In St. Petersburg on today’s date in 1893, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his latest symphony, his sixth. From the beginning, this symphony has been commonly known by its French subtitle, the Pathétique, a designation suggested by the composer’s brother, Modest.

Now, by Pathetique, Modest meant something like “passionate” or “emotional,” with overtones of “pathos” and “suffering,” but in plain old English, “pathétique” translates as “pathetic,” a word with a slew of negative connotations. The French sounds much better, thank you. Tchaikovsky had originally wanted to call it A Program Symphony with, apparently, no intention of cluing anyone in on what that program might be.

In any case, nine days after he conducted the premiere, Tchaikovsky was dead. Was his death the result of a fatal glass of unboiled water recklessly drunk during the height of a cholera epidemic? Or was it a deliberate suicide to avoid the scandal of a homosexual affair becoming public? Did his Symphony Pathétique encode the answer?

Speculation has raged around Tchaikovsky’s last symphony ever since, surrounding this last work with what one critic has called “voluptuous gloom.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Symphony No. 6 (Pathétique); Russian National Orchestra; Mikhail Pletnev, conductor; DG 449 967

On today’s date in 1994, Dennis Russell Davies conducted the Chicago Symphony in the premiere performance of a 23-minute orchestral work by American composer Steven Mackey. The new piece was titled Eating Greens, after a painting of the same name that the composer purchased at an African art store in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

Eating Greens is a colorful orchestral suite of seven movements. The fourth movement is only 46 seconds long and is playfully labeled “The Title Is Almost as Long as the Piece Itself.” Other movements’ titles acknowledge the influence of the colorful and playful visual artist Henri Matisse and the quirky but brilliant jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Monk.

In the liner notes for the recording of Eating Greens, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, Mackey wrote, “On more than one occasion, Michael has used the word ‘wacky’ to describe my music. Composers usually blanch at such attributions — nobody wants to be captured in a single word — but I can live with ‘wacky.’ It is not a common adjective, does not end with ‘ism’ and clearly the rhyme with my last name personalizes it.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Steven Mackey (b. 1956): Eating Greens; New World Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor; RCA/BMG 63826

For composers of new operas, all too often, after the heady champagne of opening night comes the strong black coffee of “the morning after” — sipped anxiously while reading the first reviews.

Imagine yourself as American composer Robert Ward, whose opera The Crucible was premiered by the New York City Opera on today’s date in 1961. Here’s what he would have read in the New York Times the following morning:

“Last night, the audience heard an opera that, in philosophy and workmanship, could have been composed at the turn of the century, or before. And, judging from the response at the end of the work, the audience loved it.”

Hmm. Not all that bad, so far.

But down a few more lines comes this zinger: “Mr. Ward is an experienced composer whose music fails to bear the impress of a really inventive mind. Melodically, his ideas had little distinction. ... [The opera’s] powerful subject cried out for intensity, for brutality and shock. ... Instead, we had musical platitudes.”

Ouch!

Oh, well, despite the nasty review, his opera did well at the box office, and, for the record, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music the following year.

Music Played in Today's Program

Robert Ward (1917-2013): The Crucible; New York City Opera; Emerson Buckley, conductor; Albany 25/26

On today’s date in 1970, a new chamber work by American composer John Corigliano received its premiere performance at a concert given by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the group that had commissioned it.

The new piece, Poem in October, was scored for tenor voice and eight instruments and was a setting of poetry by Dylan Thomas, the great Welsh poet who died in 1953.

“The thing that most appeals to me is the sound of his words,” he explained. “Phrases from Poem in October like ‘a springful of larks in a rolling cloud’ and ‘the blue altered sky streamed again a wonder of summer’ are in themselves musical.”

“The music itself is unabashedly lyrical. I sought to convey a pastoral feeling that would match the directness and simplicity of the text, to deal in understatement and succinctness rather than in complexity and theatrical effect,” Corigliano said.

His chamber scoring includes three “pastoral” wind instruments — flute, oboe and clarinet — plus strings, and, perhaps to give the work a slightly archaic feel, a harpsichord.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Corigliano (b. 1938): Poem in October; Robert White, tenor; Thomas Nyfenger, flute; Humbert Lucarelli, oboe; Joseph Rabbai, clarinet; American String Quartet; Maurice Peress, conductor and harpsichord; RCA 60395

On today’s date in 2002, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Leonard Slatkin conducted the National Symphony in the premiere of a new symphony by American composer Cindy McTee.

