Composers Datebook

Today’s date marks the premiere of two works written by émigré composers: one Austrian, the other Chinese.

On Nov. 4, 1948, the Albuquerque Civic Symphony gave the first performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, a powerful piece for narrator, chorus and orchestra. Schoenberg had met some survivors of the Nazi pogroms in the Warsaw ghetto. He was profoundly moved as they recounted their harrowing experiences, so he set their recollections to music, utilizing a twelve-tone theme which is revealed only at the end of the work, where it supplies the traditional melody of a Jewish prayer of comfort and hope.

On today’s date in 1993, Boulder, Colorado, was the venue for the premiere of the String Quartet No. 3 by Chinese composer Bright Sheng.

“It was inspired by the memory of a Tibetan folk dance which I came across about 25 years ago when I was living in a province on the border between China and Tibet,” he recalled. At that time, Madame Mao’s Cultural Revolution was in full force, and that explains why a teenage pianist from Shanghai ended up on a remote Chinese frontier. Eventually, Sheng was able to enroll in the Shanghai Conservatory, and in 1982 came to New York.

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951): A Survivor from Warsaw; Simon Callow, narrator; London Symphony; Robert Craft, conductor; Koch 7263

Bright Sheng (b. 1955): String Quartet No. 3 (Shanghai Quartet) BIS 1138

Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov might be described as an operatic dynamo: he composed fifteen and had a hand in editing, orchestrating and promoting important operas by his fellow countrymen: Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Khovantschina, Borodin’s Prince Igor and Dargomïzhsky’s The Stone Guest.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s fifteen operas are rarely staged with any regularity outside Russia, although instrumental suites and excerpts from them have proven immensely popular as concert pieces.

The familiar Flight of the Bumble Bee is from a Rimsky-Korsakov opera that premiered in Moscow on today’s date in 1900, and, like most of his operas, is based on Russian fairytales. The opera’s full title is: The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of his Son the Renowned and Mighty Bogatïr Prince Guidon Saltanovich, and of the Beautiful Swan-Princess.

If you think the title is a bit long, consider the required cast of performers, which in addition to thirteen main characters calls for Boyars and their wives, courtiers, nursemaids, sentries, troops, boatmen, astrologers, footmen, singers, scribes, servants and maids, dancers of both sexes, 33 knights of the sea with their leader Chernomor, a squirrel and — oh yes — a bumblebee.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908): Flight of the Bumble Bee, from Tsar Saltan; Philharmonia Orchestra; Vladimir Ashkenazy, conductor; London 460 250

Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumble Bee; Budapest Clarinet Quintet; Naxos 8.553427

Rimsky-Korsakov: Flight of the Bumble Bee Itzhak Perlman, violin; Samuel Sanders, piano; EMI 54882

Today we dip into the “Composers Mailbag” for two letters, neither of them dealing with significant musical matters, but both (coincidentally) with wine.

In a note dated Nov. 2, 1894, Giuseppe Verdi wrote (in his typically blunt style): “Dear Sig. Melani, I received yesterday the cases of wine. Now what is left is to pay for them. Please send me the bill for what I owe you minus the empty cases and returned bottles. Do it as soon as possible as I am going to the country and want to send you a check before I leave. As always, G. Verdi."

The second letter is dated Nov. 2, 1748, and was penned by Johann Sebastian Bach to his cousin, and reads: “That you and your dear wife are well I am assured by the note I received from you yesterday accompanying the little cask of wine you sent, for which much thanks. Regrettably the cask was damaged by being shaken in the wagon or some other way, for when opened for the usual customs inspection, it was 2/3 empty. It is a pity that even the least drop of this noble gift of God should have been spilled. (Signed) Your devoted cousin, J.S. Bach.”

Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): Libiamo (Brindisi), from La Traviata; Frank Chacksfield Orchestra; London 436 849

On today’s date in 1738, George Frederick Handel completed one of his first great Biblical oratorios: Israel in Egypt, based on the book of Exodus.

At this point in time, British taste for Handel’s Italian-style operas had waned, and, like the filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille some 200 years later, Handel set out to entice his jaded audience back into the theaters with Biblical epics like Saul and Israel in Egypt, featuring big casts and lots of special effects.

“I hear that Mr. Handel has borrowed a pair of the largest kettle-drums from the Tower of London, so to be sure it will be most excessively noisy!” Gossiped one young British Lord to his father.

Even so, many in the audience at premiere of Israel in Egypt didn’t know quite what make of it. Some thought religious subjects unsuitable outside of a church setting; others found the music, in the words of one contemporary, “too solemn for common ears.” A few, however, were quite enthusiastic. One gentleman wrote a long letter to the London Daily Post, informing readers that the Prince of Wales and his consort attended, and appeared enchanted by the new work.

George Frederic Handel (1685-1759): Israel in Egypt; King’s College Choir; Brandenburg Consort; Stephen Cleobury, conductor; London 452 295

Since today is Halloween, how about a supernatural legend in music?

The second of three Fábulas — fables or fantastic stories — for violin and piano by Puerto Rican composer Dan Román is titled La Garita del Diablo or The Devil’s Sentry Box.

The old port city of San Juan is surrounded by a fortified stone wall built by the Spaniards to protect it from their enemies, dotted with stone sentry boxes at strategic locations where soldiers could gain an advantageous view of any attack arriving by sea.

Mystery and myth surrounding one of these lonely sentry boxes built high above the sea began after several soldiers disappeared during their watch, leaving no trace behind. Despite a number of rational explanations, popular imagination blamed the disappearances on evil and supernatural forces.

In his chamber work, Román said, “The piano and the violin form aural impressions of the echoes and distant reverberations that take shape in the old passages leading to the sentry box and of the darkness and impersonality of the ocean during the night, until the observer gets to the sentry box and hears the breaking of the sea waves against the rocks and city wall.”

