Bolcom's "Sonata Stramba"

Synopsis

The Third Sonata for Violin and Piano written by American composer William Bolcom had its premiere performance on today's date in 1993 at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. The violinist was Nadia Salerno-Sonneberg, with the composer himself at the piano. The work was commissioned to honor the 75th birthday of Dorothy Delay, a legendary violin teacher who taught at Juilliard for many years.

Now, the violin is a strange animal for composers to master well, especially if they aren't violinists already, and Bolcom subtitled his Third Violin Sonata "Sonata Stramba"—"stramba" being the Italian word for "strange" or "odd."

Bolcom confesses that he has long been fascinated by two musical sounds more than any other: the voice and the violin. "When I was about ten," Bolcom recalls, "we trundled out my maternal grandfather's imitation Stradivarius, made in Czechoslovakia, and I took a few not-very-successful lessons. When the violin was stolen out of the back seat of my father's Buick that was the end of my studies of the instrument."

Bolcom did become a very talented pianist, however, and befriended a violinist named Gene Nastri, who initiated the young composer into the mysteries of the instrument by performing Mozart and Beethoven Violin Sonatas with him, as well as fledgling violin works written by the young composer. As William Bolcom puts it: "I cannot think of a better way for a non-player to find out about the history and psychology of that instrument than what Gene afforded me and I shall always be in his debt."

Music Played in Today's Program

William Bolcom (b. 1938) Violin Sonata No. 3 (Sonata Stramba) Suite Solomia Soroka, vn; Arthur Greene, p; Naxos 8.559150

On This Day

Births

• 1861 - Russian composer Anton Arensky, in Novgorod; Under the Julian "Old Style" calendar still in use in Russia in that year, this date would be listed as June 30

• 1885 - English composer George Butterworth, in London; As a British soldier, he was killed during battle of Pozieres in 1916

• 1895 - American musical theater lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, in New York; He provided lyrics for Rudolf Friml's "Rose Marie" (1924), Siegmund Romberg's "The Desert Song" (1926), and Jerome Kern's "Show Boat" (1926); He collaborated with Richard Rodgers on several Broadway classics such as "Carousel" (1945), "South Pacific" (1949), and "The King and I" (1951); He was also the principal mentor of American composer Stephen Sondheim

Deaths

• 1773 - German composer and flutist, Johann Joachim Quantz, age 76, in Postdam

• 1953 - Belgian composer Joseph Jongen, age 79, at Sart-lez-Spa

Premieres

• 1716 - Handel: Concerto Grosso in F, Op. 3, no. 4a (Julian date: July 1);

• 1900 - Fauré: "Requiem," (orchestrated version) in Paris, at the Paris World Exhibition

• 1922 - Hindemith: "Kleine Kammermusik" for winds, Op. 24, no. 2, in Cologne (Germany), by the Frankfurt Chamber Winds

• 1940 - Ginastera: ballet "Pananbi," in Buenos Aires

• 1946 - Britten: opera "The Rape of Lucretia" at the Glyndebourne Festival in England

• 1972 - Peter Maxwell Davies: opera, "Taverner," in London at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

• 1976 - Henze: opera, "We Come to the River," in London at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

• 1992 - Christopher Rouse: Violin Concerto, at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, by the Aspen Festival Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin, with soloist Cho-Liang Lin

• 1993 - William Bolcom: Violin Sonata No 3, at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, violin, and the composer at the piano;

• 1993 - Andrew Lloyd-Webber: musical "Sunset Boulevard," in London; The musical opened in Los Angeles on December 2, 1993, and on Broadway on November 17, 1994

Others

• 1971 - A touring production of Andrew Lloyd-Webber's rock musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" starts a cross-country American run; The musical would open on Broadway on October 12, 1971