Piston's "New England Sketches"

Synopsis

On today's date in 1959, the Detroit Symphony under the eminent French conductor Paul Paray gave the first performance of some music by the eminent American composer Walter Piston.

Piston had studied in Paris with the famous French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger and the great French composer Paul Dukas, so perhaps this was a very astute and stylish paring of composer and conductor.

In any case, to help celebrate the 100th Worcester Festival, Paray and the Detroit orchestra were on hand in Massachusetts for the premiere of Piston's "Three New England Sketches," an orchestral suite whose movements were entitled: "Seaside," "Summer Evening," and "Mountains."

Piston didn't intend for listeners to take these titles too literally: "The programmatic titles serve in a broad sense to tell the source of the inspirations, reminiscences, even dreams that pervaded the otherwise musical thoughts of one New England composer," he noted.

Piston was born in Rockland, Maine, in 1894, taught for many years at Harvard, had a summer vacation home in Vermont, and died in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1976, so he certainly qualified as a bone-fide "New England" composer.

"Is the Dust Bowl more American than, say, a corner in the Boston Athenaeum?" he once asked, arguing: "Would not a Vermont village furnish as American a background for a composition as the Great Plains?"

Even so, the most striking hallmark of Piston's music remains its quite cosmopolitan style and neo-classical form—the lasting influence, perhaps, of his two famous French teachers.

Music Played in Today's Program

Walter Piston (1894 – 1976) Three New England Sketches Seattle Symphony; Gerard Schwarz, cond. Delos 3106

On This Day

Births

• 1801 - German composer Albert Lortzing, in Berlin;

• 1906 - American composer Miriam Gideon, in Greeley, Colorado;

• 1923 - American composer Ned Rorem, in Richmond, Indiana;

Premieres

• 1754 - Rameau: opera-ballet "Anacréon," at Fortainebleau;

• 1890 - Borodin: opera "Prince Igor" (completed posthumously by Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov) at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, with K.A. Kuchera conducting (Gregorian date: Nov. 4);

• 1897 - Scriabin: Piano Concerto, in Odessa, with the composer as soloist (Gregorian date: Nov. 4);

• 1903 - MacDowell: symphonic poem “Lamia” (after Keats), by the Boston Symphony, Max Fiedler conducting;

• 1913 - Delius: "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring" and "Summer Night on the River," by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra,Artur Nikisch conducting;

• 1931 - Stravinsky: Violin Concerto, in Berlin, by the Berlin Radio Orchestra conducted by the composer, with Samuel Dushkin as soloist;

• 1941 - William Grant Still's "Plain Chant for America," by the New York Philharmonic, John Barbirolli conducting;

• 1959 - Piston: "Three New England Sketches" for orchestra, in Worcester, Mass., by the Detroit Symphony, Paul Paray conducting;

• 1959 - Rorem: "Eagles," by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting;

• 1963 - Hovhaness: Symphony No. 17 ("Symphony for Metal Orchestra"), in Cleveland;

• 1970 - Crumb: "Black Angels (13 Images from the Dark Lord)" for string quartet,in Ann Arbor, Mich.;

• 1981 - Sessions: "Concerto for Orchestra," by the Boston Symphony; This work won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1982;

• 1997 - Danielpour: "Celestial Night," by the New Jersey Symphony, Zdenek Macal conducting;

• 2002 - Peter Maxwell Davies: "Naxos Quartet" No. 1, at Wigmore Hall, London, by the Maggini Quartet;

Others

• 1739 - Handel completes in London his Concerto Grosso in Bb, Op. 6, no. 7 (see Julian date: Oct.12);

• 1881 - First concert by Concerts Lamoureux, in Paris, founded by Charles Lamoureux.