Dvořák's 'American Quintet'

Synopsis

Composers and publishers don’t always see eye to eye. Simrock, the German publisher of Dvořák’s music, irritated the patriotic Czech composer by issuing his scores with his first name printed in its Germanic form “Anton” rather than its Czech form “Antonín.” They finally came up with a compromise: Simrock abbreviated Dvorak’s first name, printing it as “A-N-T-period” on the music’s title page: Germans could read that as “Anton” and Czechs as “Antonín.” Everyone was happy.

Simrock would also have liked Dvořák to stick to writing small-scale chamber works — which sold well — rather than large-scale symphonic works — which didn’t.

“You counsel me that I should write small works, but this is very difficult … At the moment my head is full of large ideas and I will have to do as dear Lord wishes,” he wrote in 1891. A few years later, he would make Simrock very happy by sending them some large- and small-scale works that would sell tremendously well, including his New World Symphony and American String Quartet … plus this music — an American String Quintet published by Simrock as Dvořák’s Op. 97.

Dvořák’s quintet was composed in Spillville, Iowa, in the summer of 1893 and was first heard at Carnegie Hall in New York on today’s date in 1894.

Music Played in Today's Program

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): American String Quintet; Smetana Quartet; Josef Suk, viola; Denon 72507

On This Day

Births

• 1715 - French composer Jacques Duphly, in Rouen

• 1876 - Italian opera composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, in Venice

• 1921 - American composer and pianist Leo Smit, in Philadelphia

• 1926 - American composer Morton Feldman, in New York City

• 1927 - American composer Salvatore Martirano, in Yonkers, New York

Deaths

• 1674 - Italian composer Giacomo Carissimi, 68, in Rome

• 1958 - American composer Arthur Shepherd, 77, in Cleveland

Premieres

• 1723 - Handel: opera Ottone, Re di Germania (Otto, King of the Germans), in London at the King’s Theater in the Haymarket, with the debut London performance of the Italian soprano Francesca Cuzzoni in a work by Handel (Gregorian date: Jan. 23). It was during a rehearsal of this opera with Cuzzoni in late December of 1722 that the famous incident between Handel and Cuzzoni took place during which the composer supposedly said “Madam, I know you are a veritable devil, but I would have you know that I am Beelzebub, the chief of the devils!”

• 1864 - Brahms: Variations on a Theme by R. Schumann, for piano four-hands, in Vienna

• 1883 - Chadwick: Thalia Overture, by the Boston Symphony, with the composer conducting

• 1885 - Tchaikovsky: Orchestral Suite No. 3, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Jan. 24)

• 1894 - Dvořák: String Quintet (American), in New York, by the Kneisel Quartet (and violist M Zach)

• 1918 - George Templeton Strong, Jr.: tone-poem Le Roi Arthur (King Arthur), in Geneva, Switzerland, with Ernest Ansermet conducting the orchestra which would be named the Orchestra of the Suisse Romande ater that same year

• 1934 - Bloch: Sacred Service, in Turin, Italy

• 1942 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 22 in Tbilisi

• 1964 - Cowell: Concerto Grosso, for chamber orchestra, in Miami Beach by the Miami Symphony Orchestra, Fabien Sevitzky, conducting

• 2002 - Athena Adamopoulos: Soliloquy for cello and piano, at a From the Top recording session for Public Radio International at Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianist Christopher O’Riley. Adamopoulos was 15 years old at the time. Their performance was broadcast nationwide in early February, 2002.

Others

• 1910 - Radio pioneer Lee De Forest experiments with live broadcasting from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The signal was relayed from a rooftop transmitter at the Met to wireless installations, then by land lines to telephone receivers, and reportedly reached a few hundred listeners as far away as Newark, New Jersey. These were the first occasions on which a Met performance was heard live by audiences not present at the actual performance. De Forest’s 1910 broadcasts included part or all of Acts II and III of the Jan. 12 performance of Tosca (with soprano Olive Fremstad in the title role) and the following day’s double-bill of Cavalleria Rusticana (with soprano Emmy Destinn as Santuzza) and Pagliacci. Riccardo Martin sang the lead tenor roles in Tosca and Cavalleria Rusticana, Enrico Caruso in the Pagliacci performance. The first in the continuing series of complete live radio broadcasts from Met occurred on Christmas Day in 1931, when Hansel and Gretel was aired on the NBC network.