Anton Arensky

Synopsis

Under the old Julian calendar in use in Czarist Russia, on today’s date in 1861, Romantic composer Anton Arensky was born in Novgorod. If you prefer, you can also celebrate Arensky’s birthday on July 12 — the same date under the modern Gregorian calendar, but Arensky was such a Romantic that the Old Style date seems, well, more appropriate somehow.

Arensky studied with Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov, and admired the music of Tchaikovsky. Arensky taught at the Moscow Conservatory and published two books: Manual of Harmony and A Handbook of Musical Forms. His own students included a number of famous Russian composers, including Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Glière.

Arensky wrote three operas, two symphonies, concertos, chamber works and suites for two pianos — but it’s his Piano Trio in D minor that gets performed and recorded more often than any of his other works.

A victim of tuberculosis, Arensky spent the last years of his life in a Finnish sanatorium. He died young — at just 44 — in 1906.

Music Played in Today's Program

Anton Arensky (1861-1906): Piano Trio No. 1; Rembrandt Trio; Dorian 90146

On This Day

Births

• 1722 - Bohemian composer Georg Anton (Jirí Antonín) Benda, in Alt-Benatek, Bohemia

• 1861 - Russian composer Anton Arensky, in Novgorod (Gregorian date: July 12)

• 1892 - Hungarian composer Laszlo Lajtha, in Budapest

• 1958 - Finnish composer and conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, in Helsinki

Deaths

• 1987 - Spanish composer Federico Mompou, 94, in Barcelona

Premieres

• 1924 - Gershwin: musical revue, George White’s Scandals of 1924, at the Apollo Theater in New York City; This show includes the classic Gershwin song “Somebody Loves Me” (lyrics by B.G. De Sylva and Ballard MacDonald).