Composers Datebook

On today’s date in 1946, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, conducted by Volkmar Andreae, gave the premiere performance of a new oboe concerto by the German composer Richard Strauss, who was then in his 80s. The soloist was a Swiss oboist named Marcel Saillet, to whom the work is dedicated.

The concerto owes its existence, however, to a 20-something American oboist and GI named John de Lancie, who visited Strauss at his Bavarian home shortly after the end of World War II. “During one of my visits with Strauss,” recalled De Lancie, “I asked him, in view of the numerous beautiful, lyric solos for oboe in almost all his works, if he had ever considered writing a concerto for oboe. He answered ‘No,’ and there was no more conversation on the subject.” But De Lancie’s question did plant a seed, and after returning to civilian life in the states in 1946, De Lancie got a letter from Strauss’s publisher offering him the work’s American premiere.

As it turned out, the American premiere of the Strauss Concerto was given by another oboist named Mitchell Miller— a musician who some of us “of a certain age” remember as an energetic choral conductor of a sing-along TV show entitled “Sing Along with Mitch.”

For his part, John De Lancie went on to become the principal oboist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and a famous oboe teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music. In 1988, De Lancie made this recording of the Strauss Oboe Concerto.

As part of its 150th Anniversary celebration, the New York Philharmonic commissioned a number of new orchestral works. One of them premiered at New York’s Avery Fisher Hall on today’s date in 1993. The work is dedicated to the Philharmonic and Kurt Masur, its music director in those days.

This was the Third Symphony of the American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. It’s no exaggeration to suggest that Zwilich knows the symphony orchestra from inside out: for seven years she was a violinist in the American Symphony Orchestra, a New York-based ensemble conducted by Leopold Stokowski when Zwilich was a player.

For her Third Symphony, Zwilich confessed she had an often-neglected section of the orchestra in mind: “I had noticed over the years the rising quality of viola playing,” she said in an interview, “and I thought that the Philharmonic’s section was absolutely amazing. So when I had this commission, I thought almost immediately of focusing on the violas. When you think of it, many symphonies of the past are like first violin concertos with second violin and viola accompaniment, and I really wanted to put the spotlight on the viola section and give them a great deal to do, not only in terms of virtuosity, but of importance and centrality to the piece. So this symphony really grew out of my love for this section of the orchestra.”

It’s quite likely that if we could ask him, the great 18th century composer George Frideric Handel would have described himself first and foremost as a composer of Italian operas. For most of the 19th century, however, it was chiefly Handel’s English-language sacred oratorios that kept his fame alive. It wasn’t until the 20th century that curiosity about Handel’s Italian operas led to revivals, recordings, and their eventual return to the repertory of opera companies worldwide.

On today’s date in 1711, Handel’s opera “Rinaldo” had its premiere performance in London at the Queen’s Theater in the Haymarket. This was the first Handel opera produced in London, and the first Italian opera written specifically for that city. It was designed to be a spectacle, full of heroic chivalry and stage magic including live birds and flying machines, a kind of 18th century “Star Wars,” if you will.

It was a tremendous success, and, like “Star Wars,” was so popular that it became fit material for parody. Handel’s Act III march of Christian Crusaders resurfaced as a chorus of highway robbers in John Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera” of 1728, a spoof poking fun at both contemporary politics and the conventions and pretensions of Italian-style opera.

Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier is a collection of 48 preludes and fugues for solo keyboard in two sets, each covering all 24 major and minor keys. This music, which music lovers affectionately refer to as “the 48,” has become something of a bible for pianists as well as a challenge for subsequent composers to try to imitate. In the early 1990s, American composer and pianist Henry Martin tossed his hat into the ring with the completion of his own first set of 24 Preludes and Fugues for piano, and soon after published a second set of 24.

On today’s date in 1992, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., pianist Sara Davis Buechner performed three of Martin’s Preludes and Fugues for a program recorded by National Public Radio for broadcast the following month as part of their Bach birthday celebrations. Buechner has also made compact disc recordings of all of Martin’s “48.”

