Episodes
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Synopsis
Today we note the birthday of a remarkable composer, conductor and virtuoso violinist: Eugéne Ysaÿe, who was born in Liége, Belgium, on today’s date in 1858. After studies with two of the most famous violin composers of his day, Henyrk Wieniawski of Poland and his Belgian compatriot, Henri Vieuxtemps, he soon was touring Europe and Russia as a star performer himself.
In 1886, when 28-year old Ysaÿe married, great Belgian composer Cesar Franck presented the young couple with his Violin Sonata as a wedding present. That same year, Ysaÿe founded a famous string quartet, and in 1893 it was the Ysaÿe Quartet that gave the premiere performance of Claude Debussy’s String Quartet, a work its composer dedicated to the ensemble in admiration.
In 1918, he made his American debut as a conductor with the Cincinnati Symphony, and made such a great impression there that he remained as music director of the Cincinnati Symphony from 1918 to 1922.
As a composer, he wrote eight concertos and a set of six solo sonatas for the violin. In 1928, at 70, the patriotic Belgian began work on an opera, Peter the Miner to a libretto in his native Walloon language, and was at work on a second opera when he died at 72, in 1931. In 1937, Queen Elizabeth of Belgium inaugurated the annual Eugene Ysaÿe International Prize for promising young violinists.
Music Played in Today's ProgramCesar Franck (1822-1890): Violin Sonata; Itzhak Perlman, violin; Martha Argerich, piano; EMI 56815
Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931): Chant d’hiver; Aaron Rosand, violin; Radio Luxembourg Orchestra; Louis de Froment, conductor; Vox Box 5102
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For decades, Russian-born American composer, conductor and witty musical lexicographer Nicolas Slonimsky compiled the reference work Music Since 1900. It’s a year-by-year, month-by-month, day-by-day chronicle of musical events he deemed significant, interesting, or simply amusing.
Here, for example, is Slonimsky’s entry for July 15, 1942:
“Heitor Villa-Lobos conducts in Rio de Janeiro the first performances of three of his orchestral Choros: No. 6, No. 9 and No. 11, exhaling the rhythms, the perfumes and the colors of the Brazilian scene, with tropical birds exotically chanting in the woodwinds against the measured beats of jungle drums.”
Slonimsky did have a way with words, and certainly had fun compiling his mammoth (and highly readable) reference work.
For his part, Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was equally diligent, so much so that he claimed he couldn’t always remember everything that he had written. His Choros No. 11 for piano and orchestra lasts some 65 minutes and is one of his most ambitious works. Originally the word “choro” meant improvised music by Brazilian street musicians, but Villa-Lobos always used the word in its plural form to describe over a dozen of his instrumental works.
Music Played in Today's ProgramHeitor Villa Lobos (1887-1959): Choros No. 9; Hong Kong Philharmonic; Kenneth Schermerhorn, conductor; Naxos 8.555241
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A famous commercial for magnetic recording tape once asked the question: “Is it live — or Memorex” — suggesting it was hard to tell the difference. These days, at concerts of some contemporary composers’ works, the correct answer would be “It’s live and Memorex” — as there is a growing body of works that involve both live performers and prerecorded tape.
A 1995 work by American composer Ingram Marshall, Dark Waters, was written for an English horn soloist accompanied by a prerecorded tape of fragments from old 78-rpm recordings of Jean Sibelius’ chilly tone-poem The Swan of Tuonela. Both the live English horn part and the prerecorded tape are digitally processed and mixed at each live performance. “Those who know the Sibelius will recognize familiar strains,” Marshall said.
On today’s date in 1998, Marshall and Libby Van Cleve, the English horn player for whom Dark Waters was written, recorded the work at St. Casimir’s Church in New Haven, Connecticut. “You can actually hear the sound of that church in the recording,” recalled Van Cleve. “We finished at about 3 a.m., and it was stiflingly hot — how ironic that Ingram’s music — and Sibelius’ — is always associated with cold climates!”
