Composers Datebook

Synopsis

This lush, late-Romantic score, composed in 1904, had to wait until 1962 for its premiere performance, when, on today’s date that year, the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Eugene Ormandy performed it in Seattle during an international festival devoted to its composer, Anton Webern.

For most music lovers, the Austrian composer is a shadowy, vaguely mysterious figure. If they know anything at all about him, it is that he was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, that he wrote a small body of short, condensed atonal scores, and that in 1945 he was shot by accident by an American soldier in the tense days following the end of World War II.

The early orchestral score that received its belated premiere on today’s date in 1962, In the Summer Wind, was completed when Webern was just 19. It’s very much in the style of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and early Schoenberg.

To earn a living, Webern worked as a conductor of everything from Viennese operettas to worker’s choral unions. His conducting career came to a halt when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, and until his untimely death in 1945, Webern lived by doing routine work for a Viennese music publisher.

Music Played in Today's Program

Anton von Webern (1883-1945): Im Sommerwind; Cleveland Orchestra; Christoph von Dohnanyi, conductor; London 436 240

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1803, violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower, 33, and pianist and composer Ludwig van Beethoven, 32, gave the first performance in Vienna of a new sonata for violin and piano, a chamber work now regarded as one of Beethoven’s greatest.

At the first rehearsal, Bridgetower had to read from Beethoven’s manuscript score — no easy task considering Beethoven’s poor penmanship — and at one point felt compelled to improvise a passage, which so enchanted Beethoven that he added Bridgetower’s improvisation to his score. In fact, the two young men became fast friends, and were inseparable for a time.

Bridgetower was an English violin virtuoso born in Poland of a European mother and an African father. His Viennese friendship with Beethoven came to a sudden end, he later claimed, when the two men became interested in the same young lady.

And so, even though it should be known as the Bridgetower Sonata, when this music was published as Beethoven’s Op. 47, Beethoven dedicated the music to another contemporary virtuoso, a French violinist named Kreutzer, who apparently never performed it. Despite that fact, to this day, the work is known as Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Violin Sonata No. 9 (Kreutzer); Pamela Frank, violin; Claude Frank, piano; MusicMasters 67087

Synopsis

Some famous composers were notorious perfectionists — and then there was Johannes Brahms, the perfectionist of perfectionists. He spent 14 years tinkering with the score of his Symphony No. 1, remember.

He once claimed he had written and discarded twenty string quartets before publishing his first two in the year 1873. To say Brahms was his own severest critic would be putting it mildly, but there was one other person whose opinion he valued above all others, and that was Clara Schumann, one of the finest pianists of her day, the widow of his mentor Robert Schumann, and a fine composer in her own right.

So it comes as no surprise that Brahms’ String Quartet No. 3, the Quartet in B-flat Major, published as his Opus 67, was first performed as a kind of “test run” at the Berlin home of Clara Schumann on today’s date in the year 1876. The performers were the famous Joachim Quartet, led by violinist Joseph Joachim, a long-time friend of Brahms.

Unlike his preceding quartets, both austere and introspective works, this one was light-hearted and cheerful — “a useless trifle,” as he put it, adding it was just his way to “avoid facing the serious countenance of a symphony.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): String Quartet No. 3

Synopsis

German composer Richard Strauss wrote his first song at 6, and his last at 84, a year before his death in 1949. Four of his last songs were for soprano and orchestra. These Four Last Songs, as they came to be known, were premiered in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, on today’s date in 1950.

Strauss had written to great Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, suggesting “I would like to make it possible that [the songs] should be at your disposal for a world premiere … with a first-class conductor and orchestra.” Flagstad did sing the premiere performances, with the first-rate Philharmonia Orchestra of London conducted by the legendary German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler.

In addition to those famous performers, credit for the realization of Strauss’ request is also due to the Maharaja of Mysore, who put up a cash guarantee for the Strauss premiere. And since he could not be present, he asked that the premiere be recorded and the discs shipped to him in Mysore.

The Maharaja had wanted to be concert pianist, but the deaths of both his father and his uncle forced him to succeed to the throne in 1940 at 21. In addition to underwriting the Strauss premiere, the young Maharaja championed the music of Russian composer Nikolas Medtner, and, in 1945, the creation of the Philharmonia Orchestra of London as a recording ensemble for enterprising EMI producer Walter Legge.

In addition to Western classical music, the Maharaja was passionate about the court music of his native land, and, under the pen name of Shri Vidya, composed almost 100 works in the South Indian tradition.

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): “Im Abendrot (At Twlight),” from Four Last Songs; Jessye Norman, soprano; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Kurt Masur, conductor; Philips CD 464 742

Synopsis

At Westminster Abbey on today’s date in 1998 a haunting new setting of the Latin mass written by British composer Roxanna Panufnik received its premiere performance.

Panufnik was born in London in 1968, and if her family name sounds familiar, it’s because her father was Andrzej Panufnik, one of the greatest Polish composers of the 20th century.

Her interest in music began early: “I was three years old … when I said ‘Mummy, I want a violin with a stick to make it sing!’ I started violin, piano and flute. But I only wanted to make up my own music. When I was 12, [the composer] Oliver Knussen, visiting my parents, told me I should write down my improvisations. It all went from there.”

And in response to questions about having a famous composer as her father, she said: “My father had enormous integrity, always teaching me to be myself … Early in my career I was very sensitive to being compared to him and a few stray remarks about nepotism dented my confidence. However, I plodded on and now I’m thrilled to be regularly programmed alongside him and I’m so proud of where and who I came from.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968): ‘Westminster Mass’; Westminster Cathedral Choir; James O’Donnell, conductor; Teldec 28069