Composers Datebook

Synopsis

If TikTok influencers were around in Paris in 1831, they would probably have offered a breathless special edition report on a concert that occurred on today’s date that year.

Everybody who was anybody was there: from the literary world, French novelist Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables, don’t you know, and writer Alfred de Mussett, who they say was living in sin with that scandalous baroness, who went by the name of George Sand. Oh, and German poet Heinrich Heine was there, and from the music world, three of the leading opera composers of the day: foreign-born Giacomo Meyerbeer and Luigi Cherubini, and popular native son, Jacques Halevy. And who could miss the dashing, lion-maned Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt also seated in the theater?

They were all there to witness the Parisian debut of the most charismatic performer of his time, Italian violinist Nicolo Paganini. It was whispered that the fourth string on his violin was made from the intestine of his mistress, murdered at his own hand, and that he had spent 20 years in prison for the crime, with his violin his sole companion. Others hinted he had actually made a pact with Satan, trading his immortal soul for superhuman virtuosity! He looked like death warmed over, thin and gaunt, but played like a man possessed.

Music Played in Today's Program

Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840): Caprice No. 10; James Ehnes, violin; Telarc 80398

Synopsis

Today is International Women’s Day, a global celebration of the social, economic, political, and cultural achievements of women, so here’s a French composer whose name you may not have heard before, but you should!

After all, her music was good enough that Gabriel Fauré, Paul Dukas, and Maurice Ravel performed it at musical salons in Paris. She was a close friend of the famous composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger, studied organ with Louis Vierne, and composition with Vincent d’Indy.

But enough name-dropping. Her name was Charlotte Sohy. Born in Paris in 1887, and in the early decades of the 20th century, achieved both professional status and public success as a composer, writing masses, art songs, piano pieces, chamber music, and this symphony, which dates from 1917.

Unlike many women composers of the past, Sohy’s husband fully supported her career. After all, he was also a composer, and she even collaborated with him on a few of his pieces. Still, even in cosmopolitan Paris, she chose to publish her music under the pseudonym Charles Sohy, and while her chamber works received performances, her symphony remained unperformed during her lifetime.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charlotte Sohy (1887-1955): Symphony in C-sharp minor; Orchestre National de France; Débora Waldman, conductor; Palazzetto Bru Zane Label BZ-2006

Synopsis

Some special music had its premiere at Harvard University (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) on today’s date in 1980. It was commissioned to honor the memory of Walter Piston, who had taught composition at Harvard for a number of years, and it was one of his students, American harpsichordist and organist Daniel Pinkham, who composed it.

Pinkham had exceptional teachers. He studied harpsichord with Wanda Landowska, organ with E. Power Biggs and, in addition to Piston, Pinkham studied composition with Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber and Arthur Honegger.

But he credits another familiar name for his most important musical epiphany.

In 1939, while still a teenager, he heard one of the first American concerts given by the Trapp Family, whose sentimentalized story is familiar from The Sound of Music. The Trapp Family’s usual ensemble, which combined Renaissance and Baroque instruments like recorders and gambas with the bright and clear voices of young children, spoke to the young Pinkham as no music had before, becoming “a part of my way of looking at things,” as he put it later.

Pinkham composed everything from symphonies to electronic music. His choral and organ works are especially admired, and in 1990, he was named Composer of the Year by the American Guild of Organists.

Music Played in Today's Program

Daniel Pinkham (1923-2006): Serenades; Maurice Murphy, trumpet; London Symphony; James Sedares, conductor; Koch International 7179

Synopsis

Today in 1825, one of Beethoven's late chamber works, his String Quartet No. 12, received its premiere in Vienna by the Schuppanzigh Quartet. The Quartet had only received the music two weeks earlier, which, in those days, would be plenty of time for experienced musicians to work up a normal string quartet of that day. But Beethoven’s new quartet was harmonically and structurally far from the norm for 1825.

Even Beethoven knew as much, and drafted a humorous “contract” for himself and the four musicians to sign. It read: “Each one is herewith given his part and is bound by oath and pledged on his honor to do his best, to distinguish himself and to vie with the other in excellence. Signed: Schuppanzigh, Weiss, Linke, the grand master’s accursed cellist Holtz and the last, but only in signing, Beethoven.”

Even so, the premiere was under-rehearsed, and the players seemed visibly unhappy with their difficult assignment. Fortunately, Beethoven was not present, but when he learned of the poor performance, he was furious. He immediately contacted another violinist, Joseph Böhm, whose quartet meticulously rehearsed the new piece under the composer’s watchful eye.

Their performance was better received, and in April of 1825, Böhm took the unusual step of programming the difficult new work twice on the same program. As a contemporary review put it, this time, “the misty veil disappeared and Beethoven’s splendid work of art radiated its dazzling glory.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): String Quartet No. 12; LaSalle Quartet; DG 453 768

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2020, a new cello concerto by American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was given its premiere in Fort Lauderdale, by cellist Zuill Bailey the South Florida Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sebrina María Alfonso, the same performers who had commissioned the work.

About the work, Zwilich said, “A Cello Concerto is something that had been on my ‘composer’s wish list’ for a long time. One of the things I love about the cello is that it covers virtually the entire range of the human voice — I particularly like its evocation of the mezzo-soprano … I sometimes refer to string instruments as ‘singers on steroids,’ because of the power they give to a composer to explore virtuosity as well as expressivity. My Cello Concerto engages both the lyrical, singing nature of the instrument and its technical possibilities.”

Zwillich dedicated the new concerto to the memory of two legendary cellists, Leonard Rose and Mstislav Rostropovich. Following the premiere, Dennis D. Rooney of the Palm Beach Arts Paper wrote, “The concerto's three linked movements suggested a meditation on melodic gestures from the American vernacular. The blues hovered over the work allusively … Throughout, the mood was thoughtful but not elegiac.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Concerto for Cello and Orchestra; Zuill Bailey, cello; Santa Rosa Symphony; Francesco Lecce-Chong, conductor; Delos DE-3596