Composers Datebook

Most composers have to wait for years before their works get performed by a major orchestra or opera company, but not Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a child prodigy who grew up in the Vienna of Gustav Mahler. After hearing the 9-year-old play through one of his compositions, Mahler declared Korngold a genius.

At 13, Korngold’s pantomime, The Snowman, was performed at the Vienna Court Opera, and on today’s date in 1916, when he was just 18, two of Korngold's one-act operas, Violanta and Polycrates’ Ring, were premiered at Munich’s National Theater.

Korngold came to Hollywood in the 1930s and wrote scores for 17 classic films, including several starring Errol Flynn. Korngold, in his thick Austrian accent, called those action films “SVASH-booklers”. His contract let him retain all rights to his music, and in the 1940s he began recycling bits of film scores into concert works, like a 1945 Violin Concerto, written for Jascha Heifetz.

Despite early fame in Europe and success in Hollywood, after World War II, Korngold’s music started to seem old-fashioned and fell into neglect, but two decades after his death in 1957, a major Korngold revival began, sparking new interest in — and recordings of — his well-crafted and appealing scores.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957): ‘The Snowman’; BBC Philharmonic Orchestra; Matthias Bamert, cond. Chandos 10434

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957): ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ film score; London Symphony; John Williams, cond. Sony 62788

On today’s date in 1914, the original version of A London Symphony, by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, premiered at the old Queen’s Hall in that city.

It’s now called the “old Queen’s Hall,” because it was destroyed during the London Blitz of World War II. And it’s the “original version” because shortly after its premiere, Vaughan Williams sent the only copy of the full score to conductor Fritz Busch in Germany for its continental debut, but then World War I broke out, and in the ensuing chaos, the score was lost.

Royal Albert Hall became the replacement venue for the bombed-out Queen’s Hall, and despite the loss of the original full score, that was reconstructed from the orchestral parts.

But after its 1914 premiere, Vaughan Williams had second thoughts — and third and fourth thoughts — about his symphony’s original form. In 1936, he published a substantially revised version that he declared definitive, asking that any earlier incarnations of A London Symphony not be performed in public.

It wasn’t until 2001 that the original version was heard again, with the blessing of the composer’s widow, Ursula, to satisfy those curious about Vaughan Williams’ first thoughts about the city called “The Big Smoke,” and London’s evocative sounds.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Symphony No. 2 (‘A London Symphony’); London Symphony; Andre Previn, cond. RCA/BMG 60581

On today’s date in 1828, Franz Schubert gave his first — and only — public concert in Vienna, which opened with the first movement of a recently composed string quartet. We don’t know for sure which one, since Schubert was writing a lot of new music then, but most likely it was from his String Quartet in G, which we know as No. 15.

Schubert’s friends had tried to promote his music by holding “Schubertiades,” informal house concerts at which his music would be performed and wine and free food offered, but that didn’t help Schubert earn any money. And being a prolific composer — as Schubert certainly was — created its own problems. What publishers Schubert had couldn’t keep up with him.

And then, as now, star performers — not composers — seemed to get all the money and attention. In Schubert’s day, it was Italian violin virtuoso Nicolo Paganini who got all the press and big fees. Schubert’s single concert earned him 800 florins, for example, while Paganini, who arrived in Vienna the same month as Schubert’s concert, made over 6,000 florins per concert, and by the time he left Vienna later in 1828 had netted 75,000 florins.

Franz Schubert (1795-1828): String Quartet in G; Emerson String Quartet; DG 459151

On today’s date in 1946, Igor Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto was premiered at Carnegie Hall by the Woody Herman jazz band. It was Stravinsky’s most extended foray into the world of jazz — and he was a bit worried how it would turn out.

A few months before the premiere, Stravinsky wrote to Nadia Boulanger in Paris that the new score would be tailor-made for Herman’s jazz band — and the two sides of a 78-rpm record.

“I am composing a short concerto for the Woody Herman Band,” Stravinsky wrote.

