Composers Datebook

In 1885, a 20-year old violinist named Franz Kneisel came to America to become concertmaster of the Boston Symphony. That same year he formed the Kneisel Quartet, the first professional string quartet in America. For the next 30 years, their concerts were major musical events.

On today’s date in 1894, this review of a Kneisel Quartet performance appeared in the Boston Globe:

“It was one of the most interesting concerts ever given in Chickering Hall. First on the program was the Dvorák Quartet in F Major, which has never before been played in public. It was given a private performance in New York recently, and the composer was so pleased with the playing of the Kneisels that he gave them the manuscript which they used last night.”

“This composition,” the reviewer continued, “was written last summer and … the melodious parts strongly recall the type of music that the composer says he had in mind when he wrote the quartet … [The performance] was exceptionally good, and the listeners were stirred to a high pitch of enthusiasm. It is safe to say that the Dvorák quartet is a success.”

Not a bad “morning after” review for the premiere of Dvorák’s famous “American” Quartet, Op. 96.

OK – raise your hand if you have ever stayed up ‘till midnight to attend the premiere showing of a new film . . . Extra points if you attended in costume as a Hogwarts student! Well, opera fans are no slouches, either. On December 31, 1913, Wagner fanatics arrived at the opera house in Budapest in time to attend a performance of Wagner’s -5-hour opera “Parsifal” that began at one minute after midnight!

January 1, 1914 was the date on which the official copyright protection for Wagner’s last opera ran out. Before then, staged performances of “Parsifal” were forbidden to take place anywhere else than Wagner’s own Festival theater in Bayreuth, Germany.

“Parsifal” had premiered there in 1882, but since international copyright laws proved unenforceable in many countries, some opera companies just ignored them. The Met in New York, for example, extensively renovated its stage machinery for the sole purpose of staging “Parisfal” on Christmas Eve in 1903, and there were also “pirated” pre-1914 performances in Canada, the Netherlands, Monaco, and Switzerland.

One interesting note about that midnight “Parsifal” in Budapest – the conductor was a 25-year-old musical wizard by the name of Fritz Reiner, who would eventually be waving his wand – OK, his BATON – to lead the Chicago Symphony.

On New Year's Eve, 1948, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the first performance of the Symphony No. 5 by the American composer George Antheil. Now, in his youth, Antheil was something of a wild man, composing a "Ballet mechanicque" for a percussion ensemble that included electric bells, sirens, and airplane propellers. It earned him a reputation, and Antheil titled his colorful 1945 autobiography what many called him: "The Bad Boy of Music."

But the great Depression and World War II changed Antheil's attitude. Rather than write for small, avant-garde audiences, Antheil found work in Hollywood, with enough time left over for an occasional concert work, such as his Symphony No. 5. In program notes for the premiere, Antheil wrote: "The object of my creative work is to disassociate myself from the passé modern schools and create a music for myself and those around me which has no fear of developed melody, tonality, or understandable forms."

Contemporary critics were not impressed. One called Antheil's new Symphony "nothing more than motion-picture music of a very common brand" and another lamented its "triviality and lack of originality," suggesting it sounded like warmed-over Prokofiev. The year 2000 marked the centennial of Antheil's birth, and only now, after years of neglect, both Antheil's radical scores from the 1920s AND his more conservative work from the 1940s is being performed, recorded and re-appraised.

On this date in 1905, the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár conducted the first performance of his new operetta, "The Merry Widow." Lehar was sure it would be a success, but others did not share his confidence. The show's librettist, lawyer in tow, urged Lehár to cancel the premiere, and the nervous theater manager banned Viennese reporters from dress rehearsals, fearing bad advance press.

After a lukewarm debut at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, "The Merry Widow" moved to a smaller, suburban theater, where it suddenly caught on. Within a year it had become a sensational hit throughout Europe.

Lehár's contemporary, Gustav Mahler, was a "Merry Widow" fan, although he sent his wife, Alma, to buy the music rather than risk the embarrassment of having the director of Vienna's Imperial Opera House seen buying such a shamelessly "pop" score.

Ironically, another great fan of Lehár's music was Adolf Hitler. Despite the fact that Lehár's wife and many of his professional associates were Jewish, Lehár's music continued to be performed in Nazi Germany. Lehár was 68 when Austria became part of the German Reich, and continued to conduct in Vienna and Berlin.

Lehár's family was spared, but many of his former associates were forced into exile. Others were not so lucky: In 1942, Louis Treumann, who first sang "The Merry Widow Waltz" at the 1905 premiere in Vienna, died in the "model" concentration camp at Theresienstadt.

While hardly twins, the String Quartets of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are often linked in the minds of music lovers and record companies. Admired today for their grace and sheer beauty, back when these quartets were first performed in Paris, reactions were quite different.

Debussy's work premiered on today's date in 1893, played by the Ysaÿe Quartet. One critic wrote the music was "strange and bizarre, with too many echoes of the streets of Cairo and the gamelan." The gamelan reference was a dig at Debussy's enthusiasm for the Indonesian bronze gong ensemble that he—and many Europeans—heard for the first time at the Paris Exposition of 1889, which bought musical performers from around the globe to that city.

Ravel completed his Quartet ten years after Debussy's. It's dedicated to his teacher Gabriel Fauré, and was first played by the Heymann Quartet on March 5, 1904. Ravel submitted it to both the Prix de Rome and the Conservatoire de Paris. It was rejected by both institutions, and Fauré described the Quartet's last movement as "stunted, badly balanced, in fact a failure."

Now if Debussy were a modern-day American, he might have sent Ravel a note saying: "I feel your pain" or "Been there, done that" —but what he actually wrote to Ravel was: "In the name of the gods of music and in my own, do not touch a single note you have written in your Quartet!"

