The New York Phil and Pearl Harbor

Synopsis

Maybe you’re one of those die-hard classical music fans who records your favorite orchestra’s radio broadcasts. Starting in the 1950s, home tape recorders made it easy to record off the air, and the arrival of cassette recorders in the 1960s made it more affordable.

But in the 1930s and 40s, you had to be pretty darn wealthy to afford home recording equipment, which was bulky and only able to record about 14 minutes at a time on to 16-inch vinyl discs. One such home recordist was Dr. Edwin L. Gardner of Minneapolis, who, on today’s date in 1941 was recording a Sunday afternoon New York Philharmonic broadcast of the first symphony by Shostakovich and the second piano concerto by Brahms.

Dr. Gardner was probably annoyed by the first news flash which interrupted the Shostakovich symphony: a U.S. Army transport carrying lumber had been torpedoed 1300 miles west of San Francisco. But Gardner kept recording, even during the preempted intermission of the Philharmonic broadcast devoted to the first reports of the devastating Japanese attack at the U.S. Navy’s base in Pearl Harbor.

And so, in addition to capturing most of the Shostakovich and Brahms he set out to record, Dr. Gardner also captured in real time a dramatic moment in American history.

Music Played in Today's Program

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Symphony No. 1; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; Sony 88697683652

On This Day

Births

• 1637 - Italian composer Bernardo Pasquini, in Massa da Valdinievole, Lucca

• 1840 - German composer Hermann Goetz, in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad)

• 1863 - Italian composer Pietro Mascagni, in Livorno

• 1887 - Austrian-born American composer Ernst Toch, in Vienna

• 1910 - American composer and bandmaster Richard Franko Goldman, in New York City

• 1912 - Welsh composer Daniel Jones, in Pembroke

Premieres

• 1861 - Brahms: Handel Variations, in Hamburg, by pianist Clara Schumann;

• 1873 - Tchaikovsky: symphonic fantasia The Tempest, in Moscow (Gregorian date: Dec. 19)

• 1879 - Berlioz: opera La Prise de Troie (The Capture of Troy), Acts 1 & 2 of Les Troyens (The Trojans), posthumously, in a concert performance in Paris at the Théatre du Châtelet;

• 1889 - Gilbert & Sullivan: operetta, The Gondoliers at the Savoy Theatre in London

• 1890 - Tchaikovsky: opera, Pique Dame, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Dec. 19)

• 1898 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera Mozart and Salieri, in Moscow, Truffi conducting (Julian date: Nov. 25)

• 1924 - Carl Ruggles: Men and Mountains, in New York City

• 1939 - Walton: Violin Concerto, by the Cleveland Orchestra, Artur Rodzinski conducting, with Jascha Heifetz (who commissioned the work) as the soloist

• 1975 - Lou Harrison Symphony No. 2 (Elegiac), by the Oakland Youth Symphony, Denis de Coteau conducting

• 1999 - Gunther Schuller: Saxophone Sonata, in New York, by members of the Washington Square Contemporary Music Society

Others

• 1732 - John Rich opens his Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London (Gregorian date: Dec. 18); Five years earlier, in 1728, Rich had launched English-language “ballad opera” as a genre when he staged John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London (as contemporary wags put it, the wildly successful Beggar’s Opera ”made Gay Rich and Rich Gay”). Even though The Beggar’s Opera parodied the prentions of Italian opera seria, it was Rich who gave Handel’s beleaguered opera company a home at Covent Garden in 1734-1737. Handel’s Ariodante, Alcina, Atalanta, Arminio, Giustino and Berenice were first staged at Rich’s theater.

• 1842 - First concert by The Philharmonic Society of New York (now the New York Philharmonic Orchestra), in the Apollo Rooms at 410 Broadway, program including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and Weber’s Oberon Overture.