Composers Datebook

Synopsis

There was a time when German opera houses would have fought over the chance to premiere an opera by Richard Strauss. But by 1940, when he finished the mythological opera, The Love of Danae, there was a war on and Strauss had fallen out of favor with Germany’s Nazi rulers.

A scheduled premiere in Dresden had to be cancelled. In Leipzig, the orchestral parts for the new opera were lost in a fire, and in Munich an Allied air raid damaged the opera’s sets and scenery. By the summer of 1944, when conductor Clemens Krauss was rehearsing handpicked vocal soloists and the Vienna Philharmonic for the opera’s belated premiere at the Salzburg Festival, the collapse of the Third Reich was imminent.

On August 1, an order was issued from Berlin canceling all music festivals and closing all theaters. Somehow Salzburg managed to get a dispensation, and rehearsals for Strauss’ opera were allowed to continue. A private dress rehearsal of The Love of Danae took place in Salzburg on August 16, 1944. The 80-year old composer attended, and, with tears in his eyes, thanked the performers with these words: “Perhaps we shall meet again in a better world.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Die Liebe der Danae (Symphonic Fragment); Toronto Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor; CBS 45804

Synopsis

It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum — and so, apparently, did Richard Wagner, who devised a brass instrument to bridge a gap he perceived between the horns and the trombones in the orchestra of his day. And so the Wagner tuba was born, a brass instrument Wagner designed for the 1876 premiere of his cycle of four Ring operas in Bayreuth, Germany, which began on today’s date that year with Das Rheingold — the first opera in the Ring cycle.

Other composers have also scored for Wagner tubas, including Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss, both ardent Wagner fans, and also Igor Stravinsky, who, though certainly not a Wagnerite, did include Wagner tubas in the early versions of some of his famous ballet scores.

Some contemporary composers include parts for the Wagner tuba in their works as well, and a quartet of these instruments appears in a 1994 score Hungarian composer György Kurtág wrote for the Berlin Philharmonic and its then music director, Claudio Abbado. Kurtág is noted for his short, epigrammatic and introspective chamber works, and Stele is his first major work for a large, conventional, arranged symphony orchestra.

Music Played in Today's Program

György Kurtág (1926-2019): Stele; SWR Symphony; Michael Gielen, conductor; Hänssler 93001

Synopsis

Some have claimed that it was on today’s date in 1877 that the American inventor Thomas Edison recorded his own voice reciting, “Mary had a little lamb” on a tinfoil cylinder of his own design. Other historians date the precise birth of the phonograph earlier, others later. In any case, the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company wasn’t established until January of 1878.

Initially, music wasn’t Edison’s top priority: He thought his phonograph might be profitable as an aid to stenographers, or for families who wanted to record the last words of beloved relatives.

Eventually, however, classical music and the phonograph began to interact.

In London in 1888, a bit of a Crystal Palace performance of Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt was captured on an Edison cylinder. In Vienna, Johannes Brahms, seated at the piano, recorded a snippet of his famous Hungarian Dance No. 3, with a spoken intro many wrongly assumed was by the composer.

The voice of British composer Arthur Sullivan was captured, however, commenting, “I am astonished — and terrified — at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever!”

Well, Arthur, I’m afraid there’s no going back now…

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) arr. Kreisler: Songs My Mother Taught Me; Fritz Kreisler, violin Pearl 9324

George Frederic Handel (1685-1757): excerpt from Judas Maccabeus; Edward Lloyd, tenor; Koch Historic 7703

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): plays on an Edison cylinder (recorded 1889); Johannes Brahms, piano; Pearl 99049

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Hungarian Dance No. 1; Idil Biret, piano; Naxos 8.550355

Synopsis

As the proverbial saying goes: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

It was, frankly, a matter of economic necessity that led 36-year-old Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss to program an all-Johann Strauss concert by the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Music Festival on today’s date in 1929.

The Festival was established in 1920 with high ideals but insecure funding. To succeed, the Festival needed both strong local support and wealthy visitors from abroad. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but in 1929, as the festival approached its 10th anniversary, its finances and future seemed uncertain.

Now, Krauss knew that Strauss waltzes were popular with both the natives and the festival’s international visitors, so why not offer a whole concert program consisting of nothing but the dance music of Johann Strauss? The August 11, 1929, concert proved to be a resounding success, and the idea was repeated at the Festival several times over the next decade.

Back home in Vienna, Krauss revived the idea of an all-Strauss concert on December 31, 1939. That year-end tradition continues to this day, as the Philharmonic presents its annual New Year’s Concert, broadcast worldwide from Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna.

Music Played in Today's Program

Johann Strauss, Jr. (1825-1899): Annen Polka and Perpetuum Mobile; Vienna Philharmonic; Clemens Krauss, conductor; Preiser 90139 (recorded 1929)

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1813, William Henry Fry was born in Philadelphia. As a journalist, he was one of the most vociferous champions of American concert music, and put his money where his mouth was by becoming a composer, creating a number of programmatic works, including a Niagara symphony and another titled Santa Claus. Above all else, Fry was passionate about opera, and wrote several of his own.

Fry was a colorful — if understandably biased — music critic. Here’s an excerpt from his 1862 review of a New York performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore — an opera only 9 years old at that time:

“Trovatore … has a wonderful plot, beyond human comprehension; though finally we learn in the last scene that [the tenor] is made into soup by the order of his brother [the baritone], who then expresses his emotion and surprise on learning of the transaction as the curtain falls. As to the music — there are some charming, popular, ingenious, artistic … points; [but] there are others egregiously vulgar and rowdy. The Anvil Chorus, for example, is about the equal to a scene of mending a sewer set to music; or repairing a pair of cast-off leather breeches.”

Music Played in Today's Program

William Henry Fry (1813-1864): Macbeth Overture; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Tony Rowe, conductor; Naxos 8.559057