And you know what? Debussy was right.

On today's date in 1910, the Metropolitan Opera premiered a new opera by the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck, already famous for his opera "Hansel and Gretel." This new opera was also a fairy-tale and titled "Königskinder" or "The Royal Children."

The female lead role of the Goose Girl was sung by Geraldine Farrar, admired back then for both her vocal and physical beauty. Farrar wasn't scared of geese, either. She convinced both Humperdinck and Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Met's manager, to add a touch of verismo to the staging.

In her autobiography, Farrar writes: "Humperdinck was not a little taken aback when I mentioned that I intended having live geese which were to move naturally and unconfined about the stage… The conductor was much perturbed and objected to the noise and confusion they might create; but Mr. Gatti was resigned to my whim … So with the help o f… the 'boys' behind the stage I had as pretty a flock of birds as one could find on any farm. When the curtain rose upon that idyllic forest scene, with the goose girl in the grass, the geese unconcernedly picking their way about, now and again spreading snowy wings, unafraid, the [audience] was simply delighted and applauded long and vigorously."

Unlike "Hansel and Gretel," "Königskinder" had an unhappy fairy-tale ending, and despite some really lovely music, it's seldom staged these days—with or without live geese.

In the hands of a great performer, the violin can sing with the personality and intensity of a great opera singer. Pyrotechnics may dazzle, but nothing moves an audience as much as when a great violinist "sings" through his instrument.

On today's date in 1896, a French audience in Nancy must has been so moved when the great violinist Eugène Ysaÿe gave the first performance of this music: the "Poème" for Violin and Orchestra by Ernest Chausson. In addition to famous artists like Manet and Degas, Chausson counted among his friends many of the great musicians of his day, including the great violinist Ysäye.

Although they admired his work, Chausson was not always appreciated by the public. But when Ysaÿe premiered Chausson's "Poème" in Paris in 1897, the applause went on and on. Used to just the opposite reaction, Chausson was stunned by his success, and, while thanking Ysaye profusely, kept repeating to himself: "I just can't believe it!"

Two modern-day violinists, Joshua Bell and Pamela Frank, were the inspiration for this songful contemporary work by Aaron Jay Kernis. Titled "Air for Violin," it was originally composed for violin and piano, and premiered in 1995 by Joshua Bell. The following year, Pamela Frank and the Minnesota Orchestra premiered a new version of "Air" for violin and orchestra.

On this day in 1926, Walter Damrosch conducted the New York Symphony in the first performance of the last major orchestral work of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius—his symphonic tone poem "Tapiola." The title refers to an ancient Finnish forest god, Tapio, and the music suggests an ancient mystery culminating in a burst of terrifying savagery.

After receiving the score, Damrosch wrote this note of appreciation to the composer: "No one but a Norseman could have written this work. We were all enthralled by the dark pine forests and the shadowy gods and wood nymphs who dwell therein. The coda with its icy winds sweeping through the forest made us shiver." Today the commission fee Damrosch paid Sibelius for this orchestral masterpiece makes US shiver: Sibelius was paid only $400.

At this point in his career, Sibelius was afflicted by intense self-doubt. He wrote in his diary: "I have suffered because of 'Tapiola,'... was I really cut out for this sort of thing? Going downhill. Can't be alone. Drinking whiskey. Physically not strong enough for all this…"

For the next 30 years and more, Sibelius lived in retirement, drinking heavily, and though rumors persisted that he was still writing music, no scores were discovered after his death.

Today is a holiday for most people, but certainly not for church musicians. On this day in 1734 in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach supervised not one but two performances of the first part of his new "Christmas Oratorio." Bach was music director of two Leipzig churches, responsible for morning and afternoon performances scheduled on the same day.

The "Christmas Oratorio" was conceived as six separate cantatas on the Christmas theme, spread out over Christmas, New Year's Day, and Epiphany—so Bach and his Leipzig musicians kept busy well into the following year. "Jauchzet, frohlocket" sings the chorus in German at the opening of the first of the six cantatas—"Rejoice and be happy!"

Closer to our own day, musicians from several countries gathered in Berlin at Christmastime in 1989 to participate in especially joyous performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony led by Leonard Bernstein, which celebrated the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the eventual reunification of the two halves of Germany separated since the end of World War II.

A multi-national orchestra included members of the Bavarian Radio Symphony with additional players drawn from the major orchestras of New York, London, Paris, Dresden and Leningrad. They performed first on the west side of the wall on December 23rd, and then on the east side on the 24th. On Christmas Day, a video performance was telecast from Berlin to the world.

OK, how’s this for a movie scene worthy of “Doctor Zhivago” ...

It’s October 1917 and Lenin has overthrown the Tsarist government of Russia. A composer and virtuoso pianist can hear gunfire from his apartment as he works and decides that his family must flee their homeland. He receives an offer for recital appearances in Scandinavia and uses the offer as a pretext to escape Russia. But first the family must face a dangerous journey to Finland in trains crowded with terrified passengers.

At the Finnish border, a music-loving Bolshevik guard recognizes the famous artist and allows the family safe passage. But wait – there are no more trains running, so they must travel to Helsinki in an open peasant sleigh during a raging blizzard. They arrive in Stockholm on Christmas Eve, and one year later the composer and his family are able to book passage from Oslo to New York.

If that sounds perhaps a bit too melodramatic, consider that scenario is exactly what happened to Sergei Rachmaninoff, his wife, and two daughters.

In America, Rachmaninoff became a star pianist, playing 92 concerts at Carnegie Hall between 1918 and 1943. He continued to compose, but lamented, “When I lost my homeland, I lost myself as well... I have no will to create without ... Russian soil under my feet.” He would complete only six more major works during his 25 years in America.