She subtitled her Symphony No. 1, Ballet for Orchestra, saying: “Music is said to have come from dance — [and] the impulse to compose often begins as a rhythmical stirring and leads to a physical response — tensing muscles, gesturing with hands and arms, or quite literally, dancing. … There is also much pleasure to be gained from observing the gestures of a conductor, or from seeing the coordinated bowing of the string sections within an orchestra. My Ballet for Orchestra emerged out of a similar kinesthetic/emotional awareness and a renewed interest in dance music.”

McTee’s symphony makes passing allusions to earlier works by Stravinsky, Ravel, Barber and even Penderecki, tossing in some jazz and folk fiddling allusions for good measure. But Allan Kozinn, reviewing the new symphony for the New York Times, wrote: “Ms. McTee’s sense of organization kept the work from becoming a pastiche: As diverse as its ideas were, they seemed to unfold naturally within an orchestral fabric that used the ensemble’s full coloristic range.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Cindy McTee (b. 1953): Symphony No. 1 (Ballet for Orchestra); Detroit Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; Naxos 8.559765

On today’s date in 2008, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, soprano Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra gave the first performance of a new song cycle, Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories. Its composer, Maria Schneider, conducted the premiere.

Drummond was one of Brazil’s greatest poets, and Schneider came to know his work through English translations by Mark Strand. “Drummond’s poetry struck me as deeply Brazilian, and Brazil is a country for which I’ve long felt an affinity,” she said.

The Minneapolis premiere was something of a homecoming for Schneider, who was born in Minnesota and studied composition at its university before heading off to the Eastman School and after graduation being hired by the great jazz orchestrator Gil Evans as his assistant. In 1992, she formed her own jazz orchestra and won a Grammy with it in 2004.

Upshaw is a big fan of Schneider’s work, and in 2011 they collaborated on the premiere of a second song cycle, Winter Morning Walks, based on poems of Ted Kooser.

“I knew that no matter what she was going to write, it was going to be a joyful experience,” Upshaw said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Maria Schneider (b. 1960): Carlos Drummond de Andrade Stories; Dawn Upshaw, soprano; St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; Maria Schneider, conductor; ArtistShare AS-0121

Royalty was often flattered by the composers of the Baroque age. Handel wrote glorious ceremonial music for British monarchs, and Bach was not above working up an obsequiously complimentary cantata or two for some German prince. At the French Court of Versailles, King Louis XIV appeared on stage for cameo appearances during operas and ballets whose stories complemented his wisdom, talent and impeccable good taste.

On today’s date in 1987, at the Houston Grand Opera in Texas, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Chairman Mao didn’t come on stage in their own personas, but did appear as characters in the premiere of a new opera by American composer John Adams. Nixon in China was a somewhat surreal and not necessarily flattering dramatization of a real event: President Nixon’s ground-breaking trip to communist China in 1972.

One can only guess at the former president’s reaction to being portrayed on stage. Adams did report that Nixon’s lawyer, Leonard Garment, attended a performance of Nixon in China, most likely on the former president’s behalf. No lawsuit followed, and, Adams notes with some amusement, Garment even became something of a fan of his music!

Music Played in Today's Program

John Adams (b. 1947): Nixon in China; Orchestra of St. Luke’s; Edo de Waart, conductor; Nonesuch 794543

American composer Marga Richter was born on today’s date in 1926, in Reedsburg, Wisconsin. She began piano lessons by 4, started composing at 12 and had her first work performed when she was in high school in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, where her family had moved so she could study at the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis. The family moved again in 1943, this time to New York, so she could attend the Juilliard School.

She would recall, “I really didn’t notice that there weren’t any women composers to model myself after until I got to Juilliard, and then I found I was the only one there.”

She persisted as a composer, and a New York Times reviewer of a concert of her music in 1951 found it “restless, inventive, dissonant, clean; … her intentions seemed … well realized.” They added, “We will hear more from Miss Richter.”

That said, it took decades for her nearly 200 works, which range from operas and orchestra scores to chamber works for solo instrument, to earn increasing respect and performances here and abroad.

Richter died in 2020, at 93, in New Jersey.

Music Played in Today's Program

Marga Richter (1926-2020): Fragments; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra; Petr Vronský, conductor; Navona 6050

On today’s date in 1950, Karel Ančerl was named the artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic, a position he would hold for the next 18 years.

