Composers Datebook

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1992, one of the strangest — and some would say most strikingly original — violin concertos of the late 20th century had its premiere performance in Cologne, Germany. It was written by Transylvanian-born Hungarian composer György Ligeti.

He became famous in the west when some of his music appeared in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick used his music to evoke the eerie and empty vastness of outer space. And, in fact, Ligeti was fascinated by the sounds traditional orchestral instruments make when pressed to the extreme limits of their range — their own sonic “outer limits.” There’s some of that in his 1992 Violin Concerto, plus a dash of the traditionally melancholic Hungarian strain familiar from the music of his famous compatriot Béla Bartók. Finally, tossed in for good measure, is his puckish fondness for thumbing his nose at life, the universe and traditional concert hall decorum.

As if to counterbalance his melancholic strain, or perhaps just express it in a more surprising way, there’s a good deal of the clown in Ligeti, who includes a chorus of ocarinas in the score of his violin concerto.

Music Played in Today's Program

György Ligeti (1923-2006): Violin Concerto; Saschko Gavrilov, violin; Ensemble InterContemporain; Pierre Boulez, conductor; DG 439 808

Synopsis

As the 20th century drew to its close, some who followed the development of opera were struck by the number of new American operas on American themes.

On today’s date in 2000, one of these new operas debuted in San Francisco. Dead Man Walking, an opera in two acts, was based on a 1993 book by Sister Helen Prejean, a book also made into a successful movie. The libretto for the operatic version of Sister Prejean’s book was crafted by Terrance McNally and set to music by American composer Jake Heggie.

Now, an opera based on eyewitness accounts of American prisoners on death row might seem an unlikely topic for an opera, but Sister Prejean didn’t think so.

“I love the way the opera captures essential human conflicts: love or hate, compassion or vengeance, redemption or condemnation,” she said. “… From the beginning, I told McNally and Heggie that I’d trust them to compose the opera if they wove into its center the quest for redemption. They got it. And I could tell by the stillness in the auditorium and the tumultuous applause at the end that the audience also really gets it.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Jake Heggie (b. 1961): Dead Man Walking; San Francisco Opera; Patrick Summers, conductor; Erato 86238

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1927, the landmark film The Jazz Singer received its premiere showing at the Warner Theater in New York. The Jazz Singer starred Al Jolson and is usually credited with being the first “talkie” — the first motion picture to successfully incorporate prerecorded music and spoken dialogue. Both the music and dialogue were recorded using the Vitaphone process, essentially a set of disc recordings synchronized for playback with the film’s projector.

The previous year, the New York Philharmonic had participated in the first Vitaphone projects, recording Wagner’s Tannhauser Overture as the first music video and performing the soundtrack for the otherwise silent drama Don Juan, starring John Barrymore.

Within a decade, Hollywood orchestras would be recording the classic film scores of European émigré composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, and within two decades American composers like Aaron Copland and Bernard Herrmann would be writing their memorable film scores, as well.

But back in 1927, all of that was well in the future, and, as one of Jolson’s lines in The Jazz Singer so prophetically put it, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Felix Arndt (1889-1918): An Operatic Nightmare (Desecration Rag No. 2); Paragon Ragtime Orchestra; Rick Benjamin, conductor; Newport Classics 60039

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957): The Prince and the Pauper film score; National Philharmonic; Charles Gerhardt, conductor; RCA/BMG 0185

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1867, two eminent British Victorians arrived in Vienna in search of Franz Schubert. Now, Schubert had been dead for 39 years, as the two Brits were quite aware. George Grove, 47, was England’s finest musicologist, and Arthur Sullivan, 25, one of the country’s most promising young composers.

Grove believed there might be forgotten manuscripts in the possession of the late composer’s relatives, so the pair met with Schubert’s nephew, Herr Doktor Schneider, who said he did have some pieces by Uncle Franz that no one had played for more than 40 years. If the two gentlemen had no objection to getting dusty, they were welcome to rummage the family’s storage closets.

The two visitors braved the dust and found orchestral parts for Schubert’s Rosamunde incidental music, tied up in a big bundle after the work’s premiere back in 1823 and untouched since then.

Grove and Sullivan spent the rest of the day carefully making a copy of their discovery. At 2 a.m., after finishing the task, their spirits must have been pretty high, since to celebrate the proper Victorian gentlemen began an impromptu game of leapfrog.

Music Played in Today's Program

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Rosamunde Incidental Music; Chamber Music Orchestra of Europe; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 431 655

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1945, Artur Rodzinski conducted the New York Philharmonic in the premiere performance of an orchestral suite arranged from Aaron Copland’s ballet score Appalachian Spring.

For the ballet’s 1944 premiere at the Library of Congress, Copland called for a chamber orchestra of 13 players, but for most music lovers, it’s as a work for a larger symphony orchestra that Appalachian Spring is most often remembered.

He said he had conducted all of his own works but knew his Appalachian Spring best of all. He also had some specific advice for other conductors of his score.

“I have often admonished orchestras, professional and otherwise, not to get too sweet or too sentimental with it, and I have reminded performers that Appalachian Spring should be played cooler than Tchaikovsky and lighter than Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. My own favorite place in the whole piece is toward the end where I have marked a misterioso. I would tell string players that we don't want to know where the up and down bows are. They must have a special sustained quality there, a kind of organ like sound, with each entry like an amen,” he said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Appalachian Spring Suite; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 63082