Music Played in Today's ProgramIngram Marshall (1942-2022): Dark Waters; Libby van Cleve, English horn; Ingram Marshall, electronics; New Albion 112
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On today’s date in 1829, German composer Felix Mendelssohn was in London, participating in a gala concert to raise funds for the victims of a flood in Silesia. “Everyone who has attracted the slightest attention during the season will take part,” wrote Mendelssohn. “Many offers of good performers have had to be declined, as otherwise the concert will last till the next day!”
Mendelssohn performed his Double Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, joined by his friend and fellow composer/pianist Ignaz Moscheles. Mendessohn and Moscheles jointly prepared a special cadenza, and jokingly bet each other how long the audience would applaud it — Mendessohn predicting 10 minutes, and Mosceheles, more modestly, suggesting five.
In the Baroque age, double concertos were very popular, but by Mendelssohn’s day they had become less common. In our time, concertos for two pianos are even rarer. One of the most successful American Double Concertos was written between 1952 and 1953 by American composer Quincy Porter. Also known as the Concerto Concertante, commissioned by the Louisville Orchestra. It proved to be one of the most popular of Porter’s works, and even won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1954.
Music Played in Today's ProgramFelix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Double Concerto; Güher and Süher Pekinel, pianos; Philharmonia Orchestra; Neville Marriner, conductor; Chandos 9711
Quincy Porter (1897-1966): Concerto for Two Pianos; Joshua Pierce and Dorothy Jonas, duo pianists; Moravian Philharmonic; David Amos, conductor; Helcion 1044
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The Violin Sonata No. 3 by American composer William Bolcom had its premiere on today’s date in 1993 at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. The work was commissioned to honor the 75th birthday of Dorothy Delay, a legendary violin teacher who taught at Juilliard for many years.
The violin is a strange animal for composers to master, especially if they aren’t violinists already, and Bolcom subtitled this work Sonata Stramba, “stramba” being the Italian word for “strange” or “odd.”
Bolcom confessed to being fascinated by two musical sounds more than any other: the voice and the violin. “When I was about ten, we trundled out my maternal grandfather’s imitation Stradivarius, made in Czechoslovakia, and I took a few not-very-successful lessons. When the violin was stolen out of the back seat of my father’s Buick that was the end of my studies of the instrument,” Bolcom recalled.
Bolcom did become a talented pianist, however, and befriended violinist Gene Nastri, who initiated the young composer into the mysteries of the instrument by performing Mozart and Beethoven Violin Sonatas with him, as well as the fledgling violin works written by the young composer.
Music Played in Today's ProgramWilliam Bolcom (b. 1938): Violin Sonata No. 3; Irina Muresanu, violin; Michael Lewis, piano; Centaur 2910
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These days, when modern music is on the program, a sizeable chunk of the concert hall audience might start nervously looking for the nearest exit — but that wasn’t always the case.
On today’s date in 1882, 21-year old American composer and pianist Edward MacDowell took the stage in Zurich, Switzerland, to perform his Modern Suite for piano at the 19th annual conference of the General Society of German Musicians, a showcase for new music whose programs were arranged by none other than Franz Liszt.
Liszt had met MacDowell earlier that year, and when MacDowell sent him the music for his Modern Suite for solo piano, Liszt asked the young composer to play it himself at the Society’s conference in Zurich.
The success of his Modern Suite No. 1 lead to the creation of a second, and both were published a year later by the Leipzig firm of Breitkopf & Hærtel. These two suites were the first works of MacDowell to appear in print, and launched his career as one of the major American composers of the late 19th century.
Music Played in Today's ProgramEdward MacDowell (1860-1908): Modern Suite No. 1; James Barbagallo, piano; Naxos 8.559011
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On today’s date in 1919, British composer Edward Elgar finished a work he labeled jokingly as his Opus 1001 — a 50-second Smoking Cantata, intended, according to the manuscript score, as “an edifying, allegorical, improving, expostulatory, educational, persuasive, hortatory, instructive, dictatorial, magisterial, inadautory work.”
