today's Birthdays

Maurice Gendron (1920-1990)
Thea King (1925-2007)
Earle Brown (1926-2002)
Phil Specter (1940-2021)
Wayland Rogers (1941-2020)
Harry Christophers (1953)
Andre-Michel Schub (1953)
Gabriella Smith (1991)

and

Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
Henry Miller (1891-1980)
Jean Toomer (1894-1867)
Juan Felipe Herrera (1948)
David Sedaris (1958)

Today's Birthdays

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
Jean‑Joseph de Mondonville (1711-1772)
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint‑George (1745-1799)
Cosima Wagner (1837-1930)
Lina Cavalieri (1874-1944)
Giuseppe de Luca (1876-1950)
Gladys Swarthout (1900-1969)
Cab Calloway (1907-1994)
Noël Lee (1924-2013)
Noel Redding (1945-2003)
Jon Kimura Parker (1959)
Ian Bostridge (1964)

and

Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855)
Clara Barton (1821-1912)
Rod Serling (1924-1975)

Merry Christmas!

Today's Birthdays

Peter Cornelius (1824-1874)
Nikolai Roslavets (1881-1944)
Lucrezia Bori (1887-1960)
Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946)
Sir Vivian Dunn (1908-1995)
Teresa Stich-Randall (1927-2007)
Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008)
Arnold Östman (1939-2023)
Libby Larsen (1950)
Hans-Jürgen von Bose (1953)
Vasyl Slipak (1974-2016)

and

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Anthony Fauci (1940)
Dana Gioia (1950)

and from The Writer's Almanac

Today is Christmas Eve. One of the best modern Christmas Eve stories is a true one, and it happened in 1914, in the trenches of World War I. The “war to end all wars” was raging, but German and British soldiers had been engaging in unofficial ceasefires since mid-December. The British High Command was alarmed, and warned officers that fraternization across enemy lines might result in a decreased desire to fight. On the German side, Christmas trees were trucked in and candles lit, and on that Christmas Eve in 1914, strains of Stille Nacht — “Silent Night” — reached the ears of British soldiers. They joined in, and both sides raised candles and lanterns up above their parapets. When the song was done, a German soldier called out, “Tomorrow is Christmas; if you don’t fight, we won’t.”

The next day dawned without the sound of gunfire. The Germans sent over some beer, and the Brits sent plum pudding. Enemies met in no man’s land, exchanging handshakes and small gifts. Someone kicked in a soccer ball, and a chaotic match ensued. Details about this legendary football match vary, and no one knows for sure exactly where it took place, but everyone agrees that the Germans won by a score of three to two.

At 8:30 a.m. on December 26, after one last Christmas greeting, hostilities resumed. But the story is still told, in a thousand different versions from up and down the Western Front, more than a century later.

On Christmas Eve in 1906, the first radio program was broadcast. Canadian-born Professor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden sent his signals from the 420-foot radio tower of the National Electric Signaling Company, at Brant Rock on the Massachusetts seacoast. Fessenden opened the program by playing “O Holy Night” on the violin. Later he recited verses from the Gospel of St. Luke, then broadcast a gramophone version of Handel’s “Largo.” His signal was received up to five miles away.

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1920, the last operatic appearance ever of the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso took place in an evening performance of Halevy's "La Juive" (The Jewess) at the old Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Caruso would die in Naples (where he made his operatic debut on March 15, 1895) at the age of 48 on August 2, 1921.

Today's Birthdays

Joseph Boismortier (1689-1755)
Ross Lee Finney (1906-1997)
Claudio Scimone (1934-2018)
Ross Edwards (1943)
Edita Gruberová (1946-2021)
Elise Kermani (1960)
Han-Na Chang (1982)

and

Harriet Monroe (1860-1936)
Norman Maclean (1902–1990)
Robert Bly (1926-2021)
Carol Ann Duffy (1955)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1989, Leonard Bernstein led the first of two public performances of Beethoven's Ninth at the Philharmonie in West Berlin, with an international orchestra assembled to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. The second performance occurred on December 25 at the Schauspielhaus in East Berlin.