One enthusiastic reviewer of those recordings, Michael Barone, host of the nationally-distributed PIPEDREAMS organ program, wrote of Martin’s music, “We get shades of Debussy's impressionism, the vibrant jazzy riffs of Art Tatum, the spacey harmonies of John Coltrane, and the sophisticated improvisations of Bill Evans … but Martin's own individual genius shines brightly.”

Barone’s enthusiasm resulted in his commissioning Henry Martin to compose another set of 24 preludes and fugues – this time for organ! We think Bach would have approved.

Mountains can have unforeseen consequences on the imagination, it seems.

For Philadelphia-native Melinda Wagner, serving as a composer-in-residence at a musical festival in Vail, Colorado, this resulted in the composition of a new Trombone Concerto, a piece tailor-made for Joseph Alessi, the principal trombonist of the New York Philharmonic.

“During my free moments in Vail,” said Wagner, “I found myself gazing—in disbelief really—at the jagged, youthful beauty of the Rockies. By comparison, ‘my’ mountains—the old Endless, Allegheny, and Pocono ranges of Pennsylvania—seemed to be no more than a set of soft wrinkles in the skin of the earth!”

“Nobility and power, hallmarks of the trombone sound, are words that come to mind in the presence of mountains, old and new. And a truly great musician, as I learned while hearing Joseph Alessi play, can coax so much more out of the trombone: aching tenderness, sadness, lyricism, mirth.”

Alessi gave the premiere performance of Wagner’s new Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall, on February 22, 2007, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Lorin Maazel.

Since winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1999, Melinda Wagner has been called to write works large and small, including a 2002 Piano Concerto entitled “Extremity of Sky” for Emanuel Ax and the Chicago Symphony, and a 2004 choral piece entitled “From a Book of Early Prayers” for the Chamber Choirs of the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Minnesota.

On today’s date in 1929, the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi completed his trilogy of symphonic tone poems based on Roman scenery and history with the premiere performance of his “Roman Festivals.”

Unlike the first two installments in this series, “The Fountains of Rome” from 1917 and “The Pines of Rome” from 1924, which were both premiered in Rome by Italian orchestras, the premiere of “Roman Festivals” occurred in America at Carnegie Hall, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

“All three of the compositions which form that cycle are conspicuous brilliant instrumental effects,” wrote music critic Olin Downes in his New York Times review the following day. “Roman Festivals however, fairly caps the climax for sheer orchestral sonority and brilliance of effect. It may be said, in fact, that no Richard Strauss or Stravinsky either has beaten Mr. Respighi in securing amazing and deafening noise from an orchestra."

"But it is also true,” continues Downes, “that the first part has something more than mere racket. It is really wild and brutal music, the dramatic idea being the howls and cries of the crowd at the Circus Maximus, the salutations for Nero, the opening of the iron gates and the roaring of beasts, the hymn of the Christians about to be slaughtered... The passage is short, but of a stunning power." "All this program material furnishes Mr. Respighi opportunity for descriptive writing,” concludes the review, “but the music is of no merit.”

Today marks the birthday of the British composer Ruth Gipps, who lived from 1921 to 1999, and rates among the more prolific of UK composers, having written five symphonies, and dozens of concerto, chamber works, and vocal scores.

Gipps always said she found it “difficult to understand young people who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up.” She published her first music at age 8, and by her twenties had also become a professional oboist and pianist. Her triple career peaked in 1945, when in Birmingham, Gipps performed the Glazunov Piano Concerto on the first half of a concert, then, on the second half, played the English horn part in the premiere performance of her own First Symphony.

Vaughan Williams was one of her composition teachers, and her music was, like his, firmly based in melody and traditional harmony. Ironically, this counted against her in the years following World War II when music that wasn’t atonal and avant-garde was deemed old-fashioned and passé.

