Leroy Anderson in the studio

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1950, Decca recording engineers committed to disc seven short works by American composer Leroy Anderson, with him conducting top-notch New York freelance musicians.

Since 1938, Anderson had been associated with the Boston Pops, for whom he had composed a string of very successful pieces, beginning with Jazz Pizzicato and Jazz Legato, complimentary works designed for the two sides of a 78-rpm disc. Anderson recorded both those pieces at his 1950 Decca session and also the first performance of a new work, The Waltzing Cat. In fact, after 1950 most of his premieres took place at Decca recording sessions. One of them, Blue Tango, sold over a million copies.

By 1953, one national survey found Anderson was the most-performed American composer of his day. That was the year he wrote his only extended orchestral work, a piano concerto. With the exception of a short-lived Broadway musical from 1958 Goldilocks, the bulk of his works are short, witty orchestral pieces, superbly crafted works intended to make audiences smile.

“I just did what I wanted to do, and it turned out that people liked it,” Anderson once said.

Music Played in Today's Program

Leroy Anderson (1908–1975): Jazz Pizzicato and The Waltzing Cat; Decca studio orchestra; Leroy Anderson, conductor; MCA 9815

On This Day

Births

• 1711 - Baptismal date of British composer William Boyce, in London

• 1786 - German-born Danish pianist and composer Friedrich Kuhlau, in Ülzen (near Hanover)

• 1825 - Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, in Prague

• 1935 - Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, in Paide

Deaths

• 1733 - French harpsichordist and composer François Couperin (“le Grand”), 64, in Paris

• 1949 - French composer Henri Rabaud, 76, in Paris

• 1985 - English composer William Alwyn, 79, in Southwold

Premieres

• 1887 - Dvorák: Mass in D, at a private performance in Luzany;

• 1924 - Gershwin: musical Primrose, at the Winter Garden Theater in London;

• 1936 - Kodály: Te Deum, in Budapest;

• 1951 - Stravinsky: opera, The Rake’s Progress, in Venice at the Teatro della Fenice, conducted by the composer. According to Opera America, this is one of the most frequently-produced American operas during the past decade.

• 1971 - Barber: Fadograph from a Yestern Scene (the title is a line from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake), by the Pittsburgh Symphony, at the opening concert in Heinz Hall;

• 1986 - Harbison: Remembering Gatsby for orchestra, in Atlanta, with the Atlanta Symphony, Robert Shaw conducting. This music became the prelude to Harbison’s 1999 opera, The Great Gatsby.

Others

• 1840 - German composer Robert Schumann gives his fiancée, Clara Wieck, his new song-cycle Liederkreis, as a gift on the eve of their wedding

• 1850 - Swedish soprano Jenny Lind makes her American debut at the Castle Garden Theatre in New York City, inaugurating a 93-stop American tour arranged by showman and entertainment entrepreneur Phineas “P.T.” Barnum

• 1950 - At a Decca recording session in New York City, Leroy Anderson conducts the premiere performance of his piece The Waltzing Cat and also commits to disc six more of his most popular compositions: Jazz Pizzicato and Jazz Legato (both composed in 1938), A Trumpeter’s Lullaby and The Syncopated Clock (both composed in 1945), and two of his pieces that had premiered at 1947 and 1948 Boston Pops concerts: Serenata (Arthur Fiedler's favorite Leroy Anderson composition) and Sleigh Ride (which was actually composed in July!). Anderson had conducted the premiere of Jazz Pizzicato (his first composition) at a 1938 Boston Pops concert, and Jazz Legato was written at the request of Arthur Fiedler as a companion piece for the second side of a 78-rpm recording of Jazz Pizzicato, A Trumpeter’s Lullaby was written at the request of Roger Voison, principal trumpet of the Boston Pops, and The Syncopated Clock was popularized when it was used for 25 years as the theme music for The Late Show" on WCBS-TV in New York City.

• 1962 - At their third recording session at London’s Abbey Road studios, The Beatles record one of their early hit songs: “Love me do!”