Gao Hong

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2012, the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet — an ensemble committed to commissioning original works as well as performing new arrangements for four guitars — gave the premiere performance of a suite that took them far afield: to Guangxi province in China, to be exact. The new work, Guangxi Impression, took place at Sundin Hall in St. Paul, but the sounds the four guitarists produced evoked not only a far-off Chinese landscape, but Chinese instruments, as well. 

That should not have been all that surprising, since the composer of the specially commissioned piece, Gao Hong, is a virtuoso performer on one of them: the pipa, the traditional pear-shaped, plucked lute of China. Hong has made the United States her home since 1994, and her Guangxi Impressions for a quartet of traditional Western guitars is a suite in three movements, played without pause. The third and final movement is titled ‘Celebrating the Harvest.’

“A bountiful harvest is cause for celebration in Guangxi,” Hong writes, “and I depict this with sounds of percussion bands and people yelling with excitement as they dance. Near the end of the movement I [ask the performers to shout Chinese] words expressing happiness.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Gao Hong (b. 1964): 'Celebrating the Harvest,' from 'Guangxi Impression'; Minneapolis Guitar Quartet; innova 858

On This Day

Births

• 1834 - German composer, pianist and organist Julius Ruebke, in Hausneindorf, near Quedlinburg

• 1878 - Austrian composer Franz Schrecker, in Monaco

• 1895 - French-born American composer, painter and mystical philosopher Dane Rudhyar, in Paris

Premieres

• 1731 - Bach: St. Mark Passion performed in Leipzig at Vespers on Good Friday

• 1748 - Handel: oratorio Alexander Balus in London at the Covent Garden Theater; The event possibly included the premiere of Handel's Concerto a due cori No. 1 as well (Gregorian date: April 3)

• 1783 - Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 13 and final version of Symphony No. 35 (Haffner), at the Vienna Burgtheater, with composer as piano soloist and conductor; An earlier version of the symphony was performed in Salzburg at private concerts arranged by the wealthy Haffner family in the summer of 1782

• 1792 - Haydn: Symphony No. 94 (Surprise), conducted by the composer, at the Hanover-Square Concert Rooms in London

• 1828 - Beethoven: String Quartet in F, Op. 135 (posthumously, and almost one year to the day after the composer's death on March 26, 1827), in Vienna, by the Schuppanzigh Quartet

• 1886 - Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony (after Byron), in Moscow (Julian date: March 11)

• 1912 - Gliere: Symphony No. 3 (Ilya Murometz) in Moscow (Julian date: March 10)

• 1917 - Bloch: Trois Poèmes Juifs (Three Jewish Poems), in Boston, with the composer conducting

• 1923 - de Falla: opera El Retrablo de Maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show) (concert version), in Seville at the Teatro San Fernando

• 1935 - Barber: Music for a Scene from Shelley, by the New York Philharmonic

• 1939 - Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 2, by the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, Willem Mengelberg conducting and Zoltán Székely as the soloist; A live recording of this premiere performance has been issued on both LP and CD

• 1944 - Cowell: Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 2 for strings, in New York on a WEAF radio broadcast featuring Henri Nosco and his Concert Orchestra; The first concert hall performance took place at Town Hall in New York on Oct. 8, 1944, with the Daniel Saidenburg Little Symphony

• 1945 - Copland (and nine other composers): Variations on a Theme by Eugene Goosens, by the Cincinnati Symphony

• 1946 - Marc Blitzstein: Airbourne Symphony, in New York City

• 1962 - Irving Fine: Symphony 1962 by the Boston Symphony, Charles Munch conducting

• 1969 - Gene Gutchë: Genghis Khan, by American Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting

• 1999 - James MacMillan: Cumnock Fair for piano and strings, at Cumnock Academy by members of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Others

• 1703 - Antonio Vivaldi becomes a Roman Catholic priest at 25

• 1721 - Handel completes the composition of Act 3 of Muzio Scevola, as part of a "competition" arranged by the directors of the Royal Academy of Music to settle the rivalry between their three house composers (Filippo Amadei composed Act 1, Giovanni Bononcinni composed Act 2 and Handel composed Act 3); Handel was deemed the victor in this "contest" (Gregorian date: April 3)

• 1729 - J.S. Bach visits Coethen to perform funeral music for his former employer, Prince Leopold

• 1743 - London premiere of what is billed as A New Sacred Oratorio by Handel (Gregorian date: April 3); This was his Messiah which had its first performance in Dublin the previous year