The score was completed at the Hertfordshire home of a wealthy banker named Edward Speyer, one of his oldest friends, to whom the manuscript was given. When he came to stay, Speyer had only one request, that the composer and his musician friends, “Kindly do not smoke in the hall or on the staircase.”
That’s also full text of Elgar’s cantata.
In the middle of his manuscript, he drew a medieval hell’s mouth, belching smoke. The little score was discovered, performed, and recorded for the first time in July of 2003.
Music Played in Today's ProgramEdward Elgar (1857-1934): Smoking Cantata; Andrew Shore, bar; Hallé Orchestra; Mark Elder, conductor; Hallé CD HLL-7505
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Today we note the birth and death anniversaries of two American composers of the 20th century.
On today’s date in 1915, American composer David Diamond was born in Rochester, New York. In 1940, Dmitri Mitropoulos, then the music director of the Minneapolis Symphony commissioned one of his best-known works. He had specifically asked Diamond for an upbeat piece of music. “Write me a happy work,” he asked. “These are distressing times ... make me happy!” The 29-year-old composer responded with his popular Rounds for String Orchestra, which Mitropoulos premiered in Minneapolis in 1944.
Also on today’s date, in 1984, the American composer and teacher Randall Thompson died in Boston at 85. Randall Thompson wrote three symphonies and some fine chamber works, but his best-known piece of music is this choral setting of Allelujah which was first performed at the opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Lenox, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1940, when Thompson was 41 years old.
“[My Alleujah is] a very sad piece,” said Thompson. “Here it is comparable to the Book of Job, where it is written, ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’”
Music Played in Today's ProgramDavid Diamond (1915-2005): Rounds; Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Nonesuch 79002
Randall Thompson (1899-1984): Alleluia; Robert Shaw Chamber Singers; Robert Shaw, conductor; Telarc 80461
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Today’s date in 1931 marks the birthday of the first notable Native American composer of concert music. His name was Louis Ballard, and he was born in Devil’s Promenade in Oklahoma. His father was Cherokee, and his mother Quapaw.
As a young boy he attended — but managed not to be irreparably damaged by — one of the notorious boarding schools where Native American students were taught to forget everything about their own language and culture. He remained rooted in Quapaw language and traditions at the same time his interest in European classical music developed, and in 1962 became first American Indian to receive a graduate degree in music composition.
Inspired by the example of Bela Bartok, who incorporated the folk music of Eastern Europe in his works, Ballard attempted to do the same with Native American source material in concert works both large and small. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1971 and in 1974 his orchestral piece Incident at Wounded Knee was performed at Carnegie Hall and taken on an Eastern European tour by Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, who had commissioned the work.
Music Played in Today's ProgramLouis Ballard (1931-2007): Mid-Winter Fires; Amy Morris, flute; Mark Serrup, oboe; Mary Goetz, piano; Indande Records 52352
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Unless you’re just mad about 18th century history, it’s unlikely you know off the top of your head who the winners and losers were in the War of the Spanish Succession. Suffice it to say, on today’s date in 1713, to celebrate the successful resolution of that conflict, a festive choral Te Deum was performed at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
It was written by ambitious 28-year old German composer, George Friedrich Handel. We’re not sure if Handel wrote his Utrecht Te Deum in response to an invitation from the British royal family or wrote it “on spec” to win their favor. In any case, when performed by the Royal Musicians and the choir of the Chapel Royal on July 7, 1713, it made a tremendous impression.
