On today’s date in 1971, jazz great Louis Armstrong died in New York City at 69. He was born in New Orleans, and for years, all the standard reference books listed his birthday as the Fourth of July, 1900. Well, it turned out that wonderfully symbolic date was cooked up by his manager Joe Glaser. Armstrong wasn’t sure when he was born, so the Fourth of July seemed as good a date as any, and was accepted as fact for many years. Eventually documents were discovered that proved he was actually born on August 4, 1901.

Armstrong earned the nickname “Satchmo,” short for “Satchelmouth,” and in later years he was affectionately dubbed “Pops.” If documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is to be believed, he was the central figure in the development of jazz in the 20th century.

British music critic Norman Lebrecht offered this assessment: “Armstrong never bowed his head nor sang from anywhere but the heart. He was a figure of enormous dignity and a musical innovator of universal importance.” Acknowledging his influence in American concert music, composer Libby Larsen subtitled one of her works, a 1990 Piano Concerto, Since Armstrong.

Music Played in Today's Program

Louis Armstrong (1901-1971): Skip the Gutter; Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five; Columbia 44422; I’m in the Barrel arr. David Jolley; Windscape Arabesque 6732

On today’s date in 1992, lovers of the tango had good reason to be sad. Argentinean composer and bandoneón virtuoso Astor Piazzolla had died in Buenos Aires at the age of 71.

The bandoneón is a close relation of the accordion, and for it Piazzolla composed new music inspired by the tango, an Argentinian dance form that originated in working-class dancehalls. While still a teenager, he had played bandoneón in the orchestra of Carlos Gardél, the most famous tango singer of the 1930s. Eventually, he formed his own band, which became famous throughout South America.

But Piazzolla had a burning desire to write concert music, and won a scholarship to study composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. She encouraged him to explore the possibilities inherent in the music he knew best, so he set about reinventing the tango. The result was dubbed “nuevo tango,” as vital as the old ones, but often dark and brooding.

When asked why these new tangos were so melancholy, he replied, “Not because I’m sad. Not at all. I’m a happy guy … no, my music is sad because the tango is sad — sad and dramatic, but not pessimistic.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992): Tres Minutos con la Realidad; Nestor Marconi, bandoneon; Yo Yo Ma, cello; ensemble; Sony Classical 63122

Weather permitting, there’s a good chance you’ll be attending an outdoor symphonic concert tonight that will close with Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, complete with a volley of booming cannon shots, church bells, and dazzling fireworks.

It’s become an American tradition to perform the 1812 Overture on July 4, even though it has nothing to do with the 1776 War of Independence — or America’s War of 1812, for that matter.

No, it’s all down to Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops.

For years, a wealthy American businessman named David Mugar financed an outdoor Pops concert on Boston’s Esplanade on the Fourth of July. But by the mid-1970s, attendance started to decline, so Mugar suggested that if Fiedler would close the annual concert with the 1812 Overture, people might be lured back by the live cannon fire Tchaikovsky asks for in the piece.

Well, it worked. Outdoor concerts with the 1812 Overture plus cannons quickly became a tradition, and in 1976, 400,000 people attended the Boston Pops’ outdoor Bicentennial Fourth of July concert — setting a Guinness World Record for best-attended classical concert.

And, a year after his death in 2022, a bronze statue of Mugar was unveiled on the Boston Esplanade.

Music Played in Today's Program

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): 1812 Overture; Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra; Antal Dorati, conductor; Mercury Living Presence 434360

Country Gardens is the best-known work of Australian-born American composer, arranger, and pianist Percy Grainger. Its score bears this note: “Birthday-gift, Mother, July 3, 1918.” His mother Rose was responsible for his excellent early musical training.

In 1918, he arranged a folk tune given to him in 1908 by Cecil Sharp, a major figure in the folklore revival in England. He titled this arrangement Country Gardens, and it went over so well at his recitals that he decided to have it published.

It was a big hit and broke sales records. In fact, until his death in 1961, its sales generated a significant portion of Grainger’s annual income. Like other composers with a mega-hit, Grainger came to resent being known for just one tune and would say to audiences: “The typical English country garden is not often used to grow flowers. It’s more likely to be a vegetable plot. So you can think of turnips as I play it”.

In 1931, Country Gardens was arranged for wind band by someone other than Grainger, but around 1950, at the special request of a Detroit band director, Grainger prepared his own wind band arrangement, which likewise became a hit.

