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)

Preview of PBO's Dinner with Handel published in Early Music America

 

One of the coolest things coming up this year is Portland Baroque's presentation of the pasticcio "Dinner with Handel. I wrote a fun preview of this unique operatic event for Early Music America here.

Today's Birthdays

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)

Preview of Michelle Cann's recital for Portland Piano International - in The Oregonian

My preview of Michelle Cann's upcoming PPI recital that highlights works by composers of Chicago's Black Renaissance is now published online in The Oregonian here. It will be in the print edition this Friday.

 

Review: Telegraph Quartet signals impeccable concert in Portland

Playing with superb dynamics, technique, and emotion, the Telegraph Quartet excelled in a demanding program Tuesday evening (January 23) at Lincoln Performance Hall. The ensemble scaled the heights and plumbed the depths of works by Beethoven, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, and Alban Berg, impressing a nearly fullhouse as part of the Friends of Chamber Music’s Classic Series.

Now in their 10th season, the Telegraph Quartet (violinists Erin Chin and Joseph Maile, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw) is the Quartet-in-Residence at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Winners of the of the 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, the Telegraph Quartet, whose name perhaps was inspired by San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, made a terrific impression in Portland a few years ago (just before the pandemic), and this return engagement was flat-out terrific.

Beethoven’s “Quartet No. 6 in B-flat Major” received a marvelous performance by the ensemble with outstandingly sculpted phrases from beginning to end. Crisp attacks and pinpoint exchanges added to the intensity of the performance. The third movement – with its sudden eruptions, followed by the first violin (Maile) blithely skipping around and then the entire ensemble digging in – was absolutely mesmerizing. The fourth movement switched between extreme melancholy, spiked with pensive outbursts, and playfully light sections – as if Beethoven couldn’t make up his mind – until he wrapped it up with a prestissimo finale.

In 1834, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel wrote “Quartet in E-flat Major,” which is the first string quartet ever written by a woman. The Telegraph Quartet, with Chin taking over the first violin position, gave it an outstanding performance. After an elegant and poignant first movement, things shifted into a higher gear in which all of the musicians showing fleet fingerwork. In the third fashioned a beguilingly slow build up that release a flowing cascade of sound, and Chin creating a sweet sound in the upper register – kind of like walking on a tight rope suspended very high above the ground. The final movement offered a fast dance-like sequence before launching into a furious section that culminated in a barnburner ending. The audience responded with an enthusiastic standing ovation.

The Telegraph Quartet gave an incisive interpretation of Alban Berg’s “Lyric Suite,” delving into the with fervent passion that reflected the enhanced emotional intensity of the piece, which was inspired by a long affair that Berg had with Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. Because of its 12-tone style, the “Lyric Suite” is not easily to grasp. Divided into six movements, it suggests a variety of moods that take listeners from the first moments of two people falling in love to the bittersweet ending in which their love cannot be realized in the way that they desire (Berg and Fuchs-Robettin were married to other people). The Telegraph Quartet played the piece with total commitment and the final Largo desolato conveyed a sense of emptiness and closed up with a note of resignation.

Not willing to leave listeners on a downer, the ensemble delivered an lovely encore, the second movement (Waltz) from Britten’s “Three Divertimenti for String Quartet.”

One of the unique aspects about the Telegraph Quartet, is its seating arrangement. All other quartets that I’ve seen seat the violins next to each other and the violist opposite the first violinist. The Telegraph Quartet places the violist next to the first violinist, and the second violinist seats opposite the first. From what I heard with the Telegraphers, their arrangement works just fine.

Bottomline, be on the lookout for the Telegraph Quartet. It’s a top-tier ensemble with a big future

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)

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)

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)
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.

Review of Fear No Music concert in Oregon ArtsWatch

 Fear No Music presented a very interesting concert on Monday evening. My review is now published on Oregon ArtsWatch here. 

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)

Review: Conrad Tao and the Oregon Symphony and really bad weather

It was a double whammy of sorts. The snowy and icy weather over the weekend of January 12 through 14 brought everything to a halt in Portland. The Oregon Symphony lost most of its concert engagements that featured pianist-composer Conrad Tao. But Monday night, January 15, things had improved enough for the orchestra to perform with Tao, and at least half of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall was filled with patrons desperate to hear some great live music. They were treated to robust music with works by Tao, Haydn, and Rachmaninoff. Perhaps the musicians needed to release some pent-up feelings. Music Director David Danzmayr looked especially happy to be on stage. He briefly mentioned that his home had lost power for 50 hours because of the weather. He was just happy to be warm!

The inclement weather was the first whammy. The second had to do with my writing instruments. I almost always bring two pens with me when I attend concerts, just in case one of them has run dry or malfunctions (last summer one of my pens gushed ink all over my hand while I was trying to interview Leo Eguchi and Sasha Callahan at Reed College). On Monday night the first pen I tried was at the end of its life, and I inexplicably lost the other pen. I did my best to etch some words in my notebook – muttering to myself all the while – and afterwards it was like reading invisible ink.

So that means a short review, starting with the first piece on the program, Tao’s “Over” as in, perhaps, the idea of an overture. The ten-minute work had three brief movements, and it kicked off with several impressively sharp attacks from the keyboard and the orchestra. The first movement had a disjointed, herky-jerky feel (and this is when my pen ran dry). The music seemed to gather steam and then became more fragmented. According to Tao, the third movement was supposed to be dance-like, but it didn’t strike me that way, but it was spirited and uplifting at the end.

