Composers Datebook

SynopsisIt’s summertime, the livin’ is easy, and all across the country music festivals large and small are getting underway. In addition to the big symphonic festivals at Ravinia and Tanglewood, there are smaller ones devoted exclusively to the intimate art of chamber music. These festival often offer young, emerging composers the chance have their brand-new scores heard in workshop settings. Sometimes composers themselves are in charge of these summer festivals, partnering with established or specially-organized performing ensembles.In 1995, for example, two American composers, Daniel S. Godfrey and Andrew Waggoner, started the Seal Bay Festival, a two-week series of performances and workshops of recently composed chamber music in the Penobscot Bay area of Maine.On June 14, 2001, this newly-revised string quartet by Daniel Godfrey received its premiere by the Cassatt Quartet at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport.The quartet is inscribed to the memory of Godfrey’s mother, who died in 1997. “Her passing came to represent for me the losses, and the necessity of letting go, that have accompanied my arrival at late middle age,” he said. “To oversimplify, perhaps, the first movement grieves, the second looks back wistfully, and the third looks ahead with determination and, ultimately, with hope.”Music Played in Today's ProgramDaniel S. Godfrey (b. 1949): String Quartet No. 3; Cassatt String Quartet; Koch 7573

SynopsisIn 1944, French composer Darius Milhaud was in California, teaching at Mills College in California, and received a commission to write a piece suitable for school bands. With a world at war, the Jewish composer had found safe refuge in the U.S., and so eagerly accepted the commission for a number of reasons. Milhaud, confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, sent his wife Madaleine to the College library to obtain a collection of French folk tunes. His idea was arrange of some these into a suite.As the composer himself explained after his Suite Française was finished:“The five parts of [my] Suite are named after French Provinces, the very ones in which the American and Allied armies fought together with the French underground for the liberation of my country. I used some folk tunes of these Provinces, as I wanted the young American to hear the popular melodies of those parts of France where their fathers and brothers fought on behalf of the peaceful and democratic people of France."Milhaud’s Suite Française was premiered by the Goldman Band in New York City on today’s date in 1945, and rapidly became one of the best-known and most often performed of Milhaud’s works, and one of the established classics of the wind band repertory.Music Played in Today's ProgramDarius Milhaud (1892-1974): Suite Francaise; Eastman Wind Ensemble; Frederick Fennell, conductor; Mercury 289 434 399-2

SynopsisOn today’s date in 2002, a high-profile musical event occurred at Philadelphia’s new Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The city was hosting the 57th National Conference of the American Symphony Orchestra League, and the Philadelphia Orchestra was celebrating its 100th anniversary with eight new commissions, all to be premiered in the Orchestra’s new Verizon Hall.On June 12th, the new piece was a Concerto for Orchestra by 39-year-old composer Jennifer Higdon. Her concerto opened the Philadelphia Orchestra’s program, followed by Richard Strauss’ tone-poem Ein Heldenleben. Both pieces were performed before an audience of orchestral professionals from around the country — not to mention Higdon’s proud mother.Higdon, understandably a little nervous, quipped to a newspaper reporter, “You’ll know my mother because she’ll be the one crying before the piece starts.” She needn’t have worried. Her Concerto for Orchestra was greeted with cheers from both its audience and performers — the latter in typically irreverent fashion, dubbed the new piece Ein Higdonleben.Higdon, the only woman among the eight composers commissioned for the orchestra’s centennial project, calls herself a “late bloomer” as a composer. She taught herself the flute at 15 and didn’t pursue formal music training until college. She was almost finished with her bachelor’s degree requirements at Bowling Green State University when she started composing her own music.Music Played in Today's ProgramJennifer Higdon (b. 1962): Concerto for Orchestra; Atlanta Symphony; Robert Spano, conductor; Telarc 80620