Today's Birthdays

Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787)
Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889)
Teresa Carreño (1853-1917)
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
Franz Schmidt (1874-1939)
Edgard Varèse(1883-1965)
Joseph Deems Taylor (1885-1966)
Alan Bush (1900-1995)
Andre Kostelanetz (1901-1980)
David Leisner (1953)
Jean Rigby (1954)
Zhou Tian (1981)

and

Jean Racine (1639-1699)
Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)
Donald Harrington (1935-2009)

Today's Birthdays

Zdeněk Fibich (1850-1900)
André Turp (1925-1991)
Frank Zappa (1940-1993)
Roger Lasher Nortman (1941)
Michael Tilson Thomas (1944)
András Schiff (1953)
Kim Cascone (1955)
Thomas Randle (1958)
Jonathan Cole (1970)

and

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Maud Gonne (1866-1953)
Edward Hoagland (1932)

Today's Birthdays

Henry Hadley (1871-1937)
Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996)
Gordon Getty (1933)
John Harbison (1938)
Roger Woodward (1942)
Mitsuko Uchida (1948)
Hobart Earler (1960)

and

Elizabeth Benedict (1954)
Sandra Cisneros (1954)
Nalo Hopkinson (1960)

Review: Liz Callaway and the Vancouver Symphony warm things up for the holidays

A buoyant crowd filled Skyview Concert Hall to the brim for the Vancouver Symphony’s Holiday Pops concert on December 14th. The standing-room-only event generated plenty of good vibes for an upbeat program that featured Broadway vocalist Liz Callaway. It was a return appearance for Callaway, who made her debut with the orchestra in 2021, and given the reaction of the audience, the second time around was another love-fest with the orchestra’s Music Director Salvador Brotons on the podium.

The program was delightfully sprinkled with tunes from the Big Apple and Hollywood, plus American Christmas numbers, and a few European favorites that required audience participation. In the midst of it all, Callaway, one of the most consummate entertainers on the planet, charmed listeners with her singing and personal tidbits that were topped with nuggets of self-deprecating humor. In her own way, she turned the 1,150-seat venue into an intimate club – albeit with a 65-piece orchestra.

“I like to think of this song as my personal philosophy,” said Callaway before singing her first number, “Cockeyed Optimist” (by Oscar Hammerstein II) from “South Pacific.” She followed that by recalling her start on Broadway, doing numerous auditions and surviving five callbacks before landing a part in Stephen Sonheim’s “Merrily We Role Along,” She delivered her two very brief solos from that show, which closed after two weeks after it opened. She told us about her work with Sondheim and her love for his music, captured in her Grammy-nominated album, “To Steve With Love, and then sang “Send in the Clowns” from his musical, “A Little Night Music.”

We also learned that Callaway plays tennis with Stephen Schwartz, the composer of “Godspell” and “Pippen.” She asked us to imagine her a little green and gave a thrilling rendition of Schwartz’s “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked.” To close out her first set of songs, she dialed back to her five-year stint on Broadway as Grizabella and conveyed a heartfelt “Memory” from Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s “Cats.”

Delving into the holiday treasure chest, Callaway sang “Joy to the World” in an arrangement by William Holford and Lowell Mason that allowed her to slip in a phrase from the rock group Three Dog Night. With a quintet of musicians from the orchestra – guitar, flute, bass, piano, and trap set – Callaway perched herself on a stool and crooned Frank Loesser’s “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve.” Next came “Once Upon a December” and “Journey to the Past” (Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens) from the animated movie “Anastasia.” Callaway’s final number left a warm glow with “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (in an arrangement by Ryan Nowlin, Hugh Martin, and Ralph Blaine).

The orchestra launched the concert with a spirited performance of the Overture to Rossin’s opera “William Tell.” The accelerando and crescendos into the finale got concertgoers hearts pumping, but the Johann Strauss Jr's “Auf der Jagd Polka” (On the Hunt Polka) turned out to be a surprise hit. That’s because everyone got a small paper bag to blow up and pop at when Brotons cued them. Brotons divided the audience into three areas from left to right, and folks really got into the noise-making. The paper-bag smashing was in lieu of a stage gun (watch this ensemble on YouTube use a rifle fired by the conductor), and the participation was totally enthusiastic.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Snow Maiden Suite” ushered in the second half of the concert with enchanting melodies. Brotons relinquished the podium to bass trombonist Douglas Peebles for Leroy Anderson’s beloved “Sleigh Ride.” It would have been conducted by Colleen Duggan, who won the opportunity to lead the orchestra at its annual gala. But she was ill and designated Peebles to take her place, and he did a fine job.