Music Played in Today's Program

Percy Grainger (1882-1961): Country Gardens; Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra; Timothy Reynish Chandos 9549

In German, “Gluck” means “luck,” and today’s date marks the birthday of a German composer named Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose good fortune it was to be credited with reforming the vocally ornate but dramatically static form of Baroque opera.

In the 18th century, opera was the biggest and most high-profile of all musical forms, and Gluck wrote 49 of them during his 67 years of life. Like many 18th century opera composers, the stories Gluck chose were often based on ancient Greek myths such as “Orpheus and Eurydice.”

It wasn’t the matter of Gluck’s operas that was revolutionary, but the manner in which he set these stories to music. When the British music historian Charles Burney visited Gluck in 1771, he recorded the composer’s own words on the subject.

“It was my design to divest music of those abuses which the vanity of singers, or the complacency of composers, had so long disfigured Italian opera and made the most beautiful and magnificent of all public exhibitions into the most tiresome and ridiculous,” said Gluck.

To sum it all up, Gluck told Burney, “My first and chief care as a dramatic composer was to aim at a noble simplicity.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Christoph Willibald von Gluck (1714-1787): Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orpheus; Academy of Ancient Music; Christopher Hogwood, conductor; L’Oiseau-Lyre 410553

On today’s date in 1937, a two-piano suite by French composer Darius Milhaud had its premiere. It was titled Scaramouche, after a stock character in the Italian commedia dell arte, and the music’s upbeat, carefree mood made it an instant hit. For his part, Milhaud was in an apprehensive mood. When he and his wife Madeleine had visited the 1937 Paris International Exposition, they saw premonitions of war reflected in many of its exhibits.

“Picasso’s Guernica adorned the walls of the Spanish pavilion, but the Spanish Republic had been murdered. Placed face to face, the German and the Soviet pavilions seemed to challenge each other to mortal combat. One evening, as we watched the sun set behind the flags of all nations, Madeleine clutched my arm in anguish and whispered, ‘This is the end of Europe!’” Milhaud recalled.

In 1940, Milhaud was forced to leave France when the Germans occupied Paris and his music was promptly banned due to his Jewish heritage. But in 1943, two French pianists performed Scaramouche in concert, tricking the German censors by listing its composer’s name as Hamid-al-Usurid — a fictitious Arabic composer whose name just happens to be an anagram of Darius Milhaud.

Music Played in Today's Program

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974): Scaramouche; Anthony and Joseph Paratore, pianos; Four Winds 3014

In 1971, American film composer Bernard Herrmann confessed, “the only thing I ever did that was foolhardy was to write an opera.” The opera was based on the 19th century novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Herrmann began work on it in April of 1943, and didn't finish until today's date in 1951 — at 3:45 p.m., as he noted in its score.

In those years, Herrmann was juggling three careers. He was conducting the CBS Orchestra, producing music for New York radio plays and occasional Hollywood films, and trying to write serious concert hall works. It's no wonder it took him eight years to finish a big opera score that clocked in at over three hours in length.

Now, writing an opera is hard enough, but getting it staged is even harder. Herrmann liked to quote Franz Liszt, that “to write an opera you have to have the soul of a hero — and the mentality of a lackey — to have it produced.” Even if an opera company expressed interest, Herrmann refused to cut or alter his score. He felt Wuthering Heights was his masterpiece, and refused to compromise.

The opera was never staged during his lifetime, so Herrmann had to content himself with making his own studio recording of Wuthering Heights at his own expense. After Herrmann’s death in 1975, the Portland Opera staged an edited-down version, and more recently, in 2011, the Minnesota Opera staged and filmed a critically acclaimed revival.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975): Wuthering Heights; soloists; Pro Arte Orch; Bernard Herrmann, conductor; Unicorn UKCD -2050/52

Today’s date in 1914 marks the birthday of famous Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík. He was the son of a very musical father, namely the violin virtuoso Jan Kubelík, known as the Czech Paganini.

Kubelík studied violin, composition, and conducting at the Prague Conservatory, and was an excellent pianist to boot — good enough to accompany his father on several concert tours. At the age of 19, he made his conducting debut with the Czech Philharmonic, and later became that orchestra’s artistic director.

In 1950, Kubelík became director of the Chicago Symphony; in 1955, the director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and in 1961, conductor of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra. It was with the Bavarian orchestra that he made the bulk of his recordings, including a critically-acclaimed set of the Mahler symphonies. Like Mahler, he was both a conductor and a composer.

