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

On today’s date in 1727, the opera season in London ended early when rival Italian prima donnas, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, came to blows on stage during a performance of an opera by Bononcini.

Londoners were shocked, but not surprised. Trouble had been brewing between the two, egged on by partisan behavior from their rabid English fans, who (depending on their preference) greeted them with either extravagant applause and bravos, or catcalls, hissing and, as one contemporary put it, “other great indecencies.”

It was all terrific for the box office, as Handel must have realized and so worked their rivalry into his opera Alessandro, in which the hero finds it hard to decide between the attractions of the dueling divas. He prudently gave exactly the same number of solos to each soprano.

Even so, according to Handel’s first biographer, years earlier he had threatened to toss Cuzzoni out the window when, during a rehearsal she refused point blank to sing one of his arias. “Madam,” he is quoted as roaring as he dragged her towards the window, “I know you are a veritable devil, but I would have you know that I am Beelzebub, the king of all the devils!”

Music Played in Today's Program

George Frederic Handel (1685-1759): “Aria” from Alessandro; Lisa Saffer, soprano; Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra; Nicholas McGegan, conductor; Harmonia Mundi 90.7036

On today’s date in 1998 at King’s Chapel in Boston, a new work by American composer Daniel Pinkham received its first performance. Scored for baritone and organ, Three Latin Motets was intended as a birthday offering to Pinkham’s fellow composer and colleague Ned Rorem, with a dedication that read, “For Ned Rorem and a half century of friendship.”

But the premiere occurred on the Pinkham’s 75th birthday, as a surprise at a concert in his honor. Organist James David Christie and baritone Sanford Sylvan had sneakily persuaded him to write the motets for Rorem, who was born in 1923 — the same year as Pinkham — but intended all along to premiere the music as a surprise at a concert in his honor.

He was noted for his church music, and once quipped, “I just like to hear my pieces more than once, and when you write music for the church you have a better chance at that … I [tell people] am available for weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs.”

Pinkham died in 2006, and Christie and Sylvan performed Three Latin Motets once again in January of 2007 — at Pinkham’s memorial service.

Music Played in Today's Program

Daniel Pinkham (1923-2006): Three Latin Motets; Aaron Engebreth, baritone; Heinrich Christensen, organ; Florestan FRP-1003

In the early years of the 20th century, a hauntingly beautiful piece of Grecian sculpture — a bust of the head of the goddess Aphrodite — was donated to the Boston Museum of Fine Art. There it inspired this orchestral work by Boston composer George Whitefield Chadwick. Chadwick’s symphonic tone poem Aphrodite was, in the words of the composer, “an attempt to suggest in music the poetic and tragic scenes which may have passed before the sightless eyes of such a goddess.”

Chadwick composed this music during East Coast holidays on Martha’s Vineyard, inspired, he said, by the play of light and wind on the sea before him. It received its premiere at the Norfolk Festival in Connecticut on this date in 1912.

On today’s date in 1999, at a summer musical festival on the opposite coast of America, another musical work inspired by ancient Greece received its first performance. Five Images after Sappho was inspired by texts of ancient Greek poetess Sappho and written for the remarkable voice of American soprano Dawn Upshaw. It was premiered at the Ojai Festival in California, and was written by Finnish composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931): Aphrodite; Brno State Philharmonic; Jose Serebrier, conductor; Reference 74

Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958): Five Images after Sappho; Dawn Upshaw, soprano; London Sinfonietta; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony 89158

LAUGH-IN was a popular TV comedy sketch program in the late 1960s and one of their recurring alliterative gag lines referred to “the fickle finger of fate.” Now, composers who enter — and lose — competitions, often mutter something similar — or stronger.

In London in 1703, three English composers, John Weldon, John Eccles, Daniel Purcell and Moravian-born Gottfried Finger took part in a competition organized by wealthy opera fans. All four composers were asked to set the same short English-language libretto, and the resulting works were all staged on today’s date for the audience to choose their favorite.

The grand prize of 100 guineas was won by Weldon, even though many bet on Eccles to win. Gottfried Finger came in dead last and was not happy about it. He left the country in disgust complaining that, “He had thought to be judged by men, not boys,” and that the competition was rigged.

And in his defense, some recent recordings of Finger’s virtuoso viola da gamba works show him to have been, in fact, a very good composer.

Even so, as the old LAUGH-IN hosts might put it, “Fun fact: fickle fans found Finger faulty. Finished fourth. Forthwith fuming foreigner fled.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Gottfried Finger (ca. 1655-6-buried 31 August 1730): Sonatae pro Diversis Instrumentis; Echo du Danube; Accent CD 24264

When you listen to classical music like Bach or Mozart, you are taking a trip in a time machine. Or, as Shirley MacLaine might put it, “Classical music is the soundtrack of your previous lives.”

