George Walker's 'Wind Set'

Synopsis

The catalog of the Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American composer George Walker includes two major pieces for winds: Canvas, written in 2000, is a large-scale work for wind band, percussion, and double bass; and Wind Set, a smaller chamber piece, written the previous year and for just five instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon.

In both works, Walker said he set out to do something had hadn’t done before, something new:

“I am trying to think that I am beginning fresh — that it's not something that I have done before … I try to find the kind of beginning, for me the beginning is so crucial, that is unlike something that I have done before … or like something that I might have heard. So the search process is really trying to find those initial notes that will convey the sense of freshness … Beyond that I think that I was able, from my point of view, to maximize the coloristic possibilities of the winds.”

Wind Set was commissioned by the New Jersey Chamber Music Society and received its premiere performance by them in Newark on today’s date in 1999.

Music Played in Today's Program

George Walker (1922-2018): Wind Set; Peggy Schecter, flute; Richard Foley, oboe; William Shadel, clarinet; Leonard Hindell, bassoon; Jerome Ashby, french horn; Summit 274

On This Day

Births

• 1660 - Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, in Palermo; he was the founder of the Neopolitan School of music and father of the composer, Dominico Scarlatti

• 1752 - Baptismal date of German oboist and composer Ludwig August Lebrun, in Mannheim

• 1810 - Danish conductor and composer Hans Christian Lumbye, in Copenhagen

• 1843 - Austrian conductor and operetta composer Carl Michael Ziehrer, in Vienna

• 1905 - English composer Alan Rawsthorne, in Haslingden

Deaths

• 1864 - German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (Jakob Liebmann Beer), 72, in Paris

• 1990 - American composer William Levi Dawson, 90, in Montgomery, Alabama

Premieres

• 1692 - Purcell: opera The Fairy Queen, in London at the Queen's Theater, Dorset Garden

• 1935 - Ibert: Concertino da Camera for saxophone and chamber orchestra, in Paris

• 1936 - Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf at a children’s concert by the Moscow Philharmonic, conducted by the composer;

• 1947 - Copland: In the Beginning for mezzo-soprano and chorus, at Harvard University

• 1947 - Schoenberg: String Trio, at Harvard University

• 1951 - Cage: Imaginary Landscape No. 4 for 12 radios, in New York

• 1951 - Ulysses Kay: Sinfonia for orchestra, in Rochester, New York

• 1965 - Bolcom: Oracle for orchestra, in Seattle

• 1965 - Grofé: Trick or Treat: Halloween, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, André Kostelanetz conducting

• 1981 - David Amram: Violin Concerto, by the St. Louis Symphony, Leonard Slatkin conducting, with Charles Castleman the soloist

• 1984 - Ezra Laderman: String Quartet No. 7, in New York City, by the Colorado Quartet

• 1984 - Broadway premiere of Sondheim: musical Sunday in the Park with George

• 1990 - Elliott Carter: Violin Concerto, by the San Francisco Symphony conducted by Herbert Blomstedt, with Ole Böhn as soloist

Others

• 1855 - American premiere of Verdi’s opera Il Trovatore (The Troubadour) at the Academy of Music in New York.

• 1872 - First documented American performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, at Steinway Hall in New York, by the Church Music Association, Dr. James Pech conducting. Subsequent regional premieres of this work occurred in Cincinnati (May 19, 1880) and Boston (Mar. 12, 1897).