“In public, I am practicing more as a conductor, but I could not live without composing, just as I would not be able to conduct without composing,” he said. He wrote five operas and three symphonies as well as many chamber music pieces, choral works and songs.

Rafael Kubelík died at 82 in 1996, in Lucerne, Switzerland.

Music Played in Today's Program

Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996): Orphikon: Symphony in Three Movements; Bavarian Radio Symphony; Rafael Kuybelik, conductor; Panton 1264

On today’s date in 1745, 73-year-old French composer Antoine Forqueray died in Mantes-la-Jolie outside Paris, where he had lived after his retirement as a court musician to King Louis XIV of France.

Forqueray was a virtuoso on the viola da gamba, a bowed string instrument popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, but nowadays only played by specialists in old music. At the tender age of 10, Forqueray played before Louis XIV. Seven years later, he landed a job at the Court of Versailles.

In his day, the other great French gamba virtuoso and composer was Marin Marais, noted for his introspective, sweet and gentle style of playing. Forqueray’s style was extroverted and bold, even brash. People said Marais played like an angel, and Forqueray like the devil.

Forqueray’s style was so distinctive that three other French composers of the day, Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Couperin and Jacques Duphly, each composed a piece named La Forqueray in tribute to him.

An obituary notice suggested that Forqueray had composed some three hundred works, but a selection of thirty-two pieces published by his son two years after his father’s death is the only music by Antoine Forqueray that survives.

Music Played in Today's Program

Antoine Forqueray (1671-1745): Piece for viola de gamba

The name George Templeton Strong crops up frequently in both the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War and Ric Burns’ history of New York City. That George Templeton Strong was a lawyer and music lover who lived from 1820-1875, whose diary entries offer a detailed picture of daily life in New York City.

But there’s another member of the family we’d like to tell you about — the son of the famous diarist, George Templeton Strong, Jr., born in New York in 1856, and died in Geneva, Switzerland on today’s date in 1948.

The younger Strong became a fine oboist who played in various New York orchestras of his day. His father was not very happy about that. He wanted his son to study law. Moreover, Junior rebelled against his father’s ultra-conservative tastes in music: Strong Senior detested the music of Liszt and Wagner, whereas Junior, who became a composer, modeled his works on those very composers.

The sad father-son relationship is documented painfully in the final entries of the elder Strong’s diaries. After a bitter argument, Junior left home and moved to Europe, eventually settling in Switzerland, where he pursued a dual artistic career as composer and watercolorist.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Templeton Strong (1856-1948): Evening Dance from Suite No. 2; Moscow Symphony; Adriano, conductor; Naxos 8.559078

It was Mozart who wrote the first great piano concertos, with Beethoven, Brahms and others following suit in the 19th century. Closer to our own time, the tradition continues, with new contributions appearing each year.

On today’s date in 1986, American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s piano concerto received its premiere by the Detroit Symphony with Marc-Andre Hamelin the soloist.

“My piano concerto does not cast the pianist as the prototypical 19th-century hero battling the orchestral forces and triumphing through overwhelming virtuosity,” said Zwilich. “My concerto calls for a blending of forces — a joint exploration of the piano soloist and orchestra. The pianist is even asked to merge with various sections of the rather large orchestra at times.”

She continued, “To me, a part of the nobility of the piano is that it can change its color, chameleon-like without losing its special identity … One composer treats the piano as a percussion instrument, another as a singer … Certainly the vast and wonderful piano repertoire explores this remarkable range. And the world of composer-pianists is large enough to embrace Serge Rachmaninoff and Art Tatum.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Piano Concerto; Joseph Kalichstein, piano; Florida State Orchestra; Michael Stern, Koch 7537

In the Guiness Book of Music Facts and Feats, the record for Most Prolific Composer goes to Georg Philip Telemann, who died on today’s date in 1767 at 86. And longevity gave an edge to productivity: Telemann outlived his prolific contemporary, J.S. Bach, by 21 years, and outlived Handel by 12.

But even considering the extra years he lived, Telemann’s output is staggering. Of Bach’s cantatas, 200 or so survive, but Telemann’s number 1400. He also wrote 125 orchestral suites, 125 concertos, 130 trios, 145 pieces for solo keyboard, and about 50 operas.

Most composers (if they are lucky), publish one autobiography; Telemann published three, and commented in one of them, “How is it possible for me to remember everything I wrote for violin and winds?” Sometimes, in addition to composing original music, Telemann was also asked to perform it: “A few days before I play a violin concerto,” he wrote, “I always locked myself away, fiddle in hand, shirt-sleeves rolled up, with something strong to calm the nerves, and practice.”

