Synopsis
Piero della Francesca was a 15th century Renaissance painter, whose series of frescoes, Legend of the True Cross, inspired one of the best orchestral works of 20th-century Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.
In 1952, he made a trip to the Tuscan hill town of Arezzo, where he saw the frescoes and got the idea for a new symphonic work that would attempt to capture in music what Piero had captured in painting.
What he sought to replicate was, as he put it, “a kind of solemn, frozen silence and opaque, colored atmosphere … a strange, peaceful and moving poetry.”
He linked the first movement of his score to one Tuscan fresco showing the Queen of Sheba and some women kneeling by a river; and the second to another depicting the dream of the Emperor Constantine. The third movement was intended, in his words, as “a kind of general view of the frescoes.”
Martinu’s orchestral triptych, The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, received its premiere performance on today’s date at the 1956 Salzburg Festival in Austria, with the Vienna Philharmonic led by the eminent Czech conductor, Rafael Kubelik.
Music Played in Today's Program
Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1950): Les Fresques de Piero della Francesca; Vienna Philharmonic; Rafael Kubelik, conductor; Orfeo C521-991 (recorded August 26, 1956)
On This Day
Births
1887 - Nicaraguan composer Luis Delgadillio, in Managua
1915 - British composer Humphrey Searle, in Oxford
Deaths
1958 - British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, 85, in London
Premieres
1815 - Weber: Clarinet Quintet, in Munich, featuring clarinetist Heinrich Bärmann
1846 - Mendelssohn: oratorio Elijah, at Birmingham Festival in England, with composer conducting
1954 - Alan Rawsthorne: Practical Cats (after T.S. Eliot), for speaker and orchestra, at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland
1956 - Martinu: Frescoes of Piero della Francesca, for orchestra, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria
1957 - Panufnik: Rhapsody for orchestra, in London
2001 - André Previn: Tango, Song and Dance, at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter and pianist Lambert Orkis
Others
1717 - French flutist and composer Jacques-Martin Hotteterre is appointed royal flutist (“flutte de la chamber de Roy”) at a salary of 6000 livres
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About Composers Datebook®
Host John Birge presents a daily snapshot of composers past and present, with timely information, intriguing musical events and appropriate, accessible music related to each.
He has been hosting, producing and performing classical music for more than 25 years. Since 1997, he has been hosting on Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Music Service. He played French horn for the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestra and performed with them on their centennial tour of Europe in 1995. He was trained at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy.