SynopsisIn St. Petersburg, Russia, on today’s date in 1909, Alexandre Siloti conducted the first performance of a new orchestral work by a 26-year-old composer named Igor Stravinsky. The work was billed as Scherzo Fantastique, but Stravinsky’s original title was Bees.Stravinsky had just completed his studies with the great Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose Flight of the Bumblebee was already a famous musical depiction, so perhaps he wanted to impress his teacher — or try to outdo him.In 1907, Stravinsky wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov, “Just now [my wife] Katya and I have read Maeterlinck’s Life of the Bees, a partly artistic, partly philosophical book that pleased me, as they say, down to my toes.”Maeterlinck’s book offered an anthropomorphized description of the life cycle of bees describing “the innumerable agitations of the honeycomb, the perpetual, enigmatic and crazy jiggling of the nurses on the brood chamber … the invading spirals of the queen, the various and incessant activities of the crowd … the comings and goings overwhelmed with ardor.”Stravinsky’s scoring includes three harps and multiple woodwinds, but omits timpani, trombones and tuba, resulting in a light, nimble and air-born orchestral sound for his busy bees.Music Played in Today's ProgramIgor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Scherzo Fantastique; Montreal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, cond. Decca 414 409

SynopsisIn Berlin on today’s date in 1915, prolific German composer Max Reger conducted the premiere performance of what would become his most popular orchestral work.Like Bach, Reger was a master of counterpoint and the fugue, and, like Beethoven, loved writing variations. Reger’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart starts off simple enough, quoting a familiar theme from one of Mozart’s piano sonatas. About 30 minutes later, the simple theme develops into a massive fugue. It’s all grand and clever if you like it, or bombastic and tiresome if you don’t.The witty Nicolas Slonimsky, in his book Music Since 1900, described it as follows: “Mozart’s ingenuous theme … is subjected to torturous melodic anamorphoses, contrapuntal contortion, canonic dislocation, rhythmic incrustation and harmonic inspissation.”To save you the trouble of Googling the definition of “inspissation,” let’s just say it’s not a condition you would wish on anybody!Whether you’re a fan or not, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart is quintessential Reger, and one is tempted to say, “What did you expect? It’s Reger to the Max!”Music Played in Today's ProgramMax Reger (1873-1916): Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart; New York Philharmonic; Kurt Masur, cond. Teldec 74007

SynopsisBy 1837, the symphonies of Beethoven had become quite popular in Paris. Beethoven had been dead for 10 years, but surprisingly, much of his chamber music had yet to be performed publicly in Paris.So Franz Liszt organized a series of chamber concerts at the Salle Erard to introduce Beethoven’s piano trios. Liszt would play the piano part, of course, joined by the finest Parisian violinist and cellist available.One of the programs fell on today’s date in 1837 and was to feature, on the first half, one of Beethoven’s Trios, then, on the second half, a new trio by contemporary German composer Johann Peter Pixis, whose works Liszt admired.At the last minute, the performers decided to reverse the printed order of the program, performing the new Pixis trio first. The audience (and critics), following the printed program, warmly applauded the Pixis, mistakenly thinking it was the Beethoven, and reacted coolly to the Beethoven, assuming it was by Pixis.Among the many newspaper critics who attended the concert, only one noticed the switch and wrote his review accordingly — and that music critic’s name happened to be a famous composer, Hector Berlioz.Music Played in Today's ProgramLudwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Piano Trio, Op. 1, No. 2; Kempff-Szeryng-Fournier Trio DG 453 751

SynopsisIf he hadn’t turned composer, Johannes Brahms might have made an excellent travel agent. He was in the habit of spending his summer vacations working on his music and consequently was always on the lookout for scenic spots and comfortable rooms at a decent price. In the summer of 1865, Brahms rented rooms from a certain widow Becker in Lichtental near Baden-Baden. The rooms offered a wonderful view of a mountain hillside covered with fir trees — and the rent was irresistibly low. “I came. I saw. I rented,” Brahms wrote to a friend.Brahms composed his String Sextet No. 2 there, between jolts of bracing coffee in the morning and afternoon hikes up the aforementioned hillside. Not surprisingly, this sextet turned out to be one of his happiest and most genial chamber works.But on today’s date in 1867 at the sextet’s first performance in Vienna, the critic of the Wiener Zeitung heard desert sands rather than shady forests, and wrote: “We are seized with a kind of foreboding whenever Herr Johannes Brahms, this new John the Baptist, emerges from the wilderness. This prophet makes us quite disconsolate with his impalpable, vertiginous tone-vexations, pleasing to neither body nor soul.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJohannes Brahms (1833-1897): String Sextet No. 2; L'Archibudelli Sony Classical 68252

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1890, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak conducted the first performance of his Symphony No. 8 in Prague, on the occasion of his election to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts.By 1890, Dvorak was a world-famous composer, honored in his own country and abroad. Within a year of its premiere, Dvorak conduced his Symphony No. 8 again in London, Frankfurt and at Cambridge University, where he received an honorary doctorate in music in 1891.Despite some mysterious and melancholy passages, Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony is usually described as “sunny,” “idyllic” and “pastoral.” Its final movement opens with a brass fanfare, perhaps a reference to a century-old tradition of signal trumpeters playing from the towers and parapets in Prague, a sight and sound that visitors to the famous Astronomical Clock tower in that city’s Old Town Square can still experience today.It’s amusing — and perhaps revealing of something deep in the national spirit — that at a rehearsal of this finale, legendary Czech conductor Rafael Kubelik quipped to his players, "Gentlemen, in Bohemia the trumpets never call to battle — they always call to the dance!"Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonin Dvorak (1841-1904): Symphony No. 8; Berlin Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, cond. DG 447 412

SynopsisIn 1881, the posthumous premiere of Jacques Offenbach’s final work, The Tales of Hoffmann, had been announced for Feb. 1 at the Opera Comique in Paris — and in fact was performed on that date, but as a closed dress rehearsal attended only by theater staff and Offenbach’s family.Offenbach knew he was dying as he wrote this opera and had completed a full piano score and extensive sketches for its orchestration. For its premiere, Ernest Guiraud faithfully orchestrated Hoffmann, but, at the request of the Opera Comique’s director, he replaced the original, quick-paced spoken dialogue between its musical numbers with slower, sung recitatives in the style of a grand opera.At a private premiere, the opera ran much too long. In something of a panic, drastic cuts and a wholesale rearrangement of Offenbach’s score were made before the public premiere nine days later. In its drastically altered form, Hoffmann proved to be a great success and remained so for decades. For the opera’s centenary in 1981, however, musicologists painstakingly prepared new performing versions of Hoffmann, restoring Offenbach’s original plan for the work.Consequently, opera companies today are faced with a dilemma: Do they stage the familiar or the faithful version of Offenbach’s masterpiece?Music Played in Today's ProgramJacques Offenbach (1819-1880): Tales of Hoffmann Suite; Detroit Symphony; Paul Paray, cond. Mercury 434 332

SynopsisSince the 18th century, Paris and Prague have been famous for producing some of the greatest wind players of Europe. And in the 19th century, Anton Reicha, who was born in Prague but died in Paris, wrote for those wind players a sizable body of quintets to showcase the agreeable blend of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn.In our own time, the number of professional wind quintets has increased dramatically, and, not surprisingly, contemporary composers are eager to create new works for them.On today’s date in 1987, at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York, the Manhattan Wind Quintet premiered a piece by American composer David Maslanka — his Wind Quintet No. 2.A clarinetist, Maslanka is particularly known for his works for wind ensembles, large and small. He describes his three-movement Wind Quintet No. 2 as follows:“The first movement is fierce and somewhat daunting in its technical demands; the second is moody and elusive; the third is sweet and resigned.”This recording features the Bergen Woodwind Quintet of Norway, an ensemble that has taken Maslanka’s music to heart, recording three of his Wind Quintets for the BIS label from Sweden.Music Played in Today's ProgramDavid Maslanka (1943-2017) Wind Quintet No. 2; Manhattan Wind Quintet Albany 246

SynopsisIn 1985, the musical world was celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of Georg Frideric Handel. On today’s date that year, Minnesota-based composer Libby Larsen, then in her mid-30s, was celebrating the premiere performance of her Symphony No. 1.Larsen titled her symphony Water Music and says its first movement was a deliberate homage to Handel’s famous Water Music. As a resident composer of a state with over 10,000 lakes, Larsen admits her love of sailing also had something to do with the symphony’s descriptive title.Since 1985, Larsen has gone on to write a few more symphonies, each with its own particular title. And she frequently gives individual movements of each symphony a descriptive tag. For example, one movement from her Solo Symphony (No. 5), from 1999, is titled “The Cocktail Party Effect.”Rather than the wallop of a stiff drink, Larsen says she means the ability of human hearing to pick out a single voice among the extraneous noise one encounters at a crowded cocktail party. “It’s a kind of musical ‘Where’s Waldo?’” she says. “In this case, Waldo is a melody, introduced at the beginning … then hidden amid the other music.”Music Played in Today's ProgramLibby Larsen (b. 1950) Symphony: Water Music; Minnesota Orchestra; Neville Marriner, cond. Nonesuch 79147; and Solo Symphony; Colorado Symphony; Marin Alsop, cond. Koch 7520

SynopsisIn the early 1990s, flutist Susan Morris de Jong and guitarist Jeffrey Van commissioned Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra to write three sets of chamber works that have become classics for their combination of instruments. Sierra titled these Crónicas del Descubrimiento, or Chronicles of Discovery, and said they were his vision of the bewilderment the native Indians of Puerto Rico must have felt during first interactions with the Spanish conquistadores, and vice-versa.Each of the three sets contains two contrasting pieces in which flute and guitar seem to observe, excite and provoke each other, with the first slow atmospheric piece followed by a more rhythmic second one. On today’s date in 1994 in Minneapolis, De Jong and Van presented the third and final set of Sierra’s Chronicles of Discovery, containing two pieces: the first titled Song, and the second, more ominously, Battle.Sierra left his native Puerto Rico to study composition with György Ligeti in Hamburg in the late 1970s, served as the composer-in-residence of the Milwaukee Symphony in the 1980s and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2021.Music Played in Today's ProgramRoberto Sierra (b. 1953) – Battalia, from Tercera Crónica del Descubrimiento (Marcelo Barbozab, flute; Fabio Zanona, guitar) Somm CD-0669

SynopsisIt’s nice when talent in one field recognizes and appreciates it in another. But this is not always the case. Take, for example, Jonathan Swift, one of the greatest English writers of the 18th century, and Georg Frideric Handel, one of that century’s greatest composers.In 1742, Handel was in Ireland, preparing for the premiere of his sacred oratorio Messiah at the Music Hall on Dublin’s Fishamble Street, and wanted to use the choirboys from Dublin’s two cathedrals, Christ Church and St. Patrick’s. Swift was the Dean of Patrick’s, and, on today’s date, the author of “Gulliver’s Travels penned a flaming reply to his sub dean:“I do hereby require and request not to permit any of the choristers to attend or assist at any public musical performances ... and whereas it hath been reported that I gave a license to assist a club of fiddlers in Fishamble Street, I do annul said license, entreating my said Sub-Dean to [refuse] such songsters, fiddlers, pipers, trumpeters, drummers, drum-majors or any [such] sonic quality.”History does not record Handel’s response, but he did, in point of fact, eventually get to use the St. Patrick’s choir boys and other “songsters” he requested.Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Frederic Handel (1685-1757) Messiah; Oregon Bach Festival; Helmuth Rilling, cond. Hännsler 98.198

SynopsisTo say that American composer and jazz pianist Vijay Iyer is a multifaceted artist would be quite the understatement. The son of Tamil immigrants, he was born and raised in New York and began classical music training at 3. His undergraduate degree at Yale was in mathematics and physics, but music retained its strong pull. At the University of California, Berkeley, his 1998 Ph.D. dissertation was titled, “Microstructures of Feel, Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Musics.”As a pianist, Iyer started attracting a lot of attention. Reviewing Break Stuff, his 20th CD release, critic Steve Greenlee wrote, “He may be the most celebrated musician in jazz.”On today’s date in 2005, Iyer and the Ethel String Quartet gave the premiere performance of his chamber work Mutations, a suite that combines improvisatory elements of jazz with the meticulously organized scoring of contemporary classical music. The work was recorded for the ECM label, a home for many cross-discipline composers and performers.“The world likes to put us in boxes,” Iyer says. “But when you’re an artist, a composer, a creative person … you find a lot of different sides of yourself opening up.”Music Played in Today's ProgramVijay Iyer (b. 1971) Mutations; Vijay Iyer, p; Ethel String Quartet ECM 2372

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1966, a symphonic work by American composer Dominick Argento received its premiere performance by the Minneapolis Civic Orchestra at the St. Paul Campus Student Center of the University of Minnesota. The work was titled Variations for Orchestra (The Mask of Night) for orchestra and soprano soloist. For the premiere performances, the vocal soloist was Argento’s wife, soprano Carolyn Bailey.The music was composed in Florence, Italy.“I vividly remember the circumstances that inspired it,” Argento wrote. “Our seventh-floor apartment in the Piazza Pitti overlooked the Boboli Gardens and behind it, out of sight, was a military barracks. Every night at 10 o’clock, a bugle solemnly intoned the Italian equivalent of taps. The sound seemed to be the voice of the garden itself — moonlit, deserted, cypress-scented and mysterious. ... The trumpet theme is a 12-tone row whose first six notes, I later realized, form the opening phrase sung by the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, a role my wife had often performed.”“Consequently,” Argento concluded, “these variations are much indebted to my favorite city, my favorite writer, my favorite composer and my favorite soprano.”Music Played in Today's ProgramDominick Argento (1927-2019) Variations for Orchestra (The Mask of Night); Plymouth Music Series Orchestra; Philip Brunelle, cond. Virgin 91184

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1946, the octogenarian German composer Richard Strauss conducted the final rehearsal of his latest work, Metamorphosen, a study for 23 strings. Paul Sacher, the Swiss conductor and music patron, had commissioned the work and conducted the public premiere later that day in Zurich.Strauss had begun work on the piece on March 13, 1945, one day after the Vienna State Opera house had been bombed by the Allies. When the Nazis had come to power in 1933, Strauss was at first fêted as the greatest living German composer, but he soon fell out of favor. While his music was not banned, official Nazi support for Strauss eventually fell away, and the fact that Strauss’ beloved daughter-in-law was Jewish meant increasing anxiety about her fate and that of his grandchildren as the Nazi’s race laws tightened their noose.In a postwar memorandum, Strauss wrote, “The most terrible period of human history has come to an end, the 12-year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany’s 2,000 years of cultural evolution met its doom and irreplaceable monuments of architecture and works of art were destroyed.”Music Played in Today's ProgramRichard Strauss (1864-1949) Metamorphosen; Vienna Philharmonic; Simon Rattle, cond. EMI 56580

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1968, London witnessed a double debut: the first concert of the London Sinfonietta, a chamber group that would go on to become one of Britain’s most famous new music ensembles, and, on its debut program, the premiere performance of The Whale, a dramatic cantata by John Tavener, who would go on to become one of Britain’s most famous contemporary composers.The London Sinfonietta’s premiere attracted the attention of both the BBC, which broadcast the work that same year, and the Beatles, who released a recording of the work on their newly formed Apple label.After Tavener’s religious conversion to the Greek Orthodox faith in 1977 and a near-death experience during surgery in 1990 to remove a tumor from his jaw, his music became ever more liturgical, even other-worldly, and was described as “mystic minimalism.”In 1997, when the funeral service for Princess Diana was broadcast worldwide, it was Tavener’s serenely lyrical anthem Song for Athene that was chosen to accompany the princess’ coffin as it left Westminster Abbey.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Tavener (1944-2013) The Whale; London Sinfonietta and Chorus; David Atherton, cond. Capitol 98497

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1935, at the Church of St. François-Xavier in Paris, organist Geneviève de la Salle gave the first complete performance of the three-movement Organ Suite, by French composer and virtuoso organist Maurice Duruflé.If you sing in a choir or are a fan of choral classics, you probably know Duruflé’s serene and tranquil Requiem, which premiered about 12 years later.Now, if Duruflé’s Organ Suite, Op. 5, premiered in 1935 and his Requiem, Op. 9, in 1947, you might reasonably conclude the composer was a slow, meticulous worker, which he was. In all, Duruflé’s output comprises less than 15 published works, of which seven are for organ. His Organ Suite consists of a brooding “Prélude,” a “Sicilienne” — which evokes the harmonies and inflections of Ravel — and a brilliant, concluding “Toccata.”Duruflé’s music is firmly embedded in the French tradition of organ composers such as César Franck and Louis Vierne, and Duruflé’s composition teacher, Paul Dukas. The great French organist Marie-Claire Alain described Duruflé’s music as “perfectly honest art.”“He was not an innovator but a traditionalist,” she said “… Duruflé evolved and amplified the old traditions, making them his own."Music Played in Today's ProgramMaurice Durufle (1902-1986) Organ Suite; Todd Wilson (Schudi organ at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Dallas, Texas) Delos 3047

SynopsisIn January 1980, famous American film music composer John Williams was named conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. On today’s date that year, he led the Pops in the premiere performance of a concert overture based on his score for the John Wayne film The Cowboys.Now, by 1980, Williams had scored dozens of classic American films but not all that many westerns — The Cowboys, from 1971, for one, and Missouri Breaks, a quirky 1976 western starring Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando, for another.If both The Cowboys and Missouri Breaks are somewhat unconventional samples of the western genre, Williams’ music is in the grand tradition of the classic film scores by Jerome Moross, who composed the music for The Big Country; Elmer Bernstein, who wrote the score for The Magnificent Seven; and Jerry Goldsmith, who has done that service for a number of other classic westerns.All these composers, however, owed a collective debt to an unlikely cowboy music composer: Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland, whose Billy the Kid and Rodeo ballet scores from the 1930s and '40s helped define the symphonic equivalent of the wide-open American landscape.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Williams (b. 1932) The Cowboys Overture; Boston Pops; John Williams, cond. Philips 420 178

SynopsisIn 1968, Sen. Eugene McCarthy was running for president on an antiwar platform. The war in question was in Southeast Asia, and many American artists were, like Senator McCarthy, openly calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.On today’s date at a New York fundraising event for the anti-war movement Broadway for Peace, a song by Leonard Bernstein received its premiere performance, with the composer at the piano accompanying Barbra Streisand.The song was titled “So Pretty,” with lyrics describing the tragedy of the Vietnam War from a child’s point of view.Richard Nixon, not McCarthy, became president in 1968 and was re-elected in 1972. At his special request, the final piece on his January 1973 inaugural concert was Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, which struck many as a deliberately bellicose selection, considering that the Vietnam War was still raging.Bernstein, McCarthy and others arranged a counter-concert at Washington’s National Cathedral, scheduled at precisely the same time as Nixon’s, but presenting Haydn’s Mass in Time of War instead of Tchaikovsky.Whether Tchaikovsky or Haydn ultimately made any difference in resolving the conflict, history does note that a Southeastern Asian armistice was signed in Paris a few days later.Music Played in Today's ProgramLeonard Bernstein (1918-1990) So Pretty; Roberta Alexander, soprano; Tan Crone, piano Etcetera 1007

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1939, pianist John Kirkpatrick gave a recital at Town Hall in New York City that included the New York premiere of the Concord Sonata, by American composer Charles Ives.Ives had self-published his Concord Sonata some 20 years earlier and sent copies of it free to anyone he thought might be interested, including then-prominent composer and teacher Rubin Goldmark, who, in 1921, was giving composition lessons to young Aaron Copland. Copland recalled seeing the Concord Sonata on Goldmark’s piano but was not allowed to borrow it. “You stay away from it,” Goldmark warned him. “I don’t want you to be contaminated by stuff like that.”In 1934, Kirkpatrick saw a copy of the Concord Sonata in Paris and wrote Ives: “I have decided quite resolutely to learn the whole sonata.” It would take him five years, but Kirkpatrick’s Town Hall recital would put both him and Ives on the map.A New York Times critic wrote, “This sonata is exceptionally great music — it is, indeed, the greatest music composed by an American, and the most deeply felt and essential. ... Kirkpatrick’s performance was that of a poet and a master, an unobtrusive minister of genius.”Music Played in Today's ProgramCharles Ives (1874-1954) Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord, Mass., 1840-1860) Marc-André Hamelin, piano New World 378

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1853, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore (or The Troubador) had its premiere performance at the Teatro Apollo in Rome.It proved an immediate hit. True, some did complain at the time about its gloomy, complicated and downright confusing plot. But Verdi’s music setting had such great tunes and such energetic verve that Il Trovatore quickly became the most popular of all his operas in the 19th century.Its tunes were soon heard emanating from street corner barrel-organs, and, as a true sign of popularity, there were even comic parodies of its melodramatic blood and thunder storyline.Reviewing a New York production in 1862, American composer and music critic William Fry had these observations: “Il Trovatore has a wonderful plot, beyond human comprehension. ... As to the music, there are some charming, popular, ingenious, artistic, great points; then, there are some others egregiously vulgar and rowdy. The ‘Anvil Chorus,’ for example, is about equal to a scene of mending a sewer set to music.”And as for parodies, in the 1935 film A Night at the Opera, Il Trovatore — and opera, in general — receives a devastating sendup at the hands of the Marx Brothers.Music Played in Today's ProgramGiuseppe Verdi (1813-1902) [arr. Franz Liszt] Miserere, fr Il Trovatore; Daniel Barenboim, piano Erato 75457; and Anvil Chorus, fr Il Trovatore; Chicago Symphony and Chorus; Georg Solti, cond. London 466 075

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1962, President John F. Kennedy received two memos regarding a dinner party at the White House scheduled the following evening honoring composer Igor Stravinsky and his wife, Vera. The Kennedys were famous for inviting the finest artists and performers to the White House for special presentations. Mrs. Kennedy was a true arts maven, but JFK was not, and needed background information on figures like Stravinsky, which the first memo provided. The Kennedy’s social secretary even worked out secret signals and cues for the president when he attended White House recitals so he wouldn’t applaud at the wrong time.The second memo informed JFK that after a photo shoot with the Stravinskys, they would join the others invited that evening for cocktails in the Blue Room. After dinner, the 80-year-old Stravinsky expressed his gratitude and told the press that the Kennedys were “nice kids.”Four months after Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, Stravinsky asked poet W.H. Auden for “a very quiet little lyric” that he might set to music in tribute to Kennedy’s memory. The resulting work, Elegy for JFK for medium voice and three clarinets, premiered in 1964.Music Played in Today's ProgramIgor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Three Movements, fr Petrouchka; Louis Lortie, piano Chandos 8733

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1967, British orchestral trumpeter David Mason went to the famous Abbey Road Studios in London to record a high-flying solo for a pop recording.A few days earlier, Paul McCartney had seen Mason on TV performing the Baroque piccolo trumpet part in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 and decided on the spot that sound was exactly what he needed for a new Beatles tune he was working on called “Penny Lane.”And so, George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, gave Mason a call. “I took nine trumpets along and we tried various things, by a process of elimination settling on the B-flat piccolo trumpet,” Mason said. “We spent three hours working it out: Paul sang the parts he wanted; George Martin wrote them out; I tried them. But the actual recording was done quite quickly. They were jolly high notes, quite taxing, but with the tapes rolling we did two takes as overdubs on top of the existing song.”Some Beatles fans not familiar with the sound of the Baroque trumpet assumed the tape was speeded up to make the trumpet sound so high, but Bach fans knew otherwise.Music Played in Today's ProgramJ.S. Bach (1685-1750): Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 (David Moore, tpt; New Philharmonia; Raymond Leppard, cond). HMV SXLP-20110 (LP); the Beatles: "Penny Lane" Capitol Records SMAL-2835

SynopsisComing of age in the first half of the 20th century were two exceptionally talented children of the wealthy Austrian steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein: Ludwig Wittgenstein became a famous philosopher and Paul Wittgenstein a concert pianist.Paul served in the Austrian army in World War I, and, for a concert pianist, suffered a horrific injury: the loss of his right arm. Undaunted, he rebuilt his career by commissioning and performing works for piano left-hand. The family fortune enabled him to commission the leading composers of his day, including Richard Strauss, Maurice Ravel and Sergei Prokofiev.Unfortunately, even the Wittgenstein fortune couldn’t protect the family from the racial laws of Nazi Germany, given the family’s Jewish heritage. In 1938, he left for the United States after Austria’s Anschluss with the German Reich.In America, he commissioned a concert work from young British expatriate Benjamin Britten, also living in America at the time, and gave the premiere performance of Britten’s Diversions for piano left-hand and orchestra on today’s date in 1942, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. Wittgenstein later confessed that of all his commissions, Britten’s work came the closest to fulfilling his needs and wishes.Music Played in Today's ProgramBenjamin Britten (1913-1976) Diversions; Peter Donohoe, piano; City of Birmingham Symphony; Simon Rattle, cond. EMI 54270