Fortunately, Telemann seemed to find musical inspiration everywhere, including from the pop and folk music of his day. As he put it, “One would scarcely believe what wonderful ideas pipers and fiddlers have when they improvise while dancers pause for breath. An observer could easily gather enough ideas from them in eight days to last a lifetime!”

Music Played in Today's Program

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767): Violin Concerto in A (The Frog); Pavlo Beznosiuk, violin; New London Consort; Philip Pickett, conductor; London 455 621

In wartime London, on today’s date in 1943, a Promenade Concert featured the first performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5. The composer conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Queen’s Hall, the traditional home of the annual summertime Proms concerts, had been destroyed by German bombers two years earlier. The Proms concerts had moved into a new and larger venue, the Royal Albert Hall, where the series continues to this day.

For the 1943 season, Proms programs started earlier than usual so concert goers could get home before the nightly air raids on the city. To London audiences troubled by war fears and many sleepless nights of German bombing, the serene musical world of Vaughan Williams’ symphony must have seemed a real blessing. It’s not a “wartime” symphony in the conventional sense, full of defiance and bluster, but rather an evocation and affirmation of England’s musical past, blending hints of 16th century hymn tunes and modal folk melodies into symphonic form.

For some time, Vaughan Williams had been at work on an opera based on The Pilgrim’s Progress, a 17th century allegorical tale by the Puritan writer John Bunyan. Some of the tunes and motives from his projected opera ended up in the symphony, along with a sense of faith and optimism in the face of adversity that must have deeply affected the first audience to hear the work.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Symphony No. 5; London Philharmonic; Bernard Haitink, conductor; EMI 55487

In 2008, the National Convention of the American Guild of Organists was held in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and for the occasion a Minnesota Organ Book was commissioned. The idea was that six Minnesota composers should each write a short piece for organ plus one solo instrument, all suitable for use at a Sunday service.

One of the composers selected was Carol Barnett, who thought to herself, “Well, probably everybody else will do something slow and lovely, so I’m going to do something fast, which means a Recessional. The whole idea of a Recessional is, ‘We are done. We’re out of here!’”

She selected a bright, beautiful, but decidedly unusual extra instrument for her piece: the steel pan.

The steel pan is a chromatically-pitched concert instrument related to the calypso steel drums heard of Trinidad. Its bright, metallic sound blends surprisingly well with the pipe organ, holding its own against the organ’s mighty voice. Moreover, its calypso associations evoke a sense of joyful release — perfect for a recessional, in Barnett’s opinion.

She titled her piece Praise, and it received its premiere performance on today’s date in 2008 at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, with organist Jonathan Gregoire and percussionist Jay Johnson.

For the record, the six composers and pieces included in The Minnesota Organ Book are:

• Cary John Franklin: "Morning Light" (for cello and organ)
• Monte Mason: "The Dances of Our Lady" (for soprano saxophone and organ)
• Janika Vandervelde: "Hachazarah: The Arousal of the Return" (for violin and organ)
• Linda Tutas Haugen: "Invocation and Remembrance" (for trumpet and organ)
• Carol Barnett: "Praise" (for steel pan and organ)
• David Evan Thomas: "Psalm and Dance" (for flute and organ)

Music Played in Today's Program

Carol Barnett (b. 1949): Praise; Jay Johnson, steel pan; Jonathan Gregoire, organ; Augsburg Fortress Music CD (with ISBN: 9780800679118)

There is an ancient curse, popularly attributed to the Chinese, “May you live in interesting times!” French composer Étienne-Nicolas Mehul, who was born on this date in 1763, certainly lived and worked in an interesting time, politically and musically speaking.

His creative life spanned both the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, and since Mehul live and worked in Paris, he found himself at the epicenter of some extremely interesting events. As one of the leading French composers of his day, he was commissioned to write patriotic works for state occasions, and had friends and supporters in high places, including Napoleon himself.

His operas, both dramatic and comic, were greatly admired by his contemporaries, although sometimes these proved too “politically incorrect” for the Parisian censors.

Beethoven (not always politically correct himself) was a Mehul fan and borrowed some striking theatrical effects from one of Mehul’s operas to use in his own opera, Fidelio.

Apparently this admiration — and the borrowing — was reciprocated. The last movement of Mehul’s Symphony No. 1 shows the impact of Beethoven’s dramatic Symphony No. 5 of a few years earlier.

