Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1945, Artur Rodzinski conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere performance of an orchestral suite arranged from Aaron Copland’s ballet score Appalachian Spring.

For the ballet’s 1944 premiere at the Library of Congress, Copland called for a chamber orchestra of 13 players, but for most music lovers, it’s as a work for a larger symphony orchestra that Appalachian Spring is most often remembered.

He said he had conducted all of his own works but knew his Appalachian Spring best of all. He also had some specific advice for other conductors of his score.

“I have often admonished orchestras, professional and otherwise, not to get too sweet or too sentimental with it, and I have reminded performers that Appalachian Spring should be played cooler than Tchaikovsky and lighter than Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. My own favorite place in the whole piece is toward the end where I have marked a misterioso. I would tell string players that we don't want to know where the up and down bows are. They must have a special sustained quality there, a kind of organ like sound, with each entry like an amen,” he said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Appalachian Spring Suite; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 63082

Synopsis

Despite a disastrous premiere in Birmingham on today’s date in 1900, Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius has become one of his best-loved and most-frequently performed works in the U.K., where, in 2015, Classic FM offered a guide to what it called the work’s “most epic choral stupendousness.”

Here’s Classic FM’s summary of its story: “The piece follows an ‘everyman’ character (the word ‘Gerontius’ comes from the Greek for ‘old man’) as he faces death, meets his guardian angel and goes before his God before being taken to Purgatory with the promise of everlasting glory.”

Well, all that Roman Catholic talk of Purgatory in the poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman that Elgar set to music did not sit well with the Church of England in the early decades of the 20th century. Many Anglican clerics flatly refused to let it be performed in their cathedrals.

But that controversy is long a thing of the past, and nowadays Gerontius is performed at cathedrals such as St. Paul’s in London and in concert venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, where in 1991 it was performed at the BBC Proms in the presence of the Prince of Wales, now known as King Charles III.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): The Dream of Gerontius; John Shirley-Quirk, baritone; London Symphony Chorus; King’s College Choir, Cambridge; London Symphony Orchestra; Benjamin Britten, conductor; London/Decca 448170

Synopsis

In 2001, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, commissioned American composer Steve Heitzeg to write a Nobel Symphony.

In 1866, the Swedish engineer and scientist Alfred Nobel had invented dynamite. His patent helped him amass a great fortune, but, troubled by the destructive power and potential misuse of his invention, Nobel arranged that his estate would award annual prizes to those who made significant contributions to world peace.

For his Nobel Symphony, Heitzeg chose to set quotes from a variety of Nobel laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Dalai Lama. Purely instrumental effects were also employed to convey something of their ideas and ideals. For example, in a section honoring a 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, he scored an eerie march for a percussion ensemble consisting of hollow artificial limbs.

The October 2, 2001 premiere of the Nobel Symphony came shortly after the tragic events of September 11th. Understandably, its message had a special resonance for the performers and audiences present at its first performance.

Music Played in Today's Program

Steve Heitzeg (b. 1959): Nobel Symphony; Gustavus Orchestra; Warren Friesen, conductor; Gustavus Adolphus 60171-10022

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2010, at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Nashville, the ALIAS ensemble gave the premiere performance of a new chamber work by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. It was titled Hilos — the Spanish word for “threads” — and scored for piano, violin, cello and clarinet.

Now, it’s not unusual for composers to tap their particular cultural background for inspiration, but she has a pretty wide variety of options in that regard: Her father is an American of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent. They met when her father was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s, and Frank grew up in Berkeley, California.

“There’s usually a story line behind my music,” she said. Regarding Hilos, she noted, “There are similarities to [Mussorgsky’s] Pictures at an Exhibition in that each movement tells a different story … Hilos refers to the ‘threads’ that make up Andean textiles and how these threads weave together.”

Each movement of Hilos has an evocative title, such Canto del Altiplano (Song of the Highlands), Zumballyu (Spinning Top), or Juegos de los Niños (Games of the Children).

Music Played in Today's Program

Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972): ‘Hilos’; Lee Carroll Levine, clarinet; Zeneba Brown, violin; Matt Walker, cello; Gabriela Lena Frank, piano; Naxos 8.559645

Synopsis

Even during the bombing of London by the German Air Force, the London Blitz of World War Two, the BBC Proms Concerts continued.

True, in 1941 a German incendiary bomb did destroy the long-time home of the Proms, Queen’s Hall on Langham Place, but, not to be deterred, the Proms simply moved to the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington.

Wartime Proms programs included this printed notice: “In the event of an Air Raid Warning the audience will be informed immediately, so that those who wish to take shelter either in the building or in public shelters outside, may do so, The concert will then continue.”

Talk about pluck!

In 1944, British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams completed a new oboe concerto to be premiered at a Proms concert, but a German V-1 rocket that landed dangerously near the Albert Hall led to an early end to that Proms season, since the V-1 rockets, unlike the German bombers, didn’t allow enough warning time to clear the hall.

So, on today’s date in 1944, the new Vaughan Williams concerto was premiered not in London, but in Liverpool, with soloist Leon Goossens and Malcolm Sargent conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Oboe Concerto; David Theodore, oboe; London Symphony; Bryden Thomson, conductor; Chandos 8594