Composers Datebook

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Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.

11 HR AGO

Julia Perry's Violin Concerto

Synopsis On today’s date in 2022, violinist Roger Zahab and the University of Pittsburgh Symphony premiered a Violin Concerto written some 50 years earlier by American composer Julia Perry. In his program notes, Zahab tells the story this way: “One afternoon near the end of my undergraduate studies — around 1978–my violin teacher stepped out of his office and handed me a score by Julia Perry. She had sent … her Violin Concerto to him in the hope that he might know of someone who would play it, and he handed it to me. I called her phone number and spoke with her mother, who said that Julia was right next to her but unable to talk.” Perry was unable to talk because she had suffered a debilitating stroke seven years earlier at 46, derailing her career as a composer. Cared for and nursed by her mother, Perry persisted in working on the concerto that would be her final work, as she died shortly after making contact with Zahab. For his part, the violinist made it his mission to create a full orchestral performance score of the concerto from Perry’s surviving sketches, a daunting project that took him decades to complete. Music Played in Today's Program Julia Perry (1924-1979): Violin Concerto; Curtis J. Stewart, violin; Experiential Orchestra; James Blachly, conductor; Bright Shiny Things 200

2 min
1 DAY AGO

Bernstein conducts Ives

Synopsis On today’s date in 1951, Leonard Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere performance of Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 2. Ives was then 76 and living in Connecticut. Heart disease and diabetes left him far too weak to attend the Carnegie Hall premiere. Nicholas Slonimsky recalls once asking the thin and pale Ives how he was feeling, to which Ives replied he felt so weak that he said, “I can’t even spit into the fireplace.” Ives didn’t own a radio, so he visited his neighbors, the Ryders, to hear Bernstein conduct the Sunday afternoon broadcast performance of music he had composed some 50 years earlier. “There’s not much to say about the Symphony. I express the musical feelings of the Connecticut country in the 1890s. It’s full of the tunes they sang and played then, and I thought it would be a sort of a joke to have some of these tunes in counterpoint with some Bach-like tunes,” he said at the time. His neighbor, Mrs. Ryder, recalled how he reacted to the radio broadcast: “Mr. Ives sat in the front room and listened as quietly as could be, and I sat way back behind him, because I didn’t want him to think I was looking at him. After it was over, I’m sure he was very much moved. He stood up, walked over the fireplace, and spat! And then he walked out into the kitchen and said not a word.” Music Played in Today's Program Charles Ives (1874-1954): Symphony No. 2 New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; DG 429 220

2 min
2 DAYS AGO

The Theatrophone

Synopsis Many music lovers will confess they prefer to hear symphonies or operas in the comfort of their own home rather than live in person at a concert hall or theater. On today’s date in 1911, famous French novelist, hypochondriac and notorious homebody Marcel Proust wrote to his friend, composer Reynaldo Hahn, that he had just listened to a live afternoon performance of the whole first act of Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger tucked up in bed and planned to hear Debussy’s still-new opera Pelléas and Mélisande later that same evening, once again snugly secure in his Parisian apartment. Now, these days with radio, TV and multiple livestreaming devices, this would be no big deal — but in 1911 how could that be possible? Well, for 60 francs a month — a small fortune in 1911 — wealthy Parisians could hear live performances of operas and plays relayed by a special phone line to a home receiver called the théâtrophone. First demonstrated in Paris in 1881, by 1890, the théâtrophone was commercialized and the service continued 1932. Of course, even an enthusiastic subscriber like Proust had to admit the phone line sound quality was “très mal” (“really bad” in plain English) and hardly the same as being there in person. Music Played in Today's Program Claude Debussy (1862-1918): Pelléas et Mélisande Symphonie Suite (arr. Marius Constant); Orchestre National de Lyon; Jun Märkl, conductor; Naxos 8.570993

2 min
3 DAYS AGO

Harbison's 'Olympic Dances'

Synopsis In 1996, American composer John Harbison received an unusual commission — a ballet for dancers and symphonic winds. The commission came from a consortium of 14 wind ensembles, all members of the College Band Directors National Association. Maybe the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta had something to do with it, but his imagination turned in that direction: he titled the resulting work Olympic Dances, and Atlanta also happened to be the venue for the work’s premiere performance on today’s date in 1997, with the Pilobus Dance Theatre and the University of North Texas Wind Symphony performing. “When asked to do a piece for dancers and winds, it immediately suggested something ‘classical,’ not our musical 18th century, but an imaginative vision of ancient worlds … I thought of an imagined harmony between dance, sport and sound that we can imagine from serene oranges and blacks on Greek vases, the celebration of bodies in motion that we see in the matchless sculpture of ancient times, and perhaps most important to this piece, the celebration of the ideal tableau, the moment frozen in time, that is present still in the friezes that adorn the temples and in the architecture of the temples themselves,” he said. Harbison’s ballet is an austere, rather than flashy score, reminiscent of Stravinsky’s austere, neo-classical scores like Agon and Apollo, which — like our modern Olympics — were also inspired by ancient Greek ideals. Music Played in Today's Program John Harbison (b. 1938): Olympic Dances; New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble; Dr. Frank Battisti, conductor; Albany 340

