A pre-premiere premiere by John Corigliano

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1997, violinist Joshua Bell and the San Francisco Symphony gave the premiere performance of an 18-minute Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra by American composer John Corigliano.

This music was a concert offshoot of Corigliano’s film score for Francois Gerard’s movie The Red Violin, but debuted months before the film itself was completed.

Corigliano said, “I was delighted when asked to compose the score for Francois Girard’s new film. How could I turn down so interesting and fatalistic a journey through almost three centuries, beginning as it did in Cremona, home of history’s greatest violin builders? I also welcomed the producer’s offer to separately create a violin and orchestra concert piece, to be freely based on motives from the film.

“I’d assumed that, as usual in film, I wouldn't be required to score it until it was completed, except for a number of on-camera “cues” … Then plans changed. Filming was pushed back. So the present Chaconne was built just on the materials I had; a good thing, as it turns out, because I now had the freedom, as well as the need, to explore these materials to a greater extent than I might have had I been expected to condense an hour’s worth of music into a coherent single movement.”

Music Played in Today's Program

John Corigliano (b. 1938): Selections from The Red Violin; Joshua Bell, violin; Philharmonia Orchestra; Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor; Sony 63010

On This Day

Births

• 1932 - American composer and teacher Alan Stout, in Baltimore

Deaths

• 1959 - British light-music composer Albert W. Ketèlbey, 84, on the Isle of Wight

Premieres

• 1724 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 116 (Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ) performed on the 25th Sunday after Trinity as part of Bach’s second annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1724/25)

• 1887 - Tchaikovsky: Suite No. 4 (Mozartiana), on an all Tchaikovsky program in Moscow conducted by the composer (see Julian date: Nov. 14)

• 1937 - R. Schumann: Violin Concerto (composed 1853 for the great violinist Joseph Joachim, who never performed it in public), in Berlin, by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Karl Boehm, with Georg Kulenkampff as soloist

• 1948 - Virgil Thomson: Louisiana Story Suite, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting

• 1954 - Lutoslawski: Concerto for Orchestra, in Warsaw

• 1993 - Stanislaw Skrowaczewski: Chamber Concerto (Ritornelli poi Ritornelli) in St. Paul, Minnesota, by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, with the composer conducting

• 1997 - Corigliano: The Red Violin (Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra), by soloist Joshua Bell with the San Francisco Symphony, Robert Spano conducting

Others

• 1760 - Franz Joseph Haydn (28) marries Maria Anna Keller (31) in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. Ms. Keller was the daughter of the wigmaker Johann Peter Keller, who is said variously to have assisted Haydn in his years of poverty or employed him as a music teacher.