He had first conducted the orchestra in 1930, when, upon graduation from the Prague Conservatory, he led that ensemble in one of his compositions. For a time, he debated whether to be a composer or a conductor. He opted for the latter, demonstrating a mastery of classical and contemporary scores with other orchestras in Czechoslovakia.

With all that in mind, it might not seem all that surprising that in 1950, he was eventually tapped to lead the Czech Philharmonic — but that would be ignoring the miracle that he was even alive in 1950.

In 1942, he and his family were imprisoned in the Nazis’ notorious Theresienstadt concentration camp, and, in 1944, they were transported to Auschwitz, where his wife and young son were killed. He alone survived.

In 1968, when Czechoslovakia was invaded by Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops, Ančerl emigrated to Canada in protest and served as music director of the Toronto Symphony until his death in 1973.

Music Played in Today's Program

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959): Symphony No. 5; Czech Philharmonic; Karel Ancerl, conductor; Supraphon SU-3694-2

Rugby is a style of football that originated in England at Rugby School and was played at British public boy’s schools during the 19th century.

It’s also the name of a tone poem written by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger that premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Champes-Elysées on today’s date in 1928 at the first concert of the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris.

In describing his tone poem, Honegger wrote: “I’m very fond of soccer, but rugby is closer to my heart … I’m more keenly attracted by rugby’s rhythm, which is savage, abrupt, chaotic and desperate. It would be wrong to consider my piece as program music. It simply tries to describe in musical language the game’s attacks and counterattacks, and the rhythm and color of a match.”

Now, you would think in such a slam-bang contact sport as rugby that Honegger would employ a big battery of percussion instruments, but — surprise — they are totally absent in his score. Not to worry. There is plenty of rough-and-tumble action between the strings, woodwinds and brass, but fortunately no protective headgear is required by either the performers or the listeners.

Music Played in Today's Program

Arthur Honegger (1892-1955): Rugby

On today’s date in 1871, Hermann Levi conducted the premiere of a new choral work by Johannes Brahms: Schicksalslied, or Song of Destiny. It’s a setting of a poem by Friedrich Hölderlin, contrasting in its first part the blissful Greek gods on Mount Olympus and in its second the miserable suffering of we mortals below.

Brahms discovered the poem in summer 1868 while visiting his friend Albert Dietrich on the shores of the North Sea. As Dietrich recalled, during one seaside stroll: “Brahms, usually so lively, was quiet and grave. Earlier that morning (he was always an early riser), he had found Hölderlin’s poems in my bookcase and was deeply impressed. Later on, some of us were lounging by the sea, when we saw Brahms a long way off sitting by himself on the shore writing.”

Brahms originally planned to repeat the blissful opening words of the poem as the ending of his setting, but that didn’t ring true to the poem. He was stuck. Conductor Hermann Levi suggested a solution: Repeat the serene opening music, yes, but as a wordless, instrumental-only close.

Brahms had his solution, and, as a reward, Levi his premiere.

Music Played in Today's Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny); Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; Robert Shaw, conductor; Telarc CD 80176

Today’s date in 1946 marks an important moment in Parisian theatrical history with the debut performance of a legendary acting company created by husband-and-wife actors Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud. Their opening production was Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a French translation by André Gide, with incidental music by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger. To play Honegger’s score, Barrault hired two young musicians at the start of their careers.

The first, 21, was to play the eerie electronic sounds Honegger scored for the Ondes Martinot, evoking the elder Hamlet’s ghost. That young musician was a composition student named Pierre Boulez, who would remain associated with Barrault’s company for a decade before becoming a famous conductor and composer of avant-garde scores like Le Marteau Sans Maître.

The second musician Barrault hired was a 22-year-old percussionist, who brought Hamlet to a dramatic close with timpani crescendos evoking Fortinbras’ final line in the play, “Go, bid the soldiers shoot.” That young musician, Maurice Jarre, would also become a famous composer, taking quite a different career path than Boulez. He devoted himself to film scoring, composing several famous ones, such as Dr. Zhivago for British film director David Lean.

Music Played in Today's Program

Pierre Boulez (1925-2016): Le Marteau Sans Maître; Orchestre Du Domaine Musical; Pierre Boulez, conductor; PCA 101

Maurice Jarre (1924-2009): Lara’s Theme from Dr. Zhivago; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Maurice Jarre, conductor; Sony 42307

Of all the works of Richard Strauss, the one that premiered in Dresden on today’s date in 1925 ranks amount the least-known.