It was noteworthy that Callaway didn’t quickly exit the stage after she concluded her portion of the program. Instead she remarked how she “loved the sound of the orchestra,” and she helped Brotons to lead the clapping portion of Johann Strauss Sr's “Radetsky March” to close out the concert. Her genuine enthusiasm added to the exuberant atmosphere, and that sent everyone home with a smile.

P.S.: Peter Frajola, recently retired from the Oregon Symphony, was the concertmaster for this performance, and seated next to him was another fine violinist, Lily Burton.

Today's Birthdays

Louis‑Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749) George Frederick Bristow (1825-1898) Fritz Reiner (1885-1963)
Paul Dessau (1894-1979)
Edith Piaf (1915-1963)
Dalton Baldwin (1931-2019)
Phil Ochs (1940-1976)
William Christie (1944)
Marianne Faithfull (1946)
Christopher Robson (1953)
Olaf Bär (1957)
Steven Esserlis (1958)
Rebecca Saunders (1967)

and

Italo Svevo (1861-1928)
Constance Garnett (1861-1946)

and from The Writer's Almanac:

It’s the birthday of French chanteuse Édith Piaf (1915). Piaf was born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville, on the outskirts of Paris. Her mother was a café singer and a drug addict, and her father was a street performer who specialized in acrobatics and contortionism. Neither of them particularly cared for Piaf, so she mostly grew up with her grandmother, who ran a brothel. Piaf was looked after by prostitutes and later claimed that she was blind from the ages of three to seven because of keratitis, or malnutrition, though this was never proved.

Her father reclaimed her when she was nine and Piaf began singing with him on street corners until he abandoned her again. She lived in shoddy hotel rooms in the red-light district of Paris and sang in a seedy café called Lulu’s, making friends with pimps, hookers, lowlifes, and gamblers, until she was discovered by an older man named Louis Leplée.

Leplée ran a nightclub off the Champs-Élysées. He renamed Piaf La Môme Piaf, “The Little Sparrow,” dressed her entirely in black, and set her loose on the stage. Piaf was a hit, and recorded two albums in one year, becoming one of the most popular performers in France during World War II.

Édith Piaf died on the French Riviera at the age of 47. More than 40,000 people came to her funeral procession. Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina named a small planet after Piaf; it’s called 3772 Piaf. Her songs have been covered by Madonna, Grace Jones, and even Donna Summer.

Édith Piaf’s last words were, “Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for.”

Listening to music after 70 linked to sharp drop in dementia risk, study finds

Austrialian magagine, Limelight, points to research that supporting music listening as a way for seniors to decrease the chance of getting dementia. Here's a link to the article.

Review of Portland Opera's Everest

 

My review of Everest has been published in Oregon Arts Watch here. I hope that you enjoy reading it.

Today's Birthdays

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Edward MacDowell (1860-1908)
Fletcher Henderson (1897-1952)
Rita Streich (1920-1987)
William Boughton (1948)
David Liptak (1949)
Christopher Theofanidis (1967)

and

Saki - H. H. Munro (1870-1916)
Paul Klee (1879-1940)
Christopher Fry (1907-2005)
Abe Burrows (1910-1985)

Today's Birthdays

Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Arthur Fiedler (1894-1979)
Ray Noble (1903-1975)
Art Neville (1937-2019)
Margaret Jane Wray (1962-2025)

and

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939)
William Safire (1929-2009)
John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969)

and from The Writer's Almanac:

It's the day that The Nutcracker ballet was performed for the first time in St. Petersburg, Russia (1892). Czar Alexander III, in the audience, loved the ballet, but the critics hated it. Tchaikovsky wrote that the opera that came before The Nutcracker "was evidently very well liked, the ballet not. ... The papers, as always, reviled me cruelly." Tchaikovsky died of less than a year later, before The Nutcracker became an international success.