Handel’s first royal employer was King George the First, and three years after Handel’s death, King George III sat on the throne. Now, King George may have suffered from madness and lost the American colonies, but at least he did know a good composer when he heard one. He idolized Handel and saw to it that the composer was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Frederic Handel (1685-1757): Utrecht Te Deum; St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir; The Parley of Instruments; John Scott, conductor; Hyperion 67009
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On today’s date in 1971, jazz great Louis Armstrong died in New York City at 69. He was born in New Orleans, and for years, all the standard reference books listed his birthday as the Fourth of July, 1900. Well, it turned out that wonderfully symbolic date was cooked up by his manager Joe Glaser. Armstrong wasn’t sure when he was born, so the Fourth of July seemed as good a date as any, and was accepted as fact for many years. Eventually documents were discovered that proved he was actually born on August 4, 1901.
Armstrong earned the nickname “Satchmo,” short for “Satchelmouth,” and in later years he was affectionately dubbed “Pops.” If documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is to be believed, he was the central figure in the development of jazz in the 20th century.
British music critic Norman Lebrecht offered this assessment: “Armstrong never bowed his head nor sang from anywhere but the heart. He was a figure of enormous dignity and a musical innovator of universal importance.” Acknowledging his influence in American concert music, composer Libby Larsen subtitled one of her works, a 1990 Piano Concerto, Since Armstrong.
Music Played in Today's ProgramLouis Armstrong (1901-1971): Skip the Gutter; Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five; Columbia 44422; I’m in the Barrel arr. David Jolley; Windscape Arabesque 6732
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On today’s date in 1992, lovers of the tango had good reason to be sad. Argentinean composer and bandoneón virtuoso Astor Piazzolla had died in Buenos Aires at the age of 71.
The bandoneón is a close relation of the accordion, and for it Piazzolla composed new music inspired by the tango, an Argentinian dance form that originated in working-class dancehalls. While still a teenager, he had played bandoneón in the orchestra of Carlos Gardél, the most famous tango singer of the 1930s. Eventually, he formed his own band, which became famous throughout South America.
But Piazzolla had a burning desire to write concert music, and won a scholarship to study composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. She encouraged him to explore the possibilities inherent in the music he knew best, so he set about reinventing the tango. The result was dubbed “nuevo tango,” as vital as the old ones, but often dark and brooding.
When asked why these new tangos were so melancholy, he replied, “Not because I’m sad. Not at all. I’m a happy guy … no, my music is sad because the tango is sad — sad and dramatic, but not pessimistic.”
Music Played in Today's ProgramAstor Piazzolla (1921-1992): Tres Minutos con la Realidad; Nestor Marconi, bandoneon; Yo Yo Ma, cello; ensemble; Sony Classical 63122
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Weather permitting, there’s a good chance you’ll be attending an outdoor symphonic concert tonight that will close with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, complete with a volley of booming cannon shots, church bells, and dazzling fireworks.
It’s become an American tradition to perform the 1812 Overture on July 4, even though it has nothing to do with the 1776 War of Independence — or America’s War of 1812, for that matter.
No, it’s all down to Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops.
For years, a wealthy American businessman named David Mugar financed an outdoor Pops concert on Boston’s Esplanade on the Fourth of July. But by the mid-1970s, attendance started to decline, so Mugar suggested that if Fiedler would close the annual concert with the 1812 Overture, people might be lured back by the live cannon fire Tchaikovsky asks for in the piece.
Well, it worked. Outdoor concerts with the 1812 Overture plus cannons quickly became a tradition, and in 1976, 400,000 people attended the Boston Pops’ outdoor Bicentennial Fourth of July concert — setting a Guinness World Record for best-attended classical concert.
And, a year after his death in 2022, a bronze statue of Mugar was unveiled on the Boston Esplanade.
Music Played in Today's ProgramPeter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): 1812 Overture; Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra; Antal Dorati, conductor; Mercury Living Presence 434360
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Country Gardens is the best-known work of Australian-born American composer, arranger, and pianist Percy Grainger. Its score bears this note: “Birthday-gift, Mother, July 3, 1918.” His mother Rose was responsible for his excellent early musical training.
In 1918, he arranged a folk tune given to him in 1908 by Cecil Sharp, a major figure in the folklore revival in England. He titled this arrangement Country Gardens, and it went over so well at his recitals that he decided to have it published.
