Beethoven's First

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1800, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 had its first performance in Vienna, at a benefit concert for the 29-year-old composer.

It would be several years before any of Beethoven’s orchestral music reached American shores, but it did occur during Beethoven’s lifetime. In 1819, for example, a “Grand Piano Concerto” as it was billed, was performed in New Orleans — only we have no idea which concerto. On today’s date in 1825, when Beethoven was 54, his Egmont Overture was performed at the City Hotel in New York, and was performed again in Philadelphia on March 28, 1827 — just two days after its composer had died in Vienna.

By the 1840s, Beethoven’s overtures and symphonies appeared with some regularity on the East Coast, and slowly worked their way Westward.

In 1853, Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 3 was performed in San Francisco by musicians gathered from that city’s gambling houses. A letter describing the event recalled, “there were many Chinese present,” and that it “lasted four hours owing to an overwhelming demand for encores, which the performers dared not refuse in the face of rugged California individualism.”

In 1856, when San Francisco’s German Society gave the West Coast premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, The San Francisco Chronicle review the following day noted: “The pieces were very beautiful, but it must be said that some of them appeared to be considered very tedious by the greater number of the audience. The Adagio, Scherzo and Finale of Beethoven’s Symphony, for instance, caused many to yawn.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 1; Concertgebouw Orchestra; Bernard Haitink, conductor; Philips 442 073

On This Day

Births

• 1803 - German composer and conductor Franz Lachner, in Rain am Lech

Deaths

• 1961 - American composer Wallingford Riegger, 75, in New York

Premieres

• 1800 - Beethoven: Symphony No. 1, at the Hofburgtheater in Vienna, during a benefit concert for Beethoven (an “Akademie”) conducted by the composer. Also on the program was the first public performance of Beethoven‘s Septet, (A private performance had already taken place at the home of Prince Schwarzenberg). The earliest documented American performance of some or all of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 occurred in the Moravian community of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, on June 13, 1813.

• 1911 - Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe Suite No, 1, in Paris, with Gabriel Pierné conducting

• 1932 - Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 (original version), at a private concert in Munich, at which Siegmund von Hausegger first performed the much revised and cut version of this symphony prepared by Bruckner’s pupil, Ferdinand Löwe, then the composer’s original score. Clemens Krauss conducted the first public performance of Bruckner's original version with the Vienna Philharmonic on October 23, 1932.

• 1938 - Quincy Porter: Symphony No. 1, by the New York Philharmonic, with the composer conducting

• 1948 - Hartmann: opera Simplicius Simplicissimus (concert performance), in Munich by the Bavarian Radio

• 1958 - Mayuzumi: Nirvana-Symphony, in Tokyo

• 1970 - Rochberg: Caprice Variations for solo violin, by Lewis Kaplan, broadcast live in New York on WBAI’s Free Music Store

• 2005 - Per Norgard: The Will-o’-the-Wisps Go to Town (to texts by Hans Christian Andersen and Susanne Broegge), for soloists, chorus and orchestra, in Birmingham, England, by the Birmingham Symphony

Others

• 1825 - First documented American performance of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, at the City Hotel in New York during an orchestral program conducted by Joseph Herrmann

• 1845 - Shortly before his 16th birthday, American composer and piano virtuoso Louis Moreau Gottschalk performs a recital in Paris at the Salle Pleyel. Chopin attends, and congratulates Gottschalk on his performance.

• 1877 - American premiere of Wagner's opera Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), at the Academy of Music in New York City

• 1914 - Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet conducts Stravinsky’s Symphony in E-flat in Montreux and begins friendship with Stravinsky. Ansermet would become a famous interpreter and champion of this composer's works. In April of 1919, Stravinsky would dedicate a reduced-orchestra version of his Firebird Ballet Suite to Ansermet and his newly-formed ensemble, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.