Donald Shirley

Synopsis

Today marks the birthday of the American pianist and composer Donald Shirley, who was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1927, to Jamaican immigrant parents: a mother who was a teacher and a father an Episcopalian priest. Young Donald was a musical prodigy who made his debut with the Boston Pops at age 18, performing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto.

If Shirley had been born 20 years later, he might have had the career enjoyed by Andre Watts, who born in 1946. But in the late 1940s, when Shirley was in his 20s, impresario Sol Hurok advised him that America was not ready for a black classical pianist, so instead Shirley toured performing his own arrangements of pop tunes accompanied by cello and double-bass.

His Trio recorded successful albums marketed as “jazz” during the 1950s and 60s, but Shirley also released a solo LP of his piano improvisations that sounds more like Debussy or Scriabin, and he composed organ symphonies, string quartets, concertos, chamber works, and a symphonic tone poem based on the novel Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

The 2018 Oscar-winning film “Green Book” sparked renewed interest in Shirley’s career as a performer, but those of us curious to hear his organ symphonies and concert works hope they get a second look as well.

Music Played in Today's Program

On This Day

Births

• 1715 - Austrian composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil, in Vienna;

• 1782 - French composer Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, in Caen;

• 1852 - British composer Frederic Hymen Cowen, in Kingston, Jamaica;

• 1862 - English composer Fritz (Frederick) Delius, in Bradford, Yorkshire;

• 1876 - English composer Havergal Brian, in Dresden, Staffordshire;

• 1924 - Italian composer Luigi Nono, in Venice;

Deaths

• 1946 - British composer Sydney Jones, age 84, in London, age 84;

• 1962 - Austrian composer and violinist Fritz Kreisler, age 86, in New York City;

Premieres

• 1728 - Gay & Pepusch: ballad-opera, “The Beggar’s Opera,” at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London; This work, mounted by the London impresario John Rich, proved so popular that it was staged 62 times that season; As contemporary wags put it, the wildly successful work “made Gay Rich and Rich Gay&rdquo(Gregorian date: Feb. 9);

• 1781 - Mozart: opera, "Idomeneo" in Munich at the Hoftheater;

• 1826 - Schubert: String Quartet in D minor, "Death and the Maiden," as a unrehearsed reading at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, two amateur musicians; Schubert, who usually played viola on such occasions, could not perform since he was busy copying out the parts and making last-minute corrections;

• 1882 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera "The Snow Maiden," in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Feb. 10);

• 1892 - Chadwick: “A Pastoral Prelude,” by the Boston Symphony. Arthur Nikisch conducting;

• 1916 - Prokofiev: "Scythian" Suite ("Ala and Lolly"), Op. 20, at the Mariinsky Theater in Petrograd, with the composer conducting (Julian date: Jan. 16);

• 1932 - Gershwin: "Second Rhapsody" for piano and orchestra, in Boston, with the Boston Symphony conducted by Serge Koussevitzky and the composer as soloist;

• 1936 - Constant Lambert: "Summer's Last Will and Testament" for chorus and orchestra, in London;

• 1981 - John Williams: first version of Violin Concerto (dedicated to the composer's late wife, actress and singer Barbara Ruick Williams), by Mark Peskanov and the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin; Williams subsequently revised this work in 1998; This premiere date is listed (incorrectly) as Jan. 19 in the DG recording featuring Gil Shaham;