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1931, Russian-born American composer Nicolas Slonimsky was in Paris, conducting the second of two concerts of modern music from the Americas bankrolled by retired insurance executive and famous composer Charles Ives.This second concert showcased Latin American composers like Pedro Sanjuan, Carlos Chavez and Alejandro Caturla, as well as works by the Franco-American composers Carlos Salzedo and Edgard Varese. North America was represented by Wallingford Riegger’s Three Canons for flute, oboe, clarinet and bassoon.Normally, chamber music for just four players doesn’t require the services of a conductor, but in this case Slonimsky did beat time for the Parisian wind players hired for the gig. As he put it, “Some instrumental parts were written in 5/8 and others in 2/8. I started beating time in 5/8, whereupon the binary musicians began to gesticulate at me to show their discomfort. What was I to do? OK, I said, I will conduct 5/8 with my right hand and 2/8 with my left. I was so delighted with my newly found ambidextrous technique that I applied it in other pieces as well, notably in the second movement of Ives’ Three Places in New England, played on the first of the two Parisian concerts. Someone quipped that my conducting was evangelical, for my right hand knew not what my left hand was doing.”Music Played in Today's ProgramWallingford Riegger (1885-1961): Three Canons; Samuel Baron, flute; Ronald Roseman, oboe; Charles Neidich, clarinet; Donald MacCourt, bassoon; Bridge 9068

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1939, the King and Queen of England were in New York City. Despite the perilous situation back home in Europe, their royal majesties George and Elizabeth Windsor crossed the Atlantic to attend the 1939 World’s Fair, and sample exotic native delights such as a hot dog picnic with President Franklin Roosevelt.That same evening at Carnegie Hall, another visiting Brit, conductor Adrian Boult, led the New York Philharmonic in premiere performances of three brand-new works by leading British composers of the day, including the world premiere of the Seventh Symphony of Arnold Bax, a work commissioned by the British Council and dedicated to the American people. Also premiered that night was a virtuoso Piano Concerto by Arthur Bliss and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ set of variations for strings and harp on the old English carol, “Dives and Lazarus.”The music critic for The New Yorker, covering the premieres, wrote, “The symphony wandered, as Bax symphonies seem to do, yet wandered into many characteristic eloquences. The variations were soundly charming, and the piano concerto was a roaring triumph.”There seems to be no documentation on the quality of the hot dogs served to their royal majesties, but we’re willing to bet they, too, were top-notch.Music Played in Today's ProgramArthur Bliss (1891-1975): Piano Concerto; Philip Fowke, piano; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic; David Atherton, conductor; Unicorn 2029 Arnold Bax (1883-1953): Symphony No. 7; London Philharmonic; Raymond Leppard, conductor; Lyrita 232

SynopsisContemporary composers may bemoan that their newly-composed opera or concerto might languish unperformed for years. “Haydn was lucky,” they whine, “His stuff got played right away!”Well, it’s true that Haydn did have his own orchestra at Prince Esterhazy’s estate and got his music played while the ink was still wet. But even Haydn had to wait for a premiere on occasion — in two instances, for a very, very long time.Consider the last opera Haydn wrote, L’anima del Filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice — or, in English, The Soul of the Philosopher, or Orpheus and Euridice. This was supposed to premiere in 1791 in London. But a spat between the Prince of Wales and his pop, King George III, meant the performance was off. The opera was eventually premiered 160 years later — on today’s date in 1951, at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, with a cast including Maria Callas and Boris Christoff, led by the German conductor Erich Kleiber.And the public premiere of a Cello Concerto, a work some think Haydn wrote at Esterhazy in the 1760s, took place in the 1960s. Haydn’s score was presumed lost until 1961, when it was discovered at the Prague National Museum and finally played by cellist Milos Sádlo and the Czech Radio Symphony, led by Sir Charles Mackerras, on May 19, 1962.Music Played in Today's ProgramFranz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): L’Anima del Filosofo (Orfeo ed Euridice); Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo-soprano; Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood, conductor; Decca 452668 Cello Concerto No. 1; Mstislav Rostropovich, cello; Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; Iona Brown, conductor; EMI 65701

SynopsisFor some composers, what made them popular in their own day is not always what makes them popular today. Take, for example, Italian Baroque composer Tomaso Albinoni, who was born in Venice on today’s date in 1671.Albinoni was the son of a wealthy paper merchant, so he was sufficiently well-off, not to have to land a job with the church or some noble patron. He was most famous as an opera composer and travelled outside Italy to lead productions. Unfortunately, his opera scores were never published and so were lost to posterity. He did, however, publish several collections of instrumental works, and it is on these that his fame rests today.By a quirk of fate, nowadays Albinoni’s best known work, his famous Adagio in g minor, was not one those works published in the 18th century. Rather, it was a 20th century recreation by musicologist Remo Giazotto based on a rather skimpy surviving sketch. No matter that there are scads of other Albinoni Adagios equally ravishing and straight from his own quill pen. In 1996 the Erato label even issued an album consisting of nothing but 22 original and legitimate Albinoni Adagios and slow movements — plus the famous Adagio that was cooked up by Remo Giazotto tossed in for good measure!Music Played in Today's ProgramTomaso Albinoni (1671-1751): Adagio, from Concerto No. 12; I Solisti Veneti; Claudio Scimone, conductor; Erato 0630-15681-2

