Torke's "Ecstatic Orange"

Synopsis

Music Played in Today's Program

Michael Torke (b. 1961) Ecstatic Orange Baltimore Symphony; David Zinman, cond. Argo 433 071

Michael Torke (b. 1961) An American Abroad Royal Scottish Orchestra; Marin Alsop, cond. Naxos 8.559167

On This Day

Births

• 1697 - French violinist and composer Jean Marie Leclair, in Lyons;

• 1888 - Austrian-born American film composer Max Steiner, in Vienna;

• 1894 - Russian-born American film composer, Dimitri Tiomkin, in St. Petersburg;

• 1916 - American composer Milton Babbitt, in Philadelphia;

Deaths

• 1760 - German composer Johann Christoph Graupner, age 77, in Darmstadt;

Premieres

• 1876 - Wagner: "Festival March" (commissioned for the American Centennial), at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, conducted by Theodore Thomas;

• 1894 - R. Strauss: opera "Guntram," in Weimar at the Hoftheater, with the composer conducting;

• 1904 - Alfvén: "Midsommarvaka" (Midsummer Vigil), in Stockholm;

• 1907 - Dukas: opera "Ariane et Barbe-Blue" (Ariane and Bluebeard),in Paris;

• 1954 - Rautavaara: "A Requiem in Our Time," in Cincinnati, with Cincinnati Brass Choir, Ernest N, Glover, conducting; This work had won First Prize in the Thor Johnson Composition Contest that year;

• 1957 - Shostakovich: Piano Concerto No. 2, in Moscow, by the USSR State Symphony, Nikolai Anosov conducting, with the composer's son, Maxim, as the soloist;

• 1964 - Roy Harris: "Epilogue to ‘Profiles in Courage'" for orchestra, in Los Angeles;

• 1985 - Peter Maxwell Davies: "An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise" for orchestra with bagpipe solo, ay Boston's Symphony Hall, by the Boston Pops conducted by John Williams;

• 1985 - Michael Torke: "Ecstatic Orange," at the Cooper Union in New York, by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Lukas Foss conducting;

• 1997 - Philip Glass: opera "The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four and Five" (based on the sci-fi novel by Doris Lessing), at the State Theater in Heidelberg (Germany);

Others

• 1824 - American premiere of Mozart's opera "The Marriage of Figaro" (sung in English ) at the Park Theater in New York.