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1923, the belated premiere of a new ballet score by French composer Gabriel Pierné took place at the Palais Garnier, the home of the Paris Opera Ballet.The ballet was finished in 1915, but due to the turmoil of World War I had to wait seven years to be staged.  Also, its lighthearted, even frivolous subject matter would hardly have seemed appropriate during the trauma of wartime, but it perfectly suited the giddy post-war Paris of the 1920s. The ballet was titled Cydalise et le Chèvre-Pied (literally "Cydalise and the Goat-Foot" or "Cydalise and the Satyr") and, like Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloe, featured a cast of nymphs, satyrs and the god Pan. One excerpt of the ballet, known as "The Entry of the Little Fauns," became a popular concert selection on its own, although the complete score, like most of the other music by Pierné, is rarely performed in concert these days. Of late, however, more of Pierné’s melodious, well-crafted and oh-so-French scores have found their way to recordings. So anyone curious can sample more of his operas, his choral and symphonic works, and his solo piano and chamber music.Music Played in Today's ProgramGabriel Pierné (1863-1937) – The Entry of the Little Fauns, from Cydalise et le Chèvre-Pied (Orchestre National de Lille; Darrell Ang, cond.) Naxos 8.5736090 

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1932, an all-Maurice Ravel concert was given in Paris by the Lamoureux Orchestra at the Salle Erard. Ravel was on hand, conducting some of his works, including the premiere of his new Piano Concerto in G with pianist Marguerite Long the soloist.The critics were enthusiastic about the music, but less so about Ravel’s conducting skills.“Once again,” one wrote, “I wish to protest against the habit, more and more frequently indulged in, of attempting at all costs to bring a composer before the public in a part which he is incapable of filling. Monsieur Ravel is continually brought out as a pianist or as a conductor, whilst he cannot shine in either of these two specialties. ... His Pavane was unutterably slow, his Bolero dry and badly timed, and the accompaniment of the concerto lacked clarity and elasticity. ... But there can only be praise for the composer of all these delicate, subtle works, the orchestration of which abounds in amusing and profound inventions. ... The new concerto,” the review concludes, “is worthy of the other masterpieces we owe to Ravel.”Music Played in Today's ProgramMaurice Ravel (1875-1937) Piano Concerto in G; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, cond. London 452 448

SynopsisLate in 1941, Russian composer Igor Stravinsky was living in Hollywood — at 1260 N. Wetherly Drive, to be precise.Notoriously unflappable, and eminently practical when it came to commissions, Stravinsky apparently did not even bat an eye when he received a phone call from choreographer Georges Balanchine with an offer from Barnum’s Circus to write a short musical work for a ballet involving elephants. Again, to be precise, for Barnum’s star elephant ballerina, Modoc, who would be accompanied by 50 other elephants and dancers, all in tutus.“For what?” Stravinsky said.“For elephants,” Balanchine said.“How many?” Stravinsky countered.“A lot,” Balanchine replied.“How old?” Stravinsky asked.“Young,” Balanchine assured.”Well, if they’re young, I accept,” Stravinsky concluded.Stravinsky’s work, Circus Polka, had its debut at Madison Square Garden in New York by the Barnum Circus and was performed by what Stravinsky once called Barnum’s “respectable quadrupeds” some 400 times. Stravinsky then arranged his Circus Polka for symphony orchestra and conducted the premiere of that version (minus the elephants) with the Boston Symphony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on today’s date in 1944.Music Played in Today's ProgramIgor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Circus Polka; London Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. RCA 68865

SynopsisLike everyone else, young composers indulge in daydreams from time to time. One can easily imagine a 15-year-old composer wanna-be staring out the window and fantasizing that one day her music will be performed by big-name virtuosos and heard coast-to-coast on a national broadcast.That is exactly what did happen on today’s date in 2002, when 15-year-old composer Athena Adamopoulos heard Yo-Yo Ma and Christopher O’Riley perform her Soliloquy for cello and piano at a taping of From the Top — a nationally broadcast public radio program that showcases young classical musicians from around the country. Occasionally, the show also spotlights young composers, too, as it did the day Ma stopped by as a special guest.Adamopoulos said, “When I heard the piece in my head originally, I heard it something like this, but this is about 10 times better! It’s the most touching feeling in the world.”Even at 15, Adamopoulos was already a somewhat “experienced” composer. She had written several other chamber works by that date and had actually performed one of her first pieces on The Sally Jesse Raphael Show on TV when she was just 8.Music Played in Today's ProgramAthena Adamopoulos (b. 1987) Soliloquy; Yo Yo Ma, cello; Christopher O'Riley, piano; live recording courtesy of ‘From The Top’ (PRI)

SynopsisIn 1953, the Louisville Orchestra was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant of $500,000 to commission, premiere and record 20th-century music to be issued on its own label, Louisville First Edition Records. By 1997, it had released nearly 150 discs, containing more than 450 compositions by living composers.On today’s date in 1980, one of the Louisville commissions premiered and recorded by the orchestra was Tournaments by the then-41-year-old American composer John Corigliano.“As the title implies,” Corigliano writes, “Tournaments is a ‘contest piece,’ a sort of mini-Concerto for Orchestra in which first-desk players and entire sections vie with each other in displaying their virtuosity.”The Louisville Orchestra received many awards for its ambitious commissioning project, while Corigliano went on to win Grammys and an Oscar, not to mention the Grawemeyer and Pulitzer prizes.Corigliano also is proud of his teaching positions at the Juilliard School and Lehman College in New York. “I think it’s good for a composer to teach,” he says, “because you always have new students, and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Corigliano (b. 1938) Tournaments Overture; Louisville Orchestra; Sidney Harth, cond. Louisville First Edition LOU-771

SynopsisToday, we note two anniversaries concerning Handel and his music in London.On today’s date in 1710, the German-born composer’s music was performed in London for the first time when excerpts from his opera Rodrigo were used as incidental music during a revival of Ben Jonson’s comic play The Alchemist, written 100 years earlier.It’s a nice historical touch that in addition to writing satirical comedies such as The Alchemist, Jonson had supplied the poetic texts for elaborate masques staged at the court of King James I. Masques were a kind of precursor of the lavish Baroque operas such as Handel’s Rodrigo, which debuted in Italy just three years before its tunes were recycled for use on the British stage.By 1713, the vogue for Italian operas had reached London, and Handel was on hand to write and stage them. On today’s date in 1713, his opera Teseo had its premiere at the Queen’s Theatre in London. And, just to show that off-stage events could prove every bit as dramatic as those on-stage, the theater manager, a certain Owen Swiney, ran off to Italy with the box office receipts after the second night’s performance!Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Frederic Handel (1685-1757) Bourrée, from Rodrigo; Hallé Orchestra; John Barbirolli, cond. EMI 63956George Frederic Handel (1685-1757) Overture to Teseo; English Concert; Trevor Pinnock, cond. Archiv 419 219

SynopsisIn the musical world, there are many creative people with innovative ideas, but far fewer with the ability and persistence to raise the funds necessary to realize their visions.Today, a tip of the hat to American composer John Duffy, who, in 1982, was president of Meet the Composer, an organization that secured funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and other foundations for a large-scale residency program that paired rising American composers with major American orchestras. The composers included John Corigliano, Joan Tower, Stephen Paulus, Christopher Rouse, Libby Larsen and Alvin Singleton. Each wrote special works for their orchestras, works that were premiered and recorded as part of the program — a major career boost for any young composer.For example, Singleton was the composer chosen for the Atlanta residency, and on today’s date in 1988, that orchestra premiered his work After Fallen Crumbs.The unusual title doesn’t refer to arts funding, however apt that might seem, but derives from an earlier choral piece by Singleton whose text dealt with world hunger and closed with the lines, “An ant can feed a family with the fallen crumbs of an elephant.”Music Played in Today's ProgramAlvin Singleton (b. 1940) After Fallen Crumbs; Atlanta Symphony; Louis Lane, cond. Nonesuch 79231

SynopsisToday’s date marks the birthday in 1937 of American composer Robert Moran. A native of Denver, he studied in Berkley with Darius Milhaud and Luciano Berio and in Vienna with Hans Apostel, a pupil of Schoenberg and Berg.It was in Vienna that Moran overheard an unfamiliar waltz and was surprised to learn that Austrian composers were still writing them. Intrigued, he wrote one himself and asked 24 other contemporary composers to write more for The Waltz Project, a collection recorded as a Nonesuch LP in 1980 and later choreographed by the New York City Ballet.Moran’s catalog of works includes the choral setting Winni Ille Pu (a classical Latin translation of Winnie the Pooh) and Lunchbag Opera, scored for performers hidden in adult-size brown lunch bags, each armed with toy noise-makers to be played while strolling through — according to Moran’s instructions — “any important financial district or banking center at lunch time.”One of Moran’s large-scale works, The Game of the Antichrist from 2012, is based on a medieval mystery play from Bavaria. It’s scored for children’s chorus, adult vocalists, organ and a small ensemble that includes an alpine horn and cocktail bar piano.Music Played in Today's ProgramRobert Moran (b. 1937) Waltz in Memoriam Maurice Ravel; Yvar Mikhashoff, p. Nonesuch LP D-79011 (out of print)Robert Moran (b. 1937) Finale: Banishment of the Antichrist, from Game of the Antichrist Children’s Chorus of Gemeinde Vaterstetten; Vocal Ensemble Chrismos; Alexander Hermann, cond. Innova CD 251

SynopsisA remarkable shift of focus in music history occurred in the latter part of the 20th century when performers and musicologists began turning their attention to neglected works by women composers of the past and present. Composers such as Hildegard von Bingen, Clara Schumann, Amy Beach, Rebecca Clarke and Florence Price began to receive the attention they deserved.Much work remains to be done on this front, however.Take the case of Monserrate Ferrer Otero, also known as Monsita Ferrer, born in San Juan on this date in 1885. She began playing the piano at an early age and later pursued composition studies in New York. She was one of Puerto Rico’s first professional woman composers and in 1956 served as an adviser in the planning of its Conservatory of Music. Although enjoying success during her lifetime, only a few of her works are still performed today. This slow waltz, Bajo el Oro del Crepúsculo (or Under the Gold of Twilight) was dedicated to fellow travelers aboard the luxury liner Victoria Luisa.A string quartet and most of her other vocal and piano works remain unpublished long after Ferrer‘s death in 1966.Music Played in Today's ProgramMonserrate Ferrer Otero (1885-1966) Bajo el Oro del Crepúsculo (Vals lento); Kimberly Davis, p. from album ‘La Ondina: Una Colección de Música Puertorriqueña para Piano’

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1755, Montezuma, an opera by German Baroque composer Carl Heinrich Graun, had its premiere performance at the Berlin Court Opera of Frederick II, King of Prussia. Frederick supervised the rehearsals, which isn’t all that surprising, since he had drafted the opera’s libretto.Despite his well-deserved reputation as a military leader, Frederick the Great also was a talented musician and composer. As a young prince, he had tried to run away from home to pursue a musical career. His royal father was not amused. Heads rolled — one of them belonging to Frederick’s favorite music teacher — and thereafter Frederick focused on his military studies until he could ascend the throne. As king, Frederick built an opera house in Berlin and called some of Europe’s finest composers to his court — but also transformed Prussia into the military superpower of Europe.Some speculate that Frederick’s choice of Montezuma as an opera subject might be psychologically revealing. Perhaps Frederick saw the artistic, peace-loving, passive side of his nature in the tragic Mexican king and his aggressive, military side in Spanish invader Cortez.As Freud might have said a century or so later: “Very interesting.”Music Played in Today's ProgramCarl Heinrich Graun (1703-1759) Montezuma Overture; German Chamber Academy; Johannes Gortizki, cond. Capriccio 60032

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1973, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center premiered a new work by Pierre Boulez for solo flute and seven instruments, plus interaction with an electronic computer program, which generated sounds that reacted to (and interacted with) the solo flute. The piece was titled explosante-fixe, which translates as “exploding-fixed.”At the time, however, Boulez was frustrated by the still primitive computer technology. “You still had connections with wires and so on,” he recalled. “It was clumsy and unreliable.”Twenty years later, Boulez presented a new version of explosante-fixe, employing updated computer technology and midi-flute, controlled by a computer. This version was recorded, in effect “fixing the explosion.”Boulez once quoted with approval French dramatist Antonin Artaud, who described music as “collective hysteria and spells.” Yet Boulez carefully plotted out his compositions in obsessively meticulous detail.And, speaking of explosions, Boulez once suggested that as a radical break with the past, all opera houses should be blown up. Yet, as a conductor, Boulez was a devoted interpreter of some past composers, such as Debussy and Stravinsky — and, if you listen closely, echoes of their music can be heard in his own.Music Played in Today's ProgramPierre Boulez (1925-2016) explosante-fixe; Sophie Cherrier, solo midi flute; Ensemble Intercontemporain; Pierre Boulez, cond. DG 445 833

SynopsisIn essence, the music of the 18th century was an international, cosmopolitan language. But just as “nationalism” in language, culture and politics came to the fore in the 19th century, so did the radical new idea that each nation should develop its own, distinct, “national” style of music.On today’s date in 1840, a dramatic manifestation of this new trend occurred in the city of Pest. Hungarian-born piano virtuoso and composer Franz Liszt returned in triumph to his native land for a gala concert at the Hungarian National Theatre. After the performance, several Hungarian aristocrats, decked out in lavish native costumes, presented Liszt with a bejeweled Sword of Honor and delivered speeches in Hungarian praising him as an artist and patriot. For his part, Liszt delivered an equally impassioned speech calling for Hungarian cultural and political independence. The patriotic audience went berserk with joy and began a torchlight procession of about 5,000 people through the city, with Liszt at the front.It’s one of those nice, ironic touches of history, however, that Liszt, the standard bearer for Hungarian national music, didn’t really speak Hungarian well — and, for the record, delivered his patriotic address in French.Music Played in Today's ProgramFranz Liszt (1811-1886) Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2; Valentina Lisitsa, piano Audiofon 72055

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1941, the final orchestral work of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff received its premiere performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra, led by Eugene Ormandy.It was an orchestral suite, Symphonic Dances, and was originally planned as a triptych depicting the passage of time, with its three sections to be titled “Midday,” “Twilight” and “Midnight.” For this new work, Rachmaninoff recycled music from an older one: an unfinished ballet from 1915.Rachmaninoff was an unabashed and unrepentant Romantic at heart, with his musical style grounded in the late 19th-century tradition. Oddly enough, in all other matters Rachmaninoff was modern — even trendy. When living in Russia, he owned the first automobile in his rural part of the country. After settling in Switzerland, the home he built on Lake Lucerne was designed in the ultra-modern Bauhaus style, and Rachmaninoff liked to zoom around the lake in a snappy little speedboat.And, when in New York City, rather than sipping borscht at the Russian Tea Room, he would more likely be seen at a corner drug store, indulging in a quintessential American treat: ice-cream sodas.Music Played in Today's ProgramSergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Symphonic Dances; Minnesota Orchestra; Eiji Oue, cond. Reference 96

SynopsisToday’s date marks the birthday of American composer and educator Gardner Read, who was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1913.Read studied music at Northwestern University, then at the Eastman School, where his teachers included Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers. He also studied with Aaron Copland and Italian modernist composer Ildebrando Pizzetti. Read became a noted teacher himself and held posts in St. Louis, Kansas City, Cleveland and Boston. His Symphony No. 1 was premiered by John Barbirolli and won first prize at the New York Philharmonic Society's American Composers' Contest. He wrote four symphonies in all, as well as other orchestral, choral and chamber works and a significant body of works for or with pipe organ.In 1978, musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky wrote: “In American music, the name of Gardner Read is synonymous with the best traditions of modern classicism and inspired romanticism. ... To the musical analyst, it presents a technical interest as well, for in his use of the multicolored palette of modern instrumentation, Gardner Read offers fascinating examples of organized sonorities. The substance of his compositions is infinitely varied; he is a true Renaissance man, working in many different genres without prejudice and achieving his objectives with impeccable taste.”Music Played in Today's ProgramGardner Read (1913-2005): Allegro scherzando, from Symphony No. 4 (Cleveland Orchestra; Lorin Maazel, cond.) New World 742

SynopsisToday we celebrate hopeful beginnings — and happy endings.In Leipzig, on New Year’s Day 1724, Johann Sebastian Bach led the first performance of “Singet dem Herrn ein Neues Lied“ (or “Sing to the Lord a New Song,” in English) — a work we now know as his Cantata 190.About 200 of Bach’s church cantatas have survived. In 2000, British conductor John Eliot Gardiner decided to perform and record of all of them in the space of one liturgical year in historical churches in Europe and America. Starting on Christmas Day 1999, in Weimar, Germany, Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists set out to do just that.It was an ambitious undertaking, and Gardiner said, “Just as in planning to scale a mountain or cross an ocean, you can make meticulous provision, calculate your route and get all the equipment in order, in the end you have to deal with whatever the elements — both human and physical – throw at you at any given moment.”Gardiner’s Bach Cantata pilgrimage came to its triumphant conclusion on New Year’s Eve in 2000 at St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York City, with a performance of Cantata 190.Music Played in Today's ProgramJ.S. Bach (1685-1750): Cantata No. 190; Monteverdi Choir; English Baroque Soloists; John Eliot Gardiner, cond. SDG 137

SynopsisThese days, “musical piracy” can mean anything from illegal downloads to bootleg compact discs pressed in China.But back in 1878, the smash success of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta HMS Pinafore resulted in a flurry of unauthorized “pirate” productions in the United States. The two resourceful Englishmen decided the best way to put a stop to it was to premiere their next collaboration in New York, thereby establishing its copyright under American law.And so, on today’s date in 1879, it was Arthur Sullivan who conducted the pit orchestra of the Fifth Avenue Theater in Manhattan for the first full performance of their latest creation, titled, perhaps not coincidentally, The Pirates of Penzance.The New York Times review was glowing in its praise but did point out that the new work was strikingly similar to Pinafore.“There is genuine musical merit in several of the numbers,” it said. “… A chorus of policemen was the most musically humorous number of the evening and provoked more amusement than anything else. ... In response to repeated calls, the author and composer appeared before the curtain and bowed their acknowledgments.”Music Played in Today's ProgramGilbert and Sullivan - The Pirates of Penzance; D'Oyly Carte Opera; Royal Philharmonic; Isidore Godfrey, cond. London 425 196

SynopsisNow 18th-century opera is supposed to be a rather staid and stuffy affair. These operas invariably had happy endings, with all the messy human passion and conflicts amicably resolved by the opera’s finale.But 18th-century opera could arouse some serious emotion offstage. In 1704, an 18-year-old composer named George Frideric Handel was employed as a violinist and harpsichordist in the orchestra of the Hamburg opera house. He made the acquaintance of another young composer, 23-year-old Johann Mattheson. The two became fast friends until, that is, a December performance of Mattheson’s opera Cleopatra, during which Handel refused to turn over the harpsichord to Mattheson.“Hey, it’s my opera, after all — move over!” Mattheson must have said, but to no avail. One thing led to another, and the result was a duel. It is said that Handel’s life was saved by a button on his coat that deflected one of Mattheson’s more lethal sword-thrusts.Thankfully, in the best tradition of 18th-century opera, the two reconciled on today’s date in 1704, dining together and attending a Hamburg rehearsal of Handel’s first opera, Almira, becoming, as Mattheson put it, “better friends than ever.”Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Frederic Handel (1685-1757) Oboe Concerto No. 3; Heinz Holliger, oboe; English Chamber Orchestra; Raymond Leppard, cond. Philips 454 363

SynopsisIt might seem odd to think of Max Bruch as a 20th-century composer. After all, his three greatest hits — his Violin Concerto No. 1, his Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra, and his setting of the Hebraic liturgical chant Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra — were all written in the 19th century.But this archetypal German Romantic composer, who was born in 1838, lived to the ripe old age of 82, and kept producing new works up to the time of his death in 1920.One of these, a Concerto for Two Pianos, was commissioned by an American duo piano team, Ottilie and Rose Suttro, who premiered it with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra on today’s date in 1916. The new work was well-received and its composer praised.But there is a somewhat ironic historical footnote to this successful premiere: It appears the Suttro Duo drastically revised and even rewrote parts of Bruch’s score for their 1916 performance, unbeknown to the composer. It wouldn’t be until 1971 that the concerto was performed as he had actually written it.Music Played in Today's ProgramMax Bruch (1838-1920) Concerto for Two Pianos; Güher and Süher Pekinel, pianos; Philharmonia Orchestra; Neville Marriner, cond. Chandos 9711

SynopsisDecades before the Cuban revolution, some decidedly revolutionary sounds had their birth in that country’s capital city on today’s date in 1930 during a concert of ultramodern music presented by the Havana Philharmonic.The concert offered the premiere performance of a new Piano Concerto by American composer Henry Cowell, who also was the soloist. Cowell’s concerto broke new ground — and perhaps a few piano strings — by employing what Cowell dubbed “tone clusters.” These dense, dissonant chords were produced by pounding the keys of the piano with the fist, palms or extended forearms.Cowell also took his new techniques to the Old World in the 1920s and ‘30s, performing concerts of his works in Europe. These attracted the attention of Bela Bartok, who asked Cowell’s permission to employ tone clusters in his works, and Arnold Schoenberg, who invited Cowell to perform for his Berlin composition classes.Cowell’s oft-stated goal was to embrace what he described as “the whole world of music,” whether dissonant or consonant, radical or traditional, Western or non-Western. Perhaps that ideal was even more revolutionary than his Piano Concerto must have seemed back in 1930.Music Played in Today's ProgramHenry Cowell (1897-1965) Piano Concerto; Stefan Litwin, piano; Saarbrucken Radio Symphony; Michael Stern, cond. Col Legno 20064

SynopsisBack in the 18th century, Frederick the Great of Prussia was a prolific composer of sonatas, concertos and even a few symphonies. In the 19th century, Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria, composed songs and choral pieces. There have been other composers who were members of the European nobility, but more often they crop up as patrons of music rather than creators of it.But in our time, Belgian composer Jacqueline Fontyn, who was born in Antwerp on today’s date in 1930, was made an honorary baroness by the King of Belgium in 1993 in recognition of her contributions to music in her native country and around the world.Now, Fontyn is probably a composer you never heard of until today, but she has a sizable body of orchestral and chamber works and enjoyed an international career as a composition teacher, holding positions at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland, as well as in Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Seoul and her native Belgium.Her music might be described as “European modern.” Today, you can find all the manuscript scores of Fontyn in the Library of Congress.Music Played in Today's ProgramJacqueline Fontyn (b. 1930) Piano Trio (1956); Morgenstern Trio AVI Music CD 8553315

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1734, the second cantata from the Christmas Oratorio of Johann Sebastian Bach had its first performance in Leipzig, Germany. This cantata takes its inspiration from Luke’s Gospel describing shepherd keeping watch over their flocks and opens with a purely instrumental Sinfonia that sets the scene, evoking the sound of the shepherds’ rustic pipes.In Bach’s day, a famous builder of wind instruments lived in Leipzig. His name was J. H. Eichentopf, and he is credited with inventing an oboe da caccia — that’s Italian for "hunting oboe." The instrument was curved with a big brass horn bell at its end. Bach calls for this instrument in his Christmas Oratorio, but after Bach’s time, it fell out of use, and knowledge of its exact sound and construction was lost.In the 20th century, two well-preserved (but unplayable) hunting oboes built by Eichentopf survived in museums in Denmark and Sweden, and from their measurements, modern-day copies were made. These were used for the first time in over 200 years for the period-instrument recording of the Christmas Oratorio conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt that appeared in 1973.Music Played in Today's ProgramJ.S. Bach (1685-1750) Cantata No. 2 Sinfonia, from The Christmas Oratorio; Vienna Concentus Musicus; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond.

