The "historically informed" Mahler

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1910, Gustav Mahler conducted the “First Historical Concert” of the New York Philharmonic, an event billed as “the first of a series arranged in chronological sequence, comprising the most famous composers from the period of Bach to the present day.”

Mahler’s program included works of Handel, Rameau, Gretry and Haydn, and opened with his own arrangement of music from Bach’s Orchestral Suites.

Now, Bach’s music had been appearing on Philharmonic programs for decades, but some in the audience were shocked to see how Mahler presented it. Rather than conduct in the usual fashion, standing in front of the orchestra with his baton, Mahler led the orchestra from the keyboard of a “Bach-Klavier” (a Steinway piano whose action had been tinkered with to make it sound a little like a harpsichord). That bit of “historically informed performance” style was something brand new and even a little shocking to some back in 1910, although these days it’s common to see someone conduct from the keyboard at concerts of Baroque music.

In a letter to a friend back in Europe, Mahler wrote: “I had great fun recently with a Bach concert, for which I worked out the basso continuo conducting and improvising quite in the style of the old masters, playing on a rich-toned spinet specially adopted by Steinway for the purpose. This produced a number of surprises for me – and also for the audience. It was as though a floodlight had been turned on to this long-buried literature.”

Music Played in Today's Program

J.S. Bach (arr. Gustav Mahler) Orchestral Suite Berlin Radio Symphony; Peter Schwarz, cond. Schwann 11637

On This Day

Births

• 1668 - French composer, organist and harpsichordist François Couperin ("Le Grand"), in Paris;

• 1873 - French composer and conductor Henri Rabaud, in Paris;

• 1928 - Italian film music composer Ennio Morricone, in Rome;

Premieres

• 1726 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 98 ("Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan" II) performed on the 21st Sunday after Trinity as part of Bach's third annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1725/27);

• 1733 - Handel: opera "Semiramide" in London at the King's Theater in the Haymarket (see Julian date: Oct. 30);

• 1739 - Handel completes in London his Concerto Grosso in A, Op. 6, no. 11 (see Julian date: Oct. 30);

• 1862 - Verdi: opera "La Forza del destino" (The Force of Destiny) in St. Petersburg at the Grand Imperial Theater;

• 1872 - Bizet: suite, "L'Arlèsienne," in Paris, at a Pasdeloup concert;;

• 1896 - Dvorák: String Quartet No. 12 in Ab, Op. 105, in Vienna;

• 1910 - Elgar: Violin Concerto, at Queen's Hall, London, during a concert of the Philharmonic Society of London with the composer conducting, and Fritz Kreisler the soloist;

• 1932 - Bernard Wagenaar: Symphony No. 2, Arturo Toscanini conducting the New York Philharmonic;

• 1957 - Copland: incidental music for "The World of Nick Adams" (after stories by Ernest Hemingway), for a live CBS television dramatization;

• 1994 - Stephen Albert: Symphony No. 2, by the New York Philharmonic, with Hugh Wolff conducting;

Others

• 1595 - Lute virtuoso and composer John Dowland pens a letter from Nuremberg to Robert Cecil (a member of Queen Elisabeth the First’s Privy Council), warning of a plot against the Protestant Queen he discovered among some expatriate English Catholics in Italy; In the long, defensively autobiographical letter, Dowland protests his own loyalty, despite admitting his previous Catholic leanings;

• 1888 - Fritz Kreisler, age 13, makes his New York City debut in recital at Old Steinway Hall;

• 1900 - Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch makes his Carnegie Hall debut in New York City during his first American tour; In 1909 he married contralto Clara Clemens, the daughter of the American writer Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain (see also listing for Nov. 16);

• 1909 - Gustav Mahler conducts the New York Philharmonic from the keyboard of a Steinway piano (whose action had been altered to imitate a harpsichord) in his symphonic arrangement of movements from Bach’s Orchestral Suites during the first of a series of “historical” concerts surveying music from the Baroque Age to the present day.