Composers Datebook

Today’s date marks the birthday of a 20th-century Czech composer you perhaps have never heard of. Viktor Kalabis was born in 1923 and by 6 was giving public piano performances. All signs pointed to a brilliant career. But first, Kalabis had to face — and surmount — two major political hurdles.

First, his formal musical studies were delayed by the Nazi occupation of his country in 1938, when he was forced into factory work; then, after the war, Kalabis met and married young harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova, who was a concentration camp survivor. Kalabis was a gentile, but in Stalinist Czechoslovakia, anti-Semitism was rampant and marrying a Jew was frowned upon. To make matters worse, they refused to join the Communist Party, hardly what one would call a smart career move in those years.

Even so, Kalabis began to attract commissions and performances of his music at home and abroad, and following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, he assumed a more prominent position in his country’s musical life.

His symphonies, concertos and chamber works are now regarded as some of the most important contributions to Czech music in the late 20th century.

Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006): Piano Concerto No. 1; Zuzana Ruzickova, p; Czech Philharmonic; Karel Sejna, cond. MRS Classics MS-1350

On today’s date in 1832, Polish pianist and composer Frederic Chopin made his concert debut in Paris at the Salle Pleyel. Among the enthusiastic audience members was another composer-pianist by the name of Franz Liszt, who would rapidly become Chopin’s close friend and advocate.

Chopin dedicated his recently completed Piano Etudes to Liszt, and Chopin once wrote to a friend, “I am writing without knowing what my pen is scribbling, because at this moment Liszt is playing my etudes and putting honest thoughts out of my head. I should like to rob him of the way he plays them!”

The failure of the Polish Insurrection of 1831 had driven a large number of Polish refugees to Paris, where they joined émigré groups of Italians and Austrians who had also fled political repression at home for the more liberal, welcoming atmosphere of the French capitol.

Increasing ill health and crippling stage fright made Chopin’s public concert appearances in Paris rare events. When Chopin did perform in public, he liked to share the stage with a sympathetic singer like Pauline Viardot-Garcia, or a fellow pianist like Liszt. Despite his fame, Chopin’s concert appearances in Paris numbered less than a dozen.

Frederic Chopin (1810-1949): Etude No. 10; Maurizio Pollini, piano DG 413 794

“Pssst. Hey, buddy – wanna buy a bridge? No? Well, how about a clarinet concerto, then?”

As most of us know, the Brooklyn Bridge is not for sale, but this New York icon has reputedly been sold to many unsuspecting visitors. After its opening in 1883, Harper's Monthly wrote, “The wise man will not cross the bridge in five minutes, nor in 20, [but] will linger to get the good of the splendid view about him.”

American composer Michael Daugherty did just that and came up with a concerto for clarinet and wind ensemble that premiered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and then, on today’s date, in 2005 was performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

“Like the four cables of webs of wire and steel that hold the Brooklyn Bridge together,” Daugherty says, “my ode to this cultural icon [in] four movements: East (Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights); South (Statue of Liberty); West (Wall Street and the lower Manhattan skyline); and North (Empire State Building, Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center). In the final movement, I imagine Artie Shaw, the great jazz swing clarinetist of the 1940s, performing in the once glorious Rainbow Room on the 65th floor of the Rockefeller Center.”

Michael Daugherty (b. 1954): Brooklyn Bridge; Maureen Hurd, clarinet; Rutgers Wind Ensemble; William Berz, cond. Naxos 8.57252999

It’s a play both Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein wanted to make into an opera, but the playwright always said, “No.”

We’re talking about Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, a nostalgic but bittersweet look at life, love and death in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, set in the early 1900s, complete with white picket fences, boy meets girl, and a drugstore soda counter.

It wasn’t until decades after Wilder’s death in 1975 that the executor of the Wilder estate, after a long search for just the right composer for an Our Town opera, settled on Ned Rorem, and a libretto crafted by poet J.D. McClatchy, who also happened to be an authority on Wilder’s works.

Rorem was in his 80s when the opera premiered on today’s date in 2006 at the Opera Theater at the Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana.

The New York Times thought the resulting opera was a success, writing, “Our Town opens with a hymn, and Rorem retained and refracted the familiar melody, turning pat modulations slightly bitter, as if the music were heard through a lens of nostalgia that turned it sepia. This nostalgia proved a hallmark of the score.”

Ned Rorem (b. 1923): Opening, from Our Town; Monadnock Music; Gil Rose, cond. New World 80790

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 has become 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 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 in Washington, D.C., pianist Sara Davis Buechner performed three of Martin’s Preludes and Fugues for broadcast on NPR and later made recordings of all of Martin’s “48.”

One enthusiastic reviewer of those recordings, Michael Barone, host of American Public Media’s 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 Martin to compose another set of 24 preludes and fugues — this time for organ! We think Bach would have approved.

Henry Martin (b. 1950): Prelude & Fugue No. 1; (Ken Cowan, organ) Pipedreams 1004

In recounting the life story of many composers, it’s a familiar and perhaps romantic cliché that their work will be — as a matter of course — not appreciated by their contemporaries, and that the composer in question will have to toil for years in obscurity before his or her music is appreciated by performers and audiences.

In reality, we’re happy to report, that isn’t always the case.