American composer Sebastian Currier went even further, and said: “It’s only a little bit of an exaggeration to say that music is made of nothing but time ­­— well, and air too … melodic or rhythmic gestures are made of a series of events moving forward in time. … the rest is air. A musician bows a string, blows air in a cylinder, strikes a metal object, and a series of sound waves take that information to our ears … It has always been fascinating to me that an art form that is so penetrating … is made of such ephemeral stuff.”

So no surprise Currier gave the title Time Machines to his work for violin and orchestra that premiered in New York City on today’s date in 2011. The German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter was the soloist performing with the New York Philharmonic led by Alan Gilbert, and they made a live recording of the new work.

Music Played in Today's Program

Sebastian Currier (b. 1959): Time Machines; Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin; New York Philharmonic; Alan Gilbert, conductor (recorded live June 2, 2011); DG 477 9359

On today’s date in 1988, the New York Philharmonic gave a concert in a city then called Leningrad and in a country then called the Soviet Union.

For their visit to the city we now call St. Petersburg in a country known today as Russia, the Philharmonic commissioned a new work by American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Her Symbolon received its premiere performance there, and, in fact, was first American symphonic work to be premiered in the USSR.

“The word ‘symbolon’ comes from the Greek and refers to the ancient custom whereby two parties broke a piece of pottery in two, each party retaining half. Each half (or symbolon) thus became a token of friendship. From the beginning, I knew this piece would receive its first performance in the Soviet Union, and I found this profoundly moving. I’m sure my complex feelings, embracing both hope and sadness about the state of the political world, found their way into this work,” she explained.

After its premiere, Zwilich’s Symbolon was performed in Moscow, New York, London, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Paris and the former East Berlin, making it one of Zwilich’s “most-travelled” works.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Symbolon; New York Philharmonic; Zubin Mehta, conductor; New World CD

On today’s date in 1998, in Purchase, New York, the Westchester Philharmonic gave the premiere performance of a new flute concerto by 41-year old composer Melinda Wagner.

Her concerto won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1999 — a gratifying mark of recognition for Wagner, who claims she had developed 20 years of calluses from all the rejections that are the common experience of most young composers in America. Along with the bumps and scrapes, Wagner had picked up a number of other honors along the way, including awards, grants, and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, Meet the Composer and ASCAP, to name just a few.

“Composition is like writing a kind of love letter to performers. They will be interpreting something that is incredibly personal, so it feels like a love affair. As for the audience, to try to try to second-guess them to figure out what they’re going to like, and write that, would be an insult to them. I just hope they can plug into the communication that’s happening between the performers and me,” she said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Melinda Wagner (b. 1957): Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion; Paul Lustig Dunkel, flute; Westchester Philharmonic; Mark Mandarano, conductor; Bridge 9098

On today’s date in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach began his formal duties as the new Cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, a city that would remain his home for the next 27 years.

A newspaper item datelined Leipzig had appeared the previous day, noting: “This past Saturday at noon, four wagons loaded with household goods arrived here from Cöthen; they belonged to the former Princely Cappelmeister Johann Sebastian Bach, now called to Leipzig as Cantor. He himself arrived with his family on two carriages at 2:00 and moved into the newly renovated apartment in the St. Thomas School.”

Bach was not the first choice for the appointment, and it’s clear from the proceedings of the Leipzig Town Council that they were more concerned with Bach as a teacher rather than Bach as a composer. Providing quality music for services at St. Thomas Church might have been foremost in Bach’s mind, but the council seemed to think that was definitely not as important as teaching Latin to the young students of the St. Thomas School.

One council member, a certain Dr. Steger, after reluctantly voting for Bach, even wanted it on record that in his opinion, “Bach should make compositions that were not theatrical.” It’s not on record what poor Dr. Steger thought of Bach’s intensely dramatic St. Matthew Passion, or the hundreds of brilliant crafted cantatas that Bach would provide, week in and week out, for the next 20 years.

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (1685-1750): Cantata No. 73; Leonhardt Consort; Gustav Leonhardt, conductor; Teldec 44279

Today’s date marks the anniversary of one of the most famous — and notorious — premieres in the history of classical music, that of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), in Paris on May 29, 1913.

From its first note — sounded by the bassoon at the extreme end of its highest register — Stravinsky’s score signaled the start of something radically different. It’s also remembered as the occasion of one of the most emotional reactions by any audience: catcalls and insults were hurled between the composer’s supporters and detractors, fistfights broke out and finally the police were called.

