Barber and Penderecki for strings

Synopsis

Music Played in Today's Program

Samuel Barber (1910 – 1981) Adagio for Strings, Op. 11 London Symphony; Michael Tilson Thomas, cond. EMI Classics 55358

Krzysztof Penderecki (b. 1933) Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima Polish Radio National Symphony; Krzyzstof Penderecki, cond. EMI Classics 65077

On This Day

Deaths

• 1904 - Austrian music critic and university professor Eduard Hanslick, champion of Brahms and enemy of Wagner, dies in Vienna, aged 78

• 1970 - German-born American composer Ingolf Dahl, age 68, in Frutigen, Switzerland;

Premieres

• 1946 - American premiere of Britten: opera "Peter Grimes," at Berkshire Music Center (Tangelwood), with Leonard Bernstein conducting;

• 1947 - Villa-Lobos: "Bachianas Brasileiras" No. 8, in Rome, conducted by the composer;

• 1947 - Von Einem: opera "Dantons Tod" (The Death of Danton) at the Salzburg, Festival in Austria,with Ferenc Fricsay conducting;

• 1966 - Henze: "Die Bassariden" (after Euripides' play "The Bacchae") at the Salzburg Festival in Austria;

• 1967 - Piston: Clarinet Concerto, during the Fifth Congregation of the Arts at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire;

• 1988 - Ned Rorem: “Bright Music” for flute, two violins, cello and piano, at Presbyterian Church, Bridgehampton (New York), by the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Associates;

• 2000 - Joan Tower: "Big Sky" for piano trio, in LaJolla, Calif., at a SummerFest concert featuring Chee-Yun (violin), David Finckel (cello) and Wu Han (piano);

Others

• 1826 - At his parent's mansion outside Berlin, the 17-year-old German composer Felix Mendelssohn completes his overture to Shakespeare's comedy "A Midsummer Night's Dream" after reading the play the previous month; The first private performance (in a two-piano version) was given at the family mansion by Felix and his sister Fanny on November 19, 1826; The first public performance (in its orchestral version) was given in Stettlin on February 20, 1827, conducted by Carl Loewe; Mendelssohn returned to the play nearly two decades later after he had become court composer to the King of Prussia, creating a whole score of incidental music besides the overture, and himself conducted the concert premiere of the expanded incidental music in Berlin on November 14, 1842 in Berlin; The complete incidental music integrated into a staging of Shakespeare's play was performed at the Neue Palais at Potsdam on October 14, 1843.