Today's Birthdays

François Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834)
Augusta Holmès (1847-1903)
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
Turk Murphy (1915-1987)
Steve Allen (1921-2000)
Dame Thea King (1925-2007)
Alice Parker (1925-2023)
Kenneth Gilbert (1931-2020)
Rodion Shchedrin (1932-2025)
Philip Langridge (1939-2010)
Trevor Pinnock (1946)
Isabelle van Keulen (1966)

and

Jane Austin (1775-1817)
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973)
Noël Coward (1899-1973)
V. S. Pritchett (1900-1997)

Today's Birthdays

Michel‑Richard Delalande (1657-1726)
Lotte Schöne (1891-1981)
Stan Kenton (1911-1979)
Ida Haendel (1924-2020)
Eddie Palmieri (1936-2025)
Nigel Robson (1948)
Jan Latham-Koenig (1953)

and

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917)
Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959)
Freeman Dyson (1923-2020)
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000)
Edna O'Brien (1930-2024)

Today's Birthdays

Maria Agata Szymanowska (1789-1831)
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)
Georges Thill (1897-1984)
Spike Jones (1911-1965)
Rosalyn Tureck (1914-2003)
Dame Ruth Railton (1915-2001)
Ron Nelson (1929-2023)
Christopher Parkening (1947)
Thomas Albert (1948)
John Rawnsley (1949)

and

Shirley Jackson (1919-1965)
Amy Hempel (1951)

Today's Birthdays

Anna Milder-Hauptman (1785-1838)
Alexis de Castillon (1838-1873)
Josef Lhévinne (1874-1944)
Eleanor Robson Belmont (1879-1979)
Samuel Dushkin (1891-1976)
Victor Babin (1908-1972)
Alvin Curran (1938)

and

Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882)
Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)
James Wright (1927-1980)
Lester Bangs (1948-1982)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1836, at a musical soiree at Chopin's apartments in Paris, the female writer "George" Sand, determined to make a good impression with her host, arrives wearing white pantaloons and a scarlet sash (the colors of the Polish flag). Paris Opéra tenor Adolphe Nourit sings some Schubert songs, accompanied by Franz Liszt. Liszt and Chopin play Moschele's Sonata in Eb for piano four-hands.

Review of Hong Kong's Musicus Society concerts in Classical Voice North America

 

My review of a couple of concerts in Hong Kong has been published in CVNA here.

Today's Birthdays

Andrey Schulz‑Evler (1852-1905)
Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974)
Frank Sinatra (1915-1998)
Philip Ledger (1937-2012)
Margaret Tan (1945)
Donald Maxwell (1948)
Jaap van Zweden (1960)
Julie Ann Giroux (1961)
David Horne (1970)
Evren Genis (1978)

and

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
John Osborne (1929-1994)

Today's Birthdays

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)
Mieczyslaw Karlowicz (1876-1909)
Leo Ornstein (1893-2002)
Elliott Carter (1908-2012)
David Ashley White (1944)
Neil Mackie (1946)

and

Grace Paley (1922-2007)
Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)
Grace Paley (1922-2007)
Jim Harrison (1937-2016)
Thomas McGuane (1939)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1918, Russian-born conductor Nikolai Sokoloff leads the first concert of the Cleveland Orchestra at Gray's Armory, presented as a benefit for St. Ann's Church. His program included Victor Herbert's "American Fantasy," Bizet's "Carmen" Suite, two movements of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4, Liadov's "Enchanted Lake," and Liszt's "Les Préludes".

Liz Callaway returns for holiday fun with the VSO in its annual Holiday Concert

This weekend (December 13 and 14) at Skyview Concert Hall, Liz Callaway will add glitz to the VSO’s Holiday Concert, singing seasonal selections and tunes from her Broadway and film career. It’s a return appearance for the Grammy-nominated vocalist, who helped the orchestra back in December of 2021 to usher out the COVID blues and reinvigorate Skyview Concert Hall, which had been closed for a year because of the pandemic.

Callaway has been featured in Broadway shows like “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Cats,” “Miss Saigon,” “The Three Musketeers,” “The Look of Love,” and “Baby” for which she received a Tony Award nomination. Her animated film credits include “Anastasia,” “Aladdin,” “King of Thieves,” “The Return of Jafar,” “The Swan Princess,” “Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” She can be heard as Speaker of God on season two of Amazon’s “Hazbin Hotel” series.

Since her performance with the VSO, Callaway has maintained a busy schedule.

“I’ve been touring all over the place, doing lots of concerts,” she said during a phone call. “My last album, a tribute to Stephen Sondheim album was nominated in 2023 for a Grammy award – for Best Traditional Pop Vocal category. I was in the same category as Bruce Springsteen. Neither of us won. But it was a huge, big deal, and now I have the Grammy nomination framed on the wall at home.”