“Herman will record the music under my supervision,” he continued, “and it will be done on two sides of one record: first side, moderato (two and a half minutes) and andante (two minutes); second side: theme and variations (three minutes). The orchestra will consist of clarinet, oboe, five saxophones, five trumpets, horn, three trombones, double bass, harp, piano, guitar and percussion. I am somewhat unnerved by my lack of familiarity with this sort of thing.”

He needn’t have worried. The fusion of the odd sonorities of Herman’s jazz band with Stravinsky’s neoclassical inclinations resulted in a work that sounds a little like a swing-era version of one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): ‘Ebony Concerto’; Benny Goodman, clarinet; Columbia Jazz Combo; Igor Stravinsky, cond. Sony 64136

14th-century B.C.E. pharaoh Akhnaten is remembered for his radical abandonment of the multiple gods of Egypt in favor of just one: the sun god Aten. Akhnaten’s heresy ended with his death when traditional beliefs were quickly reestablished and Akhnaten’s name was literally chiseled out of Egyptian history.

Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism opined that Moses might have been an Egyptian priest of Akhnaten, and Immanuel Velikovsky, a once-popular but fanciful historian, suggested in his book Oedipus and Akhnaton that a garbled memory of Akhnaten’s reign was the source of the Greek tragedy Oedipus the King.

American composer Philip Glass credits both those authors among the inspirations for his opera Akhnaten, which premiered on today’s date in 1984 at the Staatstheaer in Stuttgart, Germany.

In 1984, the Stuttgart opera was undergoing renovations, so the premiere was moved to a much smaller hall, with a much smaller orchestra pit. Rather than scrimp on other instruments, Glass simply made a virtue of necessity and omitted the entire violin section from his score. The role of Akhnaten is sung by a counter-tenor, whose high voice provides a striking contrast to the a low, dark timbre of Glass’ violin-less orchestration.

Philip Glass (b. 1937): ‘Hymn to the Sun,’ from ‘Akhnaten’; Paul Esswood, ct; Stuttgart Opera Orchestra; Dennis Russel Davies, cond. CBS Masterworks/Sony 42457

On today’s date in 2012, the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet — an ensemble committed to commissioning original works as well as performing new arrangements for four guitars — gave the premiere performance of a suite that took them far afield: to Guangxi province in China, to be exact. The new work, Guangxi Impression, took place at Sundin Hall in St. Paul, but the sounds the four guitarists produced evoked not only a far-off Chinese landscape, but Chinese instruments, as well. 

That should not have been all that surprising, since the composer of the specially commissioned piece, Gao Hong, is a virtuoso performer on one of them: the pipa, the traditional pear-shaped, plucked lute of China. Hong has made the United States her home since 1994, and her Guangxi Impressions for a quartet of traditional Western guitars is a suite in three movements, played without pause. The third and final movement is titled ‘Celebrating the Harvest.’

“A bountiful harvest is cause for celebration in Guangxi,” Hong writes, “and I depict this with sounds of percussion bands and people yelling with excitement as they dance. Near the end of the movement I [ask the performers to shout Chinese] words expressing happiness.”

Gao Hong (b. 1964): 'Celebrating the Harvest,' from 'Guangxi Impression'; Minneapolis Guitar Quartet; innova 858

Today’s date marks the birthday of Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer of blockbuster musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. In addition to winning Grammy and Tony Awards in our country, he’s racked up Olivier Awards in his own. He was knighted in 1992, and in 1997 was created a life peer as Baron Lloyd-Webber, of Sydmonton in the County of Hampshire.

Estimates of his net worth suggest a figure well over $900 million.

Despite all that, Lloyd Webber has always had detractors, including those who accuse him of plagiarizing everyone from Mendelssohn to Puccini to Pink Floyd. His musicals are criticized for their supposed glitz and superficiality, and adversely compared with those of his American contemporary, Stephen Sondheim.

Sarah Crompton, writing for the Telegraph, offered a more nuanced comparison between the two, referencing the Beatles, no less.