Music Played in Today's Program

Étienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763-1817): Symphony No. 1; Les Musiciens du Louvre; Marc Minkowski, conductor; Erato 45026

Today is the birthday of versatile Argentinean-born American composer, arranger and jazz pianist, Boris Claudio “Lalo” Schifrin, who was born in Buenos Aires on today’s date in 1932.

From his background, you’d guess Schifrin was destined for a concert career. His father was a violinist in the orchestra of Argentina’s premiere opera house, the Teatro Colon. As a boy, he studied with Enrique Barenboim, father of pianist/conductor Daniel Barenboim, and in Paris he studied composition with Olivier Messiaen and Charles Koechlin.

But he also loved jazz, and after studies by day with Messiaen, his nights were spent performing in Parisian jazz clubs. Eventually Dizzy Gillespie commissioned him to write for his band.

Around the same time, he began writing film and TV scores. When he started working on the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he came into contact with legendary film composer Bernard Herrmann, who became a friend and mentor. Schifrin has written more than 100 scores for film and television but his most famous composition is this catchy theme of the 1960s TV series, Mission Impossible, and still used in the subsequent movie remakes.

Music Played in Today's Program

Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025): Hommage a Ravel; Eaken Piano; Trio Naxos 8.559062

Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025): Theme from Mission Impossible; studio orchestra; BBC Records 763

On today’s date in 1948 at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel there was a press demonstration of a new kind of phonograph record. Edward Wallerstein of Columbia Records stood between a big stack of heavy, shellac, 78-rpm albums, the standard for recorded music in those days, and a noticeably slimmer stack of vinyl discs, a new format which Wallerstein had dubbed “LPs” – “long playing” records that spun at 33 & 1/3 revolutions per minute.

Before 1948, if you wanted to buy a recording of a complete symphony or concerto, it meant the purchase of up to a dozen 78s, each playing only four minutes a side. In developing its new LP-record, Columbia’s goal was to fit complete classical works onto a SINGLE disc.

Columbia’s first LP release was a recording of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, with Nathan Milstein the soloist and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Bruno Walter.

The following year, Columbia struck pay dirt with its original cast album of a brand-new Broadway musical by Richard Rodgers. The 1949 Columbia LP of Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza singing the hit tunes from “South Pacific” became a best-seller, and by 1951 the LP-record had become the industry standard.

Music Played in Today's Program

Felix Mendelssohn (1809 - 1847) Violin Concerto in e Nathan Milstein, violin; New York Philharmonic; Bruno Walter, conductor. Sony 64459

Rodgers and Hammerstein South Pacific Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin; orchestra; Lehman Engel, conductor. Sony 53327

Today’s date marks the 1953 New York premiere of a musical movie that flopped when it debuted but has since become a cult classic — and for two good reasons.

First, the movie’s script — written by Dr. Seuss — was about a little boy named Bart who didn’t enjoy practicing the piano and who was worried that his widowed mom might marry his dreaded piano teacher. The film, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, is cast as Bart’s dream — or nightmare — with surreal scenarios as only Dr. Seuss could imagine them.

Second, the film boasted a score by Frederick Hollander, a composer of droll Berlin cabaret songs who found a welcome home in Hollywood. For The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, he crafted witty songs and an extravagant instrumental sequence for a whacky Seussian ballet.

Despite all that, The New York Times reviewer was bored: “A ponderously literate affair,” he wrote.

The film did have its fans, however, and one was a little boy who did like to practice the piano — singer and pianist Michael J. Feinstein, who lovingly gathered together all of Hollander’s used and unused music for the movie for a limited edition CD-set released in 2010.

Music Played in Today's Program

Friedrich Hollaender (1896-1976): ‘5000 Fingers of Dr. T’ film score; studio orchestra

Violin soloists have it easy: there are thousands of violin concertos they can choose from, starting in the Baroque era of Bach and Vivaldi, and continuing right up to the present day, with new violin concertos available from composers from John Adams to Ellen Taaffe Zwlich.

Oboe concertos? Not so much. There are some fine oboe concertos out there, but they just aren’t being written as often as new works for the violin or piano, it seems.

But on today’s date in 2010, a welcome new oboe concerto by contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin received its premiere performance at the Concertgebouw in Amstrerdam.

In describing his new work, he wrote: “It was my intention … to give expression to the entire palette of the tonal and technical qualities of this wonderful instrument. In my score there are however two further essential actors: the [English horn] which permanently imitates or answers the solo instrument … and the orchestra itself.”