SynopsisIn the 1930s, many Americans had a hard time making ends meet. During the Great Depression, opera and concert tickets didn’t always figure into most family’s budgets, but thanks to live radio broadcasts, American families enjoyed a veritable Golden Age of operatic and symphonic music in the comfort of their homes.On Christmas Day in 1931, NBC made radio history when it broadcast a matinee performance of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hansel und Gretel live from the stage of the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City to radio listeners coast to coast. The on-air host was American composer Deems Taylor, whose opera Peter Ibbetson would be included in a live Met broadcast the following spring.And on Christmas Day in 1937, music of Antonio Vivaldi opened the first live NBC Symphony broadcast conducted by legendary Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini. Live NBC Symphony broadcasts under Toscanini would continue until the conductor’s retirement in 1954. Along with Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, Toscanini included a handful of American works in his programs and, in 1938, conducted the broadcast premiere of Samuel Barber’s well-known Adagio for Strings.Music Played in Today's ProgramEnglebert Humperdinck (1854-1921) Hansel and Gretel Overture; Bamberg Symphony; Karl Anton Rickenbacher, cond. Virgin 61128Antonio Vivaldi (1674-1741) Concerto Grosso in D; Moscow Virtuosi; Vladimir Spivakov, cond. BMG 60240

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1871, the Opera House of Cairo, Egypt, presented the world premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida. The khedive of Egypt commissioned the opera for his new theater, which had opened in 1869 with a production of Verdi’s Rigoletto.Here’s how Verdi described it to his publisher, in Verdi's customary laconic fashion: “I was invited to write an opera for a very distant country. I replied, ‘No’. I was approached again and offered a very large sum. I still said, ‘No’. A month later, I was sent a printed synopsis and told it was the work of a person in high authority (which I don’t believe). Even so, I found it excellent and replied that I would set it to music on such and such terms. Three days later, I received a telegram that read: Accepted.”For his efforts, the 58-year-old Verdi received four times his usual fee — and the honorary title of Commendatore of the Ottoman Order. The Cairo premiere was a great success, even though Verdi chose to spend his Christmas Eve at home, arranging for the Italian premiere of his Egyptian opera at Milan’s La Scala opera house early the following year.Music Played in Today's ProgramGiuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) Grand March, from Aida; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond. Sony 48226

SynopsisOh, to have been in Vienna on today’s date in 1785! Wolfgang Mozart had just finished a new piano concerto a week earlier and quite likely performed it himself for the first time as an intermission feature at a performance of the oratorio Ester, by Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, conducted by Antonio Salieri.Now wouldn’t that have made for a good scene in the movie Amadeus?Fast forward 11 years for another memorable concert at the Theater an der Wien, when on today’s date in 1806, it was Beethoven’s turn to premiere one of his new concertos in Emanuel Schikaneder’s Viennese theater. Alongside works of Mozart, Méhul, Cherubini and Handel, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was introduced to the world, with Franz Clement as the soloist.Beethoven’s friend Czerny recalled that Clement’s performance was greeted with “noisy bravos.”But a contemporary Viennese music critic wrote: “While there are beautiful things in the concerto … the endless repetition of some commonplace passages could prove fatiguing.” The reviewer’s final assessment? “If Beethoven pursues his present path, it will go ill with him and the public alike.”Music Played in Today's ProgramWolfgang Mozart (1756-1791) Piano Concerto No. 22; Mitsuko Uchida, piano; English Chamber Orchestra; Jeffrey Tate, cond. Philips 420 187Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791) Magic Flute Overture; Zurich Opera House Orchestra; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec 95523Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Violin Concerto; Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin; New York Philharmonic; Kurt Masur, cond. DG 471 349

SynopsisWhether you live in sunny California or snowy Minnesota, the arrival of the solstice means, “It’s official: Winter is here!” And if you were born someplace sunny, but moved to someplace snowy, the arrival of winter is pretty hard to ignore.Winter must have made an impression on the transplanted Italian composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, who was born in Florence but settled in Paris and ended up as the court composer for King Louis XIV.One of Lully’s operas, Isis, had its premiere in the winter of 1676 and contains a chorus of “Trembleurs,” or “Trembling People from the Frozen Climes,” whose teeth chatter in slurred tremolos. This chorus became particular famous for the wintry pantomime ballet that accompanied it, as well as for its evocative music.Of course, the most famous of all Baroque winter music was served up by another Italian, Antonio Vivaldi, who was born in Venice but traveled widely in Northern Europe as well and died in Vienna.Vivaldi’s “Winter” from The Four Seasons includes its own musical shivers, not to mention a musical depiction of slipping and sliding on icy streets.Music Played in Today's ProgramJean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) Isis; Philippe Caillard Chorale and Orchestra Erato 20983Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Winter, from The Four Seasons; Enrico Onofrio, violin; Il Giardino Armonico Teldec 97671

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1934, on a radio broadcast from Moscow, the orchestral suite Prokofiev culled from his film score to Lt. Kije received its first performance. The original film recounted the efforts of 18th-century Russian bureaucrats to invent a suitably impressive life and death for a nonexistent Russian solider, whose unusual name, actually a typographical error on a list of real soldiers’ names, caught the attention of the czar.If the fictional Russian bureaucrats in Lt. Kije were terrified lest they displease the czar, real-life composers living in the Soviet Union of the 1930s were desperately anxious to keep on the good side of their ruler, dictator Joseph Stalin. It was, to put it mildly, a matter of life and death.For Stalin’s 60th birthday, which fell on Dec. 21, 1939, Prokofiev composed a choral tribute, “Zdravitza,” which translates as “A Congratulatory Toast.” It, too, was broadcast on today’s date, this time booming over loudspeakers throughout Moscow’s squares and side streets.Prokofiev’s son Oleg recalls running home through the swirling snow eager to tell the big news: “Daddy! They’re playing you outside!”Music Played in Today's ProgramSergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) Lieutenant Kije Suite; Chicago Symphony; Claudio Abbado, cond. DG 447 419Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) A Toast!; St. Petersburg Philharmonic Choir; New Philharmonia Orchestra; Alexander Titov, cond. Beaux 38

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1738, a once-successful French composer died destitute in an asylum of Charenton. It was a lamentable end for the 56-year-old Jean-Joseph Mouret, who had once served the French king at the Palais Royal and whose operas had once graced the stage of the Paris Opéra.How ironic, then, that Mouret would achieve belated fame in 20th-century America when the “Rondeau” from his Symphonies and Fanfares for the King's Supper was chosen as the theme for the Masterpiece Theatre TV series on PBS. Christopher Sarson, the original executive producer of Masterpiece Theatre, recalls how this came about.“In 1962, my future wife and I went to one of the Club Med villages in Italy. We were in these little straw huts and every morning we were summoned to breakfast by that theme. It was just magic. ... I wanted to use it for Masterpiece Theatre but there was no way I could bear to put a French piece of music on something that was supposed to be English. I went through all kinds of English composers and nothing worked. So, Mouret became the theme.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJean-Joseph Mouret (1682-1738) Rondeau; Wynton Marsalis, trumpet; English Chamber Orchestra; Anthony Newman, cond. Sony 66244

SynopsisThe short career of Charles Tomlinson Griffes is one of the more tragic “might-have-beens” of American music history. Griffes died at 35 in 1920 just as his music was being taken up by the major American orchestras of his day.As most American composers of his time, Griffes studied in Germany, and his early works were, not surprisingly, rather Germanic in tone. But beginning around 1911, he began composing works inspired by French impressionism and the art of Asia.The Boston Symphony, under Pierre Monteux, premiered his tone poem The Pleasure Dome of Kubla-Khan and the New York Symphony, under Walter Damrosch, his Poeme for flute and orchestra. On today’s date in 1919, the Philadelphia Orchestra, under Leopold Stokowski, premiered four orchestral pieces: Nocturne, Bacchanale, Clouds and one of his best works, The White Peacock. The Philadelphia newspaper reviews of the premieres called Griffes’ work “one of the hopeful intimations for the future of American music.”A severe bout of influenza left Griffes too weak to attend these Philadelphia premieres under Stokowski, and he died of a lung infection the following spring.Music Played in Today's ProgramCharles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920) The White Peacock; Dallas Symphony; Andrew Litton, cond. Dorian 90224

SynopsisIn the section of his autobiography on the 1960s, Aaron Copland wrote: “I have often called myself a ‘work-a-year’ man … and 1964 belonged to the band piece ‘Emblems.’ Among the invitations I received to compose new pieces was one from clarinetist Keith Wilson, who was president of the College Band Directors National Association, for a work to be played at the organization’s national convention.“I hesitated for a moment,” Copland continued, “but accepted when I was told that the piece would be bought sight unseen by at least two hundred bands!”Emblems premiered in Tempe, Arizona, on today’s date in 1964, performed by the USC Band, conducted by William Schaefer. Here’s how Copland explained the work’s title: “An emblem stands for something. … I called this work ‘Emblems’ because it seemed to me to suggest musical states of being: noble or aspirational feelings, playful or spirited feelings.”Close listeners might hear harmonic echoes of the spiritual “Amazing Grace” in the slow opening and close of Emblems. Copland said, "Curiously, the harmonies had been conceived without reference to that tune. It was only by chance that I realized a connection between my harmonies and ‘Amazing Grace’!"Music Played in Today's ProgramAaron Copland (1900-1990) Emblems; U.S. Marine Band; Lt. Col. Michael J. Colburn, cond. Naxos 8. 570243

SynopsisWhen Franz Schubert died in Vienna in 1828, he left behind several manuscripts of symphonies unpublished and, in some cases, unperformed during his short lifetime. It wasn’t until today’s date in 1865 — 37 years after Schubert’s death — that his most famous symphony received its premiere performance in his hometown of Vienna.This Symphony in B-minor came to be called the Unfinished, since its manuscript score contained only two completely finished movements. A normal Viennese symphony of Schubert’s time should contain four movements, and, in fact, a fairly complete piano sketch of the third movement exists, as does a full score of just the first nine measures of that same movement.When Johann van Herbeck conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in the first performance in 1865, he tacked on the last movement of Schubert’s Third Symphony as a finale. More recently, some scholars have argued that a portion of Schubert’s Rosamunde incidental music was in fact the missing final movement of his symphony.Despite these attempts to finish the Unfinished, most performers and audiences seem content to hear the score as Schubert left it — romantically cut short, just like the composer’s tragically short life.Music Played in Today's ProgramFranz Schubert (1795-1828) Symphony No. 8 (arr. Brian Newbould); Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields; Neville Marriner, cond. Philips 412 176

SynopsisNostalgic fans of old-time radio and TV shows will have no trouble recognizing the overture to Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek’s comic opera Donna Diana as the signature theme for Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, an adventure series set in the far North that chronicled the exploits of a Royal Canadian Mountie and his loyal husky, Yukon King.This music, however, had its real birth on today’s date in 1894 at the New German Theater of Prague, where Reznicek’s opera had its first performance. Reznicek wrote other operas, but Donna Diana was his one international hit. Gustav Mahler thought highly of it and conducted its premiere in Vienna in 1904.In 1932, Reznicek and another famous composer, Richard Strauss, formed an international society for composers. When Reznicek resisted a Nazi takeover of that organization in 1942, the 82-year-old was punished by having his music confiscated by the Propaganda Ministry. His death three years later amid the bombed-out rubble of Berlin was a sad one. Reznicek died in 1945 of typhoid fever aggravated by starvation.It was a tragic end for a composer best known for such lighthearted music!Music Played in Today's ProgramEmil von Reznicek (1860-1945) Donna Diana Overture; Symphony Nova Scotia; Georg Tintner, cond. CBC 5167

SynopsisA color wheel is a circular chart showing the relationship of the colors of the spectrum. It was originally fashioned by Isaac Newton in 1666 and still serves as a useful tool for painters and graphic designers today.Color Wheel also is the title of an orchestral showpiece by American composer Aaron Jay Kernis — a work that was premiered on today’s date in 2001 by the Philadelphia Orchestra at the opening concerts of the then-new Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.“The honor of being asked to compose the first music played in this new hall led me to conceive of a ‘miniature’ concerto for orchestra which treats it as a large and dynamic body of sound and color,” Kernis said.“I sometimes see colors when I compose,” he confessed, “and the qualities of certain chords do elicit specific sensation in me — for example, I see A-major as bright yellow. I’ve also been fascinated with Sufi whirling dervishes and their ecstatic spinning. This work may have some ecstatic moments but it is full of tension, continuous energy and drive.”Music Played in Today's ProgramAaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960) Color Wheel; Nashville Symphony; Giancarlo Guerrero, cond. Naxos 8.559838

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1918, the Metropolitan Opera in New York offered the world premiere performance of not one, not two, but three new operas by Giacomo Puccini.The three one-act operas are collectively billed as Il Trittico, or The Triptych. In order of their presentation at the Met, the triptych consisted of Il Tabarro (The Cloak), a rather sordid tale of passion and murder, followed by a sentimental tear-jerker titled Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica, after its Romantic heroine), and, for a comic finale, Gianni Schicchi, titled after the resourceful hero of its comic plot.Musical America reported a warm welcome for the three new Puccini operas, but did find Il Tabarro “in the main, black and brutal.” In that journal’s opinion, the hit of the evening was the comic opera, Gianni Schicci. In particular, one brief soprano aria from that opera so pleased the first-night audience that it had to be encored.Over time, this little aria, “O Mio Babbino Caro,” has become one of Puccini’s greatest hits and has even cropped up in the soundtracks of movies such as A Room With a View and G.I. Jane.Music Played in Today's ProgramGiacomo Puccini (1858-1924) Gianni Schicchi; Angela Gheorghiu, soprano; London Symphony; Antonio Pappano, cond. EMI 56587

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1836, Chopin held a soiree in his apartment in Paris. The famous tenor Adolphe Nourit sang some Schubert songs, accompanied by Chopin’s friend, Franz Liszt. Liszt and Chopin then played a new sonata for piano four-hands by Ignaz Moscheles.In attendance was a petite, olive-skinned baroness turned writer known by her pen name, George Sand. Sand was notorious for her racy novels and for her highly unorthodox lifestyle. She liked cigars, for example, and often showed up at parties wearing men's clothing without the required permit.Chopin had met her earlier and was not at first impressed. The 26-year-old composer was engaged to a much younger woman back home in Poland, a pale beauty who couldn’t be more unlike the 32-year-old Sand. But, anxious to make a good impression, Sand showed up for Chopin’s soiree wearing white pantaloons and a scarlet sash (the colors of the Polish flag) — and left her stogies at home!All it took was a “Dear Frederic” letter from the girl back home, and before long the Chopin-Sand romance was the talk of Paris. “My heart was conquered,” Chopin wrote in his journal. “She understood me.”Music Played in Today's ProgramFrederic Chopin (1810-1849) Polonaise in C-sharp; Garrick Ohlsson, piano; Arabesque 6642

Synopsis1685 was a good year for composers: Bach, Scarlatti and Handel were all born in 1685, as was, on today’s date, Italian composer Lodovico Giustini.Like Bach, Giustini came from a family of musicians, and he began his career by succeeding his father as church organist, eventually landing the prize organ post at his hometown cathedral, a position he retained for the rest of his life. Giustini also took up a new-fangled keyboard instrument known as the forte-piano, which, unlike the harpsichord, struck the instrument’s strings with small hammers rather than plucking them like a harp. This new technology allowed music to be played loud and soft (piano and forte), with a more nuanced range of dynamics and phrasing.Giustini’s claim to fame is that in 1732 he published the first collection of sonatas written specifically for the instrument we now call the piano. Although Giustini’s sonatas attracted little attention when they were first published, since only a few wealthy royals could afford to own these new and expensive instruments, over the next two centuries thousands of pianos — and piano sonatas — began appearing in even the most modest of musical households.Music Played in Today's ProgramLodovico Giustini (1685-1743) Canzona, from Sonata No. 12; Andrea Coen, fortepiano Brilliant Classics 94021

SynopsisThe adjective most commentators turn to when describing the six symphonies of Carl Nielsen is “quirky.” Certainly, the great Danish composer had a wicked sense of humor and loved poking fun at anything pompous and pretentious — including the conventions of writing a symphony. Just when the audience members think they know what is going to happen next — or should, in a conventional symphony — Nielsen delighted in throwing them a curveball. For example, as any seasoned concertgoer knows, in most cases when the strings start playing what sounds like a fugue theme, you have a reasonable expectation that the end must be near. But in Nielsen’s last symphony, his Sixth, titled Sinfonia semplice or A Simple Symphony, which premiered in Copenhagen on today’s date in 1925, all sorts of crazy things happen in the last movement. And, since everyone knows the bassoon is supposed to be “the clown of the orchestra,” Nielsen’s parting shot is to give that instrument the last word — deflating any lofty expectations of a grand Romantic symphonic finale with what most politely could be described as giving that idea the raspberries.Music Played in Today's ProgramCarl Nielsen (1865-1931) – Symphony No. 6 (Sinfonia Semplice); San Francisco Symphony; Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Decca  425 607

SynopsisWolfgang Mozart died on Dec. 5, 1791, leaving behind an unfinished Requiem Mass, commissioned anonymously by Count Franz von Walsegg, a 28-year-old Austrian nobleman who had the ignoble habit of passing off works he commissioned as his own. The Requiem was intended to be a memorial to the count’s 20-year-old wife, Anna, who had died earlier that year.Mozart’s wife, Constanza, arranged for some of Mozart’s pupils to complete the unfinished Requiem and eventually delivered it to Count Walsegg in order to receive the full commission fee promised her husband.But just five days after Mozart’s death in 1791, the portions of the Requiem that Mozart had completed were sung at a memorial service organized by his friend and collaborator Emanuel Schikaneder.Schikaneder was the librettist for Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute and ran his own opera house at the Theater auf der Wieden in a Viennese suburb. It was there that Mozart’s Magic Flute had premiered, and it was Schikaneder’s musicians who performed parts of Mozart’s Requiem for the first time on today’s date in 1791, at St. Michael’s Church in the center of Vienna.Music Played in Today's ProgramWolfgang Mozart (1756-1791) Requiem

SynopsisWhat’s your favorite season? And how would you describe it in words? And if you’re a composer, how would you describe it in music?The most famous musical depiction is The Four Seasons, a set four violin concertos by Italian Baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi, but other composers have evoked the mood and sounds of the seasons. On today’s date in 2009, American composer Philip Glass tossed his hat into the ring with the Toronto Symphony premiere of a new work, The American Four Seasons.Glass’ seasonal tone painting, like Vivaldi, is a set of four concertos, written for violinist Robert McDuffie, who also performed the premiere. But when McDuffie finally saw the finished score, he felt Glass’s view of some of the seasons did not quite match his own, so they came up with an unusual solution: In the published score, Glass did not provide titles for any of the four concertos, letting each listener (or performer) decide for him- or herself which concerto matched which season.So, in this case of this Four Seasons, it’s all up to you.Music Played in Today's ProgramPhilip Glass (b. 1938) The American Four Seasons (Violin Concerto No. 2); Robert McDuffie, vn; London Philharmonic; Marin Alsop, cond. Orange Mountain CD 0072

SynopsisAt Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 1908, Gustav Mahler conducted the New York Symphony, the 200-voice Oratorio Society chorus and two vocal soloists in the American premiere of his Symphony No. 2, his Resurrection Symphony.These days, Mahler’s Second ranks among his most popular works. But how was this new music received by New Yorkers back in 1908? An unsigned review in the New York Daily Tribune noted:“It was by demonstrations of far more than mere politeness that the large audience found vent for its feelings of interest and pleasure in this new music. ... After the Schubertian second movement, there was long continued applause, and at the close of the composition … there was cheering and waving of handkerchiefs until Mr. Mahler was compelled to appear several times to bow his thanks and appreciation.”As for the music itself, the review opined: “Of the beauty and insight of certain episodes, there can be no doubt. … There seems, however, a lack of significant and commanding originality. It is more cerebral than passionate, more intellectual than compellingly emotional.”Music Played in Today's ProgramGustav Mahler Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection"); New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond.

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1975, the Oakland, California, Youth Orchestra gave the first performance of a symphony by a Bay area resident, American composer Lou Harrison. He began sketches for this symphonic score back in 1942 and tinkered with it off and off until the day of its premiere performance, even stapling in 15 additional measures to the young players’ parts at their final dress rehearsal.The commission for Harrison’s Fourth Symphony, subtitled The Elegiac, came from the Koussevitzky Foundation, and in part was written as a tribute to the memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky, two of the 20th century’s greatest new music patrons. But the intensely personal tone of this elegiac symphony was prompted by the death of Harrison’s mother, which was followed by the death of his close friend, iconoclastic American composer and instrument inventor Harry Partch.The symphony’s first movement is titled “Tears of the Angel Israfel” — the angel of music in Islamic lore — and the score also bears two inscriptions. The first reads “Epicurus said of death: where death is, we are not; where we are, death is not; therefore, death is nothing to us.” The second inscription is a quote from Horace: “Bitter sorrows will grow milder with music.”Music Played in Today's ProgramLou Harrison (1917-2003) Symphony No. 2 (Elegiac); American Composers Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, cond. MusicMasters 60204

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1998, two new Christmas carols debuted in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the “Welcome Christmas” choral concert of VocalEssence conducted by Philip Brunelle.The two carols, “Sweet Noel,” by Joan Griffith, and “The Virgin’s Cradle Hymn,” by Richard Voorhaar, were the prize-winning submissions entered in a contest arranged by the Plymouth Music Series and the American Composers Forum. The idea was to inspire contemporary composers to create new carols that — who knows? — might turn out to be classics over time.As Brunelle put it, “The Christmas carols that we love to sing and hear have a timelessness about them wrapped in their music and words. Out of submissions from all across the USA, [we] selected two that we felt captured this feeling.”Since 1998, the “Welcome Christmas” Carol Contest has continued as an annual tradition, and hundreds of worthy carols have been submitted. Each year, two are selected and premiered in December by Brunelle’s choral ensemble. These “Welcome Christmas” concerts are recorded by American Public Media for both regional broadcast and national distribution.Music Played in Today's ProgramRichard Voorhaar - The Virgin's Cradle Hymn; Vocalessence; Philip Brunelle, cond. Clarion 939

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1998, at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Orchestra, led by Eiji Oue, premiered a new symphony by American composer Libby Larsen. This was her Symphony No. 4, a work scored for strings alone.Larsen explained her decision to do without winds, brass and percussion as follows: “This symphony is both homage to strings and an essay about them. Strings, the core of the symphony orchestra, are supremely lyrical and supremely emotional. Yet, throughout the 20th century, perhaps marked by the performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, orchestral compositions have tended to become more and more rhythmic and percussive and less lyrical.”Larsen goes on to make this interesting observation: “In each century since the 1600s, the orchestra has added a new choir of sound to its ensemble: the Baroque orchestra consisted chiefly of strings; woodwinds were added during the 1700s; brass during the 1800s. The 20th century has added the percussion section.”Larsen said her new symphony was an attempt to capture something of the melody and inflections of 20th-century American English, as it is spoken and sung, through orchestral strings alone.Music Played in Today's ProgramLibby Larsen (b. 1950) Symphony No. 4 (String Symphony); Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Joel Revzen, cond. Koch International 7481

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1693, a new opera based on an old legend had its premiere performance at the Académie de la Musique in Paris. The new opera was by French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The old legend was that of Medea, the sorceress who murdered her children to avenge her abandonment by their father, the Greek hero Jason.Charpentier’s Médée (to give his opera its French title) was well received by its first audiences. The most celebrated French soprano of her day sang the title role, but one contemporary critic, impressed by Charpentier’s achievement, wrote, “The emotions are so vivid, that even if the role were only spoken, the opera would not fail to make a great impression.”In the three centuries following Charpentier’s opera, many other musicians have taken up the Medea legend as well. In 1980, American composer Jacob Druckman took themes from three famous Medea operas and worked these into a three-movement orchestral suite, Prisms, with Charpentier’s version of Medea having pride of place and quoted in the first movement of Druckman’s score.Music Played in Today's ProgramMarc-Antoine Charpentier (1635 – 1704) Médée; Les Arts Florissants; William Christie, cond. Harmonia Mundi 90.1139/41Jacob Druckman (1928 – 1996) Prism; New York Philharmonic; Zubin Mehta, cond. New World 335

SynopsisParents are not supposed to have favorite children. By analogy, maybe composers aren’t supposed to love some of their pieces more than others — but they often do.In the case of Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, his little Sonatina for violin and piano was one of his proudest creations. He wrote it for two of his older children, 15-year-old Otilie and 10-year-old Antonin Junior.The Sonatina was composed in 1893 while Dvořák and his family were living in America. In the fall of that year, Dvořák had paid a visit to the Czech community in St. Paul, Minnesota, and while there had visited Minnehaha Falls, a local tourist attraction. After viewing the picturesque little waterfall, Dvořák jotted down a musical idea, a bit of rippling water music that found its way into the Sonatina’s slow movement.The Sonatina was finished in New York City on today’s date in 1893 — less than two weeks before the premiere of Dvořák’s New World Symphony at Carnegie Hall. Despite the tremendous success of that symphony, Dvořák liked to say his proudest premiere was when his children played the Sonatina for him in the family parlor.Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonin Dvořák (1841 – 1904) Sonatina in G; Ivan Zenaty, violin; Antonin Kubalek, piano; Dorian 90171

SynopsisFor the last 30 years of his life, Aaron Copland lived in a ranch-style house built in the 1940s on Washington Street in Cortlandt Manor, New York. After his death in 1990, the house became a National Historical Landmark and also the site of a residency program for composers. In 2017, one of them was Juri Seo, a composer and pianist based in New Jersey.Now, there was a lot of snow in Cortlandt Manor that year, and maybe that had something to do with it, but the chamber work Juri Seo worked on there was titled String Quartet - Infinite Season. As she explains:“After each snow, golden sunlight hinted at the spring’s coming warmth. The turbulent fluctuation of the weather made me acutely aware of the passage of time. The seasons seemed to alternate by the day, yet the certainty of spring never faltered. … This was my solace: The seasons, with their infinite gradations of difference, will return again, and the birds and insects will carry on, cycle after cycle, an infinite rebirth.”This new work was written for the Argus Quartet, which gave its premiere performance on today’s date in 2017 at Princeton University.Music Played in Today's ProgramJuri Seo (b. 1981) String Quartet - Infinite Season; Argus Quartet Innova 1-022

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2006, the Minnesota Orchestra did something quite unusual: it gave a public concert consisting of nine works that had never been performed by a major orchestra, all written by young composers at the start of their careers. The new pieces had been workshopped and rehearsed the previous week as part of the Orchestra’s annual Composers Institute for promising new works by promising new composers. The public concert was billed as “Future Classics,” suggesting that though the pieces were new, they would have staying power.One of the works on the program that chilly December night in Minneapolis was selected as the audience’s favorite, and has also gone on to be programmed again by not only the Minnesota Orchestra, but others around the world.  The work was by a Pennsylvania-born composer named Missy Mazzoli titled These Worlds In Us. Dedicated to her father, it ruminates on his service in the Vietnam War. Blogging after its 2006 performance in Minneapolis, Mazzoli wrote: “Participating in the [Composer] Institute was the single most important thing I have ever done as a composer, not only for the performance but also for the long love affair with the orchestra this week has inspired.”Music Played in Today's ProgramMissy Mizzoli (b. 1980) – These Worlds in Us (Arctic Philharmonic; Tim Weiss, cond.) Bis 2572