For starters, it has an odd title, Parergon to the Symphonia Domestica. “Parergon” means “an ornamental accessory or embellishment,” and he meant his new work, written for piano left-hand and orchestra, as a follow-up to his Symphonia Domestica tone-poem of 1903, which depicted one day in the Strauss family household, complete with baby’s bath.

The baby in question was his son Franz, who by 1925 was a young man setting up his own household, and recently recovered from a near-fatal case of typhus contracted while on his honeymoon in Egypt. For Strauss, this Parergon was a private celebration of his son’s survival.

For Paul Wittgenstein, the wealthy one-handed concert pianist who commissioned the new work, this was one of several he had requested from leading composers of his day, all designed to showcase his talent. Wittgenstein’s contract with Strauss stipulated that Wittgenstein alone would have exclusive rights to the Parergon as long as he wished, and so it wasn’t until 1950 that any other pianist could perform it.

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Parergon to the Symphonia Domestica

The hills surrounding the Austrian town of Salzburg, according to Rogers and Hammerstein, are “alive with the sound of music.” Well, the same could have been said for the vast interior and multiple choir lofts of Salzburg Cathedral on today’s date in 1682. A lavish celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the Archbishopric of Salzburg culminated in a specially-composed mass setting, with performers placed above and all around the citizens assembled there for the occasion.

The music was composed by one of Salzburg’s most remarkable composers. No, not Mozart – he wouldn’t be born for another six decades or so. We’re talking about Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, who lived from 1644 to 1704, and, while not a native son like Mozart, was similarly employed by one of the princely archbishops of Salzburg. Unlike Mozart, however, Biber was on much better terms with his employer.

Biber’s magnificent Missa Salisburgensis for 53 voices is now regarded as a masterpiece of the Baroque music — but was almost lost. Forgotten for two centuries, the manuscript score was rediscovered by a choir director in 1870 in the home of a Salzburg greengrocer, who planned to use the large sheets of music paper to wrap vegetables.

Music Played in Today's Program

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704): Missa Salisburgensis; Musica Antiqua Köln; Reinhard Goebel, conductor; DG Archive 457 611

On today’s date in 1883, the premiere of Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto was given in Prague by Czech violinist František Ondrícek with the National Theatre Orchestra, led by Czech conductor Moric Anger, an old friend of Dvořák’s and his onetime roommate.

The concerto was commissioned by distinguished violinist Joseph Joachim, an old friend and collaborator of German composer Johannes Brahms. Brahms had sent him two of Dvořák’s chamber works for strings. He expressed enthusiasm for these pieces and urged Dvořák to write a concerto for him.

So far, so good.

He had a finished score by December 1879, but Joachim had what we now would call “some issues” with the score, and, by the time he was finishing the last revisions, three years had elapsed with no talk of a premiere. He realized Joachim was unlikely ever to premiere the new concerto, so he offered it to Ondrícek, a young virtuoso who eagerly championed it in Prague and abroad.

Joachim finally did perform Dvořák’s concerto in Berlin in 1894, about 15 years after he had commissioned it.

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904): Violin Concerto

As far as housewarming gifts go, a nice bottle of champagne is common, or maybe a bouquet of flowers. But if you’re a composer, and the occasion is the ceremonial opening performance at a new concert hall, you write a celebratory piece of music.

On today’s date in 1984, for the inaugural concert of the Indianapolis Symphony’s new home, the Circle Theater, American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich wrote an orchestral work titled, appropriately enough, Celebration.

“In writing this work, I was motivated by three complementary goals. First, I wanted to celebrate a joyous and historic occasion with all its inspiring symbolism of beginning and renewal. My second goal was to write a kind of ‘toccata’ or test piece for the new Circle Theater. Finally, I wanted to celebrate the orchestra itself, which is, after all, the centerpiece of the occasion. Thus, Celebration is like a mini-concerto for orchestra,” she said.

Zwilich’s housewarming gift was dedicated to the Indianapolis Symphony’s music director in 1984, conductor John Nelson. Despite its origins as an occasional piece for a particular event, Celebration has gone on to become one of her most popular and frequently performed orchestral works.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Celebration; Indianapolis Symphony; John Nelson, conductor; New World 336

By a coincidence, the last two symphonies of Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev premiered on today’s date: his Symphony No. 6 premiered in Leningrad in 1947, and his final, Symphony No. 7, in Moscow, in 1952.