Now, Shchedrin knows a thing or two about writing concertos and has written quite a few: for trumpet, cello, and viola; six concertos for piano — as well as five showpiece Concertos for Orchestra.

Music Played in Today's Program

Rodion Shchedrin (1932-2025): Oboe Concerto; Alexei Ogrinchuk, oboe; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Suzanna Malkki, conductor; RCO Live CD 11001

The “Three B’s” are traditionally Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, of course — but today we’re offering Boccherini, Brahms and Berio.

20th-century Italian composer Luciano Berio, noted for his avant-garde scores, was asked to orchestrate the F minor Clarinet Sonata by Johannes Brahms — in 1986, for a Los Angeles Philharmonic concert featuring clarinetist Michele Zukofsky. Berio admired Brahms, and created a very respectful arrangement, but Berio couldn’t resist adding something of his own: a totally original 13-bar orchestral introduction that segues into the Brahms score.

Eleven years earlier, on today’s date in 1975, Berio’s orchestration of one of the greatest hits of the 18th century Italian composer Luigi Boccherini received its premiere performance in Milan. Originally a quintet for strings, Boccherini’s Night Music in the Streets of Madrid was written around 1780 when he was living in Spain. This chamber work became very popular — even though Boccherini feared no one outside Madrid would understand it. 200 years after it was written, when asked to supply a short piece for the La Scala Orchestra in Milan, Berio arranged the final movement of Boccherini’s quintet, music evoking the procession of Madrid’s night watchmen signaling the midnight curfew.

Music Played in Today's Program

Johannes Brahms (arr. Luciano Berio) (1833-1897): Clarinet Sonata No. 1

Luigi Boccherini (arr. Luciano Berio): Ritirata Notturna di Madrid; Daniel Ottensamer, clarinet; Basel Symphony; Ivor Bolton, conductor; Sony 19075982072

If you’re a baby boomer who played in a high school or college band, you’ll probably remember the Divertimento for Band by American composer Vincent Persichetti, which premiered on today’s date in 1950, with the composer conducting the Goldman Band.

Persichetti didn’t envision his Divertimento as a band work, per se. At the start, it was just some woodwind figures accentuated by brass and percussion. When he realized that violins and cellos just didn’t seem to fit in the picture, Divertimento began to take shape in his mind as a work for winds, brass and percussion alone.

He went on to write a dozen more compositions for concert band. Beyond his works for band, he was a prolific composer of keyboard, chamber and orchestra pieces. He once claimed that since musical ideas often came to him in his car, he liked to tape a piece of music paper to his steering wheel, so he could jot down ideas and keep his eyes on the road at the same time.

Luckily for other residents of his hometown of Philadelphia, apparently this practice didn’t result in any head-on collisions!

Music Played in Today's Program

Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987): Divertimento; North Texas Wind Symphony; Eugene Migliaro Corporon, conductor; Klavier 11124

Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg was born in Bergen on today’s date in 1843. He is credited with putting Norway on the map, musically speaking, drawing inspiration from the folk music of his native land.

What you might not know is that two famous French composers were fans. Grieg was about 19 years older than Claude Debussy and about 32 years older than Maurice Ravel, but both knew and admired his music.

Despite criticizing Grieg’s Piano Concerto for being too much like Schumann’s, Debussy included Grieg’s Violin Sonata No. 3 in one of his public recitals, praised Grieg’s Peer Gynt incidental music, and described Grieg’s songs as possessing “the icy coldness of the Nordic lakes [and] the intensive fire of the sudden Nordic spring.”

Ravel once played some of Grieg’s Norwegian dances for the composer in Paris, timidly at first, but when Grieg asked for a stronger beat, saying, “You should see our peasants with their fiddles stamping the rhythm with their feet. Start over!” Ravel complied, and the elder composer got up and started dancing. After Grieg’s death Ravel said: “Next to Debussy there’s no other composer to whom I feel more related than Grieg.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907): Lyric Pieces Book VI, No. 6; Homeward Emil Gilels, piano; DG 449721

A now-obscure Englishman named Charles Caleb Colton is credited with the famous adage that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

On today’s date in 1985, Concerto for Oboe, Clarinet and Strings, a new work by American composer John Harbison premiered in Sarasota, Florida, that imitated the form and gestures of the Baroque Concerto Grossos written by Bach or Handel.