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2000, the Boston Symphony gave the premiere performance of the Second Symphony of American composer John Corigliano. For strings alone, the symphony was a reworking of a string quartet that Corigliano had composed for the farewell tour of the Cleveland Quartet in 1996.The symphony was well received, and the following year was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music. “I am more than shocked. ... I don't know what to say,” Corigliano said upon receiving the news. “It's one of the great surprises of my life.”Perhaps doubly surprising, since, as a young man, Corigliano pretty much ruled out writing even one symphony, let alone two. “My thought then,” he said, “was that there were so many great symphonies [already]. I could satisfy only my ego by writing yet another. Only the death of countless friends from AIDS prompted me to write my Symphony No. 1. ... A world-scale tragedy, I felt, needed a comparably epic form.“Then the Boston [asked] that I write a second symphony to honor the l00th anniversary of their justly famous Symphony Hall. At first I declined, stating my earlier reservations, but they were quite insistent.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Corigliano (b. 1938) String Quartet; Cleveland Quartet Telarc 80415

SynopsisUtah came to the stage of Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, musically speaking, on this date in 1989, when the Orchestra of St. Luke’s premiered Utah Symphony, by American composer John Duffy. His Symphony No. 1 was commissioned by Gibbs Smith, the president of the Utah chapter of the Sierra Club to draw attention to the endangered and pristine wilderness lands of that state.Duffy knew this region firsthand. “I began sketching the symphony while hiking through southeastern Utah in the spring of 1988,” he said. “The landscape astounded me: Dramatic contrasts of light and shadow ... violent changes in weather ... expansive vistas. Here in the ancient Indian ruins, canyons, cathedral-like Mesas and fantastical slabs of rock is a spiritual presence and aesthetic wonder of pure, majestic, humbling wilderness.”Duffy is perhaps best known for writing the score to the 9-hour PBS documentary series Heritage: Civilization and the Jews. He was born in the Bronx and studied with Aaron Copland and Henry Cowell.In addition to composing over 300 works, in 1974, Duffy founded Meet the Composer, an organization dedicated to the creation, performance and recording of music by American composers.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Duffy (1926-2015) Symphony No. 1 (Utah); Milwaukee Symphony; Zdenek Macal, cond. Koss 1022

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1843, a composer dubbed “The Chopin of America” was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His name was Manuel Gregorio Tavárez, born to a French father and Puerto Rican mother. He began his musical studies in San Juan but at 15 moved to France to study at the Paris Conservatory with two leading French composers of the day, Daniel Auber and Eugen D'Albert.While in Paris, Tavárez suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left hand and affected his hearing. He returned to Puerto Rico, overcame those problems and after giving several recitals in San Juan, became a piano teacher.As a composer, Tavárez developed an original dance form called danza — similar to the waltz but tinged with Afro-Cuban rhythms from the Caribbean and the wistful melancholy of European Romantic composers.Tavárez gave his works evocative titles such as La Sensitiva (The Sensitive One), La Ausencia (Absense), Un Recuerdito (A Little Remembrance) and Pobre Corazón (Poor Heart), but the title of his most famous danza, written in 1870, was simply a woman’s name: Margarita.Like Chopin, Tavárez lived only 39 years. He died in 1883.Music Played in Today's ProgramManuel Gregorio Tavárez (1843-1883) Margarita; Kimberley Davis, p. from “La Ondina: Una Colección de Música Puertorriqueña para Piano” (digital album)

SynopsisAt 2 p.m. on today’s date in 1855, the first in a series of afternoon chamber music concerts was given at Dodworth’s Hall in New York City. As a contemporary newspaper put it, “In consequence of the numerous evening engagements of the city, and to enable ladies to be present without escort, it is proposed to give matinees in preference to soirees.”The concert was a great success, and many of the fashionably dressed ladies who attended were forced to stand, as all available seats were already occupied.In addition to classics by Schubert and Mendelssohn, the audience heard new music, the American premiere of a recently published piano trio by 21-year old German composer Johannes Brahms. The New York Times opined that the Brahms contained “many good points and much sound musicianship” but possessed also “the defects of a young writer; ... the motives seldom fall on the ear freshly.”It's doubtful that Brahms ever saw that review or even knew that his new trio had been played in America. But in 1889, 35 years later, Brahms extensively revised his youthful work, transforming his first major chamber work into his last.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohannes Brahms (1833-1897) Piano Trio No. 1 (1854 version); Odeon Trio Capriccio 10 633

SynopsisMusic — Beethoven’s music, in particular — played an important role in the life of Schroeder, a piano-playing character in Peanuts, the comic strip created by Charles Schulz, who was born in Minneapolis on today’s date in 1922.But new music snuck in the strip on occasion, too. In a 1990 installment, Peppermint Patty is at a young person’s concert and when informed that American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich had won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, stands up and yells, ''Way to go, Ellen!''Turns out Schulz had been impressed by a piece by Zwilich that he heard at a concert, and the cartoonist and composer struck up a friendship. So when Zwilich was asked to write a new work for a young people’s concert at Carnegie Hall, the result was a suite titled Peanuts Gallery.Its 1997 premiere was acknowledged in a Sunday Peanuts strip that had Schroeder telling Lucy about the new work. “We're all in it,” he says, and goes on to list the movements, including “Schroeder's Beethoven Fantasy,” “Lullaby for Linus” and “Lucy Freaks Out.”Of course, Lucy's only comment is: “My part should be longer.''Music Played in Today's ProgramEllen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939) Peanuts Gallery; Jeffrey Biegel, p; Florida State University Symphony; Alexander Jiménez, cond. Naxos 8.559656

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2005, the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the premiere performance of a new Percussion Concerto by American composer Jenifer Higdon. The soloist was Colin Currie, a Scottish virtuoso for whom the work was tailor made.In program notes for her work, Higdon wrote, “When writing a concerto, I think of two things: the particular soloist for whom I am writing and the nature of the solo instrument. In the case of percussion, this means a large battery of instruments, from vibraphone and marimba (the favorite instrument of soloist Colin Currie), to nonpitched smaller instruments like brake drums, wood blocks or Peking Opera gongs.“Not only does a percussionist have to perfect playing all these instruments, he must make decisions regarding the use of sticks and mallets ... not to mention the choreography. ... Where most performers do not have to concern themselves with movement across the stage during a performance, a percussion soloist must have every move memorized.”Higdon’s new concerto proved popular with both audiences and the critics, and in 2010 the work won that year’s Grammy for best classical contemporary composition.Music Played in Today's ProgramJennifer Higdon (b. 1962) Percussion Concerto; Colin Currie, percussion; London Philharmonic; Marin Alsop, cond. LPO CD 0035

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1949, at Carnegie Hall, Leopold Stokowski conducted the New York Philharmonic in the first performance of the last major work of American composer Carl Ruggles.In a letter to his friend Charles Ives, or “Charlie” as he called him, Ruggles hinted that in this piece, he was perhaps, "stumbling on something new.” Another composer-friend, Edgard Varèse, agreed, but wrote: “The use [of intervals of] 5ths and 4ths is very remarkable, because that was done hundreds of years ago — let’s call it Organum.” And so Organum, a word referring to an early medieval polyphony, became the title of Ruggles’ final orchestral piece.After that, Ruggles, then already 73, pretty much gave up on the musical establishment and devoted himself to painting. In 1966, he moved to a nursing home, where he died in 1971 at 95.Shortly before his death, Ruggles was visited by Michael Tilson Thomas, who recalls the feisty old man saying, “Now don’t go feeling sorry [for me]. I don’t hang around this place, you know. Hell, each day I go out and make the universe anew — all over!”Music Played in Today's ProgramCarl Ruggles (1876-1971) Organum; Japan Philharmonic; Akeo Watanabe, cond. CRI 715

SynopsisIn 1834, the great violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini acquired a new Stradivarius viola. He approached 30-year-old French composer Hector Berlioz and commissioned him to write a viola concerto.What Berlioz came up with, however, was a Romantic program symphony with a prominent part for solo viola, Harold in Italy, inspired by Byron’s narrative poem “Childe Harold.” Paganini was disappointed. “That is not what I want,” he said. “I am silent a great deal too long. I must be playing the whole time.”And so, when Harold in Italy was first performed, at the Paris Conservatory on today’s date in 1834, it was an old classmate of Berlioz’s, Chrétien Urhan, who was the soloist, not the superstar Paganini. The audience seemed to like the “Pilgrims’ March” movement of the symphony, which was encored, but otherwise the performance was one train wreck after another.Four years later, however, Berlioz had the last laugh when Paganini, hearing the music he commissioned at a better performed concert, rose from the audience, mounted the stage and publicly declared Berlioz a genius, and, two days later, presented the stunned Berlioz with a check for 20,000 francs.Music Played in Today's ProgramHector Berlioz (1803-1869) Harold in Italy; Nobuko Imai, viola; London Symphony; Colin Davis, cond. Philips 416 431

SynopsisIf you’re a baby boomer, you probably remember exactly where you were and what you were doing on Nov. 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.On that day, American composer Warren Benson was just beginning to work on a commission he had received for a new work for wind band. Maybe the trauma of that day unleashed some creative power in Benson, but whatever the reason, the resulting music is both intense and moving. He titled his piece The Leaves Are Falling, a line from Rainer Maria Rilke's “Autumn,” a poem that evokes a sense of a passing season and a passing life. The Leaves Are Falling became Benson’s best-known work and a landmark score in the wind band repertory.Born in 1924, Benson grew up in Detroit, studied at the University of Michigan and landed a job playing timpani in the Detroit Symphony. He served as a professor of percussion and composition at Ithaca College, and from 1967 until 1993, he taught composition at the Eastman School in Rochester, New York. He died in 2005.Music Played in Today's ProgramWarren Benson (1924-2005): The Leaves Are Falling; Eastman Wind Ensemble; Donald Hunsberger, cond. Centaur 2014

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1941, Greek-born conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos led the Minneapolis Symphony in the premiere performance of a new symphony by German composer Paul Hindemith, who came to Minnesota for the performance.Mitropoulos was an ardent promoter of new music, but few of the contemporary works he programmed were welcomed by audiences or the critics with much enthusiasm. Hindemith’s reputation as an atonal composer had preceded him, but, surprisingly, his new piece for Minneapolis was billed as a “Symphony in E-flat Major” and, much to the delight of all concerned, featured recognizable tunes.By chance, another famous composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff, was in Minneapolis that day, and was invited by Mitropoulos to attend the Hindemith premiere backstage, where he wouldn’t be annoyed by autograph seekers. Rachmaninoff had a pessimistic view of modern music, but Mitropoulos was sure the famously dour Russian would like Hindemith’s resolutely tonal new symphony. Rachmaninoff was positioned just off stage, and after the end of the symphony, which was received with great applause, Mitropoulos passed him as he left the stage. “Well?” Mitropoulos asked. “No goooood,” was Rachmaninoff’s lugubrious response.Music Played in Today's ProgramPaul Hindemith (1895-1963) Symphony in E-flat; BBC Philharmonic; Yan Pascal Tortelier, cond. Chandos 9060

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1805, Beethoven’s opera, Leonore, had its premiere at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, after many postponements due to getting the opera’s libretto approved by government censors and the orchestral parts copied in time. There was also the little matter of the Austrian capital being occupied by French troops as Napoleon was sweeping across Europe.The cream of Viennese society had fled by the time Napoleon arrived, so the skimpy audience for the premiere performance of Beethoven’s opera included a good number of French soldiers. What they made of Beethoven’s opera, which tells the story of a woman rescuing her husband from a political prison, is anybody’s guess.As usual, the Viennese critics were not impressed. One wrote, “There are no new ideas in the solos, and they are mostly too long. The choruses are ineffectual and one, which indicates the joy of prisoners over the sensation of fresh air, miscarries completely!”After several revisions and the eventual departure of the French, even the critics came to accept Beethoven’s opera — retitled Fidelio — and in particular the “Prisoners’ Chorus,” as one of Beethoven’s most moving creations.Music Played in Today's ProgramLudwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Overture and Prisoner's Chorus, from Fidelio; Dresden Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips 438 496

SynopsisThe publisher of Lou Harrison’s Concerto for Violin and Percussion, which received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1961 at New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall, states with refreshing honesty that it is “not one of Harrison's most frequently performed works” and that “the highly rhythmic violin line is pleasantly contrasted by the exceptionally varied percussion ensemble.”Now, by an “exceptionally varied” percussion ensemble, it means in addition to conventional instruments, Harrison asks for tin cans, suspended brake drums, flowerpots, plumber’s pipes, wind chimes and spring coils.Not surprisingly, it can be difficult to assemble the “heavy metal” called for in the score. For a 1965 performance, Harrison was forced to spend hours, as he put it, "chasing down pipe lengths and flower pots in hardware stores."But there was a method to his madness. Harrison was trying to imitate the sounds of the tuned bronze gongs of the traditional Indonesian gamelan orchestra by using distinctly American “found” materials. In performance, the setup seems downright humorous at first sight, but at first sound, it works. In fact, one suspects Harrison wants the audience to chuckle at first, but then be charmed.Music Played in Today's ProgramLou Harrison (1917-2003) Concerto for Violin and Percussion; Antonio Nunez, vn; Basel Percussion Ensemble; Paul Sacher, cond. Pan Classics 510 103

SynopsisWe all have our heroes and role models — people we admire and hope to emulate if we can. Composers, of course, are no different.On today’s date in 1995, American composer William C. Banfield’s Symphony No. 6 received its first public performance by the Akron Symphony, the same ensemble that recorded the new work for a Telarc compact disc release that same year. Banfield titled the work Four Songs for Five American Voices and explained it as follows:“As creators, innovators, performers and composers, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan have made an incredible impact on my life and art. Their presence in American music and culture will never be forgotten, and the memory of them will always bring to [one's] mind a memorable melody, and to [one's] face, a smile."The symphony is made up of four instrumental movements: “If Bernstein Wrote It...,” “In an Ellington Mood,” “I’m Dizzy Over Miles” and “Someone Said Her Name Was Sarah.”That last movement, Banfield says, “was simply written to pay homage to the sweet and lyrical facility of singer Sarah Vaughan, who was ingenious in her vocal execution and style.”Music Played in Today's ProgramWilliam C. Banfield (b. 1961) Someone Said Her Name Was Sarah, from Symphony No. 6; Akron Symphony; Alan Balter, cond. Telarc 80409

SynopsisNov. 17, 1878, marked a milestone in the career of 37-year old Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. For the first time, he engaged and conducted the orchestra of the Provisional Theater in Prague in a concert entirely of his own works, including the premiere performance of a new Serenade for Winds.Earlier that year, Dvorak heard a performance of a Mozart wind serenade in Vienna and was so taken by the sound of Mozart’s double-reeds and horns that he wrote a similar work in just two weeks.Dvorak added to the open-air feel of Mozart’s 18th-century wind serenade some lively 19th-century Czech dance rhythms. But he also chose the key of D minor, reserved by Mozart for some of his most serious works. That enables Dvorak’s Serenade to seem both somber and upbeat, infused with musical shadows and sunlight.The new work was well received in Prague and also in Vienna, where one its biggest fans was Johannes Brahms, who wrote: ``A more lovely, refreshing impression of real, rich and charming creative talent you can't imagine. I think it must be a pleasure for the wind players!''Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonin Dvorak Serenade for Winds; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Hugh Wolff, cond. Teldec

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1904, the Washington Post’s headline read, “Hiawatha Tonight: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s masterpiece to be sung at Convention Center.”The 29-year-old British composer, on his first visit to America, was to conduct the 200 members of the Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society of Washington D.C., accompanied by the Marine Band orchestra.So who was this British composer and what had he done to inspire an American chorus to name itself after him?Coleridge-Taylor was born in 1875 to an African father from Sierra Leone and an English mother. Showing remarkable musical talent, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and rapidly established himself as a major choral composer with a trilogy of oratorios, all based on Longfellow’s epic poem Hiawatha, that became wildly popular in England, but the 1904 concert in Washington was the first time all three had been performed on the same concert.The Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society was America’s first African-American concert choir. Attending the Washington performance were many members of the federal government and distinguished members of both Black and white society.Music Played in Today's ProgramSamuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) Hiawatha's Departure; Welsh National Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Kenneth Alwyn, cond. Argo 430 956

SynopsisIn 1974, St. Petersburg was still called “Leningrad” and still part of what we now call the “former Soviet Union.” Back then, the most famous living Soviet composer was Dmitri Shostakovich, whose health was rapidly failing from the cancer that would claim his life the following year.On today’s date in 1974, Shostakovich’s final string quartet, his Fifteenth, was given its premiere performance by the Taneyev Quartet. The work was supposed to have been premiered by the Beethoven Quartet, but its cellist died unexpectedly, and, mindful of his own mortality, Shostakovich was reluctant to postpone the scheduled premiere. After all, he might not be around by the time the Beethoven Quartet found a replacement cellist.When his String Quartet No. 1 had premiered in 1938, Shostakovich had described that work as “joyful, merry, lyrical” and “springlike.” His Fifteenth Quartet, on the other hand, is obviously a “winter work,” written by someone who knows he might never see another spring.If Shostakovich’s fifteen symphonies represent the “public” side of a Soviet composer, his fifteen string quartets might be described as chronicling his “private” inner world of hopes, fears and dreams.Music Played in Today's ProgramDmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) String Quartet No. 15; Emerson String Quartet DG 463 284

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1922, the British Broadcasting Corporation began daily radio transmissions from London, at first offering just news and weather — the latter read twice, in case anyone wanted to take notes. The following month, on Dec. 23, 1922, the BBC broadcast its first orchestral concert.Over time, the BBC became affectionately nicknamed “the Beeb,” or, less affectionately “Auntie,” due to the upper-middle class, slightly patronizing tone of its music announcers in the 1940s and ‘50s.That said, Auntie has proven to be hip in one aspect: The BBC has been a major commissioner of and advocate for new music by a wide range of composers — and not just British ones. In 2007, for example, the BBC Symphony premiered the Doctor Atomic Symphony, by American composer John Adams, live on-air at a BBC Proms Concert at the Royal Albert Hall.And it’s not just famous, big-name composers who get an airing on the Beeb either. Each year, BBC Radio 3 hosts a competition for teenage composers. Winners participate in a mentored program and have one of their orchestral works developed, rehearsed and performed at the BBC Proms.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Adams (b. 1947) Violin Concerto; Tamsin Waley-Cohen, violin; BBC Symphony; Andrew Litton, cond. Signum 468

SynopsisWhile for Puerto Ricans, the bomba and the plena are more familiar representatives of their proud dance tradition, the musical form known as danza holds a special place in their hearts.Danza originated in southern Puerto Rico in the early 19th century, originally similar to the waltz, but over time it absorbed Afro-Cuban influences. Manuel Gregorio Tavárez, a 19th-century Puerto Rican composer raised the danza to a cultivated artform, and accordingly he was dubbed “the Chopin of America.”A 21st-century Puerto Rican composer, Dan Román, paid tribute to Tavárez and other earlier danza masters in a piece for cello and piano called Retrospectos, or Retrospectives. This new work premiered on today’s date in 2007 at the University of Colorado at Boulder, played by the Montserrat Duo, which had commissioned the piece.“Each movement of my piece uses a different aspect of the Danza,” Román says. “Each movement also explores a particular composer from among the most significant authors of the genre. However, the source material is always treated as series of analytical objects that become manipulated to nearly the point of abstraction.”Music Played in Today's ProgramDan Román (b. 1974) Retrospectos; Beth Ringel, vcl; Alex Maynegre, p. Innova 904

SynopsisThese days at symphony concerts, when a new piece of music is about to be played, it’s not uncommon to overhear someone mutter, “Why do they have to program this new stuff, when there’s so much Brahms and Tchaikovsky we’d rather hear?”Well, on today’s date in 1881, the 40th season of the New York Philharmonic Society’s concerts opened with a pair of new works: first the New York premiere of the Tragic Overture, by Johannes Brahms, and after that, the world premiere of the Second Piano Concerto, by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The soloist in the Tchaikovsky was Madeleine Schiller.Here’s what the New York Times had to say the following morning: “The return of Madame Schiller to the stage is a welcome event, ... the only regret being that her efforts had not been devoted to a more interesting work, for, apart from the novelty, it cannot be said that the Tchaikovsky concerto possessed any great merit. There are older works, of which one never tires and which, interpreted by Madame Schiller ... would always be welcomed.”Ah, some things never change!Music Played in Today's ProgramJohannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) Tragic Overture; Chicago Symphony; Daniel Barenboim, cond. Erato 95192Peter Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) Piano Concerto No. 2; Barry Douglas, piano; Philharmonia Orchestra; Leonard Slatkin, cond. RCA/BMG 61633

SynopsisIn his autobiographical sketch, A Mingled Chime, British conductor Thomas Beecham offered this assessment of British composer Ethel Smyth: “Ethel Smyth is without question the most remarkable of her sex that I have been privileged to know,” and added that he admired her “fiery energy and unrelenting fixity of purpose.”Born in 1858, Smyth became a composer against her family’s wishes, and it took dogged determination to get her large-scale choral and operatic works performed in an era when most in the music business did not take female composers seriously. That was before they met Smyth, who convinced legendary conductors like Arthur Nikisch, Bruno Walter and Beecham, who realized her music had merit.Smyth’s opera The Wreckers had its premiere performance in Leipzig on today’s date in 1906 and was championed in England by Beecham, who thought it her masterpiece. It remains, wrote Beecham in 1944, the year of Smyth’s death, “one of the three or four English operas of real musical merit and vitality written in the past 40 years.”Music Played in Today's ProgramEthyl Smyth (1858 - 1944) The Wreckers; Soloists and BBC Philharmonic; Odaline de la Martinez, cond. Conifer 51250

SynopsisToday’s date marks the birthdate in 1928 of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, famous for more than 400 scores he wrote for films and TV.If you’re a fan, you already know that he wrote the music for a series of spaghetti western movies like the 1964 classic A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood as a taciturn, sun-burnt, cigar-chomping gunman.If you’re an oboist, you’ve probably played Morricone’s haunting Gabriel’s Oboe at weddings or funerals. It's a melody originally heard in his soundtrack to the1986 film The Mission.But in a 2006 interview for Dazed magazine, Morricone revealed some things even his fans might not have known: He collected bars of hotel soap as a hobby. And if he hadn’t become a composer, he would have liked to have been a professional chess player.He also offered a bit of wise advice when asked about scores that were not successes: “A long time ago, I really loved a film that I was working on and I became too involved. That was kind of unbalanced. It made me realize that you can’t love things too much if you want them to work.”Music Played in Today's ProgramEnnio Morricone (1928 - 2020) Gabriel’s Oboe, fr “The Mission”; Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Ennio Morricone, cond. Sony 57872

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1967, the New York Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new piece, November Steps, by Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, a work commissioned by the orchestra as part of its 125th-anniversary celebrations. In addition to the usual instruments of the Western symphony orchestra, Takemitsu included in his score two traditional Japanese instruments: the shakuhachi flute and the biwa, a kind of Japanese lute.Eight years after the Takemitsu premiere, an organization called Music from Japan was founded to help make other Japanese contemporary music feel “at home” in America. Music from Japan has presented about 400 works across the U.S. and premiered over 40 new works, many of them specially commissioned.On today’s date in 2000, to celebrate its 25th anniversary, Music from Japan presented a gala concert at Carnegie Hall, which included the premiere of a new orchestral work by talented young Japanese composer Karen Tanaka, one of the rising stars of her generation. Among Tanaka’s recorded works is Night Bird, a piece for two decidedly Western instruments: saxophone and piano.Music Played in Today's ProgramToru Takemitsu (1930 - 1996) November Steps; Katsuya Yokoyama, shakuhachi; Kunshi Isuruta, biwa; Concertgebouw Orchestra; Bernard Haitink, cond. Philips 426 667Karen Tanaka (b. 1961) Night Bird; Claude Delangle, saxophone BIS 890

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1830, 11-year-old piano virtuoso Clara Wieck took the stage of the Leipzig Gewandhaus for her first solo recital. Her father was a piano teacher, who had groomed Clara for a solo career since infancy.This was the age of the great composer-pianists Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin, and little Clara also wrote original works for her performances. Her set of four Polonaises was published the following year. Her career as a composer and performer would eventually span five decades, and, like her father, she became one of the most famous piano teachers of her time.Nowadays, composer-performers are more common in the world of jazz than classical music, although there are exceptions. One of them is Judith Lang Zaimont, who, like Clara Schumann, developed a triple career as composer, performer and teacher. “Composing is the central fact of my life,” Zaimont says. “My music seeks to appeal both to the heart (the ‘Ahh!’ response) and to the head (the ‘Aha!’ response). When this mix is just right, I can sense it — and reactions from audiences can be positive, too.”Music Played in Today's ProgramClara Schumman (1819 – 1896) Four Polonaises; Josef de Beenhouwer, piano CPO 999 758Judith Lang Zaimont (b. 1945) September, fr Calendar Collection; Judith Lang Zaimont, piano Four Tay 4001

SynopsisThe Nov. 7, 1950, issue of Look magazine included a record review of a new LP of music by avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse. “Varèse is unlike anything else in music,” the review suggested, “and well worth knowing.”A young Californian named Frank Zappa, just short of his 10th birthday, was fascinated by the Look magazine photo of Varèse accompanying the review, which made the composer look a little like a mad scientist in vintage horror films. The young Zappa felt compelled to hunt down the record and begin composing music himself. For his 15th birthday, Zappa chose to spend a $5 gift from his parents on a long-distance phone call to Varèse, who Zappa correctly guessed must live in New York’s Greenwich Village.Today, Frank Zappa is best remembered as the head of the iconoclastic rock band of the ‘60s and ‘70s the Mothers of Invention, but in 1983, Zappa also conducted works of Varèse at a San Francisco concert honoring the composer’s centenary, and always acknowledged Varèse as a major influence. One of Zappa’s final projects, recorded in 1993, the last year of his life, was an orchestral tribute to Varèse.Music Played in Today's ProgramEdgar Varèse (1883 - 1965) Ionisation; New York Philharmonic; Pierre Boulez, cond. Sony 45844Frank Zappa (1940 – 1993) Dog Breath Variations; Cincinnati Conservatory Wind Symphony; Eugene Corporon, cond. Mark 1116

