On today’s date in 1893, a New York Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall featured the premiere of a big new symphony by a 37-year old American composer and New York native named George Templeton Strong, Jr. This was a pretty big deal at a time when the Philharmonic regularly played new works from Europe, but paid little attention to what Americans were composing.

As the Philharmonic’s program book put it, somewhat defensively: “The acceptance of a work for performance is to a certain extent a declaration that it belongs to the very best class of contemporaneous literature according to the unbiased judgment of those who are entrusted with these concerts.”

Strong’s Symphony No. 2, subtitled “Sintram,” was inspired by a literary work of that name depicting the victory of good over evil. The New York Times review gave it high marks, praising the composer’s imagination and mastery of instrumentation, but ventured to suggest that a few cuts might be welcomed by future audiences, as the new symphony WAS a tad long and unremittingly serious in tone. Still, the Times gave the opinion that Strong belonged to “the front rank of living composers.”

Strong himself was not present. He was in Switzerland, a country he was soon to adopt as his permanent home. His absence on the American scene caused his music to be largely forgotten, but recently there has been a revival of interest in this late Romantic expatriate composer.