There were those, including Pierre Monteux, the conductor of the premiere, who felt the reactions were occasioned more by the dancing and the stage picture than by the music itself.

Years later, when Monteux was asked what he thought of the original production, he confessed to everyone’s amusement that he actually never saw it, because his eyes were glued to the score. “On hearing this near riot behind me, I decided to keep the orchestra together at any cost … I did, and we played it to the end absolutely as we had rehearsed it in the peace of an empty theatre,” he wrote.

Music Played in Today's Program

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971): The Rite of Spring; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Georg Solti, conductor; London 436 469

On today's date in 1938, Matthias the Painter, an opera by the German composer Paul Hindemith, had its premiere performance in Zurich, Switzerland.

This work had been scheduled to be premiered in 1934 at the Berlin Opera by the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, but the newly-installed Nazi regime canceled the performance.

In protest, Furtwangler performed a concert suite from Hindemith’s opera at a Berlin Philharmonic concert, resulting in a loud pro-Hindemith demonstration on the part of the audience. The Nazi press responded with attacks on both Hindemith and Furtwangler. By the end of 1934 it was clear to all in Germany that the Nazis would brook no opposition when it came to cultural matters.

So how had the quintessentially German Hindemith offended the new regime? In 1929 Hitler had attended the premiere of another Hindemith opera, News of the Day, and hated it — labeling it “degenerate.” Furthermore, his wife and many of his closest musician friends were Jewish. Hindemith became persona non grata in Nazi Germany, and, shortly after the Zurich premiere of his new opera, he and his wife emigrated to the U.S., where he taught at Tanglewood and Yale, becoming an American citizen in 1946.

Music Played in Today's Program

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963): Mathis der Maler; Bavarian Radio Chorus and Orchestra; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; EMI 55237

On today’s date in 1992, during the bloody civil wars that shattered the former Yugoslavia, a hand grenade was thrown into the midst of a bread line in Sarajevo. Twenty-two people died. To most around the world, it appeared to be just one more senseless act of violence amidst the thousands of such acts took place in that unhappy part of the world.

One Sarajevo resident thought otherwise. At 4 p.m. every day after the incident, despite the danger, Vedran Smailovic, a cellist with the Sarajevo Opera, went to the site of the bombing in full evening dress and played his cello in memory of the dead. A New York Times reporter wrote of the cellist’s moving act of courage and faith in art and humanity — and the world took notice.

English-born composer David Wilde read about the cellist while riding a train in Germany. “As I sat in the train, deeply moved, I listened; and somewhere deep within me a cello began to play a circular melody like a lament without end,” he later recalled. That theme developed into The Cellist of Sarajevo, a piece dedicated to Vedran Smailovic, and which cellist Yo-Yo Ma was soon performing around the world.

Music Played in Today's Program

David Wilde (1935-2025): The Cellist of Sarajevo; Yo Yo Ma, cello; Sony 64114

For many years now MidAmerica Productions has been organizing concerts in New York City and enlisting choral ensembles from the U.S. and abroad to come to the Big Apple to perform at prestigious Manhattan venues.

On today’s date in 1990, choirs from Arkansas, Connecticut, Minnesota and Texas were on stage at Carnegie Hall for the world premiere of John Rutter’s Magnificat, specially commissioned by MidAmerica, and with the British composer himself on hand to conduct.

“The chorus numbered over 200 voices, every one of them happy and excited at the prospect of joining forces in the magnificent setting of Carnegie Hall … [so] I wanted to write something joyous because that would reflect the mood of the performers … the Magnifcat is known as the Canticle of the Blessed Virgin, and it is mainly in the sunny southern countries — Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico — that Mary is most celebrated … this led me to conceive the music as a bright, Latin-flavored fiesta,” he recalled.

Despite composing and conducting religious music, Rutter confessed during a 2003 interview that he was not particularly religious — just a composer deeply moved and inspired by the spirituality of sacred verses and prayers.

Music Played in Today's Program

John Rutter (b. 1945): Magnificat; Elizabeth Cragg, soprano; Choirs of St. Albans Cathedral; Ensemble DeChorum; Andrew Lucas, conductor; Naxos 8.572653

This lush, late-Romantic score, composed in 1904, had to wait until 1962 for its premiere performance, when, on today’s date that year, the Philadelphia Orchestra led by Eugene Ormandy performed it in Seattle during an international festival devoted to its composer, Anton Webern.