SynopsisThe American composer Florence Price wrote three symphonies in all. Her Symphony No. 1 was premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1933 and marked the first time a composition by an African-American woman was played by a major American orchestra. The score for her second symphony is lost. Her third symphony, commissioned by the WPA Federal Music Project, was premiered on today’s date in 1940 by the Detroit Civic Orchestra.Price was born in 1887, in Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three children in a mixed-race family. Her mother was a music teacher who guided Florence's early musical training. At age 14, she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music, where she pretended to be Mexican to avoid the Ivy League racial prejudice of that time.After teaching in the South, Price moved to Chicago in 1927, where she became acquainted with the writer Langston Hughes and contralto Marian Anderson, both prominent figures in the African-American arts scene, who both helped promote Price's music.Price died in 1953. After decades of neglect, early 21st century performances and recordings of her works have helped revive interest in her life and career.Music Played in Today's ProgramFlorence Price (1887 – 1953) Symphony No. 3; Women’s Philharmonic; Apo Hsu, cond. Koch 7518-2

SynopsisInto the Woods, a new musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, opened on Broadway on today’s date in 1987, and brought to the stage characters from the world of fairy-tales: Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and not one, but TWO Prince Charmings.But in Lapine and Sondheim’s fairy tale, bad things happen to good people who make morally questionable decisions in their quest to “live happily ever after.”At the time, Sondheim said, “All fairy tales are parables about steps to maturity. The final step is when you become responsible for the people around you, when you feel connected to the rest of the world.”The New York Times review noted that this fairy tale’s quest was “the same painful, existential one taken by so many adults in Sondheim musicals past.” Granting the musical was “potent stuff,” some complained there was simply too much of it, with multiple plot lines resulting in a complicated story hampering Sondheim’s lyrical gifts from really taking off on their own.Even so, since its 1987 premiere, Into the Woods has gone on to become one of the most performed and popular of all Sondheim’s musicals.Music Played in Today's ProgramStephen Sondheim (b. 1930) Into the Woods; original Broadway cast members RCA 60752

SynopsisToday we honor one of America’s greatest patrons of chamber music, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who died on this date in 1953.Born in 1864, Elizabeth was the daughter of a wealthy wholesale grocer. She put her inheritance to good use. In 1924, she proposed to the Library of Congress that an auditorium be constructed in Washington, D.C., that would be dedicated to the performance of chamber music. A year later it was built, and Coolidge Auditorium at the Library of Congress still stands today.Not content with just a superb venue for chamber music, Coolidge diligently commissioned new works to be played there. The list of important chamber pieces her foundation commissioned is impressive, and includes Bartok and Schoenberg string quartets, the original chamber versions of Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Stravinsky’s Apollo ballets, and modern works by American composers as diverse as Samuel Barber, Milton Babbitt, George Crumb and John Corigliano.Coolidge was an amateur composer and accomplished pianist. Her passion for music and enthusiasm for the creation of new works was all the more remarkable considering that tragically she battled deafness from her mid-30s.Music Played in Today's ProgramIgor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971) Apollo ballet; Stockholm Chamber Orchestra; Esa-Pekka Salonen, cond. Sony Classical 46667

SynopsisAt Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 2002, the American Composers Orchestra presented new works inspired by the Hebrew Psalms. The program included the premiere of a new work by the American composer David Lang entitled How to Pray.In his program note, Lang wrote: “[The] Psalms are so central to religious experience [because] they are a comprehensive catalogue of how to talk to the Almighty... Of course, it's like reading one side of a correspondence... I am not a religious person. I don't know how to pray. I do, however, know some of the times and places and formulas that are supposed to help make prayer possible. Sometimes I find myself sending those messages out. And then I wait, secretly hoping that I will recognize the response.”The minimalist-style, patterned repetition in Lang’s How to Pray, reminded some listeners of a “mandala”—those intricate graphic patterns intended to be an aid to meditation for Hindu or Buddhist believers.Stravinsky fans with sharp ears might also recognize the running piano line from the beginning of Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms, which Lang borrows and weaves into the pattern of How to Pray as both a tribute and inspiration.Music Played in Today's ProgramDavid Lang (b. 1957) How to Pray; Real Quiet ensemble; Gil Rose, cond. Naxos 8.559615

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1979, a new play by Peter Schaffer titled Amadeus opened at the National Theatre in London.Schaffer’s play tells the story of Mozart’s final years in Vienna, including some posthumous gossip that it was the petty jealousy and back-stabbing intrigue of Mozart’s Italian contemporary Antonio Salieri that hastened Wolfgang’s untimely demise. There was even a Romantic legend that Salieri had actually poisoned Mozart, a legend Shaffer gave a psychological spin.Music historians were quick to attack Shaffer’s play as wildly inaccurate and downright unfair to poor old Salieri, who, they said, was not all that bad a fellow. Accurate or not, Schaffer’s play was a big hit, and five years later was made into a wildly successful film. That movie version of Amadeus prompted millions of new classical music fans to snap up any recordings of Mozart’s Requiem they could find.And what about the music historians? They couldn’t even find comfort in the old public relations adage, “There’s no such thing as bad press as long as they spell your name right!” They felt even the movie’s title was bogus. Mozart never signed his middle name “Amadeus,” preferring the French version, “Amadé.”Music Played in Today's ProgramWolfgang Mozart (1756 – 1791) Requiem; La Chapelle Royale and Orchestre des Champs Elysees; Philippe Herreweghe, cond. Harmonia Mundi 901620

SynopsisIn France, today is “la Fete de la Toussaint” – All Saints’ Day – observed as both a sacred and secular national holiday, a time to visit cemeteries and put flowers on the graves of relatives. In 1947, when memories of the dead of World War II were still fresh, French Radio broadcast three premieres at a special concert from the Salle Gaveau in Paris.First on the program was the French premiere of Hungarian composer Lazlo Lajhta’s somber In Memoriam. This had been the first new orchestral work to be performed in Budapest when concert life had resumed after the war.Second was the world premiere of the Sixth Symphony by Polish composer Alexandre Tansman, who, being Jewish, found refuge in France in 1938, then, during the German occupation, had fled to the United States. In 1946, Tansman returned to Europe in time for the premiere of his symphony, also titled In Memoriam, at this concert.The third work on the program was another world premiere: a newly completed Requiem Mass by French composer Maurice Duruflé, originally commissioned as an orchestral work in 1941 during the German occupation of France, which morphed into a choral Requiem Mass by the time of the liberation.Music Played in Today's ProgramMaurice Duruflé (1902 - 1906) – Requiem (Westminster Choir; Joseph Flummerfelt, cond.) Avie 46

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1955, Leopold Stokowski gave his first concert as the new music director of the Houston Symphony — or, as Stoki pronounced it, the “Hooston Symphony.” It was a major cultural event in those days. NBC even televised a bit of the famously white-maned conductor rehearsing the Texans in a brand-new work that Stokowski had commissioned for the occasion: the second symphony of Alan Hovhaness, subtitled Mysterious Mountain.At the time, Hovhaness explained his subtitle as follows: “Mountains are symbols, like pyramids, of man’s attempt to know God. Mountains are symbolic meeting places between the mundane and spiritual worlds.” The new piece proved to be a terrific success for all concerned. The next day, the Houston Post’s music critic wrote, “The real mystery of Mysterious Mountain is that it should be so simple, sweetly, innocently lovely in an age that has tried so terribly hard to avoid those impressions in music.” For his part, Hovhaness once said, “Things that are complicated tend to disappear and get lost. Simplicity is difficult, not easy.”Before his death in 2000, Hovhaness would complete 67 symphonies.Music Played in Today's ProgramAlan Hovhaness (1911 – 2000) Symphony No. 2 (Mysterious Mountain) - London Symphony; John Williams, cond. Sony Classical 62729

SynopsisAmerican opera composer Jake Heggie and his librettist Terrence McNally decided to follow their Dead Man Walking – a successful but harrowing opera about capital punishment – with a lighter, more comic work, Great Scott.Now, McNally winced when people called Great Scott a “comic” opera, since it deals with a serious topic – for opera lovers, at least, namely, “Does opera still matter?”Great Scott is set in a large U.S. city with a respected – but struggling – opera company. The city also has a powerhouse professional football team. In Great Scott, international opera star Arden Scott returns to her hometown to save the opera company by staging the world premiere of a long-lost Italian bel canto work, Rosa Dolorosa, Figlia di Pompei. Unfortunately, the scheduled premiere falls on the same day as the home team’s first Super Bowl.Does the diva save the opera company? And who wins the Super Bowl?Well, you’ll just have to listen to the opera to find out!Fortunately, a Dallas Opera recording of Great Scott was made at its premiere on today’s date in 2015 – featuring the powerhouse American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato in the title role.Music Played in Today's ProgramJake Heggie (b. 1961) “Rosa Dolorosa” Overture, fr Great Scott - Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Dallas Opera; Patrick Summers, conductor Erato 9029594078

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1739, George Frideric Handel took out an advertisement, announcing that he was now accepting subscriptions for his new set of 12 Grand Concertos for strings. He had, in fact, finished the first concerto one month before, on Sept. 29, and spent the next five weeks polishing off the other 11 at the rate of one every two or three days.Handel’s publisher was John Walsh Jr., who had a shop in London at the sign of the harp and oboe in Catherine Street on the Strand. One hundred twenty-two copies of the music were to be printed and sold at a prepublication price of two guineas each. Among the initial 100 subscribers were three royal princesses and the duke of Cumberland, and two copies each were sold to the Academy of Music in Dublin and a certain Charles Jennens.It was Jennens who was to provide the text for Handel’s next major oratorio, Messiah, and the city of Dublin the venue for its famous premiere.So, in 1739, just as today, it pays to advertise!Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Frederic Handel (1685 – 1757) Concerto Grosso in D, Op. 6, no. 5 - I Solisti Italiani Denon 6305

SynopsisIn St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1893, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his latest symphony, his Sixth. From the beginning, this symphony has been commonly known by its French subtitle, the Pathétique, a designation suggested by the composer’s brother, Modest.Now, by Pathetique, Modest meant something like “passionate” or “emotional,” with overtones of “pathos” and “suffering,” but in plain old English, “pathétique” translates as “pathetic,” a word with a slew of negative connotations. The French sounds much better, thank you. Tchaikovsky had originally wanted to call it A Program Symphony with, apparently, no intention of cluing anyone in on what that program might be.In any case, nine days after he conducted the premiere, Tchaikovsky was dead. Was his death the result of a fatal glass of unboiled water recklessly drunk during the height of a cholera epidemic? Or was it a deliberate suicide to avoid the scandal of a homosexual affair becoming public? Did his Pathétique Symphony encode the answer?Speculation has raged around Tchaikovsky’s last symphony ever since, surrounding this last work with what one critic has called “voluptuous gloom.”Music Played in Today's ProgramPeter Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique) - Russian National Orchestra; Mikhail Pletnev, cond. DG 449 967

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1994, Dennis Russell Davies conducted the Chicago Symphony in the premiere performance of a 23-minute orchestral work by American composer Steven Mackey. The new piece was titled Eating Greens, after a painting of the same name that the composer purchased at an African art store in the French Quarter of New Orleans.Mackey’s Eating Greens is a colorful orchestral suite of seven movements. The fourth movement is only 46 seconds long and is playfully labeled “The Title Is Almost as Long as the Piece Itself.” Other movements’ titles acknowledge the influence of the colorful and playful visual artist Henri Matisse and the quirky but brilliant jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk.In the liner notes for the recording of Eating Greens, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, Mackey writes, “On more than one occasion, Michael has used the word ‘wacky’ to describe my music. Composers usually blanch at such attributions — nobody wants to be captured in a single word — but I can live with ‘wacky.’ It is not a common adjective, does not end with ‘ism’ and clearly the rhyme with my last name personalizes it.”Music Played in Today's ProgramSteven Mackey (b. 1956) Eating Greens - New World Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. RCA/BMG 63826

SynopsisFor composers of new operas, all too often, after the heady champagne of opening night comes the strong black coffee of “the morning after” — sipped anxiously while reading the first reviews.Imagine yourself as American composer Robert Ward, whose opera The Crucible was premiered by the New York City Opera on today’s date in 1961. Here’s what he would have read in the New York Times the following morning:“Last night, the audience heard an opera that, in philosophy and workmanship, could have been composed at the turn of the century, or before. And, judging from the response at the end of the work, the audience loved it.” Hmm. Not all that bad, so far. But down a few more lines comes this zinger: “Mr. Ward is an experienced composer whose music fails to bear the impress of a really inventive mind. Melodically, his ideas had little distinction. ... [The opera’s] powerful subject cried out for intensity, for brutality and shock. ... Instead, we had musical platitudes.”Ouch!Oh, well, despite the nasty review, Ward’s opera did well at the box office, and, for the record, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music the following year.Music Played in Today's ProgramRobert Ward (b. 1917) The Crucible - New York City Opera; Emerson Buckley, cond. Albany 25/26

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1970, a new chamber work by American composer John Corigliano received its premiere performance at a concert given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the group that had commissioned it.The new piece, Poem in October, was scored for tenor voice and eight instruments and was a setting of poetry by Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet who died in 1953.“The thing that most appeals to me is the sound of his words,” Corigliano explained. “Phrases from Poem in October like ‘a springful of larks in a rolling cloud’ and ‘the blue altered sky streamed again a wonder of summer’ are in themselves musical.”“The music itself,” Corigliano says, “is unabashedly lyrical. I sought to convey a pastoral feeling that would match the directness and simplicity of the text, to deal in understatement and succinctness rather than in complexity and theatrical effect.”Corigliano’s chamber scoring includes three “pastoral” wind instruments — flute, oboe and clarinet — plus strings, and, perhaps to give the work a slightly archaic feel, a harpsichord.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Corigliano (b. 1938) Poem in October - Robert White, tenor; Thomas Nyfenger, f.; Humbert Lucarelli, ob.; Joseph Rabbai, cl.; American String Quartet; Maurice Peress, cond. and hc. RCA 60395

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2002, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Leonard Slatkin conducted the National Symphony in the premiere of a new symphony by American composer Cindy McTee.McTee subtitled her Symphony No. 1, Ballet for Orchestra, saying: “Music is said to have come from dance — [and] the impulse to compose often begins as a rhythmical stirring and leads to a physical response — tensing muscles, gesturing with hands and arms, or quite literally, dancing. … There is also much pleasure to be gained from observing the gestures of a conductor, or from seeing the coordinated bowing of the string sections within an orchestra. My Ballet for Orchestra emerged out of a similar kinesthetic/emotional awareness and a renewed interest in dance music.”McTee’s symphony makes passing allusions to earlier works by Stravinsky, Ravel, Barber and even Penderecki, tossing in some jazz and folk fiddling allusions for good measure. But Allan Kozinn, reviewing the new symphony for the New York Times, wrote: “Ms. McTee's sense of organization kept the work from becoming a pastiche: As diverse as its ideas were, they seemed to unfold naturally within an orchestral fabric that used the ensemble's full coloristic range.”Music Played in Today's ProgramCindy McTee (b. 1953) Symphony No. 1 (Ballet for Orchestra) - Detroit Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, cond. Naxos 8.559765

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2008, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, soprano Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra gave the first performance of a new song cycle, Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories. Its composer, Maria Schneider, conducted the premiere.Drummond was one of Brazil’s greatest poets, and Schneider came to know his work through English translations by Mark Strand. “Drummond’s poetry struck me as deeply Brazilian, and Brazil is a country for which I’ve long felt an affinity,” she said.The Minneapolis premiere was something of a homecoming for Schneider, who was born in Minnesota and studied composition at its university before heading off to the Eastman School and after graduation being hired by the great jazz orchestrator Gil Evans as his assistant. In 1992, she formed her own jazz orchestra and won a Grammy with it in 2004.Upshaw is a big fan of Schneider’s work, and in 2011 they collaborated on the premiere of a second song cycle, Winter Morning Walks, based on poems of Ted Kooser."I knew that no matter what she was going to write,” Upshaw said, “it was going to be a joyful experience."Music Played in Today's ProgramMaria Schneider (b. 1960) Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories - Dawn Upshaw, soprano; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Maria Schneider, conductor ArtistShare AS-0121

SynopsisRoyalty was often flattered by the composers of the Baroque age. Handel wrote glorious ceremonial music for British monarchs, and Bach was not above working up an obsequiously complimentary cantata or two for some German prince. At the French Court of Versailles, King Louis XIV appeared on stage for cameo appearances during operas and ballets whose stories complemented Louis’ wisdom, talent and impeccable good taste.On today’s date in 1987, at the Houston Grand Opera in Texas, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Chairman Mao didn’t come on stage in their own personas, but did appear as characters in the premiere of a new opera by American composer John Adams. Nixon in China was a somewhat surreal and not necessarily flattering dramatization of a real event: President Nixon’s ground-breaking trip to communist China in 1972.One can only guess at the former president’s reaction to being portrayed on stage. Adams did report that Nixon’s lawyer, Leonard Garment, attended a performance of Nixon in China, most likely on the former president’s behalf. No lawsuit followed, and, Adams notes with some amusement, Garment even became something of a fan of his music!Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Adams (b. 1947) Nixon in China - Orchestra of St. Luke's; Edo de Waart, cond. Nonesuch 794543

SynopsisAmerican composer Marga Richter was born on today’s date in 1926, in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. She began piano lessons by 4, started composing at 12 and had her first work performed when she was in high school in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, where her family had moved so she could study at the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis. The family moved again in 1943, this time to New York, so Richter could attend the Juilliard School.She would recall, “I really didn’t notice that there weren’t any women composers to model myself after until I got to Juilliard, and then I found I was the only one there."She persisted as a composer, and a New York Times reviewer of a concert of her music in 1951 found it “restless, inventive, dissonant, clean; … her intentions seemed … well realized.” They added, “We will hear more from Miss Richter.”That said, it took decades for her nearly 200 works, which range from operas and orchestra scores to chamber works for solo instrument, to earn increasing respect and performances here and abroad.Richter died in 2020, at 93, in New Jersey.Music Played in Today's ProgramMarga Richter (1926 – 2020): Fragments - Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; Petr Vronský, conductor Navona 6050

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1950, Karel Ančerl was named the artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic, a position he would hold for the next 18 years.Ančerl had first conducted the orchestra in 1930, when, upon graduation from the Prague Conservatory, he led that ensemble in one of his compositions. For a time, Ančerl debated whether to be a composer or a conductor. He opted for the latter, demonstrating a mastery of classical and contemporary scores with other orchestras in Czechoslovakia.With all that in mind, it might not seem all that surprising that in 1950, he was eventually tapped to lead the Czech Philharmonic — but that would be ignoring the miracle that Ančerl was even alive in 1950.In 1942, Ančerl and his family were imprisoned in the Nazis’ notorious Theresienstadt concentration camp, and, in 1944, they were transported to Auschwitz, where his wife and young son were killed. He alone survived.In 1968, when Czechoslovakia was invaded by Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops, Ančerl emigrated to Canada in protest and served as music director of the Toronto Symphony until his death in 1973.Music Played in Today's ProgramBohuslav Martinu (1890 - 1959) Symphony No. 5 - Czech Philharmonic; Karel Ancerl, cond. Supraphon SU-3694-2

SynopsisRugby is a style of football that originated in England at Rugby School and was played at British public boy’s schools during the 19th century.It’s also the name of a tone poem written by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger that premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Champes-Elysées on today’s date in 1928 at the first concert of the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris.In describing his tone poem, Honegger wrote: “I’m very fond of soccer, but rugby is closer to my heart. … I’m more keenly attracted by rugby’s rhythm, which is savage, abrupt, chaotic and desperate. It would be wrong to consider my piece as program music. It simply tries to describe in musical language the game’s attacks and counterattacks, and the rhythm and color of a match.”Now, you would think in such a slam-bang contact sport as rugby that Honegger would employ a big battery of percussion instruments, but — surprise — they are totally absent in his score. Not to worry. There is plenty of rough ‘n’ tumble action between the strings, woodwinds and brass, but fortunately no protective headgear is required by either the performers or the listeners.Music Played in Today's ProgramArthur Honegger: Rugby

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1871, Hermann Levi conducted the premiere of a new choral work by Johannes Brahms titled Schicksalslied, or Song of Destiny. It’s a setting of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, contrasting in its first part the blissful Greek gods on Mount Olympus and in its second the miserable suffering of we mortals below.Brahms discovered the poem in summer 1868 while visiting his friend Albert Dietrich on the shores of the North Sea. As Dietrich recalled, during one seaside stroll: “Brahms, usually so lively, was quiet and grave. Earlier that morning (he was always an early riser), he had found Hölderlin’s poems in my bookcase and was deeply impressed. Later on, some of us were lounging by the sea, when we saw Brahms a long way off sitting by himself on the shore writing.”Brahms originally planned to repeat the blissful opening words of the poem as the ending of his setting, but that didn’t ring true to the poem. He was stuck. Conductor Hermann Levi suggested a solution: Repeat the serene opening music, yes, but as a wordless, instrumental-only close.Brahms had his solution, and, as a reward, Levi his premiere.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; Robert Shaw, conductor Telarc CD 80176

SynopsisToday’s date in 1946 marks an important moment in Parisian theatrical history with the debut performance of a legendary acting company created by husband-and-wife actors Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud. Their opening production was Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a French translation by André Gide, with incidental music by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger. To play Honegger’s score, Barrault hired two young musicians at the start of their careers. The first, 21, was to play the eerie electronic sounds Honegger scored for the Ondes Martinon, evoking the elder Hamlet’s ghost. That young musician was a composition student named Pierre Boulez, who would remain associated with Barrault’s company for a decade before becoming a famous conductor and composer of avant-garde scores of his own like Le Marteau Sans Maître.The second musician Barrault hired was a 22-year old percussionist, who brought Hamlet to a dramatic close with timpani crescendos evoking Fortinbras’ final line in the play, “Go, bid the soldiers shoot.” That young musician, Maurice Jarre, would also become a famous composer, taking quite a different career path than Boulez. Jarre devoted himself to film scoring, composing several famous ones, such as Dr. Zhivago for British film director David Lean.Music Played in Today's ProgramPierre Boulez (1925 - 2016) – Le Marteau Sans Maître (Orchestre Du Domaine Musical; Pierre Boulez, cond.) PCA 101 Maurice Jarre (1924 - 2009) – Lara’s Theme, from Dr. Zhivago (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Maurice Jarre, cond.) Sony 42307

SynopsisOf all the works of Richard Strauss, the one that premiered in Dresden on today’s date in 1925 ranks amount the least-known.For starters, it has an odd title, Parergon to the Symphonia Domestica. “Parergon” means “an ornamental accessory or embellishment,” and Strauss meant his new work, written for piano left-hand and orchestra, as a follow-up to his Symphonia Domestica tone-poem of 1903, which depicted one day in the Strauss family household, complete with baby’s bath.The baby in question was Strauss’ son Franz, who by 1925 was a young man setting up his own household, and recently recovered from a near-fatal case of typhus contracted while on his honeymoon in Egypt. For Strauss, this Parergon was a private celebration of his son’s survival.For Paul Wittgenstein, the wealthy one-handed concert pianist who commissioned the new work, this was one of several he had requested from leading composers of his day, all designed to showcase his talent. Wittgenstein’s contract with Strauss stipulated that Wittgenstein alone would have exclusive rights to the Parergon as long as he wished, and so it wasn’t until 1950 that any other pianist could perform it.Music Played in Today's ProgramRichard Strauss (1864 - 1949) Parergon to the Symphonia Domestica

SynopsisThe hills surrounding the Austrian town of Salzburg, according to Rogers and Hammerstein, are “alive with the sound of music.” Well, the same could have been said for the vast interior and multiple choir lofts of Salzburg Cathedral on today’s date in 1682 when a lavish celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the Archbishopric of Salzburg culminated in a specially-composed mass setting, with performers placed above and all around the citizens assembled there for the occasion. The music was composed by one of Salzburg’s most remarkable composers. No, not Mozart – he wouldn’t be born for another six decades or so. We’re talking about Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, who lived from 1644 to 1704, and, while not a native son like Mozart, was similarly employed by one of the princely archbishops of Salzburg. Unlike Mozart, however, Biber was on much better terms with his employer. Biber’s magnificent “Missa Salisburgensis” for 53 voices is now regarded as a masterpiece of the Baroque music – but was almost lost. Forgotten for two centuries, the manuscript score was rediscovered by a choir director in 1870 in the home of a Salzburg greengrocer, who planned to use the large sheets of music paper to wrap vegetables.Music Played in Today's ProgramHeinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644 - 1704) – Missa Salisburgensis (Musica Antiqua Köln; Reinhard Goebel, cond.) DG Archive 457 611