Even so, in 1981, Gipps was included in the Queen’s Honors List, but Dame Ruth probably derived as much pleasure from her MG as her MBE: an avid sports car enthusiast, her obituary noted that, heavily swathed, Gipps enjoyed driving her roadster though whatever the British climate threw at her.

These days, the artistic forecast seems more favorable, and the music of Ruth Gipps is receiving renewed attention.

In February of 1794, the Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn arrived in England for his second visit, and the premiere performances of some of his newest symphonies, beginning with one in E-flat Major that we know as his Symphony No. 99.

Haydn would write 104 symphonies in all—an astonishing accomplishment, considering both their quantity and quality. In typically modest fashion, Haydn once commented:

“I compose music so that the weary and worn, or the man burdened with affairs, may enjoy a few moments of solace and refreshment. I know that God has bestowed a talent upon me, and I thank Him for it. I think I have done my duty and been of use in my generation by my works. Let others do the same.”

Well, these days, as in Haydn’s, to write a symphony one needs talent and an orchestra willing to perform it. The American composer Daniel Asia has a way to go before matching Haydn’s output, but has composed at least five symphonies to date. The first was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra and the Seattle Symphony, and received its premiere performance in Seattle, Asia’s hometown, on today’s date in 1990.

This music is from the finale of Asia’s Fourth Symphony, a commission from the Phoenix Symphony. And, perhaps thinking of Haydn’s creations of some two centuries earlier, Asia writes: “This Fourth Symphony is my most 'classical’ in structure and sound... in this piece I was rediscovering old formal ideas.”

In a creative life that spanned over 60 years, the American composer Howard Hanson never wavered in his belief that music should be tonal in nature and fundamentally Romantic in style, with strong and clear melodic lines.

By the mid-1950s, many other European and American composers were espousing a far different approach to music, favoring an abstract and often densely complex style, more in harmony with the non-representational canvases of the painter Jackson Pollack than the meticulous realism of, say, Norman Rockwell.

On today’s date in 1955, this music, Hanson’s Symphony No. 5, had its premiere performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. It’s the most compact of Hanson’s seven symphonies, a single-movement work in three sections lasting just 15 minutes. Hanson titled the work “Sinfonia Sacra” or “A Sacred Symphony,” and suggested it was inspired by the account of Christ’s resurrection in the Gospel of St. John.

“The Sinfonia Sacra does not attempt programmatically to tell the story of the first Easter,” wrote Hanson, “but does attempt to invoke some of the atmosphere of tragedy and triumph, mysticism and affirmation of this story, which is the essential symbol of the Christian faith.”

For many decades Hanson, along with other “unfashionably traditional” symphonists like Walter Piston and David Diamond, were neglected by most American orchestras, but more recently are making something of a comeback in concert halls and on compact discs.

The American composer Elliott Carter has a reputation for writing some of the thorniest, most abstract and most technically difficult orchestral scores of the 20th century.

But for a few moments at least, during the opening of Carter’s “Symphony of Three Orchestras,” which had its premiere performance on today’s date in 1977 at a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Pierre Boulez, audiences must have been surprised by an impressionistic, almost Romantic tone. In notes for the new piece, Carter admitted the opening of the new work was inspired by the poetry of Hart Crane, specifically Crane’s description of the New York harbor and the Brooklyn Bridge. Both those New York landmarks were a short walk away from Carter’s lower Manhattan apartment in 1977.

Carter’s 15-minute “Symphony of Three Orchestras” quickly shifts into his more recognizably dense style, however, and, as the title indicates, employs three orchestras on one stage, playing with and against each other at various points.

As the New York Times reviewer wrote: “Mr. Carter has never made concessions to his listeners. The dissonances are Ivesian, with everything coming together in the end in smashing volleys of shrieking sound. It will take many hearings for the relationships of the score to assert themselves, though one can be confident that Mr. Carter, one of the most accomplished constructionists of the age, has assembled everything with pin-point logic.”