Bloch's Quintet

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1923, the League of Composers presented its first chamber concert in New York City. Their stated mission was to present music by living composers whose works represented new trends in music.

Actually, the League was founded as a splinter group, seceding from a more radical International Composers Guild founded two years earlier by Edgard Varese. The Guild’s concerts were restricted to previously unheard works, and favored what was then called the ‘ultra-modern’ school, shutting out some less aggressively radical composers in the process. The newly formed League set out to be more inclusive.

Their opening concert included a world premiere: a piano quintet by the Swiss composer Ernest Bloch, who was then living in America. While not a radical work, Bloch’s quintet was strong stuff for 1923, and even included some quartertone elements. The New York Times was impressed, but not won over: “To the inevitable question, ‘Do you like it?’ it seems almost impossible to answer, but if pressed I should say, no, not for any fault in the work but simply because of its too apparent determination to be emotionally stirring.”

The British critic Ernest Newmann, on the other hand, singled out Bloch’s First Quintet for special praise: “No other piece of chamber music produced in any country during that period can be placed in the same class with it.”

For his part, Bloch said simply: “I write without any regard to please either the so-called ‘ultra-moderns’ or the so-called ‘old-fashioned.’”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ernest Bloch (1880 – 1959) Piano Quintet No. 1 Portland String Quartet; Paul Posnak, piano Arabesque 6618

On This Day

Births

• 1872 - German-born American conductor of the Chicago Symphony (and occasional composer) Frederick Stock, in Jülich;

Deaths

• 1936 - English composer Sir Edward German, age 74, in London;

• 1945 - American songwriter, Jerome Kern, age 60, in New York City;

• 1979 - Ukranian-born American film music composer Dimitri Tiomkin, age 85, in London;

Premieres

• 1727 - Handel: opera “Riccardo Primo, re d’Inghilterra” (Richard the First, King of England), in London at the King’s Theater in the Haymarket (Gregorian date: Nov. 22);

• 1866 - Brahms: String Sextet in G, Op. 36, in Boston, at a concert by the Mendelssohn Quintet Club; The European premiere occurred in Zürich, Swizterland, a few days later, on November 20;

• 1889 - R. Strauss: tone-poem "Don Juan," in Weimar, with the composer conducting;

• 1890 - Brahms: String Quintet No. 2 in G, Op. 111, in Vienna, by the Rosé Quintet;

• 1898 - Coleridge-Taylor: oratorio "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast," in London;

• 1899 - Leslie Stuart: operetta "Floradora" in London; This operetta was tremendously popular in England and America for many seasons, but is seldom heard today;

• 1906 - Ethel Smyth: opera "The Wreckers" (under its German title "Strandrecht") in Leipzig;

• 1923 - Bloch: Piano Quintet, in New York, with Harold Bauer piano, at the first concert of the League of Composers;

• 1952 - Stravinsky: "Cantata," by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer;

• 1999 - Corigliano: "Vocalise," for soprano, electronics and orchestra, by Sylvia McNair, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Kurt Masur;

• 2004 - Augusta Read Thomas: “Dancing Galaxy” for wind ensemble, in Boston, Ma. by the New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble.

Others

• 1898 - Shortly after it was finished, the painting “Nevermore” by Gaugin is purchased by the English composer Frederick Delius; The painting was inspired by Poe’s famous poem and is now in the collection of London’s Cortland Gallery;

• 1922 - The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) begins daily radio transmissions; The BBC had been formed on Oct. 18, 1922, broadcast its first orchestral concert on Dec. 23, 1922, and on Dec. 24 its first radio play, “The Truth About Father Christmas.”