The Symphony No. 6 is tragic in tone, and Prokofiev confided that it was about the physical and emotional wounds suffered by his countrymen during World War II. It was premiered at the opening concert of the Leningrad Philharmonic’s 1947 season and was applauded warmly by both audiences and the official Soviet critics. But early in 1948, he somehow ran afoul of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and his Symphony No. 6 was quickly withdrawn from further performances.

Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 7 was intended to be for children, a kind of symphonic Peter and the Wolf, written in a deliberately populist style and with a wary eye on the dictates of the Central Committee. It’s an airy, almost transparently melodic score. Originally, it had a wistful, somewhat melancholic ending, with the music trailing off into silence. During the final dress rehearsals, however, he wrote an alternative, perhaps more “politically correct” finale, decidedly chipper and upbeat in tone.

Music Played in Today's Program

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Symphony No. 6; National Symphony; Leonard Slatkin, conductor; RCA/BMG 68801; and Symphony No. 7; French National Orchestra; Mstislav Rostropovich, conductor; Erato 75322

American jazz composer and pianist Thelonious Sphere Monk was born on today’s date in 1917. Largely self-taught, he began playing piano at 6. At 17, he dropped out of New York’s esteemed Stuyvesant High School for gifted students to serve as organist for a touring evangelist. In his 20s, he became the house pianist at Minton’s, a Manhattan jazz nightclub.

His original compositions, marked by dissonances and angular twists of melody, became jazz standards. They also had great titles: ‘Round Midnight; Straight, No Chaser; Ruby, My Dear; and Well, You Needn’t.

He made the cover of Time magazine and is credited with being the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington.

Biographer Robin D.G. Kelly, who spent 14 years researching his life and music, said, “He was Janus-faced [looking backward and forward]. … Monk pulled as much from his roots, the old-style [stride] piano traditions he never left, as from the really futuristic musical territory he was the first to visit. He’s always going to be associated with the founding of Bebop, with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. I don’t place him on the Bebop school, though — I place him in his own school.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Thelonious Monk (1917-1982): Ruby, My Dear; Thelonious Monk, piano; Columbia Legacy CK-63533

On today’s date in 2001, the release of a CD of Vivaldi’s oratorio Juditha Triumphans launched an ambitious project to record nearly 450 works of the famous Italian Baroque composer that exist as manuscript scores in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, Italy.

It’s the largest collection of manuscript scores by any 18th-century composer in existence and includes many Vivaldi works unperformed since his lifetime.

Susan Orlando, the director of the recording project, explained how that came to be: “When Vivaldi died in Vienna in 1741, he had debts, so the authorities immediately sealed off his home. We have the inventory that they made. It included no musical manuscripts, but there was a big, empty chest. It seems Vivaldi’s brother had got hold of the music and sold it off.”

Back then, his scores ended up with various wealthy collectors, but in 1930 the scattered music was consolidated and bequeathed to the library in Turin.

The French label Naïve has released over 60 Vivaldi Edition CDs so far, including 17 of his operas. More than a dozen additional titles are planned for release by 2028, the year that will mark the 350th anniversary of Vivaldi’s birth.

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): Sinfonia from Juditha Triumphans; Academia Montis Regalis; Magdalena Kozena, mezzo soprano; Juditha Maria José Trullu, mezzo soprano; Holofernes Marina Comparato, mezzo soprano; Vagaus Anke Herrmann, soprano; Abra Tiziana Carraro, soprano; Alessandro De Marchi, conductor; Naïve Vivaldi Edition OP-30314

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

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

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

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

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

Despite a disastrous premiere in Birmingham on today’s date in 1900, Edward Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius has become one of his best-loved and most-frequently performed works in the U.K., where, in 2015, Classic FM offered a guide to what it called the work’s “most epic choral stupendousness.”

Here’s Classic FM’s summary of its story: “The piece follows an ‘everyman’ character (the word ‘Gerontius’ comes from the Greek for ‘old man’) as he faces death, meets his guardian angel and goes before his God before being taken to Purgatory with the promise of everlasting glory.”

Well, all that Roman Catholic talk of Purgatory in the poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman that Elgar set to music did not sit well with the Church of England in the early decades of the 20th century. Many Anglican clerics flatly refused to let it be performed in their cathedrals.

But that controversy is long a thing of the past, and nowadays Gerontius is performed at cathedrals such as St. Paul’s in London and in concert venues such as the Royal Albert Hall, where in 1991 it was performed at the BBC Proms in the presence of the Prince of Wales, now known as King Charles III.

