Zwilich's Horn Concerto

Synopsis

For many professional musicians, summertime is spent away from home at one or more music camps and festivals. And if the camp or festival just happens to be in a gorgeous mountain or lakeside setting, well, so much the better.

Since 1987, musicians have made the climb to scenic Vail, Colorado, at this time of year for the Bravo! Music Festival. And on today’s date in 1993, it was at the Bravo! Festival that a new Concerto for Horn and Strings by the American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich received its premiere.

The concerto was a triple commission from the Rochester Philharmonic, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the New York-based French horn virtuoso David Jolley, who was the soloist for the Vail premiere. Zwilich wrote: 

“While I think of the solo horn as a heroic figure, I enjoyed the interplay and dialogue between horn and strings and allowed the character and nature of the horn to influence the strings and vice-versa. For me, the combination of solo horn and string orchestra is rich and evocative, as is the unique nature of the horn: its warmth and color, its dramatic legato as well as its pungent staccato, the sheer breadth of its sound.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (b. 1939): Horn Concert; David Jolley, horn; MSU Symphony Orchestra; Leon Gregorian, conductor; Koch 7487

On This Day

Births

• 1779 - Baltimore lawyer Francis Scott Key, who in 1814 wrote the words of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” setting his text to the tune of a popular British drinking song of the day, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” written by John Stafford Smith. The text and the tune became the official national anthem by and Act of Congress in 1931.

• 1858 - Austrian composer Hans Rott, in Vienna

• 1913 - American composer Jerome Moross, in Brooklyn, New York

• 1930 - British pop song and musical composer Lionel Bart, of Oliver! fame, in London

Deaths

• 1973 - Gian-Francesco Maliperio, Italian composer and first editor of collected works of Monteverdi and Vivaldi, 91, in Treviso

Premieres

• 1740 - Thomas Arne: masque, Alfred (containing “Rule, Brittania”), in Clivedon (Gregorian date: August 12)

• 1921 - Hindemith: String Quartet No. 3, by the Amar Quartet (which included the composer on viola) in Donaueschingen, Germany

• 1968 - Webern: Rondo for string quartet, written in 1906, at the Congregation of the Arts at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire

• 1993 - Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto for Horn and String Orchestra, at the Bravo! Music Festival in Vail, Colorado, by soloist David Jolley with the Rochester Philharmonic, Lawrence Leighton Smith conducting

Others

• 1892 - John Philip Sousa, 37, quits the U.S. Marine Corps Band to form his own 100-piece marching band

• 1893 - In Spillville Iowa, Antonin Dvořák finishes his American String Quintet during his summer vacation at the Czech settlement