Not one to rest on her laurels, Callaway is working on a new album.

“I am working on an album of Stephen Schwartz songs,” she said. “He co-wrote the music for ‘Wicked.’ But that recording won’t be released until February or March. But in the meantime, I will sing ‘Defying Gravity’ from ‘Wicked’ with the VSO. That’s on the first half of concert, which will feature a medley of Broadway tunes. The second half will be more holiday oriented.”

In addition to the “Wicked” number concertgoers will hear Callaway sing Oscar Hammerstein’s “Cockeyed Optimist” from “South Pacific,” Sondheim’s “Broadway Baby” from “Follies,” a medley of tunes from “Merrily We Roll Along,” and “Send in the Clowns” from “A Little Night Music.” She will close her first part of the program with Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s “Memory” from “Cats.”

For the second half, Calaway will do an arrangement of “Joy to the World,” plus Frank Loesser’s “What Are You Doing New Year's Eve.” She will also sing “Once Upon a December” and “Journey to the Past” from “Anastasia,” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

“I love the songs,” she said, “And I like to talk to the audience and tell stories. So, I’ve put a lot of thought into the selections. like to talk to the audience and tell stories. I have a lot of fans who know me from the animated movie ‘Anastasia.’ So I will be singing my two big songs from that film in the show. I can’t wait to sing with the VSO and maestro Brotons. It’s a fantastic orchestra and people are ready to celebrate the holidays with live music.

Callaway’s fans can also catch her on her Substack newsletter, “Between Flights,” which she fills with songs, recipes, and her schedule. She and her sister Ann Hampton Callaway will perform at 54 Below – a night club in New York City – from January 14 - 17, and some of the shows are livestreamed.

Of course, the VSO concert will also feature several purely orchestral pieces. They are Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” Johann Strauss Jr’s “Hunting Polka,” Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Snow Maiden Suite,” and Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride,” and Johan Strauss Sr’s “Radetzky March.”

Callaway’s discography contains 46 recordings, and she will be signing CDs at the concert. Already, according to the VSO website, Sunday’s show is sold out and there are only a few tickets left for Sunday’s event. Fortunately, there is a livestream option that can accommodate more listeners.

Today's Birthdays

César Franck (1822-1890)
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Morton Gould (1913-1996)
Sesto Bruscantini (1919-2003)
Nicholas Kynaston (1941-2025)
Julianne Baird (1952)
Kathryn Stott (1958)
Sarah Chang (1980)

and

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Melvil Dewey (1851-1931)
Adolf Loos (1870-1933)

Fred Child to take over the reins at All Classical Radio

 

credit: courtesy of All Classical Radio

From the Press Release:

All Classical Radio today announced that award-winning broadcaster and arts advocate Fred Child will become its next President and CEO, beginning January 2, 2026. Child, who will relocate to Oregon from New York City for the position, is particularly admired for his 25-year run as host of the nationally syndicated classical music radio program Performance Today, heard on hundreds of public radio stations nationwide. His appointment marks the next chapter in All Classical Radio’s ongoing evolution as a global media network amplifying classical music, arts, and culture.

“Fred has been a leader in connecting music-makers with music-lovers, and advancing access to the arts with a passion and approach that is absolutely infectious. He brings an ambitious strategic vision for our arts network, guided by a deep understanding of and appreciation for public media. We are proud to welcome him to All Classical Radio,” says All Classical Radio Board Chair Elaine Durst.

All Classical Radio is a nationally recognized arts and culture network. The public radio station boasts a local reach of nearly 250,000 regular listeners through broadcast radio and 400,000 monthly visitors through its website, representing listeners across the United States and in over 100 countries worldwide. With its International Children’s Arts Network (ICANradio.org), All Classical’s second station designed for youth, families, and educators, the network offers 48 hours of enriching curated content daily.

“It is a joy to return to my hometown of Portland and an honor to join this beloved institution,” says Child. “All Classical Radio delivers essential culture as a free global resource, and does so with a team of uniquely talented personalities. Their creativity inspires me to envision what we can do together through our shared experience of great music, outstanding performances, and engaging storytelling.”