It was a big hit and broke sales records. In fact, until his death in 1961, its sales generated a significant portion of Grainger’s annual income. Like other composers with a mega-hit, Grainger came to resent being known for just one tune and would say to audiences: “The typical English country garden is not often used to grow flowers. It’s more likely to be a vegetable plot. So you can think of turnips as I play it”.
In 1931, Country Gardens was arranged for wind band by someone other than Grainger, but around 1950, at the special request of a Detroit band director, Grainger prepared his own wind band arrangement, which likewise became a hit.
Music Played in Today's ProgramPercy Grainger (1882-1961): Country Gardens; Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra; Timothy Reynish Chandos 9549
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In German, “Gluck” means “luck,” and today’s date marks the birthday of a German composer named Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose good fortune it was to be credited with reforming the vocally ornate but dramatically static form of Baroque opera.
In the 18th century, opera was the biggest and most high-profile of all musical forms, and Gluck wrote 49 of them during his 67 years of life. Like many 18th century opera composers, the stories Gluck chose were often based on ancient Greek myths such as “Orpheus and Eurydice.”
It wasn’t the matter of Gluck’s operas that was revolutionary, but the manner in which he set these stories to music. When the British music historian Charles Burney visited Gluck in 1771, he recorded the composer’s own words on the subject.
“It was my design to divest music of those abuses which the vanity of singers, or the complacency of composers, had so long disfigured Italian opera and made the most beautiful and magnificent of all public exhibitions into the most tiresome and ridiculous,” said Gluck.
To sum it all up, Gluck told Burney, “My first and chief care as a dramatic composer was to aim at a noble simplicity.”
Music Played in Today's ProgramChristoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-1787): Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orpheus; Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood, conductor; L’Oiseau-Lyre 410553
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On today’s date in 1937, a two-piano suite by French composer Darius Milhaud had its premiere. It was titled Scaramouche, after a stock character in the Italian commedia dell arte, and the music’s upbeat, carefree mood made it an instant hit. For his part, Milhaud was in an apprehensive mood. When he and his wife Madeleine had visited the 1937 Paris International Exposition, they saw premonitions of war reflected in many of its exhibits.
“Picasso’s Guernica adorned the walls of the Spanish pavilion, but the Spanish Republic had been murdered. Placed face to face, the German and the Soviet pavilions seemed to challenge each other to mortal combat. One evening, as we watched the sun set behind the flags of all nations, Madeleine clutched my arm in anguish and whispered, ‘This is the end of Europe!’” Milhaud recalled.
In 1940, Milhaud was forced to leave France when the Germans occupied Paris and his music was promptly banned due to his Jewish heritage. But in 1943, two French pianists performed Scaramouche in concert, tricking the German censors by listing its composer’s name as Hamid-al-Usurid — a fictitious Arabic composer whose name just happens to be an anagram of Darius Milhaud.
Music Played in Today's ProgramDarius Milhaud (1892-1974): Scaramouche; Anthony and Joseph Paratore, pianos; Four Winds 3014
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In 1971, American film composer Bernard Herrmann confessed, “the only thing I ever did that was foolhardy was to write an opera.” The opera was based on the 19th century novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Herrmann began work on it in April of 1943, and didn't finish until today's date in 1951 — at 3:45 p.m., as he noted in its score.
In those years, Herrmann was juggling three careers. He was conducting the CBS Orchestra, producing music for New York radio plays and occasional Hollywood films, and trying to write serious concert hall works. It's no wonder it took him eight years to finish a big opera score that clocked in at over three hours in length.
Now, writing an opera is hard enough, but getting it staged is even harder. Herrmann liked to quote Franz Liszt, that “to write an opera you have to have the soul of a hero — and the mentality of a lackey — to have it produced.” Even if an opera company expressed interest, Herrmann refused to cut or alter his score. He felt Wuthering Heights was his masterpiece, and refused to compromise.
