Chadwick wins a prize

Synopsis

Every composer who enters a competition hopes to get a letter like this one, which showed up in the Boston mailbox of George Whitefield Chadwick in 1894:

“I take pleasure in announcing that your symphony offered for the second annual competition of the National Conservatory of Music has obtained the prize. In view of your desire to produce it without delay, we have decided to waive our right [to the symphony’s first performance].” Signed: Antonin Dvorak, Director.

And so it was the Boston Symphony, not the Conservatory’s orchestra or the New York Philharmonic, who gave the premiere performance of Chadwick’s prize-winning Symphony No. 3 on today’s date in 1894.

Chadwick dedicated his symphony to Theodore Thomas, the preeminent American conductor and new music advocate of his day. In a letter to Thomas, Chadwick commented: “My symphony was very well received here, and condemned by some of the newspaper men as a ‘dry and uninspired work’—by which you may guess that it had some features which were not altogether trivial!”

In the decades that followed his death in 1931, Chadwick’s unashamedly Romantic scores fell out of favor and were rarely heard. Some dismissed these as pale imitations of Brahms and Wagner, forgetting that same criticism could have been applied as well to many prominent European composers in the 1890s. In the context of an American musical scene dominated by German music and musicians, Chadwick himself would probably have taken such comparisons as a compliment.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Whitefield Chadwick (1854 – 1931) Symphony No. 3 Detroit Symphony; Neeme Järvi, cond. Chandos 9253

On This Day

Births

• 1903 - American composer Vittorio Giannini, in Philadelphia;

• 1916 - Swedish composer Karl-Birgir Blomdahl, in Växjö;

• 1943 - British composer Robin Holloway, in Leamington Spa;

Premieres

• 1845 - Wagner: opera "Tannhäuser" (Dresden version), in Dresden at the Hoftheater;

• 1894 - Chadwick: Symphony No. 3, by the Boston Symphony, Emil Paur conducting;

• 1901 - Elgar: "Pomp and Circumstance" March No. 1 in D, in Liverpool, by the Liverpool Orchestral Society;

• 1905 - Sibelius: Violin Concerto (revised version), in Berlin, conducted by Richard Strauss and with Karl Halir the soloist; The first version of this concerto premiered under the composer's director in Helsinki, with Victor Novácek as soloist, on February 8, 1904, but the composer withdrew this version and revised the concerto;

• 1922 - Mussorgsky: "Pictures at an Exhibition" in the orchestration by Maurice Ravel, in Paris, Serge Koussevitzky conducting;

• 1928 - Honegger: symphonic movement, "Rugby," in Paris;

• 1953 - Morton Gould: "Inventions for Four Pianos and Orchestra" by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Mitropoulos;

• 1964 - Virgil Thomson: "Autumn" (Concertino for harp, strings, and percussion), at the American-Spanish Festival of Music in Madrid, with Nicanor Zabeleta the harp soloist and Enrique Jordá conducting

• 1967 - Gershwin: public premiere of "Lullaby" for string quartet (composed c. 1919-20), at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., by the Juilliard String Quartet; During his lifetime, Gershwin would occasionally arrange impromptu performances of this piece at parties if sufficient string players were in attendance;

• 1990 - Shulamit Ran: "Symphony," by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Gary Bertini conducting; This work won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1991;

• 1996 - John Adams's Clarinet Concerto "Gnarly Buttons" with soloist Michael Collins and the London Sinfonietta conducted by the composer;

Others

• 1739 - Handel completes in London his Concerto Grosso in a, Op. 6, no. 4 (see Julian date: Oct. 8);

• 1933 - German conductor and composer Otto Klemperer leads his first concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; The program includes Leo Weiner's transcription of J.S. Bach's "Toccata and Fugue" in d, Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" Ballet Suite, and Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.