SynopsisClaudette Sorel was a pianist, educator and passionate advocate for equal rights for women in music, especially composers and performers. In 1996, she founded the Sorel Organization to expand opportunities and stretch the boundaries for promising emerging female musicians through a variety of collaborations and scholarships, and to acknowledge notable masters in the field.On today’s date in 2022, for example, Cuban-born American composer Tania J. León was awarded the Organization’s Sorel Legacy Medallion for her life and work in music.While still in her 20s, León became a founding member and the first musical director of the Dance Theater of Harlem, establishing its music department, school, and orchestra. She has composed a number of both large scale and chamber works that have been performed here and abroad. In February 2020, the New York Philharmonic premiered her orchestral piece Stride and in 2021 that work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music.León said, “Stride was inspired by women’s rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony. She kept pushing and pushing and moving forward, walking with firm steps until she got [it] done. That is what Stride means. Something that is moving forward.”Music Played in Today's ProgramTania León (b. 1943): Batá; Louisville Orchestra; Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor; Soundmark CD 48027

SynopsisOn today’s date in 1931, Russian-born American conductor and composer Nicolas Slonimsky was in Paris conducting the first of two concerts of ultra-modern music from the New World. These were presented under the auspices of the Pan American Association of Composers, and funded by an anonymous philanthropist Slonimsky later identified as retired insurance executive and fellow composer Charles Ives.Slonimsky had approached Ives early in 1931 with the idea of presenting a series of new music concerts in New York. When that proved too costly, they suggested mounting the same concerts in Paris.“In 1931, the dollar was still almighty among world currencies,” Slonimsky recalled. “Ives gave me a letter of credit to the Paris branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank in the amount of $1500, an enormous sum of money in French francs at the time. The prestigious Orchestra Straram was engaged for my first Paris concert. I had a brilliant audience: composers, journalists, painters, Italian futurists. There was applause, but also puzzled responses.”One French music critic even titled his review “The Discovery of America,” writing, “We have, (without joking), just discovered America, thanks to a Christopher Columbus called Slonimsky.” As for Ives, he was very pleased with the success of the concerts, and for a time jokingly addressed Slonimsky as either “Columbus et Vespuccius.”Music Played in Today's ProgramHenry Cowell (1897-1965): Synchrony; Polish National Radio Orchestra; William Strickland, cond.) Citadel 88122

SynopsisMerriam-Webster’s defines a gazebo as “a freestanding roofed structure usually open on the sides.”To most Americans, however, “gazebo” conjures up warm, summer days spent out-of-doors: If you imagine yourself inside a gazebo, you’re probably enjoying a cool beverage while gazing out at the greenery — or, if you fancy yourself outside one, you’re probably seated in a lawn chair, gazing at a group of gazebo-sheltered band musicians playing a pops concert for your entertainment.In the early 1970s, American composer John Corigliano wrote a series of whimsical four-hand piano dances he dedicated to certain of his pianist friends, and then later arranged these pieces for concert band, titling the resulting suite Gazebo Dances.“The title was suggested by the pavilions often seen on village greens in towns throughout the countryside, where public band concerts are given in the summer,” Corigliano explained. “The delights of that sort of entertainment are portrayed in this set of dances, which begins with a Rossini-like overture, followed by a rather peg-legged waltz, a long-lined adagio, and a bouncy tarantella.”The concert band version of Corigliano’s Gazebo Dances was first performed in Indiana on today’s date in 1973, by the University of Evansville Wind Ensemble, with Robert Bailey conducting.Music Played in Today's ProgramJohn Corigliano (b. 1938): Gazebo Dances; University of Texas Wind Ensemble; Jerry Junkin, conductor; Naxos 8.559601