Composers Datebook

Synopsis

It’s all a matter of timing. In 1942, the Soviet Union was America’s wartime ally, and the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich made the cover of TIME magazine. Seven years later, the war was over, but the Cold War was on — with a vengeance.

On March 25, 1949, Shostakovich arrived in New York for his first visit to America as part of the Soviet delegation to a Cultural and Scientific Congress for World Peace.

By then the anti-Communist tide of American public opinion resulted in pickets and protests.  Those who spoke at the congress, including the American composer Aaron Copland, felt compelled to preface their comments with unambiguously anti-Communist manifestos. Shostakovich nervously read the equally unambiguous speech prepared for him by his Soviet minders, attacking American imperialism in general and expatriate Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, in particular. It was embarrassing for everyone concerned.

But while he was in New York, Shostakovich got to play a piano reduction of the Scherzo from his Symphony No. 5 for a huge crowd at Madison Square Garden. That, at least, resulted in a big ovation — and maybe that was how he privately approached the whole, sad affair — as a kind of grim scherzo, or joke.

Music Played in Today's Program

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 5; USSR Cultural Ministry Symphony; Gennady Rozhdestvensky, conductor; MCA 32128

Synopsis

Dealing with the death of loved ones is never easy, but sometimes music can help — especially if music plays a role in the lives of both the departed and survivors. And some survivors find both meaning and consolation in commissioning a work of new music to honor the memory of those they have lost.

On today’s date in 2007, the Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia gave the premiere of such a memorial work, Love Abide. The work was commissioned by Paul Rowley, who for years had driven his wife Miriam to weekly Choral Society of Philadelphia rehearsals, where she sang alto, always, said her husband, “beaming with excitement.” 

After her sudden death in 2003, Rowley asked the society’s artistic director to choose a composer to write a tribute to his wife. Rowley had a text in mind for the lyrics and wanted an alto solo and a female composer. The commission went to British composer Roxanna Panufnik and the selected text was the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, which includes the lines: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things …  faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968): Love Abide; London Oratory School Choir; London Mozart Players; Lee Ward, conductor; Signum 564

Synopsis

Any composer who sets out to write a violin concerto knows their new work will be measured against the famous concertos of the past. But in the fall of 1936, when Hungarian composer Béla Bartók decided to write a violin concerto, he asked his publisher to send him some recent work of his contemporaries. After seeing what Karol Szymanowski, Kurt Weill and Alban Berg had accomplished in the form, Bartok set to work, with much input from his violinist friend, Zoltan Szekely, for whom the new concerto was being written.

Bartók was in America when Szekely premiered his Concerto with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Willem Mengelberg.

It was only in America in 1943, that Bartok first heard his Concerto at a New York Philharmonic concert. He wrote, “I was most happy that there is nothing wrong with the scoring. Nothing needs to be changed, even though orchestral accompaniment of the violin is a very delicate business.”

If Bartók was happy with the scoring, he wasn’t very pleased with one New York music critic, who wrote that he didn’t think the new work would ever displace the great violin concertos of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, or Brahms.

“How is it possible to write such an idiotic thing? What fool fit for a madhouse would want to displace these works with his own?” he commented.

Music Played in Today's Program

Béla Bartók (1881-1945): Violin Concerto No. 1; Kyung-Wha Chung, violin; Chicago Symphony; Sir Georg Solti, conductor; London 411 804

Synopsis

The Boston Symphony premiered a new symphony on today’s date in 1984 — a commission for its Centenary Celebrations. It was the Symphony No. 1 by American composer John Harbison.

Like many composers who teach, Harbison does most of his composing in the summer months, usually spent on a farm in Token Creek, Wisconsin. The academic year is usually spent in Boston, teaching at MIT. In the case of his first symphony, he worked on the piece both in Wisconsin (where he was also finishing up an Italian language song-cycle), and during a residency year at the American Academy in Rome.

“Just as it felt very right to be working on Italian songs in the Midwest, it was natural to work on this American-accented symphony in Italy. I have always found the view from the distance to be clearest,” he said.

Harbison’s father, a Princeton history professor and amateur composer, also was a big influence on him. The younger Harbison, like his father, has an abiding passion for and fluency in American jazz as well as the modern classical idiom. He dramatically fused both styles in one of his most ambitious ventures to date, the opera, The Great Gatsby, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1999.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Harbison (b. 1938): Symphony No. 1; Boston Symphony; Seiji Ozawa, conductor; New World 80331

Synopsis

In 1838, Robert Schumann visited the grave of Franz Schubert in Vienna and paid a courtesy call on Schubert's brother, Ferdinand, who was still alive. Schumann had heard about Ferdinand's closet full of his brother’s manuscripts, and among the dusty music scores that Schumann was shown was one for a big symphony in C Major, unperformed, he was told, because people thought it was too difficult, too bombastic, and far too long.

Looking at the music, Schumann was stunned, and asked if he could arrange to have the symphony played. “Sure,” said Ferdinand, and Schumann sent the score off to his friend and fellow composer, Felix Mendelssohn, who was the director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Mendelssohn liked what he saw, and gave the first public performance of Schubert’s big symphony on today’s date in 1839.

After attending the rehearsal, Schumann wrote to his girlfriend, Clara Wieck, “Today I have been in seventh heaven. If only you had been there! For I cannot describe it to you; all the instruments were like human voices, and immensely full of life and wit … and the length, the divine length, like a four-volume novel … I was utterly happy, with nothing left to wish for except that you were my wife and I could write such symphonies myself!”

Well, sometimes wishes do come true, and good deeds are rewarded. Schumann did marry Clara, did write symphonies of his own, and did help launch Schubert’s work on its path towards worldwide recognition as a great symphonic masterpiece.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Symphony No. 9; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Kurt Masur, conductor; Philips 426 269