Composers Datebook

Synopsis

Say the phrase “BBC Proms” to most music lovers, and they’ll conjure up a mental image of the rowdy “Last Night of the Proms” at which normally staid and reserved Britons don funny hats and make rude noises during Henry Wood’s arrangement of British sailor songs. But the raucous “Last Night of the Proms” is only the festive finale of several weeks of fairly serious music making: dozens of concerts covering a wide range of old and new music

From the very beginning of the Proms in 1895, Wood, who started the whole thing, had this specific agenda: “I am going to run nightly concerts to train the public in easy stages,” he explained. “Popular at first, gradually raising the standard until I have created a public for classical and modern music.”

On today’s date in 1996, for example, violinist Gidon Kremer premiered a violin concerto by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho at a Proms concert. The work had an unusual title — Grail Theater. “I like the unusual combination of these two words because it represents two such different things. One is the search for the Grail, and the other the theatrical aspect,” she explained.

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750) arr. Henry Wood: Toccata and Fugue in D minor; BBC Symphony; Andrew Davis, conductor; Teldec 97868

Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023): Grail Theatre; Gidon Kremer, violin; BBC Symphony; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony Classical 60817

Synopsis

The life story of George Gershwin usually runs something like this: an incredible string of successes cut short by Gershwin’s tragically early death. But on today’s date in 1922, Gershwin suffered one of his rare flops when his one-act opera Blue Monday opened and closed on the same day.

For five years, beginning in 1920, Gershwin had provided the music for an annual Broadway revue, The George White Scandals. The impresario Mr. White provided the money and the leggy showgirls; Gershwin provided the catchy tunes and light-hearted dances.

But in 1922, Gershwin was eager to try something different: a modern, jazz-age version of an Italian verismo opera. The plot was simple: he does her wrong, and then she shoots him. The reviews were devastatingly bad — one critic suggesting the soprano with the pistol should have shot the rest of the cast before anyone had a chance to sing.

And so White pulled Blue Monday from his revue before it could have a second performance. A concert revival by the Paul Whiteman band at Carnegie Hall in 1925, and a 1953 CBS-TV production didn’t fare all that much better.

Even today Blue Monday is rarely staged.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Gershwin (1898-1937): Blue Monday; Cincinnati Pops; Erich Kunzel, conductor; Telarc 80434

Synopsis

Around this time in 1956, the hot ticket on Broadway was for a musical based on the old Greek legend of Pygmalion, a sculptor so good that he fell in love with one of his beautiful female statues. The playwright, George Bernard Shaw, had updated the legend to modern-day London, and in 1956, the Broadway team of Lerner and Loewe had in turn transformed Shaw’s stage play into the smash Broadway musical, My Fair Lady.

But 208 years before all that, on today’s date in the year 1748, another very successful musical adaptation of the Pygmalion legend opened in Paris. This Pygmalion was an opera-ballet by great French Baroque composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau.

He was born in 1683, two years earlier than Bach and Handel, but unlike them, was something of a late bloomer. He was 50 before he became famous, and his opera-ballet Pygmalion opened shortly before his 65th birthday.

Rameau was famous for imitating natural sounds and noises in his music. One of his contemporaries, in praising the overture to Pygmalion, even suggested the repeated notes of his theme represented the chipping of Pygmalion’s chisel as he worked on his lovely creation.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764): Pygmalion; La Petite Bande; Gustav Leonhardt, conductor; BMG/Deutsche; Harmonia Mundi 77143

Synopsis

Piero della Francesca was a 15th century Renaissance painter, whose series of frescoes, Legend of the True Cross, inspired one of the best orchestral works of 20th-century Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.

In 1952, he made a trip to the Tuscan hill town of Arezzo, where he saw the frescoes and got the idea for a new symphonic work that would attempt to capture in music what Piero had captured in painting.

What he sought to replicate was, as he put it, “a kind of solemn, frozen silence and opaque, colored atmosphere … a strange, peaceful and moving poetry.”

He linked the first movement of his score to one Tuscan fresco showing the Queen of Sheba and some women kneeling by a river; and the second to another depicting the dream of the Emperor Constantine. The third movement was intended, in his words, as “a kind of general view of the frescoes.”

Martinu’s orchestral triptych, The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, received its premiere performance on today’s date at the 1956 Salzburg Festival in Austria, with the Vienna Philharmonic led by the eminent Czech conductor, Rafael Kubelik.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1950): Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca; Vienna Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; Orfeo C521-991 (recorded August 26, 1956)

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1959, Leonard Bernstein celebrated his 41st birthday in Moscow. The New York Philharmonic was embarked on an extensive world tour, which included three weeks in the Soviet Union.

Their August 25th concert proved controversial, offering two works of Igor Stravinsky, a composer still condemned in the Soviet Union as “bourgeois” and “decadent.” Even more daring, Bernstein opened his concert with The Unanswered Question, a short piece by American composer, Charles Ives.

Even worse, Bernstein broke traditional Soviet protocol by talking directly to the audience through an interpreter, explaining Ives’ unusual philosophy of music. The enthusiastic audience response after the Ives led to it being encored.

This really upset the Soviet authorities, and the music critic of the Ministry of Culture wrote, “Before this four-minute piece Bernstein spoke for six minutes. Only the good manners of the hospitable public resulted in a ripple of cool applause. Nevertheless, the conductor, setting modesty aside, himself suggested that the piece be repeated.”

Bernstein, although furious at what he called “an unforgivable lie,” was persuaded to forgo any further controversial lectures from the podium for the remainder of the Soviet tour.

Music Played in Today's Program

Charles Ives (1874-1954): The Unanswered Question; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony Classical 46701