Harbison described it as follows: “The oboe, clarinet and strings are equal partners. The first movement is declamatory, the second contemplative, and the last frenetic. Each movement sustains one affect [or mood], in the Baroque manner … The steady insistent rhythms are indeed baroque, the harmonies less so. One astute writer referred to the piece as ‘scenes from a marriage.’ This metaphorical marriage between solo winds and strings contains quarrels, precarious balances, comic relief, misunderstandings and eventual unanimity.”

And, speaking of marriage, Harbison composed the work at Token Creek, in Wisconsin, an unincorporated community near Madison where his wife’s family had farmed since the 1920s and where for some 25 years each summer John and Rose Mary Harbison have organized their own mini-Festival of chamber music.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Harbison (b. 1938): Concerto for Oboe, Clarinet and Strings; Peggy Pearson, oboe; Jo-Ann Sternberg, clarinet; Metamorphosen Chamber Players; Scott Yoo, conductor; Archetype Records 60106

It was on today’s date in 2003 that a new violin concerto by composer Shulamit Ran premiered at Carnegie Hall — but it would be just as appropriate for us to run this episode of Composer’s Datebook on Mother’s Day — as Ran explained:

“Thoughts of my mother, Berta Ran, whose strength of spirit has been a profoundly significant guiding light throughout my life, have embedded themselves in various parts of this work. At the closing of the concerto, echoes of a familiar melody, one my mother sang to me in childhood with words of her own creation, appear, gently fading away.”

Ran was born in Tel Aviv in 1949 and moved to New York City at 14 on a scholarship to Mannes College of Music. From 1973 to 2015, she taught at the University of Chicago, and served as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony. In 1991 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Commenting on winning the prestigious award, she admitted to being a little surprised: “I feel I’ve always been out of step,” she said. “At times … I was not considered avant-garde enough. Now, considering the current trend of accessibility, some think I’m too forbidding.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Shulamit Ran (b. 1949): Violin Concerto; Ittai Shapira, violin; BBC Concert Orchestra; Charles Hazlewood, conductor; Albany TROY-970

In Cockney rhyming slang, being “Brahms and Liszt” means being tipsy. But in the latter 19th century, “Brahms and Liszt” signified opposite schools of contemporary music. Oddly enough, it was the younger Brahms, who represented the more conservative, traditionally structured side of the spectrum, while the older Liszt, represented a freer, less structured style, dubbed “the music of the future.”

Brahms and Liszt first met on today’s date in 1853, when Liszt was 41 and Brahms 20. American composer and pianist William Mason was present at the meeting, which took place at Liszt’s home in Weimar, and recalled the encounter in his memoirs.

Liszt read at sight one of Brahms’ early piano pieces and praised the young composer’s work. When pressed for some of his own music, Liszt began playing his recently completed Sonata in B Minor. Midway through the piece it became embarrassingly apparent that Brahms had fallen asleep in his chair.

Maybe it was the summer heat, perhaps sleep deprivation — or maybe, as some must have thought at the time, Brahms was just bored. In any case, Liszt was understandably miffed, and after finishing his Sonata, rose from the piano and left the room without a word.

Music Played in Today's Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Ballade No. 3; Lars Vogt, piano; EMI 57125

Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Piano Sonata in B minor; Jeno Jando, piano; Naxos 8.550510

On today’s date in 1926, American opera composer Carlisle Floyd was born in Latta, South Carolina. Floyd’s ancestors were among the first to settle in the Carolinas, and many of operas are based on colonial, southern, or rural themes. For decades he taught piano and composition at Florida State University in Tallahassee, and it was there that his most famous opera, Susannah, was initially staged in 1955.

Susannah was a retelling of the Biblical tale of Susannah and the elders, set in rural America. It was a tremendous success and since its premiere, has received over 300 productions and more than 800 performances in the United States and Europe. Opera America magazine included it among the top ten “most performed” American operas of all time.

When pressed what it is about his music that strikes many listeners as quintessentially American, Floyd once answered, “I’m probably the worst person to ask! I’ve never really set out consciously to write ‘American’ music. I can tell you, however, that when I’ve seen my operas in Europe they have always struck me as more ‘American’ than when I hear them here.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Carlisle Floyd (1926-2021): Susannah; Soloists and Lyon Opera Orchestra; Kent Nagano, conductor; Virgin 45039

Back in Bach’s day, there were churchmen aghast at the thought that composers were trying to sneak flashy opera music into Sunday services. Church music was meant to be simple, austere, and, well, not “operatic.”