In addition to hosting Performance Today, Child served as the Emmy-winning announcer for PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center, as well as the host of NPR’s Creators @ Carnegie. Before joining American Public Media, Child was Music Director and Director of Cultural Programming at WNYC in New York, host of a live daily performance and interview program on WNYC, and, for a decade, a host at Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Child has also anchored numerous major live concert broadcasts, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s first concerts from Walt Disney Concert Hall, the New York Philharmonic’s world premiere of John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls, the Last Night of the Proms from Royal Albert Hall in London, New Year’s concerts by the New York Philharmonic, and Seiji Ozawa’s final concert with the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood.

Child grew up in Portland, Oregon, where he studied classical piano and jazz. He also dabbles in guitar, percussion, and bagpipes. He is currently an avid student of South Indian music and dance. His wife is composer Wang Jie.

Child’s appointment comes at a time of transition for the organization. Last December, All Classical Radio officially welcomed the public into its new broadcasting and office headquarters, home to five state-of-the-art production studios, the Irving Levin Performance Hall, and the James DePreist Recording Studio. In July, Congress’s budget rescission package eliminated $500,000 in critical annual support previously approved for All Classical Radio. The network has been heartened by the community support in closing the resulting revenue gap and continues to evaluate how it can best position itself in this new funding landscape. 

All Classical Radio partnered with URL Media to conduct this search. Child succeeds Suzanne Nance, who announced her departure earlier this year after 10 years with All Classical Radio. Since July, Greg Arntson has served as the media network’s Interim Chief Executive Officer. 

Today's Birthdays

Emile Waldteufel (1837-1915)
Joaquin Turina (1882-1949)
Conchita Supervia (1895-1936)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006)
Dennis Eberhard (1943-2005)
Donny Osmond (1957)
Joshua Bell (1967)

and

John Milton (1608-1674)
Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)
Léonie Adams (1899-1988)
Ödön von Horváth (1901-1938)

From the Writer's Almanac:

Milton coined more than 600 words, including the adjectives dreary, flowery, jubilant, satanic, saintly, terrific, ethereal, sublime, impassive, unprincipled, dismissive, and feverish; as well as the nouns fragrance, adventurer, anarchy, and many more.

Today's Birthdays

Claude Balbastre (1724-1799)
Frantisek Xaver Dussek (1731-1799)
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Manuel Ponce (1882-1948)
Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)
Gérard Souzay (1918-2004)
Moisei Vainberg (1919-1996)
James Galway (1939)

and

Horace (65-8 B.C.)
Diego Rivera (1886-1957)
James Thurber (1894-1961)
James Tate (1948-2015)
Mary Gordon (1949
Bill Bryson (1951)

Today's Birthdays

Bernardo Pasquini (1637-1710)
Hermann Goetz (1840-1876)
Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945)
Ernst Toch (1887-1964)
Rudolf Friml (1879-1972)
Richard Franko Goldman (1910-1980)
Daniel Jones (1912-1993)
Helen Watts (1927-2009)
Harry Chapin (1942-1981)
Daniel Chorzempa (1944-2023)
Tom Waits (1949)
Kathleen Kuhlmann (1950)
Krystian Zimerman (1956)

and

Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680)
Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Joyce Cary (1888-1957)
Noam Chomsky (1928)
Susan Isaacs (1943)

Today's Birthdays

Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605)
Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703)
Ira Gershwin (1896-1983)
Dave Brubeck (1920-2012)
Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
Henryk Górecki (1933-2010)
Tomas Svoboda (1939-2022)
John Nelson (1941)
Daniel Adni (1951)
Bright Sheng (1955)
Matthew Taylor (1964)

and

Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529)
The Encyclopedia Brittanica (1768)
Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995)

Today's Birthdays

Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762)
Vitezslav Novák (1870-1949)
"Little" Richard Wayne Penniman (1935-2020)
José Carreras (1946)
Krystian Zimerman (1956)
Osvaldo Golijov (1960)

and

Christina (Georgina) Rossetti (1830-1894)
Joan Didion (1934-2021)
Calvin Trillin (1935)
John Berendt (1939)
Lydia Millet (1968)

And from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1704, George Frideric Handel (age 19) refuses to turn over the harpsichord to Johann Mattheson (age 23) during a performance of Mattheson's opera "Cleopatra," leading to a sword duel between the two. It is said that during the swordplay, Handel was saved by a button on his coat that deflected Mattheson's mortally-directed blade. The two reconciled on December 30 that year, dining together and attending a rehearsal of Handel's opera "Almira," becoming, as Mattheson put it: "better friends than ever."

