It’s not opera, but it is the Met, it is Verdi, it is vocal, and you can hear it, live and in person, for free — with (literally) a bit of luck.

Next month (September 2008), James Levine will conduct the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus in a free performance of Verdi’s Requiem. Soloists Barbara Frittoli, Olga Borodina, Marcello Giordani, and James Morris will join them. The concert is in memory of tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who died on 6 September 2007.

In most cities you can expect interest in a free concert, of course. However, this is the Met, and it’s New York. Think of the nightmares their ticket office staff must be having.

In an effort to manage the demand, the Opera is conducting a random drawing. To enter, fill out the form at the Met’s website, or call the Met’s ticket service at 212 362-6000. Website and telephone entries will be accepted between 20 August (Wednesday of this week) and 8:00pm, Wednesday 3 September. You can also submit an entry in person at the Met. They’re not accepting mail or email entries, and they’re enforcing a strict one-per-customer limit.

The concert will take place on Thursday 18 September 18 at 5:00pm at The Met Opera House. If your name isn’t drawn for a ticket, you can at least listen live via streaming audio at the Met’s website.

Youngstown-born American composer Donald Erb died last week. Erb, distinguished professor emeritus of composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, was 81.

Erb was one of the pioneers of electronic music and was especially noted for his works combining electronics with traditional instruments. He played trumpet in high school and was a jazz trumpet player in the years after World War II. Many of his later works employed brass instruments. He had an intense and visceral reaction to the Cold War and Vietnam conflict, as evidenced in such works as Fallout (1964), Fission (1968), and The Purple-Roofed Ethical Suicide Parlor (1972).

Erb attended Kent State University, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1950. He then studied composition with Marcel Dick at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He also studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and with Bernhard Heiden at Indiana University, Bloomington. He received his Doctorate from Indiana in 1964.

Donald Erb was appointed to the CIM faculty in 1952. He was composer in residence there from 1966 to 1981, became distinguished professor of composition in 1987, and moved to emeritus status in 1996.

That same year, Erb suffered cardiac arrest. He had not been active as a composer since.

Erb leaves his wife of 58 years, Lucille; daughter Christine Hoell and son Matthew, both of Columbus; daughter Stephanie Erb of Los Angeles; daughter Janet Carroll of Rockaway, NJ; and nine grandchildren.

The “Rach 3″ (Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto) is one of the 20th-century masterpieces. Sergei Rachmaninoff composed it on his family’s country estate, Ivanovka. In the photo, he is looking over the final proofs of the concerto at Ivanovka.

The estate had been in the family for generations, but within a decade after these photos were supposedly taken, as was common after the Revolution with aristocratic families in Russia, the Bolsheviks confiscated the estate. After that, Rachmaninoff was never able to go home again, and that is the main reason he ended up in New York.

In New York, Rachmaninoff made do with decorating the place to look like Ivanovka.

He composed the third concerto for a premiere in the U.S. on his first trip here, and as a matter of fact, too rushed for time; he did not have a chance to rehearse it at all before leaving and had to practice it on a silent keyboard while on the ship.

Have you ever wondered about that theory published a few years back about Mozart?  That just by listening to his music you’ll get smarter?
WKSU’s Vivian Goodman chatted about that with the top neuroscientist at Cleveland Clinic.  The Clinic’s collaborating with the Cleveland Orchestra in an international symposium on how music affects our brains.

Listen to this story at WKSU News

 Gary Hanson tells us how the orchestra is embracing visual performances – staged opera at Severance and ballet at Blossom in the coming year.     We also hear about the Orchestra’s upcoming performance at the Salzberg Festival and the continuing competition between Cleveland and the Vienna Phil.

 

Click here to hear the interview with Cleveland Orchestra Executive Director Gary Hansen

Watch the second part of David Roden’s interview with Cleveland Orchestra Music Director Franz Welser-Most as he prepares to conduct a program featuring Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” at the Blossom Festival on Friday, August 8th.

See all four parts of the interview:

Alice Chalifoux and her personal dressing room

If you heard the Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Music Center Sunday evening (3 August 2008), you heard the legacy of an extraordinary musician and human.

Cleveland Orchestra harpist Trina Struble shared with principal clarinet Franklin Cohen the solo duties in Cleveland-born composer Eric Ewazen’s Ballade. Struble was one of the hundreds of students nurtured by the orchestra’s harpist from 1931 to 1974, Alice Chalifoux. So was Telarc recording artist Yolanda Kondonassis.

Chalifoux died Thursday in Winchester, Virginia, at the age of 100.

Along with some of her students, Chalifoux appeared as part of the Music from Stan Hywet series. These programs were broadcast on WKSU during the 1980s. Of course, she also played in countless Cleveland Orchestra programs. As harpist under five music directors — Nikolai Sokoloff, Artur Rodzinski, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell and Lorin Maazel — she made many broadcasts and recordings with the orchestra. Hers is the solo harp you hear on the 1967 Boulez recording of Debussy’s Danse sacree et profane.