Dan Román (b. 1974): La Garita del Diabolo from Fabulas; Katalin Viszmeg, violin; Pi-Hsun Shih, piano; Innova 904

“From whence cometh song?” asks the opening lines of a poem by American writer Theodore Roethke.

That’s a question American composer Ned Rorem must have asked himself hundreds of times, while providing just as many answers in the form of hundreds of his original song settings.

About his own music, Rorem tends to be a little reluctant to speak. “Nothing a composer can say about his music is more pointed than the music itself,” he wrote.

On today’s date in 1979, Rorem was at the piano, accompanying soprano Phyllis Bryn-Julson in the premiere performance of a song cycle he called Nantucket Songs, a cycle that began with his setting of Roethke’s poem.

“These songs, merry or complex or strange though their texts may seem, aim away from the head and toward the diaphragm. They are emotional rather than intellectual, and need not be understood to be enjoyed,” he wrote.

Speaking of personal enjoyment, Rorem said at the premiere performance of his Nantucket Songs, which was recorded live at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. that “Phyllis Bryn-Julson and I, unbeknownst to each other, both had fevers of 102 degrees.”

Ned Rorem (1923-2022): Nantucket Songs; Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano; Ned Rorem, piano; CRI 670

On today’s date in 1923, the comedy team of Flournoy Miller and Aubrey Lyles were the star attraction in a new musical called Runnin’ Wild, which opened at the Colonial Theater at Broadway and 62nd Street.

In their day, Miller and Lyles were the African-American equivalent of Abbot and Costello or Laurel and Hardy. The plot they crafted for Runnin’ Wild, like many musical plots back then, was flimsy: two Southern con-men on the run head north to St. Paul, Minnesota, but find the natives too strange and the climate too cold. This plot provided an excuse for comic sketches to be sandwiched in between snappy song and dance numbers, the latter invariably involving leggy showgirls.

One dance number in the show struck gold for its composer, James P. Johnson.

Johnson called this tune Charleston, after the dockside home of many recent African-American immigrants to New York City’s west side. Scholars have traced this dance step back to the west side of Africa, however — an Ashanti Ancestor dance, to be exact. But whatever its source, this catchy rhythm made Johnson famous, and rapidly became the signature tune for the Roaring Twenties, a decade of flappers, bathtub gin, and all that jazz!

James P. Johnson (1894-1955): Charleston; Leslie Stifelman, piano; Concordia Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor; MusicMasters 67140

On today’s date in 2001, the Present Music ensemble premiered a new piece of music, Flight Box, at the grand opening celebrations for a new art museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The building was designed by Santiago Calatrava, and its roof looks a little like the wings of a large, graceful bird in flight — at least that’s the impression that composer Kamran Ince got viewing the new structure on several visits to Milwaukee.

Ince was born in Montana in 1960 to American and Turkish parents and lived in Turkey between 1966 and 1980. Not surprisingly, elements of traditional Turkish music crop up in his original works, including Flight Box, which was composed while he flew between America and Europe seven times.

Ince says he completed Flight Box early in 2001, many months before the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Its October premiere, coming just one month after those traumatic events, added some sinister overtones to the work’s title, but Ince insists it was based on his own, far happier memories of flying, or, as he put it, “it’s the diary of a flight that safely reaches its destination.”

Kamran Ince (b. 1960): Flight Box; Present Music Ensemble; Kevin Stalheim, conductor; Present Music 6509

On today’s date in 1993, American composer Daniel Asia conducted the Phoenix Symphony in the premiere performance of his Symphony No. 4. The work included a slow movement, written as an orchestral elegy for his friend and composer colleague, Stephen Albert, who had died in a car crash the previous year.

But Asia cast his symphony in the traditional four-movements familiar from the symphonies of Haydn and Beethoven. And, as in the symphonies of Haydn and Beethoven, he left room for a wide range of emotions — including humor. So, in addition to a slow, elegiac movement, the symphony has a second movement Scherzo, with a traditional, but jaunty and very American-sounding trio section.

“In this piece, I was rediscovering old formal ideas ... the second movement is a true scherzo. There are refractions of Beethoven scherzos, but sometimes a beat is chopped off, creating a skipping effect. Everything is in threes in the trio-section; the harmony is three-voiced, and the instrumentation is also in threesomes,” Asia wrote.

As both composer and conductor, Daniel Asia has worked with American orchestras for coast-to-coast performances of his orchestral works, ranging from his hometown Seattle Symphony to the American Composers Orchestra in New York.

Daniel Asia (b. 1953): Symphony No. 4; New Zealand Symphony; James Sedares, conductor; Summit 256

On today’s date in 1930, The Age of Gold, a new ballet by Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich opened in Leningrad. At that time, it was trendy for Soviet art to extol sporting events, and contrast the wholesome values of the new Soviet society with those of the decadent, bourgeois West.

And so, the plot of this new Soviet ballet ran as follows: a Russian soccer team arrives in a Western city to play a match during an industrial exposition, only to find their heroic endeavors thwarted by a hostile hotel staff, a seductive Western opera diva, and, of course, corrupt police and city officials.

Dutifully following the party line, Shostakovich wrote, “Throwing into contrast the two cultures was my main aim. The dances for the Europeans breathe the decadent spirit of … contemporary bourgeois culture, but I tried to imbue the Soviet dances with the wholesome elements of sport and physical culture.”

One of the lasting hits of his ballet score was a sardonic little polka.

Despite all this political subtext, Shostakovich seemed to be having a whale of a time, as if he rather enjoyed spending a little time — if only musically — in the decadent West.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Polka, from The Age of Gold; Moscow Chamber Orchestra; Constantine Orbelian, conductor; Delos 3257