Reviews in Opera magazine

My review of OrpheusPDX's production of Il sogno di Scipione (Dream of Scipione) appeared in the December issue of Opera. In the September issue, the magazine published my review of Portland Opera's production of Falstaff. The June issue contained my review of The Shining, which Portland Opera presented in March. Opera is based in London and is considered the leading opera-reviewing publication in English.

Today's Birthdays

André Campra (1660-1744)
Michel Pignolet de Montéclair (1667-1737)
Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1949)
Alex North (1910-1991)
Yvonne Minton (1938)
Lillian Watson (1947)
Andrew Penny (1952)

and

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1891)
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
Cornell Woolrich (1903-1968)

Profile of Lajos Balogh in Oregon Arts Watch

I really enjoyed interviewing Lajos Balogh at his home. You can read my profile of him in Oregon Arts Watch here.

Today's Birthdays

Nicolo Amati (1596-1684)
André Campra (1660-1744)
Antonio Soler (1729-1783)
Émile Waldteufel (1837-1915)
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Halsey Stevens (1908-1989)
Ivan Sollertinsky (1902-1944)
Machito - Fransico Grillo (1909-1984)
Nino Rota (1911-1979)
Irving Fine (1914-1962)
Charles Craig (1919-1997)
Paul Turok (1929-2012)
José Serebrier (1938)
Matt Haimovitz (1970)

and

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Anna Freud (1895-1982)
Zlata Filipović (1980)

Today's Birthdays

Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949)
Rudolf Friml (1879-1972)
Harriet Cohen (1895-1967)
Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970)
Robert Moevs (1920-2007)
Maria Callas (1923-1977)
Jörg Demus (1928-2019)
Galina Grigorjeva (1962)

and

Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891)
T. Coraghessan Boyle (1948)
George Saunders (1958)
Ann Patchertt (1963)

And from the Composers Datebook: On this day in 1717, J.S. Bach is allowed to leave the Duke’s Court at Weimar. He had been imprisoned since Nov. 6th by his former employer Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar for accepting a new post at Prince Leopold’s court at Cöthen without first asking permission.

Today's Birthdays

François‑Xavier Richter (1709-1789)
Ernest (Louis-Etienne-Ernest) Reyer (1832-1909)
Agathe Grøndahl (1847-1907)
Lou Rawls (1933-2006)
Gordon Crosse (1937-2021
Bette Midler (1945)
Rudolf Buchbinder (1946)
Leontina Vaduva (1960)

Today's Birthdays

Carl Loewe (1796-1869)
Charles Valentin Alkan (1813-1888)
Sergei Liapunov (1859-1924)
Ludwig Thuille (1861-1907)
Ture Rangström (1884-1947)
Ray Henderson (1896-1970)
Klaus Huber (1924-2017)
Günther Herbig (1931)
Walter Weller (1939-2015)
Radu Lupu (1945-2022)
Semyon Bychkov (1952)

and

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
L(ucy) M(aud) Montgomery (1874-1942)
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012)
David Mamet (1947)

Today's Birthdays

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967)
John Brecknock (1937-2017)
Chuck Mangione (1940-2025)
Louise Winter (1959)

and

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888)
Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

Today's Birthdays

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838)
Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894)
Pamela Harrison (1915-1990)
Berry Gordy Jr. (1929)
Randy Newman (1943)
Diedre Murray (1951)

and

John Bunyan (1628-1688)
William Blake (1757-1827)
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942)
Nancy Mitford (1904-1973)
Rita Mae Brown (1944)
Alan Lightman (1948)

Today's Birthdays

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-1678)
Anton Stamitz (1750-1798 or 1809)
Franz Krommer (1759-1831)
Sir Julian Benedict (1804-1885)
Viktor Ewald (1860-1935)
Charles Koechlin (1867-1950)
Leon Barzin (1900-1999)
Walter Klien (1928-1991)
Helmut Lachenmann (1935)
Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)
David Felder (1953)
Victoria Mullova (1959)
Hilary Hahn (1979)

and

Anders Celsius (1701-1744)
Charles Beard (1874–1948)
James Agee (1909-1955)
Marilyn Hacker (1942)
Bill Nye (1955)