“Lloyd Webber is McCartney to Stephen Sondheim's Lennon,” she wrote. “He suffers from just the same undervaluing as an innovator because his essential impulse to go for the big, thumping number with the catchy tune will always obscure the subtlety and bravery he is capable of.”

Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948): ‘Memory,’ from 'Cats’; Julian Lloyd Webber, cello; Royal Philharmonic; Barry Wordsworth, cond. Philips 426 484-2

On today’s date in 1904, during his first visit to America, German composer Richard Strauss conducted a program of his music at Carnegie Hall in New York. Featured were Strauss’ tone poems Don Juan, Also Sprach Zarathustra and the world premiere of Sinfonia Domestica, or A Domestic Symphony.

After tone poems devoted to philanderers like Don Juan and philosophers like Zarathustra, Strauss apparently decided it was time to deal with family values.

He dedicated his Domestic Symphony to “my beloved wife and our young one,” and the work supposedly depicts 24 hours in the Strauss household, complete with baby’s bath, temper tantrum and connubial bliss after baby settles down for the night.

It raised eyebrows then and still does today. Strauss remained unflappable.

“I see no reason why I shouldn’t write about myself,” he said. “I find the subject as interesting as Napoleon or Alexander the Great.”

One waggish New York music critic, no doubt after meeting the formidable Mrs. Strauss, who accompanied her husband on his American tour, wrote: “If this were a true biographical sketch, we fancy that the wife would be portrayed by trombones and tuba, while the husband would be the second fiddle.”

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): 'Sinfonia Domestica’; Minnesota Orchestra; Edo de Waart, cond. Virgin 61460

On today’s date in 1980, a new production of a seldom-heard work by German composer Kurt Weill was staged by the New York City Opera. Its production of Silver Lake, starring Joel Grey, opened on the eve of the 47th anniversary of Weill’s hasty departure from Nazi Germany after being tipped off that the Gestapo was hunting for him.

Silver Lake, or Der Silbersee in its original German title, was Weill’s last work to premiere in Germany, shortly before the Nazis’ total ban of his music. As early as 1930, at a rally in Augsburg, Hitler had railed against anti-Nazi intellectuals and singled out by name novelist Thomas Mann, scientist Albert Einstein and Weill. Astonishingly, Weill happened to be in Augsburg observing the crowds that day.

Despite violent Nazi protests at performances of his music, Weill courageously stayed in his native land until 1933.

In 1935, after two unhappy years in Paris and London, Weill arrived in New York, applied for U.S. citizenship and reinvented himself as a successful Broadway composer, insisting on Anglicizing the pronunciation of his last name from “Vile” to “While” and refusing even to speak German.

Kurt Weill (1900-1950): Overture, 'Der Silbersee' ('The Silver Lake'); London Sinfonietta; Markus Stenz, cond. RCA 63447

In London on today’s date in 1896, Czech composer Antonín Dvořák conducted the first performance of his Cello Concerto.

Two years earlier, while teaching at the National Conservatory in New York, Dvořák attended the Brooklyn premiere of a cello concerto by American cellist and composer Victor Herbert. Herbert had been the principal cellist for the premiere performance of Dvořák’s New World Symphony at Carnegie Hall and was a superb player and the soloist in the premiere of his own concerto.

After the concert, Dvořák rushed backstage, embraced Herbert, and told him his concerto was “splendid — simply splendid.”

Inspired by Herbert’s example, Dvořák began a cello concerto of his own, completing it in just three months. It was the last work he completed during his three-year stay in America, but on the final page of his manuscript score, he wrote, “I finished the concerto in New York, but when I returned to Bohemia I changed the end completely the way it stands here now.”

The concerto was written for and dedicated to Dvořák’s countryman, Czech cellist Hanuš Wihan, but due to a scheduling conflict, British soloist Leo Stern played its world premiere in London.

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904): Cello Concerto; Yo Yo Ma, cello; New York Philharmonic; Kurt Masur, cond.