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1883, the premiere of Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto was given in Prague by Czech violinist František Ondrícek with the National Theatre Orchestra, led by Czech conductor Moric Anger, an old friend of Dvořák’s and his onetime roommate.The concerto was commissioned by distinguished violinist Joseph Joachim, an old friend and collaborator of German composer Johannes Brahms. Brahms had sent Joachim two of Dvořák’s chamber works for strings. Joachim expressed enthusiasm for these pieces and urged Dvořák to write a concerto for him.So far, so good.Dvořák had a finished score by December 1879, but Joachim had what we now would call “some issues” with the score, and, by the time Dvořák was finishing the last revisions, three years had elapsed with no talk of a premiere. Dvořák realized Joachim was unlikely ever to premiere the new concerto, so he offered it to Ondrícek, a young virtuoso who eagerly championed it in Prague and abroad.We should note that Joachim finally did perform Dvořák’s concerto in Berlin in 1894, about 15 years after he had commissioned it.Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonin Dvořák (1841-1904) Violin Concerto in A minor

SynopsisAt Carnegie Hall on today’s date in 1991, Dennis Russell Davies conducted the American Composers’ Orchestra in the premiere performance of a new orchestral work, Black Light.Its composer was Daniel Asia, a Seattle native who has emerged as one of the most productive contemporary composers of orchestral works. Asia has written several symphonies to date and a number of concertos and shorter orchestral works.The final page of the score for Asia’s Black Light is inscribed, “October 15, 1990 — In Memoriam Leonard Bernstein.” Bernstein had died the previous day, as Asia was just finishing his new score, and a year later, almost to the day, Asia’s Black Light was premiered in New York.Bernstein was a composer that Asia openly acknowledges as a big influence in his work. But it would be wrong to suggest that Black Light was conceived as an elegy for Bernstein. Asia has been associated with the University of Arizona in Tucson and says the closing section of Black Light is “suggestive of the fierceness of the appearance of the sun, particularly in the Southwest, in all its glory at that first instant of daybreak.”Music Played in Today's ProgramDaniel Asia (b. 1953) Black Light - New Zealand Symphony; James Sedares, cond. Koch 7372

SynopsisAs far as housewarming gifts go, a nice bottle of champagne is common, or maybe a bouquet of flowers. But if you’re a composer, and the occasion is the ceremonial opening performance at a new concert hall, you write a celebratory piece of music.On today’s date in 1984, for the inaugural concert of the Indianapolis Symphony’s new home, the Circle Theater, American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich wrote an orchestral work titled, appropriately enough, Celebration.“In writing this work,” Zwilich said, “I was motivated by three complementary goals. First, I wanted to celebrate a joyous and historic occasion with all its inspiring symbolism of beginning and renewal. My second goal was to write a kind of ‘toccata’ or test piece for the new Circle Theater. Finally, I wanted to celebrate the orchestra itself, which is, after all, the centerpiece of the occasion. Thus, ‘Celebration’ is like a mini-concerto for orchestra.”Zwilich’s housewarming gift was dedicated to the Indianapolis Symphony’s music director in 1984, conductor John Nelson. Despite its origins as an occasional piece for a particular event, Celebration has gone on to become one of Zwilich’s most popular and frequently performed orchestral works.Music Played in Today's ProgramEllen Taafe Zwilich (b. 1939) Celebration - Indianapolis Symphony; John Nelson , cond. New World 336

SynopsisBy a coincidence, the last two symphonies of Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev premiered on today’s date: His Sixth Symphony premiered in Leningrad in 1947, and his final, Seventh Symphony, in Moscow, in 1952.The Sixth Symphony is tragic in tone, and Prokofiev confided that it was about the physical and emotional wounds suffered by his countrymen during World War II. The Sixth was premiered at the opening concert of the Leningrad Philharmonic’s 1947 season and was applauded warmly by both audiences and the official Soviet critics. But early in 1948, Prokofiev somehow ran afoul of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and his Sixth was quickly withdrawn from further performances.Prokofiev’s Seventh was intended to be a symphony for children, a kind of symphonic Peter and the Wolf, written in a deliberately populist style and with a wary eye on the dictates of the Central Committee. It’s an airy, almost transparently melodic score. Originally, it had a wistful, somewhat melancholic ending, with the music trailing off into silence. During the final dress rehearsals, however, Prokofiev wrote an alternative, perhaps more “politically correct” finale, decidedly chipper and upbeat in tone.Music Played in Today's ProgramSergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953) Symphony No. 6 - National Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, cond. RCA/BMG 68801Symphony No. 7 - French National Orchestra; Mstislav Rostropovich, cond. Erato 75322

SynopsisAmerican jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Sphere Monk was born on today’s date in 1917. Largely self-taught, he began playing piano at 6. At 17, he dropped out of New York’s esteemed Stuyvesant High School for gifted students to serve as organist for a touring evangelist. In his 20s, he became the house pianist at Minton's, a Manhattan jazz nightclub.Monk’s original compositions, marked by dissonances and angular twists of melody, became jazz standards. They also had great titles: ‘Round Midnight; Straight, No Chaser; Ruby, My Dear; and Well, You Needn’t.Monk made the cover of Time magazine and is credited with being the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington.Monk's biographer Robin D.G. Kelly, who spent 14 years researching Monk’s life and music, said, “He was Janus-faced [looking backward and forward]. … Monk pulled as much from his roots, the old-style [stride] piano traditions he never left, as from the really futuristic musical territory he was the first to visit. He's always going to be associated with the founding of Bebop, with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. I don't place him on the Bebop school, though — I place him in his own school. “Music Played in Today's ProgramThelonious Monk (1917 – 1982) Ruby, My Dear - Thelonious Monk, piano Columbia Legacy CK-63533

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2001, the release of a CD of Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha Triumphans launched an ambitious project to record nearly 450 works of the famous Italian Baroque composer that exist as manuscript scores in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, Italy.It’s the largest collection of manuscript scores by any 18th-century composer in existence and includes many Vivaldi works unperformed since his lifetime.Susan Orlando, the director of the recording project, explained how that came to be: “When Vivaldi died in Vienna in 1741, he had debts, so the authorities immediately sealed off his home. We have the inventory that they made. It included no musical manuscripts, but there was a big, empty chest. It seems Vivaldi’s brother had got hold of the music and sold it off.”Back then, Vivaldi’s scores ended up with various wealthy collectors, but in 1930 the scattered music was consolidated and bequeathed to the library in Turin.The French label Naïve has released over 60 Vivaldi Edition CDs so far, including 17 Vivaldi operas. More than a dozen additional titles are planned for release by 2028, the year that will mark the 350th anniversary of Vivaldi’s birth.Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonio Vivaldi (1678 – 1741) Sinfonia, fr Juditha Triumphans Academia Montis Regalis; Magdalena Kozena, m.s.; Juditha Maria José Trullu, m.s.; Holofernes Marina Comparato, m.s.; Vagaus Anke Herrmann, s.; Abra Tiziana Carraro, s.; Alessandro De Marchi, cond. Naïve Vivaldi Edition OP-30314

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1992, one of the strangest — and some would say most strikingly original — violin concertos of the late 20th century had its premiere performance in Cologne, Germany. It was written by Transylvanian-born Hungarian composer György Ligeti.Ligeti became famous in the West when some of his music appeared in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick used Ligeti’s music to evoke the eerie and empty vastness of outer space. And, in fact, Ligeti was fascinated by the sounds traditional orchestral instruments make when pressed to the extreme limits of their range — their own sonic “outer limits.” There’s some of that in Ligeti’s 1992 Violin Concerto, plus a dash of the traditionally melancholic Hungarian strain familiar from the music of Ligeti’s famous compatriot Béla Bartók. Finally, tossed in for good measure, is Ligeti’s puckish fondness for thumbing his nose at life, the universe and traditional concert hall decorum.As if to counterbalance his melancholic strain, or perhaps just express it in a more surprising way, there’s a good deal of the clown in Ligeti, who includes a chorus of ocarinas in the score of his Violin Concerto.Music Played in Today's ProgramGyörgy Ligeti (1923-2006) Violin Concerto - Saschko Gavrilov, violin; Ensemble InterContemporain; Pierre Boulez, cond. DG 439 808

SynopsisAs the 20th century drew to its close, some who followed the development of opera were struck by the number of new American operas on American themes.On today’s date in 2000, one of these new operas debuted in San Francisco. Dead Man Walking, an opera in two acts, was based on a 1993 book by Sister Helen Prejean, a book also made into a successful movie. The libretto for the operatic version of Sister Prejean’s book was crafted by Terrance McNally and set to music by American composer Jake Heggie.Now, an opera based on eyewitness accounts of American prisoners on death row might seem an unlikely topic for an opera, but Sister Prejean didn’t think so.“I love the way the opera captures essential human conflicts: love or hate, compassion or vengeance, redemption or condemnation,” she said. “… From the beginning, I told McNally and Heggie that I’d trust them to compose the opera if they wove into its center the quest for redemption. They got it. And I could tell by the stillness in the auditorium and the tumultuous applause at the end that the audience also really gets it.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJake Heggie (b. 1961) Dead Man Walking - San Francisco Opera; Patrick Summers, cond. Erato 86238

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1927, a landmark film title The Jazz Singer received its premiere showing at the Warner Theater in New York. The Jazz Singer starred Al Jolson and is usually credited with being the first “talkie”—the first motion picture to successfully incorporate prerecorded music and spoken dialogue. Both the music and dialogue were recorded using the Vitaphone process, essentially a set of disc recordings synchronized for playback with the film’s projector.The previous year, the New York Philharmonic had participated in the first Vitaphone projects, recording Wagner’s Tannhauser overture as the first-ever “music video,” and performing the soundtrack for an otherwise silent drama titled Don Juan, starring John Barrymore.Within a decade, Hollywood orchestras would be recording the classic film scores of European émigré composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, and within two decades American composers like Aaron Copland and Bernard Herrmann would be writing their memorable film scores as well.But back in 1927, all of that was well in the future, and, as one of Al Jolson’s lines in The Jazz Singer so prophetically put it, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”Music Played in Today's ProgramFelix Arndt (1889 – 1918) An Operatic Nightmare (Desecration Rag No. 2) - Paragon Ragtime Orchestra; Rick Benjamin, cond. Newport Classics 60039Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897 – 1957) The Prince and the Pauper film score - National Philharmonic; Charles Gerhardt, cond. RCA/BMG 0185

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1867, two eminent British Victorians arrived in Vienna in search of Franz Schubert. Now, Schubert had been dead for 39 years, as the two Brits were quite aware. George Grove, 47, was England’s finest musicologist, and Arthur Sullivan, 25, one of the country’s most promising young composers.Grove believed there might be forgotten manuscripts in the possession of the late composer’s relatives, so the pair met with Schubert’s nephew, a certain Herr Doktor Schneider, who said, oh, yes, come to mention it, he did have some pieces by Uncle Franz that no one had played for more than 40 years. If the two gentlemen had no objection to getting dusty, they were welcome to rummage the family’s storage closets.The two visitors braved the dust and found orchestral parts for Schubert’s Rosamunde incidental music, tied up in a big bundle after the work’s premiere back in 1823 and untouched since then.Grove and Sullivan spent the rest of the day carefully making a copy of their discovery. At 2 a.m., after finishing the task, their spirits must have been pretty high, since to celebrate the proper Victorian gentlemen began an impromptu game of leap-frog.Music Played in Today's ProgramFranz Schubert (1797 – 1828) Rosamunde Incidental Music - Chamber Music Orchestra of Europe; Claudio Abbado, cond. DG 431 655

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1945, Artur Rodzinski conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere performance of an orchestral suite arranged from Aaron Copland’s ballet score Appalachian Spring.For the ballet’s 1944 premiere at the Library of Congress, Copland called for a chamber orchestra of 13 players, but for most music lovers, it’s as a work for a larger symphony orchestra that Appalachian Spring is most often remembered.Copland said he had conducted all of his own works but knew his Appalachian Spring best of all. He also had some specific advice for other conductors of his score. “I have often admonished orchestras, professional and otherwise, not to get too sweet or too sentimental with it,” Copland said, “and I have reminded performers that Appalachian Spring should be played cooler than Tchaikovsky and lighter than Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.”“My own favorite place in the whole piece,” said Copland, “is toward the end where I have marked a misterioso. I would tell string players that we don’t want to know where the up and down bows are. They must have a special sustained quality there, a kind of organ like sound, with each entry like an Amen.”"My own favorite place in the whole piece," Copland said, "is toward the end where I have marked a misterioso. I would tell string players that we don't want to know where the up and down bows are. They must have a special sustained quality there, a kind of organ like sound, with each entry like an amen."Music Played in Today's ProgramAaron Copland (1900 – 1990) Appalachian Spring Suite - New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond. Sony Classical 63082

SynopsisDespite a disastrous premiere in Birmingham on today’s date in 1900, Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius has become one of his best-loved and most-frequently performed works in the UK, where, in 2015, Classic FM offered a guide to what it called the work’s “most epic choral stupendousness.”Here's Classic FM’s summary of its story: “The piece follows an ‘everyman’ character (the word ‘Gerontius’ comes from the Greek for ‘old man’) as he faces death, meets his guardian angel and goes before his God before being taken to Purgatory with the promise of everlasting glory.”Well, all that Roman Catholic talk of Purgatory in the poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman that Elgar set to music did not sit well with the Church of England in the early decades of the 20th century. Many Anglican clerics flatly refused to let it be performed in their cathedrals. But that controversy is long a thing of the past, and nowadays Gerontius is performed at cathedrals such as St. Paul’s in London and in concert venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, where in 1991 it was performed at the BBC Proms in the presence of the Prince of Wales, now known as King Charles III.Music Played in Today's ProgramEdward Elgar (1857-1934) — The Dream of Gerontius (John Shirley-Quirk, bar.; London Symphony Chorus; King's College Choir, Cambridge; London Symphony Orchestra; Benjamin Britten, cond.) London/Decca 448170

SynopsisIn 2001, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, commissioned American composer Steve Heitzeg to write a “Nobel Symphony.”In 1866, the Swedish engineer and scientist Alfred Nobel had invented dynamite. His patent helped him amass a great fortune, but, troubled by the destructive power and potential misuse of his invention, Nobel arranged that his estate would award annual prizes to those who made significant contributions to world peace.For his “Nobel Symphony,” Heitzeg chose to set quotes from a variety of Nobel laureates , including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King, Jr, and the Dalai Lama. Purely instrumental effects were also employed to convey something of their ideas and ideals. For example, in a section honoring a 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Heitzeg scored an eerie march for a percussion ensemble consisting of hollow artificial limbs.The October 2, 2001 premiere of Steve Heitzeg’s “Nobel Symphony” came shortly after the tragic events of September 11th. Understandably, its message had a special resonance for the performers and audiences present at its first performance.Music Played in Today's ProgramSteve Heitzeg (b. 1959) Nobel Symphony Gustavus Orchestra; Warren Friesen, cond. Gustavus Adolphus 60171-10022

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2010, at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Nashville, the ALIAS ensemble gave the premiere performance of a new chamber world by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. It was titled Hilos — the Spanish word for “threads” — and scored for piano, violin, cello and clarinet.Now, it’s not unusual for composers to tap their particular cultural background for inspiration, but Gabriela Lena Frank has a pretty wide variety of options in that regard: Her father is an American of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent. They met when her father was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s, and Frank herself grew up in Berkeley, California."There's usually a story line behind my music," says Frank. Regarding Hilos, she noted, “There are similarities to [Mussorgsky’s] ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ in that each movement tells a different story … Hilos refers to the ‘threads’ that make up Andean textiles and how these threads weave together.”Each movement of Hilos has an evocative title, such “Canto del Altiplano” (Song of the Highlands), “Zumballyu” (Spinning Top), or “Juegos de los Niños” (Games of the Children).Music Played in Today's ProgramGabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972) Hilos Lee Carroll Levine, cl; Zeneba Brown, vn; Matt Walker, vcl; Gabriela Lena Frank, p. Naxos 8.559645

SynopsisEven during the bombing of London by the German Air Force, the London Blitz of World War Two, the BBC Proms Concerts continued.True, in 1941 a German incendiary bomb did destroy the long-time home of the Proms, Queen’s Hall on Langham Place, but, not to be deterred, the Proms simply moved to the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington.Wartime Proms programs included this printed notice: “In the event of an Air Raid Warning the audience will be informed immediately, so that those who wish to take shelter either in the building or in public shelters outside, may do so, The concert will then continue.”Talk about pluck!In 1944, the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams completed a new oboe concerto to be premiered at a Proms concert, but a German V-1 rocket that landed dangerously near the Albert Hall led to an early end to that Proms season, since the V-1 rockets, unlike the German bombers, didn’t allow enough warning time to clear the hall.So, on today’s date in 1944, the new Vaughan Williams concerto was premiered not in London, but in Liverpool, with soloist Leon Goossens and Malcolm Sargent conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic.Music Played in Today's ProgramRalph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) Oboe Concerto in A minor David Theodore, oboe; London Symphony; Bryden Thomson, cond. Chandos 8594

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2000, a new cello concerto with an unusual title received its premiere performance at the Barbican Center in London. Billed as the “Crouching Tiger” Concerto, this score was by the Chinese composer Tan Dun, and was derived from Tan’s film score for Ang Lee’s mystical and magical martial arts film titled “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”That score featured a prominent cello part, tailor-made for cellist Yo-Yo Ma, as well as a variety of traditional Chinese instruments and a percussion battery that included a North African frame drum. The haunting score matched the film so effectively that it was nominated for—and won—an Academy Award.It was director Ang Lee who suggested that Tan Dun rework his film score into a cello concerto, and even offered to put together a special film to accompany the concerto. In effect, saying, “Turnabout is fair play—you composed music to fit my film, now I’ll compose a film to fit your concerto!”Lee pulled together shots from the original film and mixed in real and imaginary scenes from New York’s Chinatown and 19th century Beijing for the new film designed to accompany performances of the new concerto.Music Played in Today's ProgramTan Dun (b. 1957) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon filmscore Yo Yo Ma, cello; Shanghai Symphony; Tan Dun, cond. Sony 89347

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1951, the classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still was playing in theaters across America. The film’s opening sequence depicted a UFO hovering over Washington, D.C. Back then, flying saucer sightings were increasingly common, perhaps a result of mass hysteria spawned by cold war tensions and the existential threat posed by the atomic bomb. Or maybe we WERE being visited by other planets?In any case, the movie made a big impression at the time, and countless kids—and probably a few adults as well—memorized the magic words “Gort: Klaatu barada nikto” which, in the film, prevented Washington DC’s destruction by a death-ray robot.Fast forward some 50 years to 1999, when Washington DC’s National Symphony premiered a new concerto for percussion and orchestra, specially composed for virtuoso percussionist Evelyn Glennie by the American composer Michael Daugherty.Inspired by the outer-space look of Glennie’s percussion gear, Daugherty titled his piece UFO and asked that the soloist arrive unexpectedly and dressed as a space alien! In performance, Glennie moves through the audience and around the stage while performing sleight-of-hand improvisations on a variety of flying saucer-like percussive instruments.Music Played in Today's ProgramBernard Herrmann (1911 - 1975) The Day the Earth Stood Still filmscore National Philharmonic; Bernard Herrmann, cond. London 443 899Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) UFO Evelyn Glennie, percussion; North Texas Wind Symphony; Eugene Migliaro Corporon, cond. Klavier 11121

SynopsisIn September 2001, American composer Elliott Carter was just a few months shy of his 93rd birthday, but still busy composing new works both large and small.On today’s date that year, Carter’s Cello Concerto received its premiere in Chicago with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony.Now, Carter’s music is technically challenging for performers, and its complexity can make it equally challenging for audiences, especially at first hearing. Despite all that, Carter’s comments on his music were usually quite straightforward:“In this score I have tried to find meaningful, personal ways of revealing the cello's vast array of wonderful possibilities,” he wrote. “My Concerto is introduced by the soloist alone, playing a frequently interrupted cantilena that presents ideas later to be expanded into movements.”A month after its premiere, Ma, Barenboim, and the Chicago Symphony brought the new work to Carnegie Hall, and the New York Times reviewer Anthony Tommasini wrote:“For all its complexities … the cello part has a rhapsodic, improvisatory quality …. At its conclusion, when Mr. Carter, who is 92, climbed the steps to the stage with a cane to steady him, he received a prolonged standing ovation.”Music Played in Today's ProgramElliott Carter (1908 – 2012) Cello Concerto Alisa Weilerstein; Staatskapelle Berlin; Daniel Barenboim cond. Decca 478 2735

SynopsisToday’s date in 1899 marks the birthday of the famous African-American composer, choir director, and teacher, William L. Dawson, in Anniston, Alabama. After musical studies in Kansas City and Chicago, from 1931 to 1956 Dawson taught at the Tuskegee Institute, where he developed the Institute’s Choir into an internationally-renowned ensemble.Dawson’s arrangements of African-American spirituals, which he preferred to call folksongs, are justly famous, but in 1934 he produced his masterwork, a Negro Folk Symphony, modeled on Dvorak’s New World Symphony, but exhibiting Dawson’s own distinctive mastery and development of his themes. His goal, he said, was for audiences to know that it was "unmistakably not the work of a white man.""The themes,” wrote Dawson, “are taken from what are popularly known as Negro Spirituals. In this composition, the composer has employed themes … over which he has brooded since childhood, having learned them at his mother's knee."Dawson’s symphony was successfully premiered by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, who took the new work to Carnegie Hall, where its 35-year old composer was repeatedly called to the stage. The symphony was revised in 1952 with added African rhythms inspired by the composer's trip to West Africa.Music Played in Today's ProgramWilliam L. Dawson (1899 – 1990) Negro Folk Symphony Symphony of the Air; Leopold Stokowski, cond DG 477 6502

Synopsis“Spaghetti western” is a nickname given to a genre of Italian films from the 1960s, most famously directed by Sergio Leone, and often starring Clint Eastwood as the taciturn, gun-toting anti-hero.Spaghetti Western also is the title of a Concerto for English horn written by American composer Michael Daugherty that received its premiere performance on today’s date in 1998 at a Pittsburgh Symphony concert conducted by Mariss Jansons.“Just as Leone’s films redefined the Western genre from an Italian perspective,” writes Michael Daugherty, “I redefine the European concerto … within an American context. In my ‘Spaghetti Western,’ the English horn soloist is the ‘Man with no Name,’ moving through a series of sun-drenched panoramas, barren deserts, and desolate towns of the Wild West, … [one of ] the gun-slinging characters who haunt the landscape.”Daugherty gave Italian titles to his three-movement concerto: “Strade Vuote” (“Empty Streets”), “Assalto all’Oro” (“Gold Rush”) and “Mezzogiorno di Fuoco” (“Noon of Fire”). And since Eastwood was unable to play the English horn for the Pittsburgh Symphony premiere, Harold Smoliar removed the cigar from his parched, suntanned lips, adjusted his poncho and took up his English horn for the performance.Music Played in Today's ProgramMichael Daugherty (b. 1954) Spaghetti Western Harold Smoliar; University of Michigan Symphony; Kenneth Kiesler, cond. Equilibrium 63

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1875, one of the greatest musical match-makers of all time died in Spartanburg, South Carolina. His name was William Walker, an American Baptist shape-note-singing master who published several collections of traditional shape note tunes.Now, “shape note” refers to a simple musical notation designed for communal singing. In his 1835 collection, Southern Harmony, Walker married a shape-note tune known as “New Britain” to a hymn text titled “Amazing Grace,” written by an Anglican clergyman and abolitionist named John Newton.Walker’s collection was a bestseller in the 19th century, and two centuries later, “Amazing Grace” has become one of the best-known and best-loved hymns of our time.In 2011, a new orchestral fanfare based on “Amazing Grace,” by African-American composer Adolphus Hailstork, was published and subsequently recorded by the Virginia Symphony — appropriately enough, since Hailstork has served as professor of music and composer-in-residence at Virginia's Norfolk State and Old Dominion universities, and in 1992 was named a cultural laureate of Virginia. In addition to this Fanfare, Hailstork’s works range from choral and chamber pieces to symphonies and operas.Music Played in Today's ProgramAdolphus Hailstork (b. 1941) Fanfare on “Amazing Grace” Virginia Symphony; JoAnne Faletta, cond. Naxos 8559722

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2011, the Saint Louis Symphony under David Robertson premiered a new piano concerto by the American composer Steven Mackey. The soloist was Orli Shaham, Robertson’s wife, to whom the new work was dedicated.The new concerto had an odd title, “Stumble to Grace,” which Mackey explained:“There is a narrative running through the piece … the piano is all thumbs … as it stumbles in its first entrance, playing naïve and awkward plinks and plunks. By [the end], the piano plays sophisticated, virtuosic and, at times, graceful contrapuntal music—a fugue, in fact …“The inspiration … came from observing my now two-and-a-half year old toddler learning to become human … I wanted to open my compositional process to incorporate some of the whimsy and exuberance that he brings to his exploration of the world.”Mackey concludes, “A preoccupation with one’s children is common among most new parents but this seemed particularly appropriate … for a piece written for Orli Shaham. She and her conductor husband, David Robertson, have twins less than a year older than my son and we’ve had play dates and shared narrations about new parenthood.”Music Played in Today's ProgramStephen Mackey (b. 1956) Stumble to Grace Orli Shaham, p; Los Angeles Philharmonic; David Robertson, cond. Canary Classics CC-11

