Catching up, July 2023

This Week in Classical Music: July 31, 2023.  Catching up.  For the final three weeks we’ve been preoccupied with two German composers, Carl Orff and Hanns Eisler, and with that, we missed a number of notable anniversaries.  We had been going to write down about Alfredo Casella who was born 140 years in the past, on July 25^th of 1883, in Turin.  We’ll come again to him quickly, within the meantime you’ll be able to learn our earlier entry.  Eugène Ysaÿe was born 165 years in the past, on July 16^th of 1858.  The fantastic Spanish composer Enrique Granados was born on July 27^th of 1867.  Hans Rott’s birthday is that this week; he was born on August 1^st of 1858.  We have now to confess our fascination with this underappreciated composer who predates Mahler in some ways. 

A number of excellent pianists had been born within the earlier three weeks, all in July: Van Cliburn on the 12^th in 1934, Leon Fleisher on the 23^rd in 1928, additionally on the 23^rd of July, however in 1944 – Maria João Pires, and Alexis Weissenberg, on the 26^th, in 1929.  The Portuguese pianist Maria João Pires is the one one nonetheless alive, and on the age of 79 may be very energetic, performing about 50 live shows a 12 months.

Throughout this era we additionally might’ve celebrated three violinists: Pinchas Zukerman, born on the 16^th, in 1948; Isaac Stern, on the 21^st, in 1920, and Ruggiero Ricci, on the 24^th, in 1918.  Zukerman is alive and properly, and, like Pires, remains to be very energetic.

We’ll flip to conductors: Igor Markevitch was born on July 27^th of 1912.  He was additionally a composer, however we’ve by no means had an opportunity to write down about his artistic (reasonably than interpretive) skills.  Riccardo Muti simply left, with nice pomp and circumstance, the put up of Music Director of the Chicago Symphony.  He was born on July 28^th of 1941.  And Erich Kleiber, a beautiful conductor and the daddy of the much more well-known Carlos Kleiber, may have his anniversary on August 5^th; he was born in 1890.

And at last, the singers.  They had been particularly bountiful, so we’ll record their names solely.  Each particular person on this unbelievable group had a birthday within the earlier three weeks: Nicolai Gedda, Kirsten Flagstad, Carlo Bergonzi, Pauline Viardot, Susan Graham, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Sergei Lemeshev, Mario Del Monaco, and Peter Schreier.  We’ve written about a lot of them, and if we’ve missed some, like Ms. Graham, we’ll get to it later.