Composers Datebook

• Salzedo and the Harp

  SynopsisCarlos Salzedo, the most influential harpist of the 20th century, was born in Arcachon, France, on today’s date in 1885. Salzedo transformed the harp into a virtuoso instrument, developing new techniques showcased in his own compositions and that others like Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Britten adopted in theirs.In 1921, Salzedo and Edgard Varese co-founded the International Composers Guild, promoting works by progressive composers like Bartok and Honegger. Salzedo’s compositions for harp include both transcriptions as well as original works like Scintillation, probably his most famous piece, and Four Preludes to the Afternoon of a Telephone, based on the phone numbers of four of his students. He taught at the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School, and offered summer courses in Camden, Maine. Hundreds of Salzedo pupils filled harp positions with major orchestras around the world. Salzedo himself entered the Paris Conservatory at 9 and won the premiere prize in harp and piano when he was 16. He came to America in 1909 at the invitation of Arturo Toscanini, who wanted him as harpist at the Metropolitan Opera, and — curious to note — Salzedo died in the summer of 1961, at 76, while adjudicating Metropolitan Opera regional auditions in Maine.Music Played in Today's ProgramCarlos Salzedo (1885-1961): Scintillation; Carlos Sazledo, harp; Mercury LP MG-80003

  --------  

  2:00
• Barber's Cello Concerto

  SynopsisIn a 1964 essay, American composer Samuel Barber wrote, “I want my music to be of use to people, to please them, to enhance their lives … I do not write for posterity.” And in a 1979 interview, he said, “I write for the present, and I write for myself … I think that most music that is really good will be appreciated by the audience — ultimately.”Barber was 35 when he composed his Cello Concerto in 1945, finishing the work around the same time he was discharged from the U.S. Army Air Corps. The concerto was written for cellist Raya Garbousova, who gave the premiere performance of the work with the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitzky on today’s date in 1946.The new concerto was warmly received in Boston, and even won an award from New York music critics. Oddly enough, soon after its premiere, Barber’s Cello Concerto was pretty much ignored for several decades, and to date has yet to catch on with performers or audiences to the same degree as his earlier Violin Concerto — another work that took quite a while to become popular.Still, in recent years both performers and audiences seem more than willing to revisit all of Barber’s scores, including his Cello Concerto, and a major reappraisal of Barber seems well underway, and, to paraphrase the composer himself, we think most of Barber’s music that is really good will be appreciated by audiences — ultimately.Music Played in Today's ProgramSamuel Barber (1910-1981): Cello Concerto; Yo Yo Ma, cello; Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, conductor; CBS/Sony 44900

  --------  

  2:00
• A Sondheim opening (and closing)

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1964, the musical Anyone Can Whistle opened at Broadway’s Majestic Theater. The book was by Arthur Laurents, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.The show told the story of a town that's gone bankrupt because its only industry manufactured something that never wears out. To spark tourism, the town’s mayor fakes a miracle — water flowing from a rock — and when patients from a local mental hospital called the Cookie Jar escape and mix in with townspeople and tourists, chaos ensues. The only conventional thing about the new Sondheim-Laurent musical was the inclusion of a love story.The New York Daily News called the first act “joyously daffy,” and the Journal-American reported that the opening night audience cheered several numbers. The New York Times, unfortunately, panned the new show, opening its review with this statement: “There is no law against saying something in a musical, but it’s unconstitutional to omit imagination and wit.”Ouch!It didn’t help that the new Laurent-Sondheim musical’s competition on Broadway that year included crowd pleasers like Hello, Dolly!, Funny Girl and Fiddler on the Roof. The show ran for just one week.But one person who liked the show happened to be a Columbia Record executive named Goddard Lieberson, who assembled the original cast the day after it closed to make an original cast recording that became something of a cult classic.Music Played in Today's ProgramSteven Sondheim (1930-2022): Me and My Town, from Anyone can Whistle; Angela Lansbury; orchestra; Paul Gemignani, conductor; RCA Victor 60515

  --------  

  2:00
• Carter's 'Boston Concerto'

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 2003, a new orchestral work by American composer Elliott Carter had its premiere in Boston. Carter was then 94 — he would live to be a month shy of 104, and, even more remarkable, he was composing new works almost to the end of his days.When you live that long, you experience a lot of changes. Carter had studied English and Greek at Harvard, and recalled a time when at Boston Symphony concerts conservative members of the audience would joke that the emergency exits signs should read “Exit — in case of Brahms.” Apparently, even in the 1920s, for some Boston Brahmins, Brahms was still “difficult music.”For his part, Carter felt the complexity of his own music reflected the complex world into which he was born — the world of Proust, Picasso and Stravinsky. His music was technically very, very difficult, but Carter always insisted it was all in service of the greater freedom and fantasy of his imagination, not difficult for difficulty’s sake.Carter’s Boston Concerto was dedicated to the memory of his wife, Helen, who died shortly before its premiere. He prefaced his score with the opening lines from the poem “Rain” by William Carlos Williams:“As the rain fallsSo doesyour lovebathe everyopenObject of the world—“Music Played in Today's ProgramElliott Carter (1908-2012): Boston Concerto; BBC Symphony; Oliver Knussen, conductor; Bridge 9184

  --------  

  2:00
• Beethoven's First

  SynopsisOn today’s date in 1800, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 had its first performance in Vienna, at a benefit concert for the 29-year-old composer.It would be several years before any of Beethoven’s orchestral music reached American shores, but it did occur during Beethoven’s lifetime. In 1819, for example, a “Grand Piano Concerto” as it was billed, was performed in New Orleans — only we have no idea which concerto. On today’s date in 1825, when Beethoven was 54, his Egmont Overture was performed at the City Hotel in New York, and was performed again in Philadelphia on March 28, 1827 — just two days after its composer had died in Vienna.By the 1840s, Beethoven’s overtures and symphonies appeared with some regularity on the East Coast, and slowly worked their way Westward.In 1853, Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 was performed in San Francisco by musicians gathered from that city’s gambling houses. A letter describing the event recalled, “there were many Chinese present,” and that it “lasted four hours owing to an overwhelming demand for encores, which the performers dared not refuse in the face of rugged California individualism.”In 1856, when San Francisco’s German Society gave the West Coast premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, The San Francisco Chronicle review the following day noted: “The pieces were very beautiful, but it must be said that some of them appeared to be considered very tedious by the greater number of the audience. The Adagio, Scherzo and Finale of Beethoven’s Symphony, for instance, caused many to yawn.”Music Played in Today's ProgramLudwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 1; Concertgebouw Orchestra; Bernard Haitink, conductor; Philips 442 073

  --------  

  2:00

Más podcasts de Música

Podcasts a la moda de Música

Acerca de Composers Datebook

Composers Datebook: Podcasts del grupo