SynopsisIn the 1970s, the Afro-American Music Opportunities Association collaborated with Columbia Records to create an audio anthology of works by underrepresented Afro-American composers.  Dubbed The Black Composer Series, this became a famous series of LPs devoted to recent works by then-contemporary composers as well as notable works from the 18th and 19th centuries.One of the earliest composers represented in Columbia’s Black Composer Series was José Maurício Nunes Garcia, who was born in Brazil on today’s date in 1767. His grandparents had been African slaves, but his parents were Brazilians of mixed race. Since their young son showed great musical abilities, he was encouraged to pursue musical studies, and eventually secured a prestigious position as master of music at the Royal Chapel in Rio. By that time, he also had become a Roman Catholic priest.Sacred music in 18th-century Brazil was heavily influenced by the symphonic mass settings of Haydn and Mozart. Garcia, in fact, had conducted the first performance of Mozart’s Requiem Mass in Rio de Janeiro.  Garcia’s own Requiem Mass proved to be one of his most famous and often-performed works, and the one selected for inclusion in Columbia’s Black Composer Series.Music Played in Today's ProgramJosé Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767 - 1830) – Sanctus, fr Requiem Mass (Morgan State College Chor; Helsinki Philharmonic; Paul Freeman, cond.) Columbia Masterworks LP S33431/Sony CD G010003978687N

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1962, Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky returned to his homeland for the first time in nearly half a century. When he left in 1914, Czar Nicholas was still on the throne. By 1962, a lot had changed. For starters, Stravinsky’s music had been severely criticized in the Soviet Union. Tikhon Khrennikov, first secretary of the Soviet Composers’ Union, branded Stravinsky “the apostle of reactionary forces in bourgeois music.” Dimtri Shostakovich had condemned “the unwholesome influence of Stravinsky” and his “complete divorce from the true demands of our time.” Whether Khrennikov or Shostakovich really believed this, or merely parroted the official party line, is debatable. But Stravinsky’s return to Russia proved a profoundly emotional experience for all concerned. The 80-year-old composer reconnected with old friends he had not seen in 50 years and relatives he had never met. And, yes, Stravinsky even met with Khrennikov and Shostakovich.Stravinsky led the Moscow Symphony in his Symphonic Ode and Orpheus Ballet.  Robert Craft, Stravinsky’s American assistant, then led the orchestra in Stravinsky’s revolutionary Rite of Spring — all to thunderous applause.  For an encore, Stravinsky returned to conduct a quintessentially Russian score: his own 1917 arrangement of the Volga Boatmen’s Song.Music Played in Today's ProgramIgor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971) — Ode (Cleveland Orchestra; Oliver Knussen, cond.) DG 4843064

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1975, the Kansas City Lyric Theater opened its 18th season with the world premiere of a new opera by Jack Beeson, Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines. As if to prove that everything is “up-to-date” in Kansas City, even before this world premiere, this Missouri company could boast a long tradition of staging contemporary operas by American composers. Captain Jinks was the sixth of some 10 operas composed by Jack Beeson, who was born in Muncie, Indiana, in 1921.  Beeson blames the radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera for his catching the opera bug. “When I was about 12,” Beeson says, “the Met started regularly broadcasting on Saturday afternoons, and I was seduced. With what spending money I had, I bought scores, and I would place the score up on the piano, and with a little radio on the piano and a big radio across the room, I would accompany the Met.”Some of Beeson’s other operas include The Sweet Bye and Bye from 1957, Lizzie Borden from 1965 and Sorry, Wrong Number from 1999. He also taught for many years at Columbia University in New York City, mentoring hundreds of his composition students.Music Played in Today's ProgramJack Beeson (1921 – 2010) — Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (Kansas City Lyric Theatre; Russell Patterson, cond.) TROY 1149/50

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1958, just nine days after his death, a funeral service was held for the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams at Westminster Abbey, where his ashes were laid to rest. Now, many famous people are buried at Westminster Abbey, but an actual funeral service there, especially for someone not of the royal family, is pretty rare. In fact, Vaughan Williams was the first commoner to be buried there for almost 300 years.The previous such event had been for the 17th English composer and sometime organist of the Abbey, Henry Purcell–whose grave, like Vaughan Williams, is in the Abbey’s north choir aisle, should you wish to pay your respects.Vaughan Williams had left instructions for which music was to be played: his anthem O taste and see and also his setting of the hymn, All people that on earth do dwell, written for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, which had taken place at Westminster Abbey just five years earlier, in 1953.The service was broadcast live by the BBC, and the announcer noted that if all the submitted requests to attend had have been honored, the Abbey would have been filled twice over.Music Played in Today's ProgramRalph Vaughan Williams (1872 - 1958) "O Taste and See" and "All People that on Earth do Dwell" (arr. of "Old 100th") The Cambridge Singers; John Rutter, cond. Collegium 107Ralph Vaughan Williams (arr.) All People That on Earth Do Dwell" (Old 100th) Christ Church Cathedral Choir; English Orch; Stephen Darlington, cond. Nimbus 5166

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1930, in Kingsway Hall in London, the British composer Sir Edward Elgar conducted the first performance of his Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5, the last in this popular series.Two of the previous marches had been dedicated to organist friends of the composer, and so when organist Percy Hull asked Elgar for a new work for the 1930 Hereford Festival, the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 is dedicated to him.In 1930, Elgar was 73 years old and he liked to go for automobile rides in the country. Hull had given Elgar some driving lessons, and, appropriately enough, Elgar got the idea for the musical themes of his new march on a drive through the countryside with a friend. Elgar suddenly asked for something on which he could jot down his ideas. All the driver could produce was a road map of Worcestershire—so on its margins the first notes of Elgar’s new score were scribbled.The march proved to be one of his last new orchestral works. Elgar planned to write a sixth Pomp and Circumstance March, a kind of soldier’s funeral march, he said, but Elgar himself died in 1934.Music Played in Today's ProgramEdward Elgar (1857 – 1934) Pomp and Circumstance March No. 5 Royal Philharmonic; André Previn, cond. Philips 454 250

SynopsisThe Milwaukee Symphony was one of the first American orchestras to offer recordings of their live performances as digital downloads – and along with Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner, occasionally offered more contemporary fare, as well.For example, on today’s date in 2005, Andreas Delfs led the Milwaukee Symphony in the world premiere performance of an orchestral work they had commissioned from Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra, and they offered it as a download.  Sierra’s Sinfonia No. 3, subtitled La Salsa, turned to the dance music of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Sierra’s native Puerto Rico for its basic materials, referencing riffs and rhythmic patterns familiar to salsa dancers for the work’s outer movements, with a slow second movement in habañera form.“Puerto Rican music,” says Sierra, “especially salsa and folkloric music, has been in my compositional DNA. The vitality of the rhythms and the unique way in which melodic structure merge with the rhythms has inspired me to the present day. I always remember with nostalgia my childhood experiences in the Puerto Rican countryside, and these feelings of longing are also present in my work.”Music Played in Today's ProgramRoberto Sierra (b. 1953) – Sinfonia No. 3 (La Salsa) (Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra; Andreas Delfs, cond.) MSO Classics MSO11 (digital download)

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1925, Vincent Youman’s musical No, No Nanette opened on Broadway after a trial run in Detroit and additional preview stagings in Chicago and London.Tunes from No, No Nanette even reached the Soviet Union, although occasionally something was lost in the translation. For example, in Russia, the musical’s popular foxtrot, Tea for Two, was called the Tahiti Trot.Late in 1927, on a dare from the conductor Nikolai Malko, a 21-year old Soviet composer named Dimtri Shostakovich orchestrated this tune in just one hour. Malko was so pleased that he performed the orchestration the following year, and Shostakovich, who had a soft spot for musicals and operettas, incorporated his Tahiti Trot into his new ballet, The Age of Gold.Just three years later, however, Soviet authorities decided that the foxtrot was just one more vestige of Western decadence, and Shostakovich quickly moved to disassociate himself from anything remotely connected to Broadway. His name even appeared on an open letter suggesting, “Only after thorough and widespread educational work on the class essence of light music will we succeed in liquidating it from Soviet society.”In other words, “Nyet, Nyet!” to “Nanette!”

SynopsisToday marks the birthday of Henry Brant, born in Montreal in 1913 to American parents. In 1929, Brant returned to New York and studied composition with Wallingford Riegger and George Antheil, exponents of the then-current modernist trends in music.Brant came of age during the Great Depression, however, and has said back then avant-garde composers were faced with some hard choices. They could stop composing altogether, write for commercial films and radio, or simplify their cutting-edge music to make it more accessible. Satiric music was also an option, and some of Henry Brant’s early works fall into that category.One 1938 chamber piece by Brant is titled Hommage aux Freres Marx, subtitled Three Faithful Portraits. The portraits in question are of Chico, Groucho, and Harpo, the wildly popular “Marx Brothers” comedy team of the 1930s.By the 1950s, Brant became fascinated with “spatial music” involving groups of performers positioned at different spots in a concert hall or performing space. Brant became famous for works exploring this option, and his Ice Fields for pipe organ and a symphonic orchestra, scattered at different spots around the concert hall, won for its 88-year old composer the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2002.Music Played in Today's ProgramHenry Brant (1913-2008) Hommage aux Frères Marx (Three Faithful Portraits) Boston Musica Viva Newport 85588

SynopsisOn this date in 1973, Eugene Ormandy conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in music by Mozart, Brahms, and the American composer, Roy Harris. The program was nothing out of the ordinary, but the concert took place in Beijing and marked the FIRST time an American orchestra had performed in Communist China. The orchestra was invited to China following the famous visit of President and Mrs. Nixon and secretary of state Henry Kissinger.In the audience for one of these historic concerts was a young student of traditional Chinese music named Tan Dun. When Tan heard the Philadelphians perform Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, a work he had never heard before, he decided then and there to become a composer himself. In 1986, Tan Dun came to New York City, and since then has managed to combine elements of East and West into his own musical works.In 1987, for example, he composed a violin concerto titled Out of Peking Opera, which draws on both Chinese and European traditions. In addition to prestigious awards and commissions from major foundations and orchestras, in March of 2001, Tan Dun won an Oscar for his film score to the Ang Lee film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.Music Played in Today's ProgramLudwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) Symphony No. 5 Royal Philharmonic; René Leibowitz, cond. Chesky 17Tan Dun (b. 1957) Out of Peking Opera Cho-Liang Lin, violin; Helsinki Philharmonic; Muhai Tang, cond. Ondine 864

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1967, Aaron Copland’s final orchestra work, titled Inscape, was premiered by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.Copland said the work’s title Inscape was borrowed from the 19th century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Its compositional technique was borrowed from the serial or 12-tone models of Arnold Schoenberg and the some of the late works of one of Copland’s favorite composers, Igor Stravinsky. Bernstein himself was no great fan of 12-tone music, but he exclaimed to Copland following the premiere, “Aaron, it’s amazing how, even when you compose in a completely foreign idiom, the music STILL comes out sounding like you!”Beyond the technical challenge involved, Inscapes, said Copland, reflected what he called “the tenseness of the times in which we live.”Copland’s experiments with 12-tone pieces like Inscape didn’t impress the avant-garde composers of the day, and only baffled audiences who expected him to produce more works in the style of his popular ballet scores of the 1930s and 40s.By 1970, Copland stopped composing altogether, and claimed not to miss it very much. “I must have expressed myself sufficiently,” he said.Music Played in Today's ProgramAaron Copland (1900 - 1990) Inscape New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond. Sony 47236

SynopsisFor decades many of the 20th century’s greatest composers routinely visited Venice’s famous canals and churches during a biennial music festival that showcased brand-new works by the likes of Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Britten, and others.The French composer Darius Milhaud describes sharing space with several of his composer-colleagues in a cramped Festival “green room.” “It was a normal sight to see Stravinsky’s rain-coat and Constant Lambert’s tweed overcoat hanging near my two walking sticks,” writes Milhaud. “Meanwhile, the Italian composer Hildebrando Pizetti would be putting up a mirror, opening a silver toilet-case, and arranging flowers, his wife’s photograph and a sheaf of telegrams.”On today’s date in 1937, Milhaud conducted the first performance of his Suite Provencale at the Venice Festival. This jaunty score proved to be one of his most popular orchestral works. In 1954, it was Leonard Bernstein’s turn. On today’s date that year, he conducted in Venice the premiere performance of his Serenade for violin and orchestra, with Isaac Stern the featured soloist.Despite its admirable track record for picking winners, the Venice Festival shut down operations in 1973, although its impact lives on in the number of modern masterworks it helped launch in its day.Music Played in Today's ProgramDarius Milhaud (1892 - 1974) Suite provençale, Op. 152b Detroit Symphony; Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos 7031Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990) Serenade (after Plato's "Symposium") Zino Francescatti, violin; NY Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, cond. Sony 60559

SynopsisIn 1886, a Czech patron of the arts named Josef Hlavka had a chapel built at his summer residence at Lužany in Bohemia and asked his composer friend Antonin Dvorak to write a mass to dedicate it.As a devout Catholic, Dvorak was happy to oblige. Since the chapel was quite small, Dvorak wrote his Mass in D Major for just a quartet of soloists, a small choir, and organ, and led the premiere performance there on today’s date in 1887, with his wife Anna singing one of the solo roles.Dvorak told Hlavka he was grateful for the chance to write so intimate a piece. “Until now,” wrote Dvorak, “I had only written sacred works of larger proportions with considerable vocal and instrumental means at my disposal.”Ironically, Dvorak’s intimate “Lužany Mass” became popular as just such a large-scale work. At the request of his publisher, Dvorak orchestrated his “Mass,” and in that form it received its international premiere in 1893 at the immense Crystal Palace in London, performed by a huge chorus and a large symphony orchestra.The published orchestrated version became extremely popular during Dvorak’s lifetime, but his small-scale original version was not even published until 1963.Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonin Dvořák (1841 - 1904) Mass in D Christ Church Cathedral Choir;Nicholas Cleobury, o;Simon Preston, cond. London/Decca 448 089-2

SynopsisThe American composer Henry Cowell lived from 1897 to 1965 and wrote thousands of musical works in a wide variety of styles. As a young boy, Cowell lived near San Francisco’s Chinatown, so Asian influences are as likely to crop up in his music as European models. And among Cowell’s aggressively experimental works are piano pieces that employ what he called “tone clusters”—chords played with a fist or forearm. Those pieces piqued the interest of European composers like Bartók and Janáček, but in addition to avant-garde scores, Cowell wrote dozens of conventionally tonal works, often hauntingly beautiful.In 1941, Cowell discovered a collection of evocative 19th century American hymns titled Southern Harmony. These reminded him of even earlier works by the 18th century American composer William Billings, who liked to write what he called “Fuguing Tunes.” Combining these two influences, Cowell came up with his own series of “Hymns AND Fuguing Tunes” for various combinations of instruments.Cowell’s Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 for oboe and strings, for example, was premiered on today’s date in 1955, in Santa Barbara, California, by oboist Bert Gassman and the Pacific Coast Music Festival orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski.Music Played in Today's ProgramHenry Cowell (1897 - 1965) Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 Humbert Lucarelli, oboe; Manhattan Chamber Orchestra; Richard Auldon Clark, cond. Koch 7282

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1949, the British composer Gerald Finzi conducted the premiere performance of his Clarinet Concerto at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford.During his lifetime, Finzi never achieved the fame of some other 20th-century British composers. British tenor Mark Padmore wrote a recent appreciation titled “The Quiet Man of British Music,” which included these lines:“I want to make a case for taking the time to get to know a composer … whose plumage is discreet and whose song is quiet and subtle. Finzi might be termed one of classical music's wrens. Despite his exotic-sounding surname and mixed Italian, Sephardic and Ashkenazi heritage, Finzi was in many ways an archetypal English gentleman. ... One of his passions was the saving of old English varieties of apples. … [His] music was written slowly and often it would take many years for a piece to reach its final form.”Finzi died in 1956, at 55, from Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was concerned his music would be forgotten after his death and added this note to his catalogue of works: "The affection which an individual may retain after his departure is perhaps the only thing which guarantees an ultimate life to his work."Music Played in Today's ProgramGerald Finzi (1901 - 1956) – Clarinet Concerto (Alan Hacker; English String Orchestra; William Boughton, cond.) Nimbus 5665

SynopsisToday's date in 1934 marked the birthday of the late British composer Peter Maxwell Davies. Now, his name is spelled D-A-V-I-E-S, so most Americans tend to pronounce it “Day-VEES,” even though “Davis” is the common British pronunciation.Once, when Davies was in the U.S., a British journalist called a Las Vegas hotel where the composer was staying and asked to speak to Peter Maxwell Davis. The receptionist said there was no one there by that name. Asked to spell the name, the British journalist did. “Oh, Day-vees!” said the receptionist. “Sorry, there is no one registered by that name either.” It turned out the hotel computer had compressed Maxwell Davis into “Mavis” and that was how he was registered. He found the whole incident so amusing that he wrote an orchestral tone-poem entitled “Mavis in Las Vegas,” fantasizing that somehow he had a female alter-ego in that city, perhaps earning her living as a high-kicking Vegas showgirl.In addition to the whimsical “Mavis in Las Vegas,” Maxwell Davies often composed music often inspired by the bleak Northern land- and seascape of the Orkney Islands—an atmosphere as far removed from the Vegas Strip as you can imagine.Music Played in Today's ProgramPeter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934) Mavis in Las Vegas BBC Symphony; Peter Maxwell Davies, cond. Collins 1524

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1573, Queen Elizabeth the First celebrated her 40th birthday.According to SOME musicologists, the music-loving monarch received as a birthday gift a Latin motet for 40 voices by Thomas Tallis titled Spem in alium, which translates as “Hope in All Things.” Elisabeth was certainly fond of Tallis, awarding him special gifts and privileges —despite his remaining a steadfast Roman Catholic throughout her reign, when being a Catholic in Protestant England was very risky business, indeed!In fact, other musicologists contend that this famous motet was ACTUALLY written for the coronation of Elizabeth’s predecessor, the CATHOLIC queen Mary Tudor. Still others say: “No, no—the motet was commissioned by a patriotic British nobleman, who challenged Tallis to write a work as good as—or better—than a contemporary Italian composer’s 40-voice motet.”The truth is we just don’t know for sure why Tallis composed this intricate and glorious music. We do know that in a dangerous time for ANYONE with strong religious convictions, Tallis lived to the ripe old age of 80. His epitaph reads: “As he did live, so he did die—in mild and quiet sort (O happy Man!)”Music Played in Today's ProgramThomas Tallis (c.1505 - 1585) Spem in alium Huelgas Ensemble; Paul Van Nevel, cond. Sony 60992

SynopsisConsider, if you will, the poor timpanist. At most symphony concerts, they sit quietly—waiting for the moment when a dramatic exclamation point is required from the kettledrums. While the violinists rarely get a break, the timpanist must sit patiently for most of the evening, biding their time, waiting for the precise moments to strike.On rare occasions, however, the timpanist is the CENTER of attention as soloist in a timpani concerto. One such concerto was written by an American composer, William Kraft, who was born on this day in 1923. Kraft was a timpanist himself. In fact, Kraft served as a percussionist and timpanist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 26 years, from 1955-1981. He was that orchestra’s first composer-in-residence, and founded the LA Philharmonic’s first New Music Group.William Kraft’s Timpani Concerto was written in 1983 for timpanist Thomas Akins of the Indianapolis Symphony, who premiered the work with that orchestra in 1984.Kraft’s own description of his Timpani Concerto is as follows, "The first movement is very jazzy … the second movement is very beautiful, with two string orchestras and a lot of glissandi, and the third is hell-bent for leather."Music Played in Today's ProgramWilliam Kraft (b. 1923) Timpani Concerto Thomas Akins, timpani; Alabama Symphony; Paul Polivnick, cond. Albany 302

SynopsisIn 1941, as the German Army was overrunning Russia, the Soviet government evacuated important artists to remote places of safety. Composer Sergei Prokofiev, for example, found himself in the little town of Nalchik, nestled in the foothills of the northern Caucasus Mountains about 1000 miles away from the front.Prokofiev was intrigued by the region’s folk music, and, taking a break from a big project to turn Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace into an opera, composed his String Quartet No. 2, based on local tunes. The new work was, as he put it, "a combination of virtually untouched folk material and the most classical of classical forms, the string quartet."Its three movements are all based on local songs and dances, and Prokofiev took care not to smooth out any roughness in the original material.Prokofiev’s new string quartet received its premiere performance back in Moscow in April of 1942, at a concert given by The Beethoven Quartet. A later performance on today’s date that same year was delayed due to a German air raid. The new music was well-received, and Prokofiev, perhaps with the air raid in mind, supposedly called the premiere "an extremely turbulent success."Music Played in Today's ProgramSergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953) String Quartet No. 2 in F, Op. 92

SynopsisFor ballet lovers, the opening of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake conjures up tutus, but for old-time movie buffs, this same music triggers memories of many black-and-white films of the 1930s. Back then, the eerie opening measures of Swan Lake served as the “main title” music for dozens of old Universal Studios thrillers, including the famous 1931 film of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi.“Ah, the children of the night—what music THEY make…”But on today’s date in 1999 at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, Tchaikovsky got some competition from Philip Glass. For a special showing of the Bela Lugosi Dracula, Glass wrote a brand-new score. Now, beyond the opening Tchaikovsky, the original 1931 soundtrack had included very little music, and, despite the creepy charisma of Bela Lugosi, the film moved at a ponderous pace. The new Philip Glass score, performed live by the Kronos Quartet, added fresh atmosphere to the familiar old film. In fact, it proved so effective that Glass and the Kronos Quartet took it on a tour, accompanying live showings of the old film in Europe and the U.S.Music Played in Today's ProgramPeter Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893) Swan Lake Ballet Montréal Symphony; Charles Dutoit, cond. London 436 212Philip Glass (b. 1937) Dracula filmscore excerpt Kronos Quartet Nonesuch 79542

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1806, Ludwig van Beethoven offered his publisher Breitkopf and Härtel three new string quartets—works we know today as the three Razumovsky Quartets, that were eventually issued as Beethoven’s Opus 59.In Beethoven’s day, Vienna was swarming with Russian, Polish, and Hungarian aristocrats with a taste for music. Among them was Count Andreas Kyrilovich Razumovsky, the Russian ambassador to Vienna. The count was an amateur violinist who occasionally played in a string quartet he maintained at his own expense.The count commissioned Beethoven to write three string quartets, stipulating that they should incorporate Russian melodies, real or imitated. The most recognizable of the Russian tunes, Beethoven employed occurs in the scherzo of the second quartet: It’s the same theme that was later quoted by Mussorgsky in the coronation scene of his opera “Boris Godunov.”When these Razumovsky Quartets were premiered in Vienna in 1807, one contemporary review noted, “These very long and difficult quartets… are profoundly thought-through and composed with enormous skill, but will not be intelligible to everyone.”When one Italian violinist confessed to Beethoven that he found them incomprehensible, Beethoven retorted: ‘Oh, they are not for you, but for a later age.’Music Played in Today's ProgramLudwiv van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) Razumovsky Quartet, Op. 59, no. 2 Emerson String Quartet DG 479 1432

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1948, at a Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall, the London Symphony gave the premiere performance of the Serenade in G Major by the British composer Ernest John Moeran. Moeran was born in 1894 in London, but Ireland became his adopted home and musical inspiration during the last decades of his life.Moeran was fascinated by folksongs, and his method of collecting them was to sit in a country pub and wait until an old man started singing. He would note down the song and ask for more. In the 1920s, Moeran became drinking companion of another British composer, music critic, and fellow folk song aficionado Peter Warlock, a talented but rather notorious character who was the model for the outrageously Bohemian composer depicted in Anthony Powell’s string of novels collectively titled A Dance to the Music of Time.Warlock’s most famous work was his Capriol Suite, an affectionate reworking of Renaissance tunes, and Moeran’s Serenade, similar in tone, was perhaps a tribute to his old boon companion. Moeran’s 1948 Serenade proved to be last major work, as he died suddenly two years later, at 55, in his beloved Ireland.Music Played in Today's ProgramE. J. Moeran (1894 - 1950) Serenade in G Northern Sinfonietta of England;Richard Hickox, cond. EMI 74991-2

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1785, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dedicated six of his string quartets to his friend and older colleague, Joseph Haydn. Earlier that year, Haydn heard some of them performed in Vienna. Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang’s father, was also present, and must have been elated when Haydn said, “Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.”Mozart’s quartets were published by the Viennese firm Artaria and generated some much-needed income for Wolfgang. Whether they made money for their publisher as well is another matter. Three years later, one of Mozart’s lesser contemporaries, Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf, offered Artaria six of HIS string quartets at the same price they paid Mozart, with a note that read, “I am certain you will do better with MY quartets than you did with Mozart’s, which deserve the highest praise, but which, because of their overwhelming and unrelenting artfulness, are not to EVERYONE’s taste.”Apparently Mozart’s quartets were deemed too “brainy” for public taste. Well, Dittersdorf may have sold better in the 1780’s, but these days performers and audiences find Mozart’s “unrelenting artfulness” more to their taste than Dittersdorf’s sugary confections.Music Played in Today's ProgramWolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) String Quartet in G, K.387 Emerson String Quartet DG 439 861Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739 - 1799) String Quartet No. 4 in C Gewandhaus Quartet Berlin Classics 9261

SynopsisAngel Fire is a village in the New Mexico Rockies that hosts an annual chamber music festival.  To celebrate their 25th anniversary, Music from Angel Fire commissioned the American composer Joan Tower to write them a new work, which she titled Angels – a virtuosic String Quartet, her fourth, which received its premiere performance by the Miami String Quartet on today’s date in 2008.“Having written three prior quartets and gotten to travel extensively around the world of quartets,” wrote Tower, “I have come to love the way [they] are so deeply creative and passionate about the music they play. They are really like four ‘composers’ at work.”The title given the new piece is a nod to Angel Fire, New Mexico, of course, but Tower made it clear she had some other special angels in mind: six people who helped her younger brother George survive a major stroke. These were her sister, a former student named Erin, a doctor , a nurse, and a pair of real estate agents.All six appear on the score’s front page beneath her dedication, “to the ‘Angels’ who took care of my brother.”Music Played in Today's ProgramJoan Tower (b. 1938) Angels (String Quartet No. 4) Miami String Quartet Naxos 8.559795