Somewhere in “Over” concertmaster Sarah Kwak created a series of extremely high sounds that were squeaky and birdlike. I could figure out how she created those sounds, so I asked her via email. She replied, stating “He wrote it 2 octaves above the written notes, which put me in nosebleed territory. I had to play above the fingerboard where the bow plays - basically there are no pitches there

Following “Over,” Tao teamed up with the orchestra for a thoroughly delightful rendition of Haydn’s “Concerto for Piano in D Major.” Tao and Danzmayr had done the piece with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra (Columbus, Ohio) back in 2017 with “Over.” Tao and the orchestra brought out the witty and lighthearted nature of the Haydn, showing lots of fleet runs up and down the keyboard. The balance between all the performers was excellent, and considering that they pulled it off with – most likely – one rehearsal is amazing.

As an encore, Tao played his arrangement of Harold Arlen’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” with a nod to influences from Art Tatum. Tao superb artistry made the piece glisten.

The second half of the concert was devoted to Rachmaninoff’s “Symphony No. 2 in E minor.” The orchestra and Danzmayr gave it everything they had, and it flowed very well, oozing with lots of lyricism and rich, warm sounds that sent the audience home in a good mood.

Tao was scheduled to talk about his music at an Open Music event the following night, but freezing rain returned to Portland, and that show was cancelled. Well, let’s hope that Tao will be re-engaged with the orchestra in the near future. Maybe in the summer.

In the meantime, I’ve got to buy a package of pens!

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)

Young artists shine with Vancouver Symphony

Maestro Salvador Brotons shook his head, marveling at the three young musicians seated next to him on the stage at Skyview Concert Hall during a Q&A session that followed the Vancouver Symphony concert Saturday evening (January 21). Brotons could only gush with superlatives to describe the talents of violinist Esme Arias-Kim, saxophonist Diego Chapela-Perez, and Xinran Shi – the three gold medal winners of VSO’s young artist competition. I whole-heartedly agree with him. The teenagers blew away the audience with their musicality and poise, delivering top-notch performances of pieces that would challenge veteran professional artists. They and orchestra achieved wonderful results despite losing at least one rehearsal because of snow and ice, which put the kibosh on travel throughout the Pacific Northwest.

The nationwide search by the VSO to find the best of the ultra-talented teenage musicians really pays off when you hear them live in concert. Esme Arias-Kim (age 18) led things off with an outstanding rendition of Ernest Chausson’s “Poéme for Violin and Orchestra.” Her passionate and assured playing heightened the lush and lyrical qualities of the piece, making it sing with beauty. Her playing balanced extremely well with the orchestra so that I could always hear her violin, even when the surrounding forces, urged by the emotive Broton, swelled with forte crescendos. Near the end of the piece, Arias-Kim created beguiling, bird-like trills that could have melted some of the ice outside that auditorium.

When was the last time that any of us have ever heard a concerto for saxophone and orchestra? I don’t think that I have ever heard such a piece. So everyone in hall got a super-duper experience, because Diego Chapela-Perez (age 17) delivered a mesmerizing performance of Alexander Glazunov’s “Concerto in e-flat Major for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra.” Chapela-Perez demonstrated a comprehensive command of his instrument, creating a myriad of technically difficult sounds, but making it all look natural and easy peasy. His cadenzas were terrifically executed, and along the way he released several lightning-fast runs that had his fingers flying over all over the keys. Chapela-Perez also produced the smoothest of tones and surged with authority to high notes. He even began one passage with an extremely high note that was perfectly placed – a jaw-dropping level of artistry.

Xinran Shi (age 14) astounded patrons with a brilliant and moving performance of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Variations on a Theme by Paganini.” Shi’s impeccable technique and musicianship conveyed the many moods and styles of this delightful and incredibly tricky work. She made each of the 24 variations on the distinct and natural – that is, not mannered or mechanical. Whether the delicate minuet of Variation 12, the demonstrative and robust sound of Variation 13, the vocative cantabile of Variation 18, or any of the other variations, Shi conveyed each one superbly, and the result was an immediate, vociferous standing ovation.

It is an unenviable task to follow such exceptional performances by the trio of gifted youngsters, but Brotons and the VSO came up with a terrific piece, Carl Nielsen’s “Symphony No. 3, aka “Sinfonia expansiva.” This symphony by Denmark’s greatest composer began with several forte blasts that grabbed everyone’s attention. They were followed by a driving waltz and passages that surged and subsided before ascending to a powerful ending that wrapped up the first movement. The second began in quiet and contemplative way, but with an insistent undercurrent that later gave way to aggressive horns. There were moments that sounded almost Wagnerian, but things settled down and closed out calmly. The third movement offered some lovely melodies and the fourth reveled in a fugue before concluding the piece with a stately, and uplifting finale.

After the concert during the Q&A, moderated by All Classical Radio’s Warren Black, listeners learned that the young artists put a lot of thought into their performances with an emphasis on “telling a story” through their musicmaking. That kind of approach definitely helped to make the music resonate with listeners, and the connection created between the young performers and much-older patrons was genuine, giving commentators like me a hope for the future – not just the future of music but the future in general.

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) Cécile Ousset (1936)
Teresa Zylis-Gara (1936)
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.

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)

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.

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)

Profile of Michael Liu - MD and pianist of the Vancouver Symphony - in The Columbian newspaper

 I wrote a profile of Michael Liu, MD and pianist for the Vancouver Symphony. He is an amazingly talented fellow, and I think that you will enjoy reading about him in The Columbian here.

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)