Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1892, the Adamowski Quartet gave a concert in Boston that included two movements from a string quartet by 32-year old composer Charles Martin Loeffler.

For the past 10 years, Loeffler had been the associate concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, and just the previous year they had premiered his first orchestral piece.

Loeffler told people he was born in the Alsace region of France in 1861, which would account for his French manners and the French titles he gave some of his pieces. In fact, he was born in Berlin, but he never forgave the Prussians for the political persecution and imprisonment of his father, and left Berlin for Paris as soon as he could.

In 1881, at 20, Loeffler came to the United States, where, as he put it, he found Americans “quick to reward genuine musical merit and to reward it far more generously than Europe.” In 1887, he became an American citizen, and in short order established himself as one of our leading composers.

After his death in 1935, Loeffler’s music fell into neglect for many decades, but his elegant and well-crafted music is attracting renewed interest — and recordings — today.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Martin Loeffler (1861-1935): String Quartet; DaVinci Quartet; Naxos 8.559077

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1930, Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the first staged presentation in America of Igor Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet The Rite of Spring at Philadelphia’s 4000-seat Opera House — and it was a hot ticket.

The Philadelphia Inquirer noted “a milling mob fought and scrambled for entrance to the Opera House … there was a traffic tie-up of taxis and trolleys for blocks beyond, while dignified ladies were seen to pop out of automobiles like rabbits out of hutches, and scurry for blocks on foot, to avoid being late.” This was for what the newspaper described as, “the startling spectacle of bare-legged girls and men whirling madly and stamping upon the stage to an orgiastic fury of sound.”

For its American premiere, the original costuming from the work’s Paris premiere was retained, but the choreography was now by Léonide Massine, not Vaslav Nijinsky, and Martha Graham and her Corps de Ballet were the dancers, not Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe.

Stokowski, a passionate promoter of Stravinsky’s score, had given its American concert premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1922 and, in 1940, it was Stokie and the Philadelphians who could accompany Walt Disney’s dinosaurs in his animated Fantasia version of the famous Stravinsky score.

Music Played in Today's Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): The Rite of Spring; Philadelphia Orchestra; Leopold Stokowski, conductor; Disneyland WDX101

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1959, the Duke University Band under Paul Bryan gave the premiere performance of a new work they had commissioned: the Symphony No. 3 for concert band by American composer Vittorio Giannini.

With the growth of concert bands in the 1950s, and success of high-profile performing ensembles like Frederick Fennell’s Eastman Wind Ensemble, composers like Giannini started getting commissions to write new works for these ensembles. In all, Giannini wrote five pieces for concert band, with his Symphony No. 3 the biggest and best known of the lot.

Paul Bryan and Duke University were certainly pleased with the new work. Its resounding success encouraged other band directors to commission new concert works for wind band — and, in one fell swoop, the Duke Band achieved national recognition for its initiative.

As for Giannini, in his later years he taught a younger generation of composers, first in New York City at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, then in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute, and finally at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he served as that institution’s first president. Giannini students included a number of successful composers, including David Amram, John Corigliano, Nicolas Flagello, Adolphus Hailstork and Alfred Reed.

Music Played in Today's Program

Vittorio Giannini (1903-1966): Symphony No. 3; University of Houston Wind Ensemble; Tom Bennett, conductor; Naxos 8.570130

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1938, radio listeners across North America tuned to the NBC network to hear the first American performance of the Symphony No. 5 by 32-year-old Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. The work premiered in Moscow the previous year to great acclaim, and many American conductors and orchestras were competing to give its first performance here, but it was Artur Rodzinski and the NBC Symphony who were chosen — for two very good reasons.

First, he had traveled to Moscow in 1934 to meet Shostakovich and a kind of mutual admiration bond was formed. Second, NBC was willing to pay the outrageously high premium demanded by the Soviet government for the American premiere. Now, $5000 might not seem like a lot to us now, but in 1938 that was the equivalent of well over $100,000 in today’s money — and NBC was willing and able to pony up that much to promote their recently-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra and its coast-to-coast radio broadcasts.

Rodzinski’s wife Halina recalled that upon receiving the new score after all the fuss and expense, her husband was at first not impressed, but during rehearsals fell in love with what would become Shostakovich’s most-performed symphony.

Music Played in Today's Program

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 5; Cleveland Orchestra; Artur Rodzinski, conductor; Sony 19439928772

Synopsis

It’s usually new music that gets terrible reviews, but scanning old newspapers, you’ll find that occasionally old music gets panned with equal venom.

On today’s date in 1865, a concert by the Theodore Thomas Orchestra at Irving Hall opened with an orchestral arrangement of a Bach Passacaglia, followed by Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola.

The New York Times reviewer was not thrilled with either selection:

“The Bach is a fair representation of the treadmill. A culprit may travel on it for a day without advancing a step. It simply goes ‘round and ‘round in the most obvious style, and is generally dull — like a superannuated church warden… The symphony for violin and viola by Mozart is a work generally avoided in Europe. The wearisome scale passages on the little fiddle repeated ad nauseam on the bigger one are simply maddening. On the whole, one would prefer death to a repetition of this production,” he wrote.

Thus spake The Times in April of 1865. We should note in its defense that Americans had other matters on their minds that week. The day the review appeared the paper’s headline read: “Union Victory! Peace! Lee Surrenders His Whole Army!”

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750) (arr. Respighi): Passacaglia in c; BBC Philharmonic; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; Chandos 9835

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791): Sinfonia Concertante; Midori, violin; Nobuko Imai, viola; NDR Symphony; Christoph Eschenbach, conductor; Sony 89488