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1933, the Philadelphia Orchestra was performing at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell. Conductor Alexander Smallens led the world premiere performance of a new work by a 23-year-old composer named Samuel Barber. It was his first orchestral composition to have a major public hearing, but oddly enough, young Mr. Barber himself was not in attendance. He was in Europe that summer, and so missed the premiere of his Overture to The School for Scandal, a musical romp inspired by the 18th century English Restoration comedy of the same name by Richard Sheridan.Even before he had left the Curtis Institute of Music, where he pursued a triple major in piano, composition, and voice, Barber had begun winning prizes that enabled him to study abroad. Until the outbreak of the Second World War, Barber’s musical career was quite Euro-centric. His School for Scandal Overture, in fact, was written in Italy in 1931. Barber’s First Symphony premiered in Rome in 1936, and the following year was played by the Vienna Philharmonic at the 1937 Salzburg Music Festival. That led to stateside performances and commissions from conductors like Bruno Walter and Arturo Toscanini.Music Played in Today's ProgramSamuel Barber (1910 – 1981) School for Scandal Overture Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, conductor. Argo 436 288

SynopsisSay the phrase “BBC Proms” to most music lovers, and they’ll conjure up a mental image of the rowdy “Last Night of the Proms” at which normally staid and reserved Britons don funny hats and make rude noises during Sir Henry Wood’s arrangement of British sailor songs. But the raucous “Last Night of the Proms” is only the festive finale of several weeks of fairly serious music making: dozens of concerts covering a wide range of old and new musicFrom the very beginning of the Proms in 1895, Sir Henry, who started the whole thing, had this specific agenda: “I am going to run nightly concerts to train the public in easy stages,” he explained. “Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.”On today’s date in 1996, for example, violinist Gidon Kremer premiered a brand-new violin concerto by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho at a Proms concert. The work had an unusual title—Grail Theater. “I like the unusual combination of these two words,” explained Saariaho, “because it represents two such different things. One is the search for the Grail, and the other the theatrical aspect.” Music Played in Today's ProgramJ.S. Bach (1685 – 1750) arr. Henry Wood Toccata and Fugue in D minor BBC Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor. Teldec 97868Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952) Graal Theatre Gidon Kremer, violin; BBC Symphony; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor. Sony Classical 60817

SynopsisThe life story of George Gershwin usually runs something like this: an incredible string of successes cut short by Gershwin’s tragically early death. But on today’s date in 1922, Gershwin suffered one of his rare flops when his one-act opera Blue Monday opened and closed on the same day.For five years, beginning in 1920, Gershwin had provided the music for an annual Broadway review entitled The George White Scandals. The impresario Mr. White provided the money and the leggy showgirls, Mr. Gershwin the catchy tunes and light-hearted dances. But in 1922, Gershwin was eager to try something different: a modern, jazz-age version of an Italian verismo opera. The plot was simple: he does her wrong, and then she shoots him. The reviews were devastatingly bad—one critic suggesting the soprano with the pistol should have shot the rest of the cast before anyone had a chance to sing.And so Mr. White pulled Blue Monday from his revue before it could have a second performance. A concert revival by the Paul Whiteman band at Carnegie Hall in 1925, and a 1953 CBS-TV production didn’t fare all that much better. Even today Blue Monday is rarely staged.Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Gershwin (1898 – 1937) Blue Monday Cincinnati Pops; Erich Kunzel, conductor. Telarc 80434

SynopsisAround this time in 1956, the hot ticket on Broadway was for a musical based on the old Greek legend of Pygmalion, a sculptor so good that he fell in love with one of his beautiful female statues. The playwright, George Bernard Shaw, had updated the legend to modern-day London, and in 1956, the Broadway team of Lerner and Loewe had in turn transformed Shaw’s stage play into the smash Broadway musical, My Fair Lady.But 208 years before all that, on today’s date in the year 1748, ANOTHER very successful musical adaptation of the Pygmalion legend opened in Paris. This Pygmalion was an opera-ballet by the great French Baroque composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau. Rameau was born in 1683, two years earlier than Bach and Handel, but unlike them, was something of a late bloomer. He was 50 before he became famous, and his opera-ballet Pygmalion opened shortly before his 65th birthday. Rameau was famous for imitating natural sounds and noises in his music. One of Rameau’s contemporaries, in praising the overture to Pygmalion, even suggested the repeated notes of Rameau’s theme represented the chipping of Pygmalion’s chisel as he worked on his lovely creation.Music Played in Today's ProgramJean-Philippe Rameau (1683 – 1764) Pygmalion La Petite Bande; Gustav Leonhardt, conductor. BMG/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 77143

SynopsisPiero della Francesca was a 15th century Renaissance painter, whose series of frescoes entitled Legend of the True Cross inspired one of the best orchestral works of a 20th-century Czech composer named Bohuslav Martinu.In 1952, Martinu made a trip to the Tuscan hill town of Arezzo, where he saw the frescoes and got the idea for a new symphonic work that would attempt to capture in music what Piero had captured in painting.What Martinu sought to replicate was, as he put it, “a kind of solemn, frozen silence and opaque, colored atmosphere… a strange, peaceful, and moving poetry.”Martinu linked the first movement of his score to one Tuscan fresco showing the Queen of Sheba and some women kneeling by a river; and the second to another depicting the dream of the Emperor Constantine. The third movement was intended, in Martinu’s words, as “a kind of general view of the frescoes.”Martinu’s orchestral triptych, entitled The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, received its premiere performance on today’s date at the 1956 Salzburg Festival in Austria, with the Vienna Philharmonic led by the eminent Czech conductor, Rafael Kubelik.Music Played in Today's ProgramBohuslav Martinu (1890 – 1950) Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca Vienna Philharmonic;Rafael Kubelik, conductor. Orfeo C521-991 (recorded August 26, 1956)

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1959, Leonard Bernstein celebrated his 41st birthday in Moscow. The New York Philharmonic was embarked on an extensive world tour, which included three weeks in the Soviet Union.Their August 25th concert proved controversial, offering two works of Igor Stravinsky, a composer still condemned in the Soviet Union as “bourgeois” and “decadent.” Even more daring, Bernstein opened his concert with “The Unanswered Question,” a short piece by the American composer, Charles Ives.Even worse, Bernstein broke traditional Soviet protocol by talking directly to the audience through an interpreter, explaining Ives’ unusual philosophy of music. The enthusiastic audience response after the Ives led to it being encored.This really upset the Soviet authorities, and the music critic of the Ministry of Culture wrote, “Before this four-minute piece Bernstein spoke for six minutes. Only the good manners of the hospitable public resulted in a ripple of cool applause. Nevertheless, the conductor, setting modesty aside, himself suggested that the piece be repeated.”Bernstein, although furious at what he called “an unforgivable lie,” was persuaded to forgo any further controversial lectures from the podium for the remainder of the Soviet tour.Music Played in Today's ProgramCharles Ives (1874 – 1954) The Unanswered Question New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor. Sony Classical 46701

SynopsisWe tend to think our time has had a monopoly on bitter religious conflicts, but on today’s date in 1572, which happened to be St. Bartholomew’s Day, the Catholic queen dowager of France, Catherine de Medici, and her son, King Charles IX, decided that the best way to rid their kingdom of troublesome Protestants would be simply to kill them off. A few days earlier, Catholic and Protestant nobles from across France had come to Paris to attend a noble wedding which, ironically, was intended to bring the rival religious factions closer together. Things quickly turned ugly, and on the 24th of August the infamous “Massacre of St. Bartholomew” began and quickly spread across the entire country. Among those who perished was a French Protestant composer named Claude Goudimel, who was killed when the massacre reached Lyons.Fortunately for posterity, not all Reformation era rulers were so bloodthirsty. The English Catholic composer Thomas Tallis managed to keep his head through the reigns of alternating Catholic and Protestant monarchs, and the Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First admired and supported the music of William Byrd, despite his openly Catholic sympathies.Music Played in Today's ProgramClaude Goudimel (1510 – 1572) Comfort, comfort Ye my people Cathedral Singers; Richard Proulx, conductor. GIA 290

SynopsisTanglewood is one of America’s most famous summer-time classical music festivals and can boast a long and impressive list of premieres and performances by famous American composers and conductors. It takes place each year around this time in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.Tanglewood has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home for more than 60 years, but it wasn't the symphony's first location in the Berkshires.  In August of 1936, the first in a three-concert series was performed at Holmwood, a former Vanderbilt estate. The great Russian-born conductor of the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky, moved the festival to Tanglewood and expanded the concert series into a kind of intensive summer camp for young musicians and composers. Among those who particularly benefited were two young composer-conductors named Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss.In 1940, the Berkshire Music Center (now the Tanglewood Music Center) opened, and to mark the occasion, American composer Randall Thompson's famous choral work titled Alleluia received its premiere performance. Music Played in Today's ProgramRandall Thompson (1899 – 1984) Alleluia Dale Warland Singers; Dale Warland, conductor. Minnesota Public Radio 201

SynopsisAngel Fire is a village in the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, home to ski slopes and hiking trails, plus a summer mountain-bike park and zip line. And, since 1983, it’s also the home of a late summer music festival called “Music from Angel Fire.”Early on, violinist Ida Kavafian was invited to serve as the Festival’s Artistic Director, a position she maintained through 2019.   Kavafian returned on today’s date in 2001  to perform in the premiere of a newly commissioned trio by Libby Larsen – along with cellist Peter Wiley And pianist Melvin Chen – this just one of over 45 premieres that have taken place at the Festival to date.Libby Larsen’s Trio is a classically-proportioned work in three movements: the first movement, titled Sultry, and the third, titled Burst, are very rhythmic, fast, and hauntingly jazz-like. In between, the second movement, titled Still is quite serene, free flowing, and very quiet.Libbuy Larsen said, “I compose music for the concert hall. I chose this type of music because I love physics. Flutes, cellos, trumpets, tubas, all of the orchestral instruments emit natural sound, and they operate on the laws of physics. I can hear those laws working in the air when those instruments play.”Music Played in Today's ProgramLibby Larsen (b. 1950) – Mvt 3 (Bursts), fr Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano (Curtis Macomber, vn; Norman Fischer, vcl; Jeanne Kierman, p.) Navona Records NV-6014

SynopsisAt the BBC Proms on today’s date in 2004 Proms a new piece by the British composer Judith Bingham was premiered by the BBC Chorus. Titled The Secret Garden, it was inspired by several events: a conversation about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, a BBC TV series entitled The Private World of Plants, some rather racy descriptions of the sex life of plants by the 18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, and a disturbing news story about the bombing of the so-called “Adam Tree” in Iraq at a site that locals believe was where the Garden of Eden once stood.  Bingham wrote her own text, which includes many Latin names of plants, which led to The Secret Garden’s subtitle: Botanical Fantasy.“This is meant to be a magical piece,” says Bingham. “It has a Christian framework with opening and closing quotations from Genesis and Matthew … but the piece also seems to wonder whether the world is better off without humans, and that, should humans cease to exist, Paradise would very soon re-establish itself …”Music Played in Today's ProgramJudith Bingham (b. 1952) The Secret Garden BBC Symphony Chorus; Thomas Trotter, o; Stephen Jackson, conductor. Naxos 8.570346 (live Proms recording of the premiere performance)

SynopsisDetails on the lives and careers of composers born before 1700 tend to be a bit skimpy, at best. For example, we know that the Italian Baroque composer Jacopo Peri was born on today’s date in 1561, but we’re not sure if that was in Rome or Florence.As a point of reference, remember that William Shakespeare was born in 1564, just three years after Peri. And by the 1580s, around the same time Shakespeare was learning to be a playwright, Peri and some of his Italian contemporaries were experimenting with a new art form that we call now call “opera.”There was much discussion at the time about what the music of the ancient Greek dramas must have been like, and how dramatic stories might be told in music. Peri was instrumental in the production of two of the earliest operas for which the complete music survives: Dafne, which premiered around 1597, and Euridice from 1600.Peri outlived his English contemporary Shakespeare by 17 years. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of 52, while Peri died sometime in August of 1633, at 72, a ripe old age for the 17th century.Music Played in Today's ProgramJacopo Peri (1561 - 1633 ) – Euridice (Sylva Pozzer, sop.; Ensemble Albalonga; Anibal E. Cetrangolo, cond.) Pavane Records 7372/3

SynopsisIn the 19th century, anybody who had the means would flee the stifling heat of the cities and head for someplace green and shady and cool: a country house, a spa perhaps, or maybe just a modest cabin by a lake.In the 19th century, it was Brahms who set the fashion for composers to spend their summer months in the countryside working on their music. His Violin Concerto and Second Symphony were the products of leisurely weeks spent in the lake district of Austria’s Carinthian Alps.For the American composer Edward Collins, who lived from 1886-1951, the city to be escaped was Chicago, and his country refuge was Cedar Lake, Wisconsin. In 1931, Collins composed a Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra. Like much of Collins’ music, it was premiered by the Chicago Symphony under conductor Frederick Stock, who encouraged young American talent, especially from a local boy like Collins, a native of Joliet, Illinois.These days the music of Edward Collins has all but disappeared from American concert halls, but conductor Marin Alsop and the Concordia Orchestra recorded a sampling of his major orchestral works for a compact disc series funded by the late composer’s family.Music Played in Today's ProgramEdward J. Collins (1889 – 1951) Concert Piece in A minor Leslie Stifelman, piano; Concordia Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor. Albany 267

SynopsisAugust 1613 proved to be an especially eventful month in the life and career of Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. The previous summer his old employer, Duke Vincenzo of Mantua, had died, and Monteverdi was looking for a job.  Fortunately, the position of Master of Music for the Republic of Venice opened up, and, on today’s date Monteverdi was probably rehearsing musicians for a trial concert of his music at St. Mark’s Cathedral. The concert was a success. Monteverdi got the job, a generous salary, and even a cash advance to cover the move from his home.So much for the good news—on his trip back home, Monteverdi was robbed by highwaymen armed with muskets. In a surviving letter, Monteverdi described the incident in some detail, noting that the muskets were very long and of the flint-wheel variety, and that he lost more than a hundred Venetian ducats.Despite the trauma—and the humiliation of being strip-searched for valuables by one of the robbers—Monteverdi recovered his fortunes in Venice. In addition to his church duties at St. Mark’s, he became famous writing a newfangled sort of commercial entertainment called opera, and lived to the ripe old age of 77.Music Played in Today's ProgramClaudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643) Che dar piu vi poss'io, fr 5th Book of Madrigals Consort of Musicke; Anthony Rooley, conductor. L'oiseau Lyre 410 291

SynopsisIn 1980, the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt emigrated from his Soviet-controlled homeland and settled in Austria. Since the 1960’s, Pärt’s increasingly spiritual and overtly religious music, imbued with mystical and contemplative rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church, did not sit well with the communist authorities, and Pärt found it increasing hard to live and work in Estonia.On today’s date in 1980, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, another Baltic artist, the Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer, gave the premiere performance of a new violin-piano arrangement of Part’s Fratres, or Brothers—an instrumental work from 1977 that Pärt subsequently rescored for a variety of ensembles. In the version commissioned by the Salzburg Festival, the original harmonic material resides in the serene piano part, while the violin plays virtuosic variations above it. That serenity is the result of Pärt’s effort to—as he put it— “learn to walk again as a composer.” He came up with a term, tintinnabulation, for the simplicity and directness of expression he sought.“Tintinnabulation is like this,” writes Pärt. “I am alone with silence. I work with very few elements… The three notes of the triad are like bells. And that is why I called it tintinnabulation.”Music Played in Today's ProgramArvo Pärt (b. 1935) Fratres Gidon Kremer, vn;Keith Jarrett, p. ECM 1275

SynopsisIn the 1950s, if you said the words “Cuban music,” perhaps Desi Arnez, a.k.a. Ricky Ricardo, singing Babaloo might come to mind. These days, it’s more likely the Buena Vista Social Club.On today’s date back in 1932, George Gershwin had Cuban music on his mind when the New York Philharmonic premiered his Cuban Overture under its original title Rumba. Cuban dance music has always proved appealing to North American composers and long before Gershwin, the 19th century piano virtuoso Louis Moreau Gottschalk toured Cuba and imitated some of the sounds and rhythms he heard there in his original works.In the early 1940s, a young hay fever sufferer named Leonard Bernstein escaped the New England pollen of Tanglewood for a time in Key West. There he was inspired by the Latin dance bands he heard on radio Havana to write a jaunty, little Cuban-style dance of his own that would resurface some 15 years later as the song America in Bernstein’s hit musical, West Side Story.And in 1990, American composer Michael Daughterty composed his orchestral conga line entitled Desi—a symphonic tribute to Cuban bandleader Desi Arnez, in his pop icon role of, who else, Ricky Ricardo.Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Gershwin (1898 – 1937) Cuban Overture New York Philharmonic; Zubin Mehta, conductor. Teldec 46318Michael Daugherty (b. 1954) Desi! Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, conductor. Argo 444 454

SynopsisWhen a flying saucer circled over Washington, DC, in the classic 1951 sci-fi film, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” it did so to music played on an electronic instrument known as the Theremin.Its Russian inventor, Leon Theremin, was born in St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1896. In 1927 Theremin traveled to America, where he obtained a patent for an electronic instrument he called the Thereminovox. In the 1930s, Theremin arranged concerts for his creation at New York’s Carnegie Hall.Then, in 1938, without explanation, Theremin disappeared. Some said it was because he was in debt, others because he was married to two women at the same time. The truth was even stranger: Theremin was a spy.He had been passing on American technical information to the Soviets. Ironically, when he returned home, Theremin was immediately thrown into a Soviet prison for seven years. While incarcerated, he developed miniature electronic eavesdropping devices for the Soviet government.Decades later, in 1989, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the 92-year old Theremin again showed up in New York to be honored at a festival of electronic music, amazed that his name and instrument were even remembered.Music Played in Today's ProgramBernard Herrmann (1911 – 1975) The Day the Earth Stood Still National Philharmonic; Bernard Herrmann, conductor. London 443 899Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971) Berceuse, fr The Firebird Clara Rockmore, theremin; Nadia Reisenberg, piano Delos 1014

SynopsisThere was a time when German opera houses would have fought over the chance to premiere a brand-new opera by Richard Strauss. But by 1940, when Strauss finished a mythological opera entitled The Love of Danae, there was a war on and Strauss had fallen out of favor with Germany’s Nazi rulers.A scheduled premiere in Dresden had to be cancelled. In Leipzig, the orchestral parts for the new opera were lost in a fire, and in Munich an Allied air raid damaged the opera’s sets and scenery. By the summer of 1944, when conductor Clemens Krauss was rehearsing handpicked vocal soloists and the Vienna Philharmonic for the opera’s belated premiere at the Salzburg Festival, the collapse of the Third Reich was imminent. On August 1st, an order was issued from Berlin canceling all music festivals and closing all theaters. Somehow Salzburg managed to get a dispensation, and rehearsals for Strauss’s opera were allowed to continue. A private dress rehearsal of The Love of Danae took place in Salzburg on August 16, 1944. The 80-year old composer attended, and, with tears in his eyes, thanked the performers with these words: “Perhaps we shall meet again in a better world.”Music Played in Today's ProgramRichard Strauss (1864 – 1949) Die Liebe der Danae (Symphonic Fragment), Op. 83 Toronto Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor. CBS 45804

SynopsisIt's said that Nature abhors a vacuum – and so, apparently, did Richard Wagner, who devised a brass instrument to bridge a gap he perceived between the horns and the trombones in the orchestra of his day. And so the "Wagner tuba" was born, a brass instrument Wagner designed for the 1876 premiere of his cycle of four Ring operas in Bayreuth, Germany, which began on today’s date that year with Das Rheingold – the first opera in the Ring cycle.Other composers have also scored for Wagner tubas, including Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss, both ardent Wagner fans, and also Igor Stravinsky, who, though certainly not a Wagnerite, did include Wagner tubas in the early versions of some of his famous ballet scores.Some contemporary composers include parts for the Wagner tuba in their works as well, and a quartet of these instruments appears in a 1994 score the Hungarian composer, György Kurtág wrote for the Berlin Philharmonic and its then music director, Claudio Abbado. Kurtág is noted for his short, epigrammatic and very introspective chamber works, and "Stele" is his first major work for a large, conventional, arranged symphony orchestra.Music Played in Today's ProgramGyőrgy Kurtág (b. 1926) Stele, op. 33 SWR Symphony; Michael Gielen, conductor. Hänssler 93001

SynopsisSome have claimed that it was on today’s date in 1877 that the American inventor Thomas Edison recorded his own voice reciting, “Mary had a little lamb” on a tin-foil cylinder of his own design. Other historians date the precise birth of the phonograph earlier, others later. In any case, the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company wasn’t established until January of 1878.Initially, music wasn’t Edison’s top priority: He thought his phonograph might be profitable as an aid to stenographers, or for families who wanted to record the last words of beloved relatives.Eventually, however, classical music and the phonograph began to interact.In London in 1888, a bit of a Crystal Palace performance of Handel’s oratorio “Israel in Egypt” was captured on an Edison cylinder. In Vienna, Johannes Brahms, seated at the piano, recorded a snippet of his famous Hungarian Dance No. 3, with a spoken intro many wrongly assumed was by the composer himself.The voice of British composer Sir Arthur Sullivan WAS captured, however, commenting: “I am astonished—and terrified—at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever!” Well, Sir Arthur, I’m afraid there’s no going back now…Music Played in Today's ProgramAntonin Dvořák (1841 - 1904) arr. Kreisler Songs My Mother Taught Me Fritz Kreisler, violin Pearl 9324George Frederic Handel (1685 – 1757) excerpt, fr Judas Maccabeus Edward Lloyd, tenor Koch Historic 7703Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) plays on an Edison cylinder (r. 1889) Johannes Brahms, p. Pearl 99049Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) Hungarian Dance No. 1 Idil Biret, piano Naxos 8.550355

SynopsisAs the proverbial saying goes: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” It was, frankly, a matter of economic necessity that led a 36-year-old Austrian conductor named Clemens Krauss to program an all-Johann Strauss concert by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Music Festival on today’s date in 1929.The Festival was established in 1920 with high ideals but insecure funding. To succeed, the Festival needed both strong local support and wealthy visitors from abroad. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but in 1929, as the Festival approached its 10th anniversary, its finances and future seemed uncertain. Now, Krauss knew that Strauss waltzes were popular with both the natives and the Festival’s international visitors, so why not offer a whole concert program consisting of nothing but the dance music of Johann Strauss? The August 11, 1929, concert proved to be a resounding success, and the idea was repeated at the Festival several times over the next decade.Back home in Vienna, Krauss revived the idea of an all-Strauss concert on December 31, 1939. That year-end tradition continues to this day, as the Philharmonic presents its annual New Year’s Concert, broadcast worldwide from Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohann Strauss, Jr. (1825 - 1899) Annen Polka and Perpetuum mobile Vienna Philharmonic; Clemens Krauss, conductor. Preiser 90139 (recorded 1929)

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1813, William Henry Fry was born in Philadelphia. As a journalist, he was one of the most vociferous champions of American concert music, and put his money where his mouth was by becoming a composer himself, creating a number of programmatic works, including a Niagara symphony and another titled Santa Claus. Above all else, Fry was passionate about opera, and wrote several of his own.Fry was a colorful – if understandably biased – music critic. Here’s an excerpt from his 1862 review of a New York performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore – an opera only 9 years old at that time:“Trovatore … has a wonderful plot, beyond human comprehension; though finally we learn in the last scene that [the tenor] is made into soup by the order of his brother [the baritone], who then expresses his emotion and surprise on learning of the transaction as the curtain falls. As to the music – there are some charming, popular, ingenious, artistic … points; [but] there are others egregiously vulgar and rowdy. The Anvil Chorus, for example, is about the equal to a scene of mending a sewer set to music; or repairing a pair of cast-off leather breeches.”Music Played in Today's ProgramWilliam Henry Fry (1813 – 1864) Macbeth Overture Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Tony Rowe, conductor. Naxos 8.559057

SynopsisOk, if your dad wrote music for silent movies and you want to write music yourself, does that increase the odds you’ll end up a film composer, too? That was the case with David Raksin, who was born in Philadelphia in 1912, and who died in Los Angeles on today’s date in 2004.When he was 23, Raksin moved to Hollywood to help Charlie Chaplin arrange Chaplin’s own music for the film, Modern Times, and stayed on in Hollywood, working without credit on dozens of B-rated films.A big break came in 1944 with the tremendous success of Raksin’s haunting score for the 1944 film noir classic, Laura. By the time of his death, Raksin had written scores for hundreds of films and TV shows.In 1960, for the Horn Club of Los Angeles, Raksin wrote Morning Revisited. Raksin explained the odd title as follows: “They needed a piece [for] their entire ensemble … two antiphonal groups of six French horns, four Wagner tubas, a baritone horn, two contrabass tubas, and seven timpani. I was busy working on a picture, so I'd start work at four or five a.m., and that's how I wrote ’Morning Revisited.’”Music Played in Today's ProgramDavid Raksin (1912 -2004) Morning Revisited The Horn Club of Los Angeles; David Raksin, conductor. EMI 63764