2 min
4 DAYS AGO

Smyth the Prisoner

Synopsis The British composer Ethel Smyth needed both talent and fierce determination to succeed in a professional musical career in her day. Born in 1858, she defied her father to study music in Leipzig. She became friends with Clara Schumann, Brahms and Dvořák. In 1903, her opera Der Wald was performed at the Metropolitan Opera. She also became a high-profile figure in the women’s suffrage movement, for which she was jailed briefly in 1912. The premiere of her 64-minute vocal symphony, The Prison, took place at Usher Hall in Scotland on today’s date in 1931, when she was 73, and increasingly deaf. The text was by H.B. Brewster, who had been Smyth’s close friend and, perhaps, her lover, and is a dialogue between an innocent prisoner awaiting execution and his soul in search of spiritual peace. In a New York Times interview, James Blachly, the conductor of the first recording of The Prison, suggests, “It’s a summary of her entire career. It’s a farewell. There’s a real sense of making peace with that, and also reconciling herself to the death of [Brewster,] her closest creative companion. It’s about love and life and loss and self-worth.” Music Played in Today's Program Ethel Smyth (1858-1944): The Prison; Dashon Burton, bass-baritone; Experimental Orchestra and Chorus; James Blachly, conductor; Chandos 5279

2 min
5 DAYS AGO

Music by and about telephones

Synopsis On today’s date in 1947, Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, The Telephone premiered at the Heckscher Theater in New York. The story involves a young man who keeps trying to propose to his girlfriend, but, well, she’s always on the phone. So the young man, deciding “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” goes to the corner and from a pay phone calls in his marriage proposal! Now, these days, he would probably have just used his cell phone. A welcome convenience in most circumstances, cell-phones have become the bane of concert halls, interrupting musical performances with unwelcome beeps and those annoying little melodies. One young American composer, Golan Levin, has even composed a 30-minute work titled Dialtones: A Telesymphony, scored for 200 cell-phones. Levin spend nearly a year working out the technology that would download customized sounds to cell-phones placed in the audience and allow them be played on cue. 200 members of the audience for the premiere were asked to bring their phones and register their numbers before the performance of the three-movement work. Some audience members reportedly felt guilty when their phones rang, even though they were supposed to, and one of the performers confessed that he was jealous that the woman seated next to him was called more frequently than he was! That might make a good storyline for a sequel to Menotti’s opera! Music Played in Today's Program Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007): Excerpt from The Telephone; New York Chamber Ensemble; Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, conductor; Albany 173

2 min
6 DAYS AGO

The Night the Lights Went Out on Elliott Carter

Synopsis On today’s date in 1994, at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, the Chicago Symphony and conductor Daniel Barenboim gave the world premiere performance of Partita by American composer Elliott Carter, specially commissioned in honor of the composer’s 85th birthday. It was a major work, and a major occasion — but, as the Chicago Tribune’s music critic John von Rheim put it, that date “will forever be known as the Night the Lights Went Out on Elliott Carter.” Just as the orchestra was playing the final pages of Carter’s complex score, the house lights went out. The audience gasped. The orchestra stopped playing. Not sure what to do, the audience started applauding. Then, after a moment or two the lights came back on. After breathing a sigh of relief, Barenboim and the orchestra prepared to pick up where they had left off — and then the lights went out again! Turning to the audience, Barenboim quipped, “It’s a good thing we and Mr. Carter are not superstitious.” Well, eventually the lights came back on — and stayed on, enabling the Orchestra to finish the premiere of Carter’s Partita. But, perhaps as a kind of insurance policy — later on Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony also made a live recording of the new work. Music Played in Today's Program Elliott Carter (1908-2012): Partita; Chicago Symphony; Daniel Barenboim, conductor (live recording); Teldec CD 81792

2 min
16 FEB

A Romance for Bassoon

Synopsis Famous composers have been, on occasion, famous performers as well. Think of Bach on the organ, or Rachmaninoff on the piano. And if Mozart’s father is to be believed, young Wolfgang could have Europe’s finest violinist — if he had only practiced more. But how many famous composers can you name who played the bassoon? Well, British composer Edward Elgar, for one. As a young musician in Worcester, he played the bassoon in a wind quintet. While never becoming famous as a bassoonist, his love for and understanding of the instrument is evident in all his major orchestral works, and he counted one skilled player among his friends: this was Edwin F. James, the principal bassoonist of the London Symphony in his day. In 1910, while working on his big, extroverted, almost 50-minute violin concerto, Elgar tossed off a smaller, much shorter, and far more introverted work for bassoon and orchestra as a gift for James. Since he was working on both pieces at the same time, if you’re familiar with he Violin Concerto, you can’t help but notice a familial resemblance to his six-minute Romance for Bassoon and Orchestra. The Romance was first performed by Edwin F. James at a Herefordshire Orchestral Society concert conducted by the Elgar on today’s date in 1911. Music Played in Today's Program Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Romance for Bassoon and Orchestra; Graham Salvage, bassoon; Halle Orchestra; Mark Elder, conductor; Halle Elgar Edition HLL-7505

2 min

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John Birge

Host

Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.