On today's date in 1959, the Detroit Symphony under the eminent French conductor Paul Paray gave the first performance of some brand-new music by the eminent American composer Walter Piston.  Piston had studied in Paris with the famous French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger and the great French composer Paul Dukas, so perhaps this was a very astute paring of composer and conductor.

In any case, to help celebrate the 100th Worcester Festival, Paray and the Detroit orchestra were on hand in Massachusetts for the premiere of Piston's "Three New England Sketches," an orchestral suite whose movements were entitled: "Seaside," "Summer Evening," and "Mountains."

Piston didn't intend these titles to be taken literally: "[They] serve in a broad sense to tell the source of the inspirations, reminiscences, even dreams that pervaded the otherwise musical thoughts of one New England composer," he noted.

Piston certainly qualified as a bonafide "New England" composer. He was born in Rockland, Maine, in 1894, taught at Harvard, had a vacation home in Vermont, and died in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1976.

Even so, the most striking hallmark of Piston's music remains its quite cosmopolitan style and neo-classical form – the lasting influence, perhaps, of his two famous French teachers.

Walter Piston (1894 – 1976) — Three New England Sketches (Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, cond.) Delos 3106