For some years Chalifoux was the only female member of The Cleveland Orchestra. Faced with concert halls that had no facilities for women, she would use her harp case as a dressing room. By the time she retired in 1974, thirteen other women had joined her in the orchestra’s ranks.

Chalifoux’s teachers included the great Carlos Salzedo. She inherited his school and taught for years at the Salzedo Harp Colony in addition to the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Oberlin Conservatory, and Baldwin-Wallace.

She is survived by a daughter and a niece.

This weekend, the last person to hold the title of Blossom Festival Music Director returns to The Cleveland Orchestra’s summer home.

Jahja Ling ran the classical show at Blossom Music Center while he was also leading the Florida Orchestra, and before he moved on to direct the San Diego Symphony. WKSU’s Vivian Goodman spoke to the maestro at his Cleveland hotel, where he’s staying with his wife, pianist Jesse Chang.

When I tagged along with The Cleveland Orchestra on their tours of Europe and the Canary Islands (1999) and Vienna (2003), I noticed that certain members tended to vanish on free days. Where’d they go? "They’re mountain climbers," violinist Judy Berman explained. "They’re off finding something to climb."

As are Jeremy Dawson, Clare Wallace and James Rees. Cellists all, they have an abiding appreciation for elevation. No longer content with cathedral rooftops, they plan to scale the UK’s highest mountain peaks — where, inspired by the slightly daft sport of extreme ironing, they intend to unpack their instruments and play recitals.

It’s not just for the challenge, though that’s surely the principal reason. It’s to raise funds for charities. Mountain rescue teams, for example.

Further reading:

Cello players reach new heights at the BBC

Although the orchestra hasn’t officially disbanded, its prognosis isn’t good. But don’t count Columbus’s classical music out yet.

The Columbus Symphony, still unable to reach an agreement with its musicians, has officially cancelled part of the upcoming season. There’s still a glimmer of hope for concerts from December, including the holiday pops, but official Columbus Symphony performances through November are definitely off the schedule. This summer’s outdoor concerts were also given the axe.

Despite mediation and telephone discussions, the musicians and management are still far apart. The Columbus Dispatch quotes the president of the board, Robert "Buzz" Trafford: "We have gone absolutely as far as we can go. Unless musicians change their position, we won’t reach an agreement."

This month (July 2008) the musicians rejected an agreement that called for sacking the orchestra’s highly regarded music director, Junichi Hirokami, and cutting 27% from the players’ salaries. The musicians’ union has filed unfair labor charges against the orchestra’s management for allegedly locking them out and failing to bargain in good faith.

Although the Columbus Symphony is shuttered for now, orchestral music has not vanished from the city. As Symphony Columbus, orchestra members have already presented two concerts in Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium this summer, and are planning additional performances. Their concert on 17 August will take place outdoors, at a natural amphitheatre in Hocking Hills’ Ash Cave.

Further Reading:

Symphony Talks Stall in The Columbus Dispatch

Goodbye, Columbus Symphony? in The Wall Street Journal

Columbus Symphony official website

Symphony Musicians

Symphony Columbus

All Columbus Symphony entries in WKSU Classical

When it comes to travel, the Cunard line of cruise ships has made high-class luxury its top goal.  Along with good food, dancing and a variety of entertainment, transatlantic crossings on the Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 typically include cultural opportunities.  Cunard (which calls itself “the Official Cruise Line of the National Symphony Orchestra”) is presenting members of The Kennedy Center Chamber Players, as well as welcoming Nigel Boon, director of artistic planning for the National Symphony Orchestra on the September 8, 2009 transatlantic crossing from New York to Southampton (the crossing to Britain is 6 days and the ship then continues on for the 24-day Grand Mediterranean Highlights tour).  The ensemble is a group of National Symphony Orchestra principals.

Although this adventure definately falls in the super-pricey, not-your-everyday-vacation category, I have been on the ship and it lives up to its posh promise.  And, it’s culturally enriching!

Cleveland’s “working man” comedian Drew Carey is returning to his hometown to take an unlikely role. He’s narrating Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with the Cleveland Orchestra Saturday. Carey expects to draw a few unintentional laughs and maybe talk baseball at a local bar.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Creativity and courage.

Here’s a tried and true formula for orchestral programs (I mean in the concert hall, not necessarily on the radio, though I’ve assembled such hours of music many times). Before intermission, play a short curtain-raiser, then launch into a substantial work. Often the second work features a guest soloist. It may also be something challenging, such as a modern work, or one that’s not too well known. After intermission, play one or two orchestral works. Generally at least one will be a piece from the standard repertoire (something the listener is likely to recognize and / or something accessible).

Though I’m a radio music director, not an orchestral one, I can see good practical reasons for adhering to this outline. The short opener allows for a reasonable break for seating latecomers. Most listeners will sit through even a fairly bracing contemporary work in the second slot, if they can see the promise of a favorite after intermission; putting it on the second half might nudge a few out the d