Consider, for example, American composer Lowell Liebermann, who was born in New York on today’s date in 1961. When he was 16, his Piano Sonata No. 1 premiered at Carnegie Hall, resulting in a number of prizes and awards. By his 30s, Liebermann was being commissioned and championed by some of the leading performers of our time.

For James Galway, Liebermann composed a flute concerto, and Liebermann’s two-act opera The Picture of Dorian Gray was the first work the Monte Carlo Opera commissioned from an American composer. In 1998, Liebermann was appointed composer-in-residence with the Dallas Symphony, and that orchestra premiered his Symphony No. 2 in February 2000, and, in a symbolic millennium gesture, simulcast their performance on the new-fangled worldwide web.

Lowell Liebermann (b. 1961) Flute Concerto; James Galway, flute; London Mozart Players; Lowell Liebermann, cond. BMG 63235

Symphony No. 2; Dallas Symphony and Chorus; Andrew Litton, cond. Delos 3256

Henry Cowell was one of the most prolific of all 20th-century American composers. Some of his works are aggressively experimental in nature, while others tap into folk traditions and world music. The range and variety are quite remarkable. Cowell wrote so many works, in fact, that even the composer himself often had trouble keeping track of all he had written.

Take today’s genial little Woodwind Quintet, for example. It was written in the early 1930s for the great French flute virtuoso Georges Barrère, who commissioned and premiered many new works involving his instrument. In 1934, Barrère even made a recording of the suite for New Music Quarterly, a publishing venture bankrolled by none other than the retired insurance executive and part-time composer Charles Ives.

After that recording, Cowell went on producing new works, and the manuscript of his Woodwind Quintet remained with Barrère, who apparently just filed it away. The music didn’t surface again until 1947, when it was discovered among the late flutist’s collection of scores.

On today’s date in 1948, Cowell’s Woodwind Suite received its first concert performance at Columbia University in New York City and quickly established itself as one of Cowell’s most popular compositions.

Henry Cowell (1897-1965): Suite for Woodwind Quintet; Solaris Capstone 8677

In 1724, Feb. 20 fell on a Sunday, and at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe, or, in English, Jesus Gathered the 12 to Himself, a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, was performed as part of the Sunday service.

Meanwhile, on Feb. 20 in London that same year, audiences at the King’s Theater in the Haymarket heard the premiere of Giulio Cesare in Egitto or, Julius Caesar in Egypt, a new Italian opera by George Frideric Handel.

How interesting to find Bach in church and Handel in the theater, on the same date — but not, as it turns out, on the same day.

In 1724, Bach’s Germany kept track of time under the Gregorian calendar, but in Handel’s England, the older Julian calendar was still used, and so Handel’s calendar would say Feb. 20 was a Thursday, while Bach’s would say was it was a Sunday. It wasn’t until 1752 that England adopted the same calendar that Germany used — the Gregorian one we still use today.

In the 18th century, apparently, you didn’t need Albert Einstein to remind you that time is a very relative concept!

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Excerpt fr Cantata No. 22; Yo Yo Ma, cello; Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra; Ton Koopman, cond. Sony Classical 60680

George Frederic Handel (1685-1757): Excerpt, fr Giulio Cesare; Barbara Schlick, soprano; Concerto Cologne; Rene Jacobs, cond. Harmonia Mundi 90.1458

On today’s date in 1923, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius conducted the premiere performance of his Symphony No. 6 in Helsinki. He had begun work on it about five years earlier and at that time described his vision for the symphony as follows:

“The Sixth Symphony is wild and passionate in character. Gloomy with pastoral contrasts. Probably in four movements with a finale, which will build to a gloomy, wild romp of the orchestra in which the main theme disappears.”

That might have been the original idea, but the final product turned out quite different and musicologist Michael Steinberg offered a more spot-on description: “The Sibelius Sixth is transparent, pastoral, lyrical and notably even-tempered — a sanctuary fashioned out of music.”

In the pecking order of popularity, the Second and Fifth of Sibelius’ seven symphonies rank at the top, with the Sixth probably the least-often heard in concert. But the always-perceptive Steinberg wrote, “To this day, the Sixth remains the least known (or understood) of the seven symphonies, and yet for those who make its full acquaintance, the Sixth may become the most cherished of them all.”

Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 6

Some things are best left to the imagination — at least that’s what French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz came to think regarding opera. Berlioz didn’t have the best of luck getting his operas staged during his lifetime, and, on the few occasions he did, the resulting performance fell far short of his ideal. Increasingly, Berlioz turned to what might be called the “Theater of the Imagination,” composing concert works that were, for all intents and purposes, operas minus the staging and costumes.

One of these, which Berlioz called “a dramatic legend” and premiered in 1846, was The Damnation of Faust. It was based on the famous Faust plays of German poet Goethe. Like many of Berlioz’s works, The Damnation of Faust proved an artistic success — but a box office failure — at its premiere as an unstaged concert piece at the Opera Comique in Paris.

Some five decades later, on today’s date in 1893, The Damnation of Faust was revived as a fully staged opera at the Monte Carlo Opera. It proved such a success that in short order it was staged in Milan, Moscow and Liverpool, and even reached the shores of America, courtesy of the French Opera in New Orleans.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Dance of the Sylphs, fr La damnation de Faust; Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, cond. Telarc 80164