So what would they have made of the three “church parables” — mini-operas, really, composed in the 20th century by the great English composer Benjamin Britten?

The third of these, The Prodigal Son, debuted on today’s date in 1968 at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Orford, England. All three impart Christian values and were meant for church performance — scored for a handful of soloists, modest choir, and a small ensemble that would fit in front of and on either side of a church altar where church music was normally performed.

But operas they are, and Britten himself let the “o” word slip when he commented in a 1967 interview that he was “doing another church opera to go with the other two, Curlew River and The Burning Fiery Furnace, to make a kind of trilogy.’”

Britten took these mini-operas seriously, and dedicated The Prodigal Son to his new friend, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who in turn would dedicate his 14th Symphony to Britten.

Music Played in Today's Program

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): “The Prodigal Son”; Peter Pears, tenor; John Shirley-Quirk, baritone; Robert Tear, tenor; Bryan Drake, baritone; English Opera Group Orchestra; Benjamin Britten, conductor; Decca 425713

On today’s date in 1904, the London Symphony gave its first concert at the old Queen’s Hall in London. Founded as a musician-run ensemble, along cooperative lines, back then all its players shared the profits at the end of each season.

So, from the start, the LSO had to be entrepreneurial: it made some of the first acoustic recordings of major orchestral works, and in the era of silent movies, played in a London theater pit for major films of the day. By the 1930s, they were recording musical scores for early British sound films as well.

One famous film score venture occurred in 1946, for the British movie, The Instruments of the Orchestra, in which the LSO itself played a starring role, performing Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra — a work specially-composed for the film.

But the LSO’s best-known film score recording dates from 1977. It was then that the LSO that recorded John Williams’ score for the first of the Star Wars movies. The score became an instant classic, and the LSO became the go-to orchestra for Williams’ film scores, including Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Harry Potter.

Speaking of “titanically” successful films, in 1912, the LSO arranged a North American tour and was booked to sail on a brand-new ocean liner named the Titanic. At the last minute, their tour schedule had to be changed, and — fortunately — they sailed on a liner named the Baltic instead!

Music Played in Today's Program

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra; London Symphony; Benjamin Britten, conductor; London/Decca CD 417 509

John Williams (b. 1932): Star Wars Main Title; London Symphony; John Williams, conductor; RSO CD 6641-679 (and other CD reissues)

On today’s date in 1912, Maurice Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé received its first performance at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, staged by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and choreographed by Michel Fokine.

Three years earlier, Diaghilev had approached Ravel about composing a ballet, and Ravel started working with Fokine on a scenario based on an old Greek pastoral romance about two lovers separated by pirates and reunited by the intervention of the god Pan.

Ravel was a meticulous and slow worker, and his score for Daphnis et Chloé ended up taking three years to complete. By the time of its 1912 premiere, internal squabbles in the Diaghilev company and conceptual differences between composer and choreographer had dampened everyone's enthusiasm for the project. Even Diaghilev seemed to lose interest.

In his memoirs, Pierre Monteux, the conductor of the first performance, recalled, “At first Diaghilev had been very enthusiastic with Ravel’s magnificent score, but for some reason, which I have always thought was due to the weakness of the choreography, his fervor for Ravel and his music diminished to such a low pitch that it became difficult to work as we should have on the premiere.”

Monteux continued, “But all the musicians in the orchestra, and I might say all the musicians in Paris, knew that this was Maurice Ravel’s greatest work.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Daphnis et Chloe; London Symphony; Pierre Monteux, conductor; London 425 956

On today’s date in 1945 Peter Grimes, a new opera by English composer Benjamin Britten, debuted at Sadler’s Wells Theater in London. The libretto was based on George Crabbe’s long poem, The Borough, published in 1810, which described life along England’s North Sea coast.

In the early 1940’s, Britten was living in America, and had read Crabbe’s poem in California. The commission for the opera was also American, coming from Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony and one of the leading music patrons of the day.

But his opera is intensely English — evoking, as it does, the images and sounds of the North Sea off the east coast of Suffolk. He was born within sight of this seascape, and lived, for the better part of his later life, a little farther down the coast at Aldeburgh — the borough on which Crabbe had based his poem.

From the start, Peter Grimes was an immediate success. Within a week of its June 7 premiere, Britten conducted the London Philharmonic in an orchestral suite of Sea Interludes from his new opera, and these, too, have since firmly established themselves in the concert repertory.

Music Played in Today's Program

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes; London Symphony; André Previn, conductor; EMI 72658