For most music lovers, the Austrian composer is a shadowy, vaguely mysterious figure. If they know anything at all about him, it is that he was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, that he wrote a small body of short, condensed atonal scores, and that in 1945 he was shot by accident by an American soldier in the tense days following the end of World War II.

The early orchestral score that received its belated premiere on today’s date in 1962, In the Summer Wind, was completed when Webern was just 19. It’s very much in the style of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and early Schoenberg.

To earn a living, Webern worked as a conductor of everything from Viennese operettas to worker’s choral unions. His conducting career came to a halt when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, and until his untimely death in 1945, Webern lived by doing routine work for a Viennese music publisher.

Music Played in Today's Program

Anton von Webern (1883-1945): Im Sommerwind; Cleveland Orchestra; Christoph von Dohnanyi, conductor; London 436 240

On today’s date in 1803, violinist George Polgreen Bridgetower, 33, and pianist and composer Ludwig van Beethoven, 32, gave the first performance in Vienna of a new sonata for violin and piano, a chamber work now regarded as one of Beethoven’s greatest.

At the first rehearsal, Bridgetower had to read from Beethoven’s manuscript score — no easy task considering Beethoven’s poor penmanship — and at one point felt compelled to improvise a passage, which so enchanted Beethoven that he added Bridgetower’s improvisation to his score. In fact, the two young men became fast friends, and were inseparable for a time.

Bridgetower was an English violin virtuoso born in Poland of a European mother and an African father. His Viennese friendship with Beethoven came to a sudden end, he later claimed, when the two men became interested in the same young lady.

And so, even though it should be known as the Bridgetower Sonata, when this music was published as Beethoven’s Op. 47, Beethoven dedicated the music to another contemporary virtuoso, a French violinist named Kreutzer, who apparently never performed it. Despite that fact, to this day, the work is known as Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata.

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Violin Sonata No. 9 (Kreutzer); Pamela Frank, violin; Claude Frank, piano; MusicMasters 67087

Some famous composers were notorious perfectionists — and then there was Johannes Brahms, the perfectionist of perfectionists. He spent 14 years tinkering with the score of his Symphony No. 1, remember.

He once claimed he had written and discarded twenty string quartets before publishing his first two in the year 1873. To say Brahms was his own severest critic would be putting it mildly, but there was one other person whose opinion he valued above all others, and that was Clara Schumann, one of the finest pianists of her day, the widow of his mentor Robert Schumann, and a fine composer in her own right.

So it comes as no surprise that Brahms’ String Quartet No. 3, the Quartet in B-flat Major, published as his Opus 67, was first performed as a kind of “test run” at the Berlin home of Clara Schumann on today’s date in the year 1876. The performers were the famous Joachim Quartet, led by violinist Joseph Joachim, a long-time friend of Brahms.

Unlike his preceding quartets, both austere and introspective works, this one was light-hearted and cheerful — “a useless trifle,” as he put it, adding it was just his way to “avoid facing the serious countenance of a symphony.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): String Quartet No. 3

German composer Richard Strauss wrote his first song at 6, and his last at 84, a year before his death in 1949. Four of his last songs were for soprano and orchestra. These Four Last Songs, as they came to be known, were premiered in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, on today’s date in 1950.

Strauss had written to great Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad, suggesting “I would like to make it possible that [the songs] should be at your disposal for a world premiere … with a first-class conductor and orchestra.” Flagstad did sing the premiere performances, with the first-rate Philharmonia Orchestra of London conducted by the legendary German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler.

In addition to those famous performers, credit for the realization of Strauss’ request is also due to the Maharaja of Mysore, who put up a cash guarantee for the Strauss premiere. And since he could not be present, he asked that the premiere be recorded and the discs shipped to him in Mysore.

The Maharaja had wanted to be concert pianist, but the deaths of both his father and his uncle forced him to succeed to the throne in 1940 at 21. In addition to underwriting the Strauss premiere, the young Maharaja championed the music of Russian composer Nikolas Medtner, and, in 1945, the creation of the Philharmonia Orchestra of London as a recording ensemble for enterprising EMI producer Walter Legge.

In addition to Western classical music, the Maharaja was passionate about the court music of his native land, and, under the pen name of Shri Vidya, composed almost 100 works in the South Indian tradition.

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): “Im Abendrot (At Twlight),” from Four Last Songs; Jessye Norman, soprano; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Kurt Masur, conductor; Philips CD 464 742

At Westminster Abbey on today’s date in 1998 a haunting new setting of the Latin mass written by British composer Roxanna Panufnik received its premiere performance.

