Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Tanglewood is one of America’s most famous summertime classical music festivals and can boast a long and impressive list of premieres and performances by famous American composers and conductors. It takes place each year around this time in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

Tanglewood has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home for more than 60 years, but it wasn’t the symphony’s first location in the Berkshires. In August of 1936, the first in a three-concert series was performed at Holmwood, a former Vanderbilt estate.

The great Russian-born conductor of the Boston Symphony, Serge Koussevitzky, moved the festival to Tanglewood and expanded the concert series into a kind of intensive summer camp for young musicians and composers. Among those who particularly benefited were two young composer-conductors, Leonard Bernstein and Lukas Foss.

In 1940, the Berkshire Music Center (now the Tanglewood Music Center) opened, and to mark the occasion, American composer Randall Thompson’s famous choral work, Alleluia, received its premiere performance.

Music Played in Today's Program

Randall Thompson (1899-1984): Alleluia; Dale Warland Singers; Dale Warland, conductor; Minnesota Public Radio 201

Synopsis

Angel Fire is a village in the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, home to ski slopes and hiking trails, plus a summer mountain-bike park and zip line. And, since 1983, it’s also the home of a late summer music festival called Music from Angel Fire.

Early on, violinist Ida Kavafian was invited to serve as the Festival’s Artistic Director, a position she maintained through 2019. Kavafian returned on today’s date in 2001 to perform in the premiere of a newly commissioned trio by Libby Larsen — along with cellist Peter Wiley and pianist Melvin Chen — this just one of over 45 premieres that have taken place at the Festival to date.

The trio is a classically-proportioned work in three movements: the first movement, Sultry, and the third, Burst, are rhythmic, fast, and hauntingly jazz-like. In between, the second movement, Still is serene, free flowing, and quiet.

Larsen said, “I compose music for the concert hall. I chose this type of music because I love physics. Flutes, cellos, trumpets, tubas, all of the orchestral instruments emit natural sound, and they operate on the laws of physics. I can hear those laws working in the air when those instruments play.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Libby Larsen (b. 1950): Movement 3 (Bursts) from Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano; Curtis Macomber, violin; Norman Fischer, cello; Jeanne Kierman, piano; Navona Records NV-6014

Synopsis

At the BBC Proms on today’s date in 2004 Proms a new piece by the British composer Judith Bingham was premiered by the BBC Chorus. The Secret Garden was inspired by several events: a conversation about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, a BBC TV series, The Private World of Plants, some rather racy descriptions of the sex life of plants by the 18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, and a disturbing news story about the bombing of the so-called “Adam Tree” in Iraq at a site that locals believe was where the Garden of Eden once stood.

Bingham wrote her own text, which includes many Latin names of plants, which led to The Secret Garden’s subtitle: Botanical Fantasy.

“This is meant to be a magical piece. It has a Christian framework with opening and closing quotations from Genesis and Matthew … but the piece also seems to wonder whether the world is better off without humans, and that, should humans cease to exist, Paradise would very soon re-establish itself …” she said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Judith Bingham (b. 1952): The Secret Garden; BBC Symphony Chorus; Thomas Trotter, oboe; Stephen Jackson, conductor; Naxos 8.570346 (live Proms recording of the premiere performance)

Synopsis

Details on the lives and careers of composers born before 1700 tend to be a bit skimpy, at best. For example, we know Italian Baroque composer Jacopo Peri was born on today’s date in 1561, but we’re not sure if that was in Rome or Florence.

As a point of reference, remember William Shakespeare was born in 1564, just three years after Peri. And by the 1580s, around the same time Shakespeare was learning to be a playwright, Peri and some of his Italian contemporaries were experimenting with a new art form that we call now call “opera.”

There was much discussion at the time about what the music of the ancient Greek dramas must have been like, and how dramatic stories might be told in music. Peri was instrumental in the production of two of the earliest operas for which the complete music survives: Dafne, which premiered around 1597, and Euridice from 1600.

Peri outlived his English contemporary Shakespeare by 17 years. Shakespeare died in 1616 at 52, while Peri died sometime in August of 1633, at 72, a ripe old age for the 17th century.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jacopo Peri (1561-1633): Euridice; Sylva Pozzer, soprano; Ensemble Albalonga; Anibal E. Cetrangolo, conductor; Pavane Records 7372/3

Synopsis

In the 19th century, anybody who had the means would flee the stifling heat of the cities and head for someplace green and shady and cool: a country house, a spa perhaps, or maybe just a modest cabin by a lake.

In the 19th century, it was Brahms who set the fashion for composers to spend their summer months in the countryside working on their music. His violin concerto and Symphony No. 2 were the products of leisurely weeks spent in the lake district of Austria’s Carinthian Alps.

For American composer Edward Collins, the city to be escaped was Chicago, and his country refuge was Cedar Lake, Wisconsin. In 1931, Collins composed a concert piece for piano and orchestra. Like much of Collins’ music, it was premiered by the Chicago Symphony under conductor Frederick Stock, who encouraged young American talent, especially from a local boy like Collins, a native of Joliet, Illinois.

These days the music of Edward Collins has all but disappeared from American concert halls, but conductor Marin Alsop and the Concordia Orchestra recorded a sampling of his major orchestral works for a compact disc series funded by the late composer’s family.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward J. Collins (1889-1951): Concert Piece in A minor; Leslie Stifelman, piano; Concordia Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor; Albany 267