The opera was never staged during his lifetime, so Herrmann had to content himself with making his own studio recording of Wuthering Heights at his own expense. After Herrmann’s death in 1975, the Portland Opera staged an edited-down version, and more recently, in 2011, the Minnesota Opera staged and filmed a critically acclaimed revival.
Music Played in Today's ProgramBernard Herrmann (1911-1975): Wuthering Heights; soloists; Pro Arte Orch; Bernard Herrmann, conductor; Unicorn UKCD -2050/52
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Today’s date in 1914 marks the birthday of famous Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík. He was the son of a very musical father, namely the violin virtuoso Jan Kubelík, known as the Czech Paganini.
Kubelík studied violin, composition, and conducting at the Prague Conservatory, and was an excellent pianist to boot — good enough to accompany his father on several concert tours. At the age of 19, he made his conducting debut with the Czech Philharmonic, and later became that orchestra’s artistic director.
In 1950, Kubelík became director of the Chicago Symphony; in 1955, the director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and in 1961, conductor of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra. It was with the Bavarian orchestra that he made the bulk of his recordings, including a critically-acclaimed set of the Mahler symphonies. Like Mahler, he was both a conductor and a composer.
“In public, I am practicing more as a conductor, but I could not live without composing, just as I would not be able to conduct without composing,” he said. He wrote five operas and three symphonies as well as many chamber music pieces, choral works and songs.
Rafael Kubelík died at 82 in 1996, in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Music Played in Today's ProgramRafael Kubelik (1914-1996): Orphikon: Symphony in Three Movements; Bavarian Radio Symphony; Rafael Kuybelik, conductor; Panton 1264
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On today’s date in 1745, 73-year-old French composer Antoine Forqueray died in Mantes-la-Jolie outside Paris, where he had lived after his retirement as a court musician to King Louis XIV of France.
Forqueray was a virtuoso on the viola da gamba, a bowed string instrument popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, but nowadays only played by specialists in old music. At the tender age of 10, Forqueray played before Louis XIV. Seven years later, he landed a job at the Court of Versailles.
In his day, the other great French gamba virtuoso and composer was Marin Marais, noted for his introspective, sweet and gentle style of playing. Forqueray’s style was extroverted and bold, even brash. People said Marais played like an angel, and Forqueray like the devil.
Forqueray’s style was so distinctive that three other French composers of the day, Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Couperin and Jacques Duphly, each composed a piece named La Forqueray in tribute to him.
An obituary notice suggested that Forqueray had composed some three hundred works, but a selection of thirty-two pieces published by his son two years after his father’s death is the only music by Antoine Forqueray that survives.
Music Played in Today's ProgramAntoine Forqueray (1671-1745): Piece for viola de gamba
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The name George Templeton Strong crops up frequently in both the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War and Ric Burns’ history of New York City. That George Templeton Strong was a lawyer and music lover who lived from 1820-1875, whose diary entries offer a detailed picture of daily life in New York City.
But there’s another member of the family we’d like to tell you about — the son of the famous diarist, George Templeton Strong, Jr., born in New York in 1856, and died in Geneva, Switzerland on today’s date in 1948.
The younger Strong became a fine oboist who played in various New York orchestras of his day. His father was not very happy about that. He wanted his son to study law. Moreover, Junior rebelled against his father’s ultra-conservative tastes in music: Strong Senior detested the music of Liszt and Wagner, whereas Junior, who became a composer, modeled his works on those very composers.
The sad father-son relationship is documented painfully in the final entries of the elder Strong’s diaries. After a bitter argument, Junior left home and moved to Europe, eventually settling in Switzerland, where he pursued a dual artistic career as composer and watercolorist.
Music Played in Today's ProgramGeorge Templeton Strong (1856-1948): Evening Dance from Suite No. 2; Moscow Symphony; Adriano, conductor; Naxos 8.559078
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