Panufnik was born in London in 1968, and if her family name sounds familiar, it’s because her father was Andrzej Panufnik, one of the greatest Polish composers of the 20th century.

Her interest in music began early: “I was three years old … when I said ‘Mummy, I want a violin with a stick to make it sing!’ I started violin, piano and flute. But I only wanted to make up my own music. When I was 12, [the composer] Oliver Knussen, visiting my parents, told me I should write down my improvisations. It all went from there.”

And in response to questions about having a famous composer as her father, she said: “My father had enormous integrity, always teaching me to be myself … Early in my career I was very sensitive to being compared to him and a few stray remarks about nepotism dented my confidence. However, I plodded on and now I’m thrilled to be regularly programmed alongside him and I’m so proud of where and who I came from.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968): ‘Westminster Mass’; Westminster Cathedral Choir; James O’Donnell, conductor; Teldec 28069

These days composer John J. Becker is almost totally forgotten, but back in the 1930s his name was linked with Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Henry Cowell and Wallingford Riegger as one of the American Five composers of what was dubbed “ultra-modern” music.

From 1928 to 1935, Becker taught at the College of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and briefly assembled a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra to give Midwest premieres of works by Ives and other ultra-modernists. From 1935 to 1941, Becker was the Minnesota State director of the Federal Music Project, one of President Roosevelt’s initiatives to provide work for American musicians during the Depression years.

On today's date in 1937, at the old St. Paul Auditorium, Becker conducted the Federal Music Project's Twin Cities Orchestra in a program that included the premiere performance of his own Symphony No. 3, subtitled Symphonia Brevis.

This ultra-modern symphony was met with an ultra-conservative review in The Saint Paul Pioneer Press, whose critic wrote: “It consists of spasmodic little excursions … percussive barrages… ideas that seem to run out before the score comes to a close, with the consequent suggestion of that spurious vitality exhibited by decapitated fowls.”

Decades later, three years before his death in 1961, Becker, along with a few other surviving members of the American Five, was invited to take a bow from the stage of Carnegie Hall at one of Leonard Bernstein's New York Philharmonic concerts which featured his Sinfonia Brevis.

Music Played in Today's Program

John J. Becker (1886-1961): Sinfonia Brevis; Symphony No. 3; Louisville Orchestra; Jorge Mester, conductor; Albany TROY-027

On today’s date in 2013, a new work by 90-year old German-born American composer and teacher named Ursula Mamlok received its premiere performance in Switzerland. Five Fantasy Pieces for oboe and strings was given its premiere by great Swiss oboist Heinz Holliger and colleagues.

Mamlok was born in Berlin in 1923 and began composing as a child. Her family was Jewish, and once the Nazis placed school music programs off limits to Jews, her family began holding musicales in their home, with Ursula writing the music.

After the Crystal Night pogrom in 1938, her family left Germany, and, via Ecuador, young Ursula came to America after being offered a full scholarship to study at the Mannes School of Music in New York. She became an American citizen and began teaching most notably the Manhattan School of Music.

The bulk of Mamlok’s music is for small chamber ensembles, and only once she tried to create a purely electronic piece. In a 1996 interview, she confessed, “Unfortunately I have no connection to it … I put it together in the studio at Columbia in New York, but it took too long. I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ I’d rather use the pencil.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ursula Mamlok (1923-2016): Five Fantasy Pieces (2012/13); Heinz Holliger, oboe; Hanna Weinmeister, violin; Jurg Dahler, viola; Daniel Heaflinger, cello; Bridge 9457

In Costa Mesa, California, on today’s date in 2014, the Pacific Chorale premiered a new choral opera. And what exactly is a choral opera you ask? Good question — and one that puzzled Jake Heggie as well, since he was the composer commissioned for that occasion.

He and his librettist Gene Sheer at first scratched their heads. As Heggie put it, “Operas require action, characters, conflicts, journeys, transformation movement. Choirs stand still and make beautiful sound.”

They came up with a unique solution involving one character, Nora, a silent, on-stage actress, whose inner thoughts are sung by half of the choir. The other half expresses the sounds and surroundings of the outside world she chooses to hear on a day in her life on which everything seems to go wrong — starting with a returned, unopened, handwritten letter she had sent, pouring out her heart, to her jerk of a boyfriend. Even her apartment furniture gets in a word or two about her unhappy state. And where does she turn for comfort? Why, to the radio of course — hence the title of the new choral opera: The Radio Hour.

Spoiler alert: the opera ends on a hopeful note for poor Nora.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jake Heggie (b. 1961): The Radio Hour; John Alexander Singers; Pacific Symphony members; John Alexander, conductor; Delos 3484