Composers Datebook

• Colorful music by Scriabin and Torke

  SynopsisA question: do you see colors when you hear music? No, we’re not going psychedelic on you, and absolutely no controlled substances are involved in preparing today’s edition of Composers Datebook.It’s just that many composers do — see colors, that is.Romantic Russian composer Alexander Scriabin would describe the key of F-sharp Major as very definitely being “bright blue.” His colleague Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov, however, thought F-sharp Major more a greyish-green hue. While many composers confess to seeing certain musical keys as certain colors, the fact is they don’t always agree on which color matches which key.Which brings us to American composer Michael Torke, who gave the title Bright Blue Music to an orchestral piece that premiered on today’s date at Carnegie Hall at a concert of the New York Youth Symphony.In 1985, when this music premiered, Torke was just 24 years old, but had already been composing music for most of his young life. In addition to a string of other “colorful” scores, with titles like The Yellow Pages and Ecstatic Orange, Torke has also gone on to write a number of ballet scores and vocal works, including a TV opera and, in 1999, a big choral symphony for the Disney Corporation to celebrate the Millennium.Music Played in Today's ProgramAlexander Scriabin (1872-1915): Etude No. 4; Piers Lane, piano; Hyperion 66607Michael Torke (b. 1961): Bright Blue Music; Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, conductor

  --------  

  2:00

  --------

  2:00
• Roger Sessions' 'Kennedy Sonata'

  SynopsisAmerican composer Roger Sessions is an acquired taste for most classical music fans, and, truth be told, his works don’t show up on concert recital programs all that often.He was born in the 19th century, 1896, when Grover Cleveland was president, and died in 1985, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House.Session’s early music, written when he was in his twenties and thirties, was neo-classical in style, but as the 20th century progressed, Sessions’ style did also, moving from harmonically complex tonality to frankly atonal works. His music became increasingly “gnarly,” you might say, but there was always a lot of emotion in his music, whatever technique he employed.Take, for example, his Piano Sonata No. 3, nicknamed The Kennedy Sonata. It was written in reaction to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on today’s date in 1963. The last movement of Sessions’ Piano Sonata was written as an elegy for the slain president, and includes a climax of three sharply accented chords. For American pianist William Grant Naboré, one of just a handful of artists who have recorded this work, those three chords suggest the three sharp rifle shots that shattered the air in Dallas the day Kennedy died.Music Played in Today's ProgramRoger Sessions (1896-1985): Sonata No. 3 (Kennedy Sonata); William Grant Naboré, piano; DRC 3002

  --------  

  2:00

  --------

  2:00
• Rehearsing Monteverdi and Reich

  SynopsisToday, a letter: written on this date in 1615 by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi to a friend at the court of the Duke of Mantua.The letter accompanied a vocal score that Monteverdi hoped would convince the Duke to commission a much larger work. After detailed instructions regarding the positioning of the singers and the instruments Monteverdi adds — almost as an afterthought — this line: “If you could let the singers and players see the music for an hour before His Highness hears it, it would be a very good thing indeed.”Talk about “authentic performance practice!”It probably took more than an hour’s rehearsal for the U.S. premiere of American composer Steve Reich’s intricate setting of four Hebrew psalm fragments — Tehillim — which took place in Houston, Texas, on today’s date in 1981. Back then, Reich was already famous as one of America’s leading “minimalist” composers, but a search for fresh directions coincided with Reich’s rediscovery of his Jewish heritage, and Tehillim was the result.“For me, the most important aspect of a piece of music, mine or someone else’s, is its emotional and intellectual effect on performers and audiences—I find it basically impossible to separate the emotional and intellectual aspects of a piece of music,” Reich said. Music Played in Today's ProgramClaudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): Orfeo; Monteverdi Choir; English Baroque Soloists; John Eliot Gardiner, conductor; Erato 88032Steve Reich (b. 1936): Tehillim; Schoenberg Ensemble; Percussion group The Hague; Reinbert De Leeuw, conductor; Nonesuch 79295

  --------  

  2:00

  --------

  2:00
• Mahler's First in Budapest and New York

  SynopsisGustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 was first heard on this day in Budapest in 1889, with the 29-year-old composer conducting.Originally billed as a “symphonic poem,” a newspaper in Budapest even printed a detailed program, obviously supplied by Mahler himself. For subsequent performance in Europe, Mahler quickly withdrew these “Cliff’s Notes” to his Symphony.Twenty years later, in December of 1909, Mahler conducted its American premiere at Carnegie Hall, during his first season as music director of the New York Philharmonic.The symphony drew mixed reviews:The New York Times wrote, “There are matters in it, that as absolute music, have no evident significance, and that serve merely to puzzle and perplex.” The critic for the Sun took a dislike to the symphony’s finale, suggesting “when the weather is bad in Tyrol, it is beyond the power of language to characterize.”Mahler’s own reactions are recorded in a letter he sent from New York to Bruno Walter back in Europe: “The day before yesterday I did my Symphony No. 1 here, without getting much reaction. However, I myself was fairly pleased with that youthful effort … The audiences here are very lovable and relatively better mannered than in Vienna. They listen attentively and very sympathetically. The critics are the same as anywhere else. I don’t read any of them.”Music Played in Today's ProgramGustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 1; Minnesota Orchestra; Edo de Waart, conductor; Virgin 61258

  --------  

  2:00

  --------

  2:00
• Buda and Pest feted in music by Bartok and Kodaly

  SynopsisThe modern Hungarian city we know as Budapest is really three older settlements merged into one: Buda, on the west bank of the Danube, was the royal seat of the medieval Hungarian kings; Obuda, just to the north, was an ancient Roman provincial capital; and Pest, is a newer city situated on the east bank of the Danube. These three became the modern-day city Budapest in 1873.In 1923, to celebrate modern Budapest’s 50th anniversary, the Hungarian government commissioned two of its greatest composers, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, to compose orchestral pieces which both premiered on today’s date that year.Bartók’s contribution was a lively Dance Suite, with themes reminiscent of Hungarian folk melodies, although no actual folksongs are quoted. It’s one of his most genial and upbeat orchestral scores.Kodály’s contribution was his Psalmus Hungaricus for tenor, chorus and orchestra, a free setting of a 16th century Hungarian translation of Psalm 55, in which the Psalmist pleads for deliverance from his persecutors.That Psalm had a special political resonance for Zoltán Kodály, who had fallen out of favor with the right-wing Hungarian regime then in power. Despite its melancholy tone, Psalmus Hungaricus was an instant hit in Hungary and elsewhere, and helped established Kodály’s international reputation as one of his country’s greatest composers.Music Played in Today's ProgramBéla Bartók (1881-1945): Dance Suite; Philharmonia Hungarica; Antal Dorati, conductor; Mercury 432 017Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967): Psalmus Hungaricus; Lajos Kozma, tenor; Brighton Festival Chorus; London Symphony; István Kertész, conductor; London 443 488

  --------  

  2:00

  --------

  2:00

Meer Muziek podcasts

Trending Muziek -podcasts

Over Composers Datebook

Composers Datebook: Podcasts in familie