Sallinen and Kronos

Synopsis

To some it seemed an act of sheer madness for a string quartet to announce in the 1970s that it would not perform the classic repertory of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but devote itself instead to music written after 1900, especially newly-composed works. But the Kronos Quartet has proved the skeptics wrong. Founded in Seattle in 1973, and reformed in San Francisco five years later, the Kronos Quartet has established itself as a major player on the international music scene, premiering hundreds of new works by living composers.

On today’s date in 1984, the Kronos Quartet was at the Kukmo Music Festival in Finland, where they gave the premiere performance of Pieces of Mosaic, the String Quartet No. 5 by Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen. This quartet is a string of 16 short fragments, and, as the composer explained, reflected a pessimistic view of world affairs, circa 1984, the ominously Orwellian year of its composition. “It seems somehow crazy that a composer should create extended symphonic forms for the world we live in. This quartet is the kind of work the world deserves: one which is smashed into fragments,” Sallinen said.

Sallinen is one of the best-known Finnish composers since Sibelius, and in addition to chamber works like his Quartet No. 5, he has written symphonic works and a number of successful operas.

Music Played in Today's Program

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): String Quartet No. 17 (Quartetto Italiano); Philips 422 512

Aulis Sallinen (b. 1935): String Quartet No. 5 (Pieces of Mosaic); Sibelius Quartet; Ondine 831

On This Day

Births

• 1670 - Italian opera composer Giovanni Bononcini, in Modena. In 1720, he joined the Royal Academy of Music in London, where one faction favored Bononcini’s works over those by Handel.

• 1821 - French mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia. She arranged some of Chopin’s mazurkas as songs and performed them with the composer in concert. She also wrote an opera, La Derniére Sorcière, that was performed in Weimar in 1869, and a chamber opera version of Cendrillon (Cinderella) which was performed privately in 1904.

• 1872 - Czech composer Julius Fucik, in Prague. A student of Dvořák, he composed the famous circus march, Entrance of the Gladiators.

• 1894 - Dutch-born American composer Bernard Wagenaar, in Arnhem. He was the son of the Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar (1862-1941). He came to the U.S. in 1920, was a violinist with the New York Philharmonic from 1921-23, and in 1927 became a composition teacher at the Juilliard Graduate School.

• 1933 - Canadian composer R. Murray Schafrer, in Sarnia, Ontario

• 1954 - American composer Tobias Picker, in New York

Deaths

• 1949 - Czech composer Vitezslav Novák, 78, in Skutec, Slovakia

Premieres

• 1713 - Handel: Utrecht Te Deum, in London (Julian date: July 7)

• 1791 - Cherubini: opera, Lodoiska, in Paris

• 1920 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 5, in Moscow

• 1972 - Panufnik: Violin Concerto, in London, with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist

• 1976 - Stockhausen: multi-media work Sirius, in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian Institute

• 1984 - Sallinen: String Quartet No. 5 (Pieces of Mosaic), at the Kuhmo Festival in Finland, by the Kronos Quartet