Donald Shirley

Synopsis

Today marks the birthday of American pianist and composer Donald Shirley, who was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1927, to Jamaican immigrant parents: a mother who was a teacher and a father an Episcopalian priest. He was a musical prodigy who made his debut with the Boston Pops at 18, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

If Shirley had been born 20 years later, he might have had the career enjoyed by Andre Watts, who born in 1946. But in the late 1940s, when he was in his 20s, impresario Sol Hurok advised him that America was not ready for a black classical pianist, so instead he toured performing his own arrangements of pop tunes accompanied by cello and double-bass.

His trio recorded successful albums marketed as jazz during the 1950s and 60s, but he also released a solo LP of his piano improvisations that sounds more like Debussy or Scriabin, and he composed organ symphonies, string quartets, concertos, chamber works, and a symphonic tone poem based on the novel Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.

The 2018 Oscar-winning film Green Book sparked renewed interest in Shirley’s career as a performer, but those of us curious to hear his organ symphonies and concert works hope they get a second look as well.

Music Played in Today's Program

Donald Shirley (1927-2013): Orpheus in the Underworld; Donald Shirley, piano; Cadence CLP-1009

On This Day

Births

• 1715 - Austrian composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil, in Vienna

• 1782 - French composer Daniel-François-Esprit Auber, in Caen

• 1852 - British composer Frederic Hymen Cowen, in Kingston, Jamaica

• 1862 - English composer Fritz (Frederick) Delius, in Bradford, Yorkshire

• 1876 - English composer Havergal Brian, in Dresden, Staffordshire

• 1924 - Italian composer Luigi Nono, in Venice

Deaths

• 1946 - British composer Sydney Jones, age 84, in London

• 1962 - Austrian composer and violinist Fritz Kreisler, 86, in New York City

Premieres

• 1728 - Gay & Pepusch: ballad-opera, The Beggar’s Opera, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. This work, mounted by the London impresario John Rich, proved so popular that it was staged 62 times that season. As contemporary wags put it, the wildly successful work “made Gay Rich and Rich Gay.” (Gregorian date: Feb. 9)

• 1781 - Mozart: opera, Idomeneo in Munich at the Hoftheater

• 1826 - Schubert: String Quartet, Death and the Maiden, as a unrehearsed reading at the Vienna home of Karl and Franz Hacker, two amateur musicians. Schubert, who usually played viola on such occasions, could not perform since he was busy copying out the parts and making last-minute corrections.

• 1882 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera The Snow Maiden, in St. Petersburg (Gregorian date: Feb. 10)

• 1892 - Chadwick: A Pastoral Prelude, by the Boston Symphony. Arthur Nikisch conducting;

• 1916 - Prokofiev: Scythian Suite (Ala and Lolly), at the Mariinsky Theater in Petrograd, with the composer conducting (Julian date: Jan. 16)

• 1932 - Gershwin: Second Rhapsody for piano and orchestra, in Boston, with the Boston Symphony conducted by Serge Koussevitzky and the composer as soloist

• 1936 - Constant Lambert: Summer’s Last Will and Testament for chorus and orchestra, in London

• 1981 - John Williams: first version of Violin Concerto (dedicated to the composer's late wife, actress and singer Barbara Ruick Williams), by Mark Peskanov and the St. Louis Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin. Williams subsequently revised this work in 1998. This premiere date is listed (incorrectly) as Jan. 19 in the DG recording featuring Gil Shaham.