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857-1934): The Dream of Gerontius; John Shirley-Quirk, baritone; London Symphony Chorus; King’s College Choir, Cambridge; London Symphony Orchestra; Benjamin Britten, conductor; London/Decca 448170

In 2001, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, commissioned American composer Steve Heitzeg to write a Nobel Symphony.

In 1866, the Swedish engineer and scientist Alfred Nobel had invented dynamite. His patent helped him amass a great fortune, but, troubled by the destructive power and potential misuse of his invention, Nobel arranged that his estate would award annual prizes to those who made significant contributions to world peace.

For his Nobel Symphony, Heitzeg chose to set quotes from a variety of Nobel laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Dalai Lama. Purely instrumental effects were also employed to convey something of their ideas and ideals. For example, in a section honoring a 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, he scored an eerie march for a percussion ensemble consisting of hollow artificial limbs.

The October 2, 2001 premiere of the Nobel Symphony came shortly after the tragic events of September 11th. Understandably, its message had a special resonance for the performers and audiences present at its first performance.

Music Played in Today's Program

Steve Heitzeg (b. 1959): Nobel Symphony; Gustavus Orchestra; Warren Friesen, conductor; Gustavus Adolphus 60171-10022

On today’s date in 2010, at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in Nashville, the ALIAS ensemble gave the premiere performance of a new chamber work by American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. It was titled Hilos — the Spanish word for “threads” — and scored for piano, violin, cello and clarinet.

Now, it’s not unusual for composers to tap their particular cultural background for inspiration, but she has a pretty wide variety of options in that regard: Her father is an American of Lithuanian Jewish heritage and her mother is Peruvian of Chinese descent. They met when her father was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the 1960s, and Frank grew up in Berkeley, California.

“There’s usually a story line behind my music,” she said. Regarding Hilos, she noted, “There are similarities to [Mussorgsky’s] Pictures at an Exhibition in that each movement tells a different story … Hilos refers to the ‘threads’ that make up Andean textiles and how these threads weave together.”

Each movement of Hilos has an evocative title, such Canto del Altiplano (Song of the Highlands), Zumballyu (Spinning Top), or Juegos de los Niños (Games of the Children).

Music Played in Today's Program

Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972): ‘Hilos’; Lee Carroll Levine, clarinet; Zeneba Brown, violin; Matt Walker, cello; Gabriela Lena Frank, piano; Naxos 8.559645

Even during the bombing of London by the German Air Force, the London Blitz of World War Two, the BBC Proms Concerts continued.

True, in 1941 a German incendiary bomb did destroy the long-time home of the Proms, Queen’s Hall on Langham Place, but, not to be deterred, the Proms simply moved to the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington.

Wartime Proms programs included this printed notice: “In the event of an Air Raid Warning the audience will be informed immediately, so that those who wish to take shelter either in the building or in public shelters outside, may do so, The concert will then continue.”

Talk about pluck!

In 1944, British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams completed a new oboe concerto to be premiered at a Proms concert, but a German V-1 rocket that landed dangerously near the Albert Hall led to an early end to that Proms season, since the V-1 rockets, unlike the German bombers, didn’t allow enough warning time to clear the hall.

So, on today’s date in 1944, the new Vaughan Williams concerto was premiered not in London, but in Liverpool, with soloist Leon Goossens and Malcolm Sargent conducting the Liverpool Philharmonic.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Oboe Concerto; David Theodore, oboe; London Symphony; Bryden Thomson, conductor; Chandos 8594

On today’s date in 2000, a new cello concerto received its premiere performance at the Barbican Center in London. Billed as the Crouching Tiger Concerto, this score was by Chinese composer Tan Dun, and was derived from his film score for Ang Lee’s martial arts film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

That score featured a prominent cello part, tailor-made for cellist Yo-Yo Ma, as well as a variety of traditional Chinese instruments and a percussion battery that included a North African frame drum. The haunting score matched the film so effectively that it was nominated for — and won — an Academy Award.

It was director Ang Lee who suggested that Dun rework his film score into a cello concerto, and even offered to put together a special film to accompany it. In effect, saying, “Turnabout is fair play — you composed music to fit my film, now I’ll compose a film to fit your concerto!”

Lee pulled together shots from the original film and mixed in real and imaginary scenes from New York’s Chinatown and 19th century Beijing for the new film designed to accompany performances of the new concerto.

Music Played in Today's Program

Tan Dun (b. 1957): Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon film score; Yo Yo Ma, cello; Shanghai Symphony; Tan Dun, conductor; Sony 89347