Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1784, Italian violinist Regina Strinasacchi gave a concert in Vienna and had the good sense to commission a new work for the occasion from an up-and-coming young Austrian composer named Wolfgang Mozart.

“We have the famous Strinasacchi from Mantua here right now. She is a very good violinist, has excellent taste, and a lot of feeling in her playing — I’m composing a sonata for her at this moment that we’ll be performing together on Thursday,” he wrote to his father.

Wolfgang’s papa must have been pleased about the cash commission, but might have frowned to learn that Strinasacchi received her part barely in time for the performance, and that his son hadn’t even bothered to write out his own part in full. Also, Regina and Wolfgang never got together to rehearse prior to the concert, which meant that she was probably sight-reading her part, and he improvising his.

No matter — the new sonata was received warmly and afterward Wolfgang had a whole month to dot all the musical i’s and cross all the musicals t’s in his score before it was printed. And, for the record, this Violin Sonata No. 32 is arguably one of Mozart’s finest.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Violin Sonata No. 32

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1865, the hottest ticket in Paris was for the premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s long-awaited grand opera L’Africaine, or The African Maid, at the Paris Opera. And when I say “long-awaited,” I mean long-awaited! Meyerbeer had begun work on L’Africaine some 25 years earlier. It had become a standing joke in the French press to rib Meyerbeer about the “imminent” completion of his opera.

There were many reasons for the delay: Meyerbeer was a slow worker and a perfectionist; he was sidelined by ill health; he was waiting for better singers, more sympathetic management at the Opera, etc. etc.

Opera fans back then must have given up hope he would ever finish L’Africaine, but — surprise! — he did and the work was slotted for production at the Paris Opera. At that point, ironically, he died, and his widow entrusted another composer to supervise the rehearsals for its 1865 premiere.

Meyerbeer’s operas were the 19th century equivalent of the sweeping costume epic movies of Cecil B. DeMille. In L’Africaine, the hero is the explorer Vasco da Gama, and one of the opera’s more spectacular stage effects involved a Portuguese ship running aground on an exotic reef and being taken over by a swarm of natives.

Music Played in Today's Program

Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864): “O Paradis” from L’Africaine; Ben Heppner, tenor; London Symphony; Myung-Whun Chung, conductor; DG 471 372

Synopsis

Today’s date in 1945 marks the birthday in Pittsburgh of great American playwright August Wilson. He chronicled the experiences of the Great Northward Migration of African-Americans decade by decade across the 20th century in a series of ten powerful and poetic plays collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle. Plays in the series include Fences and The Piano Lesson, both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame and a Broadway theater is named after him.

American composer Kathryn Bostic provided theatrical scores for several of his plays, working closely with him. Because of her collaboration, she also scored the PBS American Masters documentary August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand, which ultimately led her to create The August Wilson Symphony, which was premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony in 2018.

One of the major quests in Wilson’s plays is what he called “finding one’s song,” and music — especially the blues — figures large in his work. Perhaps with that in mind, Bostic composed a song, “State of Grace” as her personal memorial to Wilson, a song she has recorded, accompanying herself at the piano.

Music Played in Today's Program

Kathryn Bostic (b. 1970): “State of Grace”; Kathryn Bostic, vocal and piano; Pittsburgh Symphony strings; KBMusic digital download

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2002, Mariss Jansons led the Pittsburg Symphony in the premiere performance of the Symphony No. 2 written by 32-year-old American composer Michael Hersch.

Hardly a child prodigy, he was introduced to classical music at 18 by his brother Jamie, who showed him a videotape of Georg Solti conducting Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. That experience shook him. “It scrambled everything. That’s when I knew that I was to be a composer... My whole life started over at that moment,” Hersch recalled.

He certainly made up for lost time, exhibiting an uncanny ability to master both the piano and the intricacies of contemporary compositional techniques in less than a decade.

His first success as a composer came when his Elegy for Strings won a major prize and was conducted by Marin Alsop at Lincoln Center in New York in 1997. Since then, his works have been commissioned and performed by many other leading orchestras and performers.

Hersch’s Symphony No. 2 has no stated program, but it was composed shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, and knowing that, it’s hard to disassociate the score’s violent opening and subsequent elegiac mood from that tragic moment in American history.

Music Played in Today's Program

Michael Hersch (b. 1971): Symphony No. 2; Bournemouth Symphony; Marin Alsop, conductor; Naxos 8.559281

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1841 an all-Beethoven concert was given at the Salle Erard to raise funds for the proposed Beethoven monument in Bonn, the late composer’s birthplace. Franz Liszt was the piano soloist in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, conducted by Hector Berlioz.

About a month earlier, Liszt had dazzled Paris with the premiere of his new piano fantasia on themes from the popular opera Robert the Devil, by Giacomo Meyerbeer. So, as Liszt walked on stage — with the entire orchestra in place, all ready for Beethoven’s concerto — the audience clamored loudly for a repeat performance. They made such a racket that Berlioz and the orchestra had no choice but to sit idly by until Liszt first encored his Fantasia.

In the audience was 27-year old Richard Wagner, reviewing the concert for a Dresden newspaper. Wagner was outraged that the Beethoven was put on hold for Liszt’s flashy solo.

We’re not sure if Wagner attended a concert the following day at the Salle Pleyel, but any modern-day time traveler would probably want to stick around to hear Frederic Chopin give one of his rare Parisian recitals, performing, among other works, his own F-Major Ballade.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Reminiscences de Robert le Diable; Leslie Howard, piano; Hyperion 66861